Archive for July, 2008

If you follow CSS3.Info then you’ll notice my post last week regarding the UI that Facebook have come up with specifically for iPhone. You’ll also notice that some managed to misinterpreted the information I was trying to put across (your apology was welcomed, but in case any of you are still unclear as to the meaning behind my post, please read my subsequent comment).

Back to the subject in hand though; why did Facebook feel it was necessary to come up with a complete new iPhone UI? As Peter correctly suggested, the sites entire could be incorporated into a Media Query based on max-width so that handheld devices of varying width (within reason) are dealt the same layout. Granted, the site does have a prominent theme replicating the behaviour and colour palette that iPhone uses, so although the URL can of course be accessed through any browser (Opera Mini in my case), there is an obvious mis-match between the theme of the site and the skin that Opera Mini uses (it’s also worth noting that Opera Mini fell flat on it’s face trying to render anything other than the logo, links the either side of it, and the navigation menu below that- I’m guessing this is down to the processing power of my Nokia E65 as opposed to the browser itself).

Also it’s interesting that the site’s in quirks mode, and check out the body > .fullScreen declaration- for some strange reason they’ve chosen to use a combination of min-height and max-height to emulate height!

Yesterday, Google software engineers Ron Adler and Janis Stipins announced that ‘they’ve greatly improved their ability to index Flash’.

Whilst it’s a huge step forward (in the right direction, I’d like to add), there’s still no alternative (and I doubt there will be for a long time to come) to textual content being marked up with the correct HTML semantics if you wish for your Flash-based content to be a) accessible, b) on an equal footing with its semantic HTML file counterparts for ranking results (based purely on internal factors in this particular context), c) quick to download… the list goes on. Add to that the ability to aggregate physical files (HTML, video formats) into an XML sitemap, rather than relying purely on Google to identify your new pages through crawling links, and you have still no excuse for not correctly marking up your textual content semantically.

So whilst I welcome this news that textual content and hyperlinks within Flash files are that bit more accessible, I’ll still get a shiver down my spine every time I see any form of text embedded in a Flash file.

This is the Adobe press release on the matter which goes into more detail, and here’s one from Google