Terence Eden. He has a beard and is smiling.

Terence Eden’s Blog

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Semantic Dates in Wagtail Blog Posts

· 250 words


The HTML5 Logo.

(Written because I couldn't find an easy guide online.) Here's the code (formatted for readability): <time datetime="{{page.first_published_at|date:"c"}}"> {{page.first_published_at|date:"j F Y"}} </time> You can also use last_published_at if it is a page which has been updated. WHY?!??! Semantics. HTML5 contains the <time> element. The contents of it show up as normal running text, but…

Improving WordPress Video Accessibility

· 2 comments · 200 words


A video with an easy to see play button.

In order to provide a video playback UI, WordPress uses the excellent MediaElement library. Recently, I discovered a slightly annoying flaw - I couldn't see the play button! Here's a screenshot of the video UI. In the middle of this screenshot is a white play button. I have trouble seeing it, because the video's background colour is predominantly white. The issue is with the…

Default Ordering Of Title Options

· 15 comments · 600 words · Viewed ~817 times


An extremely long title list which includes Right Honourable, Wing Comander, Dame, etc.

I was signing up to a website the other day, and it wanted to know my title. Here are the options it offered me: Look, I get it. If I'm ever daft enough to undertake a PhD and masochistic enough to complete it - I am going to demand that everyone addresses me as Doctor Who Doom Octopus. But why this ordering? Why distinguish between male and female doctors? Let's see if the source code holds…

How not to use the label element

· 3 comments · 450 words · Viewed ~657 times


HTML Source Code.

HTML is magic. It comes with all sorts of great usability and accessibility features. But people often ignore them or misuse them. Take a look at these checkboxen: If you click on this label, nothing happens. If you click on this label, the checkbox will toggle This is important. Tapping on tiny squares is hard for lots of people. Whether they have visual impairments, motor issues, or just…

How to fake Progressive WebP Images

· 9 comments · 550 words · Viewed ~2,035 times


Extremely fuzzy photo.

WebP is the hip new image format on the scene. It offers unrivalled image compression at superior visual quality. But, in my opinion, it is deficient compared to JPG in one significant aspect. It doesn't have a progressive mode. Progressive mode is useful because it can quickly load a low resolution preview of an image, and then gradually improve its quality. WebP, by contrast, just loads up…

This blog strips off for CSS Naked Day

· 4 comments · 300 words · Viewed ~1,451 times


Firefox menu. Go to View, the Page Style, then No Style.

Half-a-dozen years ago, I proposed that web developers spend one day a year browsing without JavaScript. It's a great way to see how the web works when things break. Similarly, April 9th is CSS Naked Day. A chance to throw off the shackles of good design, and see the raw beauty of your HTML. Today is intended for websites to remove their own style sheets - as this blog has done. The idea…

Should panoramic images be part of the HTML5 specification?

· 9 comments · 400 words · Viewed ~315 times


360 view of the inside of the concert hall.

Noodling thoughts. The humble <img> element is one of the oldest parts of HTML. It allows you to put a static image in a document. Later revisions allowed for animated images - like GIFs. And the <map> element made parts of the image clickable. But what about interactive images? Like panoramas and photospeheres? Here's a 360° image. You can drag it to see all around. That uses the …

Responsible Disclosure - John Lewis

· 550 words · Viewed ~877 times


John Lewis Website with a big circle drawn on it.

The HTML5 specification is complicated. I've been an author on it, and even I couldn't tell you all the weird little gotchas it contains. Between that and "idiosyncratic" browser engines, it's a wonder the world wide web works at all. Let's talk about the humble <meta> element. As its name suggests, it contains metadata about the document. A typical element might look like this: <meta…

Convert DOI to a HTML5 / Schema citation

· 650 words · Viewed ~229 times


The DOI logo.

This is a quick and dirty way to turn a DOI (Digital Object Identifiers for academic papers) into an HTML & Microdata citation. I use this to power my Citations page. Schema.org is a Microdata standard which allows machines to read your HTML and create semantic relations between documents. Here's a minimum viable citation: <blockquote itemprop="citation" itemscope…

Creating an "Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality" map with OpenStreetMap

· 2 comments · 600 words · Viewed ~613 times


Map of the world, south up, stretched.

If you've seen that episode of The West Wing, you'll remember this scene: I'm not a paying member of the OCSE, but I fully support their aims. Because messing around with maps is fun. So, can I build a web-first maps which is South-up, Pacific-centred, and Peters-projected? Here's what I managed to do using OpenLayers - an Open Source web maps library which is pretty hackable. Get started …

Introducing the new HTML element - welcome <clippy>!

· 14 comments · 750 words · Viewed ~47,269 times


Hello! It looks like you're writing a blog post - would you like help with that? chuckles Me and my colleagues at Microsoft have decided that the world needs more Clippy - the adorable animated paperclip. To help with that, we're bringing a new feature to Edge 6.0. Web Developers can now use <clippy> to call up an animated virtual assistant. I've spoken to several people in Microsoft, and we …

Adding Sign Language to HTML5 video

· 5 comments · 600 words · Viewed ~1,362 times


Video with overlay.

I watched this video from my colleagues in NHS England - it's the first time I've seen a Sign Language overlay on a Twitter video. NHS@NHSukNeed help fast, but not sure what to do? Go straight to 111.nhs.uk . To find out more about NHS 111 including how to use the NHS 111 BSL interpreter service visit nhs.uk/111 #NHS111 pic.x.com/tk18uvm2vy❤️ 16💬 1🔁 016:00 - Sat 18 May 2019 Is it possible to ha…