this site
See the links page for links to software mentioned here.
I've been developing this site for a while now with an eye on accessibility issues.
All parts of the site use the techniques described on the design and accessibility page, and have been validated to XHTML 1.0.
The initial conversion from HTML 4.0 to XHTML 1.0 Transitional (previous redesign) was done with the aid of the HTML-Tidy utility (I used the Windows version with the GUI), and was completely painless. Moving to XHTML 1.1 was a little trickier, but not wildly so. I've now reverted the site to XHTML 1.0 Strict as the site's not served with the correct MIME type for 1.1.
The site is deliberately designed to be usable by all, and is not intended to favour any one browser. Towards this aim, it is checked using MS Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera on Windows; Safari, Firefox and Opera on Mac; and Firefox and Konqueror on Linux.
All alterations from 7/2/2001 have been checked with Amaya, too, and authored with it (though the Atari y2k page used to be generated from a database and then just cleaned up using Amaya).
I also do some testing using Opera Mobile and Opera Mini, to make sure the site works on small mobile/PDA screens.
As of 03/08/2002, I have altered the way the pages link to the style sheets (switching from using just link tags to using them in combination with the @import method). This effectively turns the stylesheet off for v.4 and earlier browsers, which will render the pages as if they were (effectively) written in HTML 3.2. IE3.x and Netscape 4.x tend to make such a mess of rendering CSS styles that this is a much safer option to maintain readability. If you are still using one of these browsers, I would recommend investigating a more standards-compliant browser:
Internet Explorer is the most popular browser around, and since version 7 it's not too bad with respect to standards on the whole. However, it has its downsides:
- Because It is intimately tied into the Windows operating sytem (OS), security problems with IE tend to be more common and more serious, particularly as it uses some technologies which make it particularly vulnerable (eg ActiveX).
- While it was the underdog in the browser war with Netscape, it was a champion for standards compliance. Since it won that particular battle, standards compliance has taken a back seat to development of Microsoft's own proprietary extensions to HTML, encouraging yet more sites which only work with IE.
- Microsoft announced that there would be no more standalone versions of IE after 6: the next update would only be available with an update to Windows itself (what became Vista). However, they then brought out 7, though it's only available with Vista and when you install XP Service Pack 2 (to the best of my knowledge). Everyone else is left out in the cold - I'd suggest a switch to Firefox or K-Meleon if you're in this position as IE 6 is very problematic.
Mozilla (which is the software being developed from Netscape's code after they made it open source) is much more standards compliant: if your machine is up to it I'd advise giving serious thought to switching to a Mozilla-derived browser, eg Firefox.
Mozilla Suite and Firefox are available for Windows, MacOS, LInux and a pletora of Unixes.
Other lightweight options include K-Meleon (Windows only) which is just a browser without e-mail client, editor etc, but using the Mozilla rendering engine (Gecko). It's suitable for older or lower-spec PCs, in particular.
There are similar "lite" Mozillas for other platforms, eg Galeon for Linux/Unix amd Camino for MacOS.
If you experience any problems in viewing or navigating any of this site, irrespective of the browser you use, please let me know so I can rectify the problem. All of this site should be readable in any browser.