Testing a search application with the Google API
More detailed information to follow in the coming days but for now I am looking for some testers. Please give this search a try and let me know what you think by posting below. You can enter your own searches in the top right box on that page. It will only give you the first 10 results however.
We have built a search that hits up UWdir, a keyword database, and Google using the Google API. If you have a UWdir user and pass you can try out submitting changes to the keyword database but don’t try with IE, it won’t work. The Javascript is Firefox/Safari/Opera only for the keyword changes at the moment.
Yes there are cosmetic issues, but looking more for functional problems at the moment. Let me know what you think!
update: the authentication issue on changing the keywords is a result of a vhost setting on pole that is forcing .htaccess style authentication on put, get, etc commands in https://cpadev – request has been sent, should work fine tomorrow. Fixed now, issue was related to webDAV settings. So please go and test submitting keyword changes.
Odd error 404 caused by print.css
There have been an awful lot of error 404’s reported on CLF based pages. If you look at your log files, you will notice they are look a little like:
/url(\"css/UWprint.css\")%20print
What appears to be calling it is:
<style type="text/css">
@import url("/css/UWprint.css") print;
</style>
Which comes just after the IE 6 conditional comment. So that is why that calling print CSS with the above style call doesn’t work in IE 6.
Chris Gray in the Library has come up with a JS based fix:
<!--[if IE 6]>
<style type="text/css" media="print">
@import url("/css/UWprint.css");
</style>
<![endif]-->
<script type="text/javascript">
var agt=navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
var is_major = parseInt(navigator.appVersion);
var is_ie = ((agt.indexOf("msie") != -1) && (agt.indexOf("opera") == -1));
var is_ie6 = (is_ie && (is_major == 4) && (agt.indexOf("msie 6.") != -1));
if (!is_ie6) {
document.write('<style type="text/css">');
document.write('@import url("/css/UWprint.css") print;');
document.write('<\/style>');}
</script>
This problem has been reported in the certain CSS lists already with no real fix but to call your CSS a different way. I suppose it is just another IE bug. I tend to look at as a Fact of Life (FOL) that as long as I know its there, won’t really concern me. Or should it?
WaSP – Dreamweaver Task Force member
It looks like the Dreamweaver Task Force at the Web Standards Project is still buzzing after all 
Today there is an announcement of new members – Stephanie Sullivan and me! I am looking forward to working the group. We should have more to show and tell in the coming weeks.
Centering web pages: still easy?
A while back now I wrote about centering the easy way where I used some position:relative and margin: 0 auto; in the body tag to get the effect. There were more changes required of course. The changes were made to the central CSS last week and they didn’t cause too many problems actually (yay). There was of course a couple of problems:
- Anything above the doctype will cause IE quirks mode and thus mess up your CSS – this would have caused problems before (cascade rules not being honored in tables, etc) as well but they weren’t as obvious,
- Not calling the central CSS and having your own copy. That is understandable given DW not rendering the CSS unless it is local. Just remember to update your local CSS.
- Page shift brought on by the appearance of the browser scroll bar in the right.
Then of course there was a really strange problem that was seen with most pre-1.0 versions of the XHTML. A span was missing or in the wrong spot:
<span class="none"><a href="#content">Skip to the content of the web site.</a></span>
This does nothing but for some reason influenced the cascade. Symptoms were the right and left navigation margins for placement were aligned with the #contentbar in IE 6. To me this suggests a problem with the CSS but I am not sure what do about it.
Really the CSS way of centering using the body tag is a hack that is kinda dirty. The cleanest way to center pages is with a page container or centering each piece of the larger puzzle. Navigation would still require a wrapper so really there is no proper way to do it without adding in some HTML that I know of.
Home page usability study final report for April 2005 study
Well after some delay the usability study that we used to guide some of our changes to the home page in May is now available in PDF format along with the executive summary is available in HTML (most will likely just want to read that anyway).
The study did not have as many participants as we would have liked and nor did it look at the external audiences. But it did offer up some guidance on changes to the home page and how they effected peoples work flow.
Take a look at the report and let me know what you think. We are working on another study that will look at both external and internal audiences in the fall. The goal is to make this a regular exercise and maybe even expand it. “Test early, test often” is echoed in the usability world…
But I also believe that usability has more to do with accessibility than even the WAI guidelines. Why? Well what good is a technically accessible web site if no one can use it? I wouldn’t suggest the WAI is not useful, just that I think usability is an extremely important piece of the puzzle.
On that note, Derek Featherstone will be at UW next Friday talking about Accessibility. Take a moment to sign-up, it is open to all members of the UW community.
