So the other day I was trying to get text input fields to have the same height across browsers. I figured I could use the line-height property for this, but no such luck. Well, it does work in WebKit browsers, but not in Firefox.
When looking closer at why I discovered that Firefox specifies line-height for form controls in its user agent stylesheet using the !important keyword. Since you can’t override that, a workaround is necessary.
Copyright © Roger Johansson
When auditing websites for accessibility I occasionally find elements that are incorrectly hidden with display:none. The most common example is probably skip links intended to help keyboard and screen reader users. The irony is that those well-intended skip links are made useless by display:none.
The pitfalls of using display:none have been widely known among accessibility-conscious web developers for many years (in Web terms). As I mentioned a couple of years ago in Hiding with CSS: Problems and solutions, setting an element’s display CSS property to none makes it completely invisible. It doesn’t generate a box, it doesn’t take up any place, it doesn’t affect the layout. display:none hides the element – and its descendants – visually, and it also hides the element from screen readers (most screen readers most of the time – see JAWS, Window-Eyes and display:none: Return to 2007 for more).
Posted in Accessibility, CSS.
Copyright © Roger Johansson
Last week Apple released Mac OS X 10.7, a.k.a. OS X Lion. There are many news and changes in this version of Mac OS X, some of them pretty fundamentally changing how you use your Mac. For an in-depth review of Lion I recommend John Siracusa’s Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: the Ars Technica review.
I’ve taken a look at some of the changes that affect accessibility, and there are quite a few nice improvements. The Mac OS X Accessibility page as always has an overview of the built in assistive technologies. There’s also an overview of what’s new on the page listing Lion’s new features. Here are some highlights.
Posted in Accessibility, Apple, Mac.
Copyright © Roger Johansson
It’s been quite a while since I read a new book on CSS. It seemed like most books on the subject had already been written. But then browsers started implementing CSS3, and developers started using it.
And that’s where this book comes in. The Book of CSS3, written by Peter Gasston, is all about CSS3 just as the title says. And it’s a book you more than likely should have, even if you think you already have a pretty good handle on everything CSS.
Copyright © Roger Johansson
Long-time readers may remember that I like to take some time off during summer (the northern hemisphere summer, that is). This year is no different. Well, not that different anyway.
Instead of going completely offline and not posting anything at all here here, my intention is to slow down a bit during June, July and August. Instead of two or three posts per week, expect at the most a single post. And for a few weeks I probably will completely “unplug to recharge�, however contradictory that may sound.
For very brief tips, links and the like there’s always Twitter, which I’m slowly getting used to using. So if you find what I write about here interesting you may want to keep an eye on @rogerjohansson. Or you too could try slowing down a bit for just a while.
Posted in Life.
Copyright © Roger Johansson