how much does web design pay?

[Tags: web design, new media]. From £13K to £40K according to this useful breakdown by Giant Mouse.

Image maps made accessible

[Tags: web design, accessibility]. This article is pretty mind-blowing: it shows how you can create an accessible image map using CSS and definition lists. I'm going to lie down now.

Using definitions, abbreviations and acronyms

[Tags: web design, new media]. Have you ever been on a website and seen a word with a dotted underline? Then you move your mouse over that word and a definition appears over it? (If not, check out A List Apart, which does it a lot - or see http://www.slais.ubc.ca/courses/libr500/02-03-wt1/www/C_Walker/intro.htm)

This is how you do it:
In your HTML, use one of the following tags before your word: <acronym title="TYPE TITLE HERE">or <abbr title="TYPE
ABBREVIATION HERE">- and close the tag afterwards, i.e. </acronym>or
</abbr>

In your CSS, include the following:
abbr, acronym
{
border-bottom: 1px dotted #333;
cursor: help;
}

Putting RSS feeds on your webpage - and create your own content management system

[Tags: web design, RSS, PHP]. There's a very useful page at http://www.rss-specifications.com/displaying-rss-feeds.htm about various ways of putting RSS feeds on your site. The first few only allow you to use feeds that have been pre-approved by the likes of feedroll, but go a bit further and the most useful link is to Feedforall.com (who the writer does marketing for). Takes a bit of playing around, but not too much to get it to work well - the most work lies in creating a template for your feeds to sit in.

The great thing about this is that by using a blogging site and then displaying the feed on your own template, you can effectively have your own content management system (CMS), albeit a very basic one, and not too different to simply changing the blog template.

Giant Mouse squeaks about this blog

[Tags: web design, new media]. Had an interesting email today from Iain at GiantMouse.co.uk, who's very nicely reviewed this blog and thereby given me ample reason to return the favour. Despite my initial suspicions that this was a form of link farming, it turns out that GiantMouse.co.uk looks like being quite a useful resource for the budding web designer, with very clear and simple articles on subjects from improving your Google ranking to working out how much a site will cost. Well worth exploring.

Target sued over web accessibility

[Tags: web design, accessibility]. The story is a couple months old, but still important: in America the National Federation of the Blind is sueing Target. "The lawsuit alleges that Target's Web site, Target.com, fails to include features such as an invisible code embedded beneath images that would enable blind customers to use the screen-reading software." (

You can also find reports at http://www.out-law.com/page-6634, http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1139837720306 and CNET.

Actionscript Cheat Sheets

[Tags: web design, Flash]. Thanks to Flash Insider for directing me to this excellent link: "ActionScriptCheatSheet.com has put together some great single page cheat sheets for ActionScript. Currently, he's posting sheets for AS3 (so far, he's posted sheets for Top Level Classes, Packages and the Display Package), but there's an older AS2 sheet as well if you're still not on the beta bandwagon"

Will licensing kill the online radio star?

[Tags: web design, new media]. "New rules on royalties are stifling British internet radio stations while allowing foreign rivals to broadcast into the UK unhindered," reports The Guardian.