Please, please, PLEASE use label tags! Accessibility has been on a lot of people's minds for a while now, and I'm surprised to see the lack of zeal for the HTML label tag.
Recently, people have wised up and made entire blocks clickable, not just the text within them, sometimes doubling, tripling, (or more!) the size of the rectangle representing the link. Generally you recognize one of these menus when you hover over the menu item's row and it or the link changes color, and your cursor changes to a hand. This is a great step forward in usability, and it pains me to see the forms equivalent being neglected like the red-headed step child.
Take for example, your average navigation menu. Mine will do: over to the right there. --->
When you hover your mouse over a menu item's row (list item), the row changes background color, the link changes color, and the mouse cursor changes to the "hand" to indicate that you are over a link.
Think about it: A check box is only about 15 pixels tall by 15 pixels wide. That's a very small rectangle and not only requires extra precision on the part of your average user, but may prove to be difficult for someone with poor eyesight or arthritis. A radio button is even smaller. In most cases, your checkbox is going to have some text next to it that describes what checking it accomplishes. Wrapping that text in a label tag will only take you a few more seconds, and exponentially grows the clickable rectangle for that form control.
Try clicking on the text labels:
Try clicking on the text labels:
Add some CSS to change the cursor, and you're in good shape:
label { cursor: pointer; }
Try clicking on the text labels:
Your users and I thank you!
in
Best Practices |
HTML/CSS |
No Responses Yet
Posted 2007-06-08 05:41
I just couldn't resist playing with all of the sexy AJAX tags and CFWindow. I couldn't. I can't play with new syntaxes and not the new tags. So I put aside working on side-dish proximity checking and instead worked on this beautiful screen:
Click to enlarge
There is plenty of functionality in there that doesn't work, or works incorrectly. But the skeleton is there, and you can get an idea of where I'm headed with it. The code has been committed to the repository, but the demo has not been updated. So if you're eager to see it up close and personal, check it out! (Literally!)
I promise I will work on side dish proximity next, so that I can go ahead and call it an alpha release.
Promise.
in
AJAX |
CFMenuCal |
My projects |
Scorpio |
No Responses Yet
Posted 2007-06-07 10:51
Today was a good day! The heavens parted and the CFGods shined a ray of light down on me, and fixed my project schedule, so now I can go to CFUnited! I've lined up a free place to crash, registered, and signed up for the lectures I want to attend.
I'm so new to the "scene" of CF Developer Bloggers that I wonder if anyone will even know who I am. Not that it will matter while I'm sitting in a corner alone drinking my beer perfecting my I wish I was a people-person stare. If you've got the guts, and you happen to recognize me, do say hello. I promise I won't bite.
in
CFUnited 07 |
ColdFusion |
No Responses Yet
Posted 2007-06-05 11:10
At this point I'm not going out of my way to make the code particularly available. We're not even to the point where I'm happy enough to call it an alpha release. However, after checking with Ben Wednesday, I was assured that I could commit my code to the repository without violating the NDA. I'm writing it in CF8 using the new efficiency improving syntax changes, and intend to branch it for MX7 some time during beta.
So if you're itching for a peek under the hood, check out the repository, over at the RIAForge project page.
I was able to implement exceptions (when no meal is needed), and have the ground work laid for preventing repeat side-dishes, but still have some kinks to work out of that code. I've also added some classes, divs, and id's that should make it easily skinnable with CSS, provided a default.css file, and added a variable for you to specify the CSS file name.
I've also updated the demo to use the latest code.
in
CFMenuCal |
My projects |
No Responses Yet
Posted 2007-06-01 12:35
