Unlike HTML validators, there are some aspects of accessibility that can only be reliably tested by a human reviewer. For instance, a validator can check that you have alternative text set for all your images, but it can't check that it is "equivalent". But using an accessibility validator is the first step to making sure that your site is accessible.

• How to Use an Accessibility Validator

There are a lot of people who feel that they are really good designers. Maybe they are well recognized members of the Web design industry or are new to the field but have some great ideas that just haven't been discovered yet. One of the best ways to prove your skills is to build or redesign Web sites.

The Redesign Competition
If you are interested in showing off your skills as a designer, you can submit your design ideas and we'll all vote on which one is the best.

The Site: Web Design / HTML at About.com
http://webdesign.about.com/index.html

The Rules:

• Your version of the Web Design site must have all the same elements that are on the site today, including advertising elements, navigation, and content.
• You are only redesigning the front page of the Web Design site.
• Feel free to change any design elements you would like, in order to improve the design, including color and images.
• The only images that you should feel obligated to keep are the About logo and the Guide photo.
• All designs that you create are yours to keep, you only agree to have a screen shot taken of the design and a link to the redesigned site page will be on this site for voting.
• The redesign will not be used by About - unless you make an outside agreement with them to do so. I do not have control over the look and feel of this site, so please don't ask me. :)

Fill in this form to submit your redesign to the competition. Submissions due by midnight on September 30th, 2006.

On October 9, 2006, a list of all the sites will be posted to the site for everyone to review and compare. On October 16, 2006, the sites will be listed in a poll to be voted on by anyone who visits the About Web Design / HTML site. The Poll will close on October 23rd and a winner will be declared.

Good luck! And Good Designs!

And, no, I'm not asking you to tell me that you have an automated report that runs every hour that you never read. I'm talking about how often do you check the links on your site, and then fix the broken ones. I can set up my report to run hourly if I wanted to, but who wants to spend all my free time fixing broken links, yeurgh!

• More often than once a week
• Once a week
• Every two weeks
• Once a month
• Once a quarter
• Twice a year
• Once a year
• I never have
• I don't do maintenance

View Results

I know, you might do it on a different schedule than listed above, just humor me and choose the closest to how often you do it. No one will know what your answer is....

Okay, I know that frames are not "cool" now, but there are still valid reasons to use them, and with the Frameset DTD, it's completely valid XHTML to use frames. But many framed Web pages don't include the noframes element in their document, and this just isn't a good idea.

• Noframes - The Key to Usable and Accessible Frames

I've added four more designs to the Web Design Design Gallery. There are two that are really nice - CSS layouts that look really good and one that I'm told is fully accessible (I didn't check, but it looked like it was).

Please don't resubmit sites unless they have significantly changed. And if you do want to resubmit your site, you'd do better to just email me and let me know why.

Show me your stuff. I love to see new designs, and CSS layouts that don't use tables are the most likely types of sites to be added.

I've spent the last few days rebuilding my free Web templates to make sure that they all still work with modern browsers, that they all have the same look and layout on the site, and that they all are still actually on my site. It sure is tedious.

The thing is, it's not really over with, unlike my title implies. A Web developer's job is never done. It seems to me that often pages that are perfectly fine when I look at them, deliberately go bad when it's the least convenient time. Links go bad, I place new articles in the wrong location, interns and temps hired to help end up messing things up more, and on it goes.

Now that I'm done with the layouts, I need to move back to my CSS style library and verify that the changes I made last month are actually correct. Plus, I have to go through all 10 weeks of my free XHTML class and make sure it's still up to snuff.

I sometimes wonder how I have time to actually write anything new. :(

• Yes
• No

View Results

Technically, HTML is a markup language, not a programming language. But when I was trying to define the difference, it seemed like HTML (or HTML along with something like PHP or ColdFusion) could do all the same things. What do you think the difference is?

One of the most common questions I get is how to share one HTML file in multiple Web pages. For example, if you have a copyright notice that you want on every page of your site, you can either create it and edit it manually every year, or you can use an include system to edit that section of code once and then copy it across the rest of the site. A long time ago, I wrote an article that explained how to share HTML snippets using several technologies like PHP and SSI. But if you don't have PHP or SSI, you can still do it using Dreamweaver.

• How Do I Include One HTML File in Another Using Dreamweaver?

I've added two more designs to the Web Design Design Gallery out of the 6 or 7 that were submitted. Please keep in mind that this gallery is intended to be a showcase of designs, not an advertising vehicle for Web design firms. I have no problem with linking to a Web design firm, but if your Web site is boring, or does something annoying (like take over my entire screen and require that I have Flash, tell me to turn on my speakers, and then tell me to update an extension once I enter) I won't be adding it to the library.

One other thing, if you're telling me and others that you are a Web designer, then I strongly believe that your Web site should be at least near the edge of the technology. Cutting edge or bleeding edge isn't required, but straight table based layouts are a turnoff to me - I wouldn't hire you to work on my team or build my site... A Web design Web site should be better than what's readily available, not just average.

Show me your stuff. I love to see new designs, and CSS layouts that don't use tables are the most likely types of sites to be added.