Web Standards, Accessibility & More

Looking for a good, free code/text editor? I’ve gone through this quandary several times (due to new job, second home computer, suggestion for a friend, etc.), so I figured I’d list my favorites here. Hope you find this, and it serves you well!

Windows

• Notepad++ (highly recommended for the PC)
• TextPad
• Edit+

Mac

• TextMate
• Text Wranger
• Xcode (Apple)
• BBEdit (awesome, but just a free trial)

I thought it would be interesting to post some statistical information from Feedburner on my podcast and blog about web accessibility, Web Axe. It had been several weeks since I last checked the stats, and it was a pleasant surprise to see some growth.

The stats are for Thursday, July 10, 2008 and shows one of Web Axe’s highest subscriber rates of 746 (an approximation of how many times your feed has been requested in a 24-hour period). What I find most interesting is the different types of feed readers being used and how popular they are.  Google and iTunes top the list. Google feed readers (Google Reader or iGoogle) count for 32%, and iTunes for 30% (17% Mac and 13% Windows). Netvibes, my favorite RSS reader, was next at 10%.

I recently purchased a new PC at Fry’s. I don’t have the budget for a new Mac yet, so I got a pretty decent Windows box for only $300! Plus the tax and extended warranty, of course. It’s an HP Compaq Presario and has 2 Gigs of RAM and 250 Gig hard drive. So the computer came with Windows Vista. To my surprise, I’m really liking it. It has more of a Linux-like GUI which is pretty cool.

Here are some Acronyms and Quotes that definitely worth reading!

On future of Ajax:

“Ajax is the frames of web 2.0″

How true; Ajax is overused and many times not used correctly.

Jeremy Keith in Hijax presentation:

“Plan for Ajax from the start; Implement Ajax at the end”

Great advice. Go read his book, Bulletproof Ajax.

D.R.Y.

“Don’t Repeat Yourself”

Meaning don’t rewrite and duplicate code. Great idea, especially for larger sites.

i18n

“Internationalization”

Cute, isn’t it? Comes from “i” + 18 letters + “n”.

X.H.R

“xmlHttpRequest”

P.O.S.H.

“Plain Old Semantic HTML”

My favorite!

A quote about friendly web development:

“Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.”

Be responsible with your code.

A quote about using Macs:

“Once you go Mac, you never go back.”

Is that not P.C.? Ha ha.

A.H.A.H.

“Asynchronous HTML and HTTP”

Becoming a much more relevant term; there are other often-used alternatives to the X in Ajax (XML).