Web Standards, Accessibility & More » Admin Stuff http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog Personal blog of Dennis E. Lembree, web site professional Tue, 22 May 2012 06:24:28 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 New Theme – Accessible 1.0 http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2010/11/07/new-theme-accessible/ http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2010/11/07/new-theme-accessible/#comments Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:10:08 +0000 Dennis http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/?p=8981 Continue reading →]]> Last week I installed a new theme on this WordPress blog. It’s called Accessible 1.0, and it’s a child theme for WordPress’ (somewhat new) default theme, “Twenty Ten”. The child theme was developed by Sylvia Egger (@Sprungmarkers) of Cologne, Germany. I’ll be tweaking some of the code, but overall, the web accessibility is a great improvement over the WordPress’ default theme. Accessibility enhancements include the following (taken from its web site):

  • Accessible colors and contrast according to WCAG AAA.
  • Accessible and visible link focus for keyboard use.
  • Optimized link hover and active states.
  • Skip link to content visible on keyboard focus.
  • Added skip links back to top after content and after footer area.
  • Added additional hidden headlines for sidebars (left and bottom).

PS: My previous theme was accessible (after tweaking) but I wanted a fresh look and wanted to support Sylvia’s Accessible 1.0 theme!

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]]> http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2010/11/07/new-theme-accessible/feed/ 3 LifeStream is Sweet http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2009/07/28/lifestream-is-sweet/ http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2009/07/28/lifestream-is-sweet/#comments Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:09:55 +0000 Dennis http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/?p=473 Continue reading →]]> I recently added a LifeStream page this site (see top menu). Lifestream is an awesome WordPress plugin from iBegin that compiles multiple social networking accounts together. There are many customization available. You can enter a custom feed, or choose from many sites including:

  • Twitter
  • TwitPic
  • Digg
  • YouTube
  • StumbleUpon
  • Delicious
  • Flickr
  • Brightkite
  • Tumblr
  • Reddit

PS: Finding the Facebook RSS feed is ridiculously difficult. Fail! Here’s a tip, the best I can do so far:
http://www.facebook.com/feeds/notifications.php?id=YOURID&viewer=YOURID&key=YOURKEY&format=rss20

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]]> http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2009/07/28/lifestream-is-sweet/feed/ 0 New Theme! http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2009/07/06/new-theme-2/ http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2009/07/06/new-theme-2/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:27:28 +0000 Dennis http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/?p=412 Continue reading →]]> My WordPress theme got tired and outdated, so I switched to a theme called iNove by NeoEase. It needed a little adjusting for standards and accessibility, but not nearly as much as most themes out there. I continue to have a very difficult time finding and recent, fully accessible, standards-compliant themes. What a shame. I published a Web Axe blog post discussing this lack of accessible WordPress themes. Hope to create one by end of summer.

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]]> http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2009/07/06/new-theme-2/feed/ 0 U of M Dentists Returns after Friend Dies http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2009/05/19/u-of-m-dentists-returns-after-friend-dies/ http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2009/05/19/u-of-m-dentists-returns-after-friend-dies/#comments Tue, 19 May 2009 18:39:28 +0000 Dennis http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/?p=365 Continue reading →]]> The U of M Dentists web site went back up last month after an extended period of downtime. The site is an  “Online Network of University of Michigan Dental School Graduates and their Practices”. Here’s the strange story…

Last December, I noticed a few web sites of mine were completely down. The reason was tragic. A former co-worker of mine in Florida was hosting the sites, and he died suddenly. His computer business was sold, and the plug was pulled on the web servers (literally).

It took me a week to figure out what happened, then a several weeks more to track down the new company and get some domains transferred into my name. What a mess that was. When I finally had time (after reviving other higher-priority sites), I converted the old ASP code (yes, Classic ASP!) into nice, simple PHP. And the Access data to MySQL. It was a tedious but worthy effort.

I’m glad I decided to re-launch the site instead of ditching my pet project. And since its return, a few dentists have requested to be added to the network.

U of M Dentists logo

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]]> http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2009/05/19/u-of-m-dentists-returns-after-friend-dies/feed/ 0 New Theme! http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2007/10/04/new-theme/ http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2007/10/04/new-theme/#comments Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:42:20 +0000 Dennis http://checkengineusa.com/dennislembree/blog/2007/10/04/new-theme/ Continue reading →]]> I finally came across a WordPress theme that looks professional, satisfies my taste, and is standards-compliant. (I sure don’t have time to create one myself!) A few minor adjustments and voila! Here it is…the new look of my blog. Hope you like it.

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]]> http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2007/10/04/new-theme/feed/ 0 Posts coming soon… http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2006/09/30/hello-world/ http://weboverhauls.com/dennislembree/blog/2006/09/30/hello-world/#comments Sat, 30 Sep 2006 15:03:13 +0000 Dennis Continue reading →]]> I’ve been posting personal blogs on MySpace for a while now, and I’m finally getting around to blogging the “right” way, using WordPress. This blog is hosted together with my web development company, CheckEngine USA — web site tune-ups and overhauls. So from today on, I’ll only be blogging here instead of MySpace. You can also check out my company news, and my podcast and blog on web accessibility (Web Axe). Thanks for visiting!

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