Unintentionally Blank

It seems like a long time since I wrote about the importance of making websites work without JavaScript, a post that uncovered the Nationwide building society locking customers without JavaScript enabled out of their site with nothing but a blank page to look at. The post elicited a response from Ian Lloyd from the Nationwide web team, saying that they would look into the issue.

While it has been a long time before I noticed any difference, an online banking site can’t be changed up that quickly, in the last month or so I did notice a difference to the site. Jumping immediately to my “disable JavaScript” button I proceeded to try to sign on to the online banking section. I was met with a message:

Nationwide’s Internet Banking requires JavaScript and cookies to be enabled. It appears that your browser does not support JavaScript, or you have disabled it. Please re-enable JavaScript or try accessing this site using a different browser.

The Nationwide have taken the first step towards accessibility for those without JavaScript enabled, a <noscript> element prints out the above text. While I don’t claim any knowledge of the stringent security measures that banks must take, I am still quite sure that JavaScript should not be necessary to log on. To make sure of this, I checked with my other online bank, the HSBC. I was able to log on without JavaScript enabled.

Small Steps

While a <noscript> element really is the least anyone can do by notifying users that they can’t use the site without JavaScript, it is a start. As I said above, changing an online banking system is not a trivial matter, so I appreciate what the Nationwide have done so far. Let’s hope that this change can inspire further work at the Nationwide, and anywhere else where JavaScript is required.

Apologies for the lack of updates recently, all this sitting about with my feet up has sort of put me off the computer for a while. I did upgrade my version of WordPress this evening to 2.5 (that’s right, check the number at the bottom of the page!), just so I could use the new light and airy admin interface designed by certain people I highly respect at Happy Cog Studios. Thankfully nothing went wrong, that I can see, but if you do happen to spot anything, do let me know.

Have you upgraded yet? If so, do you like the new interior? My favourite part is automatically upgrading plugins, but the design and usability is beautiful too.

It’s nice to know that life has a knack of knowing when to take you down a notch. Sure, I got a new job that’s just around the corner, traffic here is at the best it’s been and my rugby team were playing for the league title at the weekend, what could possibly go wrong?

Maybe I gave you a hint by mentioning the rugby, there is good and bad news. We won the game, we won the league. The bad news: I only played 10 minutes due to a misplaced tackle that caused me to twist my ankle in several wrong directions. A swollen leg, a trip to the hospital (my first time in an ambulance) and several hours later left me with a cast and still no concrete knowledge of what the real problem was. You see it is entirely possible, according to half the x-rays and half the doctors, that I had broken bones they had never seen broken before, everyone else said it was a nasty sprain.

Either way, it looks like my short walk to work has become even shorter as working from home outweighs the long journey on crutches.

I hope you had a good weekend, I spent mine getting plastered.

Ever heard web standards explained through the medium of hip hop? No? Then you need to watch this YouTube video on design coding. That’s all I need to say, enjoy

(Found via molly.com)

This year, April 9th is that time of year again. The time when you say, who needs CSS? Who needs fancy design at all? Who needs anything more than clean, semantic HTML to present information to the web?

April 9th is CSS Naked Day, brainchild of Dustin Diaz and the single reason that within the last month I received hits to last year’s announcement from searches such as “stripping on the web“, “naked forever” and “proud to be naked“. Bonus search results aside, the day is meant to show that well marked up HTML content is readable, accessible and essential as the base for any site.

Do you have the markup to take part? Lose your CSS for web standards, next week!