Whitepapers
Dive Into Accessibility
Intro: This book is entitled "Dive Into Accessibility: 30 days to a more accessible web site", and it will answer two questions. The first question is "Why should I make my web site more accessible?" If you do not have a web site, this book is not for you. The second question is "How can I make my web site more accessible?" If you are not convinced by the first answer, you will not be interested in the second . . .
Web Standards For Business
This article highlights the benefits of using Web standards for business sites (Internet, intranet and extranet sites). It is aimed at stakeholders from the marketing, communication and IT departments . . .
http://www.webstandards.org/learn/articles/web_standards_for_business/
Understanding Free and Open Source Licenses
Open source software is more and more an alternative for large enterprises. Most companies already
use open source software, starting with Linux and web servers, but also databases or complete
infrastructure stacks to run their applications. Cost benefits, higher quality, and increased
independence from vendors are driving factors for this trend. Often, however, CIOs and IT
decision makers do not take open source software into consideration due to perceived risks
involved. Concerns about legal issues and uneasiness about the involved licenses are mentioned
frequently.
Understanding free and open source (FOSS) licenses is not actually difficult.
Looking at the history and some of the more important developments allows one to assess the
impact of using FOSS in the enterprise. Risks for an enterprise that is only using open source
software are minimal or actually comparable to using commercial software . . .
Courtesy of Optaros Consulting (Under GNU GPL License)
The Perfect 404
Oops. Something went wrong. You're not sure what — was it you? Was it the website? What do you do now? Welcome to the world of the Error 404 page. You've requested a page — either by typing a URL directly into the address bar or clicking on an out-of-date link and you've found yourself in the middle of cyberspace nowhere. A user-friendly website will give you a helping hand while many others will simply do nothing, relying on the browser's built-in ability to explain what the problem is. We can do better than that, can't we?
http://alistapart.com/articles/perfect404/
Better Living Through XHTML
XHTML is the standard markup language for web documents and the successor to HTML 4. A mixture of classic (HTML) and cutting–edge (XML), this hybrid language looks and works much like HTML but is based on XML, the web’s “super” markup language, and brings web pages many of XML’s benefits, as enumerated by the Online Style Guide of the Branch Libraries of The New York Public Library . . .
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/betterliving/
"Forgiving" Browsers Considered Harmful
Current browsers are very forgiving; they quietly correct or gloss over many common HTML errors. This makes it easy for people to experience the joy of creating their own web pages with a minimum of frustration – if a page displays correctly, then it’s "right". Unfortunately, by hiding the need for structure that the web will require as it moves towards XHTML and XML, these forgiving browsers have helped create a world of structural HTML illiterates. As long as browsers continue to parse and display HTML that isn’t well-formed or valid, we will never learn the right ways, and we will never get to a structural web . . .
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/forgiving/
Using XHTML/CSS for an Effective SEO Campaign
Any internet marketing professional will tell you, just as we will, that an effective Search Engine Optimisation campaign can generate more traffic than an expensive banner-ad program, or costly and time-consuming pay-per-click methods. Some of the best methods of optimising a website are ensuring that a page is not overly heavy in file size, maintaining a good content to code ratio, using lots of relevant content, and filling the page with as much text and links as you can without “spamming” the search engine spiders . . .
