Project Cerbera > Ben Millard’s Do List

Ben Millard’s Do List

Some of the things I want to do and thoughts I wish to persue.

Project Cerbera

• Redirects:
  • Refactor legacy .htaccess rules, such as for redirecting old URLs like these and ones from old topics on gtaforums.com.
  • A blog entry entry from 2004 used the URL /tutorials/gta3-vc/handling/suspension.
  • Figure out how these weird URLs work.
• TextStudio bug fixes, new features and backend.
• New articles.
• Review all tables, particularly /gta/.../tutorials/editors.
• Submit the /gta/ page to DMOZ.
• Update robots.txt.

Life of Ben (Blog) Renovation

• Entry markup quality assurance:
  • Code samples (<pre><code>) to use highlighting technique.
  • Review class="dialogue" and class="irc" structures.
  • Retrofit better phrase markup, like I’ve done with <code> before now.
• Continue firefighting broken links.
• Thoughts could be moved to corresponding parts of the blog archives?
• More pictures and photographs.

GTA Modding

• GTA 2 Game Hunter:
  • My old Game Hunter Mockups influenced it at the time.
  • Sektor has now let me work on Game Hunter Ben Millard Edition (GHBM)!
  • XP theming with Common Controls 5.0 would lose .FullRowSelect but maybe Sektor can fix that?
  • Simplify the ‘first time user’ experience.
• Finalise MultiSlayer.
• 6 player version of Bernaar Race with lighting.

Calthorpe Park School

• Designer:
  • Prospectus and existing branding as basis?
  • Get quote after Warren has checked opinion.
  • Leave it until next year?
• Write a Style Guide:
  • Images dimensions.
  • Dates and times.
  • Tables, grids and columns.
  • Subheadings.
  • Names and authorship.
• Technology neutral URLs.
• Footer icons demo.
• Add dates for letters and news.
• Most useful letters in Parent Resources?
• Replace <acronym title> with a glossary page?
• Recent Changes.

HTML

Resume work on 2008 collection.

<abbr> and <acronym>

• Make them aliases.
• Element content as “a short version”.
• title as “a long version” of elements content.

<address>

• As “any contact details or authorship information”.
• Allow <dl>, <table> and so on like <blockquote>.

<br>

• Creates a minor break in the flow of the document.
• Larger than a full stop.
• Smaller than a new paragraph.

<figure>

• Re-use existing HTML4 elements, such as <p>:

  <p>
   <img src alt>
   ...
  </p>

Forms

• for as space-separated list:
  • Radio buttons ending with Other and a textbox as example.
  • Date of Birth applying to various combinations of text fields and dropdowns.
• for+name as fallback when for+id fails.
  • Mockup using Google Custom Search:
    • With radio buttons.
    • Without radio buttons.
• <label> proximity:
  • As implemented by ATs?
  • Only apply to <label> elements?
  • Fallback when other steps fail.
  • Would make for+id unnecessary in all regular forms.
  • Akin to <dt>+<dd> and <th>→<td>.
  • Irregular forms would still need for+id much like irregular tables need headers+id.
• Use name value as label when all else fails? (As implemented by ATs?)
• Reserve some name values to formalise features like Opera’s Wand?
• Could these controls work?

Headings

• Treat any <hn> as a heading of that level.
• Consistent with existing HTML element names.
• Enables arbitrary heading depths.
• Simple and familiar to style.
• Simple and familiar to author.
• Already present on the web, although very rare.
• No new attributes.
• Minimal changes to deployed code for document outlining?
• Straightforward to specify, I would guess.

id and name

• Only require uniqueness where it has a real effect:
  • <a name>
  • <input name>
  • Other places?
• Make them space-separated lists?
  • Specification headings have a section number and a section name.
  • Other examples?
• Allow numbers at start.
• Allow any valid character, trimming whitespace?
• Is this already what the spec says?

Images

• <img usemap> with <map id> and several <area shape coords alt> for labelled diagrams?

Lists

• <dl>:
  • Usefulness of exeptional <dd> as opposed to accumulative <dd>?
  • Compare <dt><dd><dd> with <h2><p><p>.
  • <dt> is title of group.
  • <dd> is an item in group.
  • No implied exceptions or accumulations.
  • Consistent with <li>.
  • Research author practices.
• <ul> as “a group of items whose markers do not affect the meaning”.
• <ol>:
  • As “a group of items whose markers affect the meaning”.
  • Source order already provides the order.
  • Order can be essential in parts of lists but not others.
  • Who arbitrarily re-orders the contents of every <ul> they read?
  • Authors choose between lists by which marker is produced.
• Family tree mockup:
  • Present as:
    • Bullet list.
    • Treeview.
    • UK style with clear and float.
  • Parents share a <li>.
  • Offspring nested in <li> of parents.
  • Maybe <tr> per generation in a <table>?
  • <dl> could list parents with their children but what of next generation?
  • Fundamentally impossible because DOM has only have 1 parent for any number of children while humans need at least 2 parents?
• Arbitrary list markers?
  • <li value="foo">
  • <li value="1.2.3"> or <ol type="1.1"> for TOC numbering.
  • Times could be list markers, with enough padding or list-style-position: inside.
  • <li value="P"> for skipping letters more easily.
  • Mixed lists, such as numbered sections with lettered appendices.
• Rename <ol reversed> to <ol countdown>:
  • countdown captures:
    • that the list markers “count down” to start;
    • the aspect being controlled (counting);
    • the direction (downwards);
    • and the single most common cowpath it paves, countdowns. (Are these actually the most common?)
  • reversed sounds like the <li> get rearranged when it’s just the direction of list marker counting.
• Make <ol type> override list-style-type, as if it were set using style.

Microformats

• Markup they use is redundant and messy.
• Requires classitis.
• Examples frequently have divitis.
• Find better ways to use the semantics of HTML.
• Simplify and optimise.
• URL</a>↵<span class="summary">Title</span> could be <a href>Title</a>?
• If there are two <time> elements in a vevent and neither has class, imply dtstart to earlier one and dtend to later one?

Phrase & Formatting

• <small> is for de-emphasising.
• Shrinking the text is used to direct attention away from it.
• It may still be important but the author wants users to skim past it.
• Signatures on internet forums.
• Footnotes and tangental remarks in forum messages.
• Confessions, sometimes de-emphasised for humourous effect.

Sectioning

• <hr> ends previous section and begins new section.
• In the absence of heading elements, these sections are unlabelled.
• For the following markup:

  Header
  <hr>
  Navigation
  <hr>
  Content

  These sections are the result:
  1. Initial section is implied by <body>.
  2. Header fills this section.
  3. <hr> ends it and starts new section.
  4. Navigation fills this section.
  5. <hr> ends it and starts new section.
  6. Content fills this section.
• Next Heading and Previous Heading become Next Section and Previous Section.
• The new elements are too numerous, too confusing, too easy to get wrong and are clearly going to fail at the web scale. UAs will have to treat them like <div> due to authors misunderstanding, making mistakes and re-interpretating them.

Tables

• <td scope> (literally):
  • As an alias for <th>.
  • Creates a table header without bold or centering.
  • Avoids <font>, <span>, style and align.
  • Remains accessible.
• Define table types:
  • Layout tables. (Paper notes.)
  • Data tables. (Paper notes.)
  • Tabular forms. (Tables with form fields: am I crazy?)
  • Only tables which match the definition for that type are conforming.
  • Would help AT become more robust and interoperable?
  • Data tables, layout tables and tabular forms IRC discussion, 14^th April 2008.
  • Mockup using 1-5 scoring table.
  • Mockup using Shopping Basket table?
• Pages using <th> from Philip Taylor’s study.
• Finish remaining tables for Collections of Interesting Data Tables.
• ESPN could do <th>Results<th>Results rather than <th colspan="2">Results.

User Interface Reviews

• Basecamp:
  • Messages to work like a mailing list, so you can just Reply.
  • Allow HTML everywhere, including Files page.
  • Always escape contents of <code>, including nested <code>.
  • Dragging a To-do item to a list with no items should add it.
• Firefox 3:
  • Awesome bar ideas.
  • Chatzilla
  • OS integration theme any good?
• Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 mockups of better:
  • Top-level chrome.
  • Add-ons Manager.
  • Menu items and shortcuts.
• Opera 9:
  • XP Theming section with Chat mockup.
  • Redundant toolbar can be hidden using Customise.
  • Joining an IRC channel seems hard.
• phpBB:
  • As used by Accessify Forum:
    • Pagination link absent from tops of topics.
    • Difficult moderation control.
    • Topic title is absent from reply to topic page!
    • No breadcrumbs.
    • Endless message parsing bugs. (Collect real examples from Accessify Forum.)
    • Generates <strong> for bold.
    • No way to use <code>.
    • Evidence of broken or unintuitive editing controls, such as [list=][/list].
    • BBCode used but disabled.
    • Member list has neither a search box nor a set of A to Z links.
  • Review latest version instead or as well?
• Picture Sizes on TV.
• Secure & Accessible PHP Contact Form
• SmartFTP:
  • Dump notes.txt on a 2.5.1008.40 index page.
• Tiny MCE
• TortoiseSVN
• Virgin TV:
  • See notes.txt.
• Windows XP missing screenshots and notes.

Improve Public Pages

• Start by making a shortcut icon for W3C and see if it gets used. (It must be perfect.)
• W3C mailing list web interface (using mailing list search stylesheet?):
  • Public Lists
  • List Archive
  • Month by Date (default with index.html disparity)
  • Month by Thread
  • Month by Subject
  • Message
  • Link threads across months.
• #whatwg mail archive HTML included Marking Up Mail. Is Zesty too radical?
• HTML5 IRC Logs:
  • Channel by Most Recent Days & Monthly Archives
  • Year by Day
  • Month by Day
  • Day by Time
  • Heading per hour.
  • Subheading per topic:, using the given text.
  • Each line as a <p>.
  • Make time into the permalink, without square brackets or # character.
  • Checkbox with <label> to mark important lines.
  • <a href> around first instance of known author names to a URL they supply?
  • Select lines from and to user via class or data-*?
  • Navigation:
    • Need to provide number of lines and number of important lines.
    • 3-column data table?
    • Adjecant days in Day by Time.
  • Relative href values would reduce filesize by 10% on index pages.
  • Atomise URLs to /irc-logs/channel/yyyy/mm/dd with suitable view at each level.
• Recode “Accessible” Data Visualization with Web Standards:
  • Concise text:
    • Start: a. End: b. High: c. Low: d.
    • From a to b, up to c and down to d.
    • a at start, b at end. High of c. Low of d.
    • a at start. Rose to c, fell to d. Ended at b.
    • a to b between c and d.
  • <ul> for lists.
  • <table> for tabular data.
  • Shorter element names than <span>.
• Edit photo: Lego Stormtroopers from Stop using Ajax:
  • Use <textarea> for tagging.
  • Use overflow for vertically expanding <textarea>.
• Location for mockups:
  • Create /web/mockups/ folder, with a subfolder per mockup?
  • Move everything from Site Surgeon development area to Project Cerbera?
• Mockups to accompany my advice about Woking’s website.
• Mockup for BBC’s failed redesign.
• Recode ARIA Button and maybe other ARIA examples with clever use of HTML4.

Accessify Forums

• Accessify Developer's Group
• Possibly switch to:
  • PunBB
  • sCssBoard by Elxxy
  • Forum Deli
• Mockup a better version of each forum template while keeping the Accessify look.

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Last modified on Sunday 15^th November 2009 at 6:57pm UTC.