amelierosalyn.com

In case you haven't noticed, I've tried to make this site more accessible since the revamp last week. I had got everything to AAA/priority 3 standards about a year ago, but I got lazy and started using silly things like "click here" as link text and forgetting my accesskeys.

So, I put the accesskeys back in for this layout. When I went to test them, nothing happened. I know they work, since I was able to use them in IE, but in Firefox and Opera every time I tried the key combinations, a menu would popup, an extension shortcut would get activated, etc. etc. etc. (or in the case of Opera, nothing happened. Eh?) Of course, a solution to this is to do what many others have done and use numbers as accesskeys - but I disagree with doing this. Why? Because it's not symbolic enough (to me, at least), and ... I don't know, I just don't like it. I prefer to use letters if at all possible. Besides, the number thing doesn't solve the shortcut problem - I like to use accesskeys on others' sites because I'm lazy and prefer to use keyboard shortcuts than the mouse, but when I went to press ALT + 0 to go back home (or whatever it was), I was once again presented with some options for an extension. Hmph. Seeing as I never use the keyboard shortcuts for those extensions, I tried disabling them, but apparently that's not possible.

Having said that, the site should conform to priority 3/AAA accessibility levels now. The automatic checker at WebXact doesn't seem to like my previous/next page links though, and tells me they don't make sense out of context... I think they do, but I tried changing them to such things as "View more blog posts" and even more detailed sentences but it didn't like those either. I've manually checked everything else and to me it seems fine, but of course many of the accessibility checkpoints are to do with personal preference and/or opinion. I may think those links make sense out of context (they don't have a context anyway... They're pretty much standalone as it is) but that doesn't mean everyone will.

Just a small layout note: I know about the slow/jerky scrolling - this is caused by the transparent PNG background. I will try and change that, but when I tried a solid background, it didn't really work :\ Likewise, I also know about the fact that this centre column looks odd in high resolution/widescreen monitors, since it is fixed width and the rest of the layout is not. Again, I'll try and fix this when I have a moment.

As tempting as the idea is, I refuse to be paid to blog. My site is not a tool for anyone - least of all me - to make money; it serves as a creative outlet for me so that I can show off my super-1337 intarwebz sk1llz1!11 because I'm geeky and I simply must have an internet presence.

Do you see any advertising on this site (other than a couple of links to similar sites, but they are all non-profit and generally agree with me on this standpoint)? No. There will never be advertising on this site, and especially not spam disguised as a blog entry. I am not going to lie through my teeth and bore all 2 of my visitors to death by talking about how great it is now that my [begin obligatory link] mortgage debts [/end obligatory link] have been cleared by some scammy company or how I really should be [link!1!1] losing weight [/link] by taking some dodgy pill just to get $5 out of it. I could work a real job (*gasp!* Those actually still exist!1!) and get that in under an hour.

Want to lose all your visitors? Go ahead, sell your site. And your soul. To me, you just look greedy and like you can't be bothered to go out and get a real job.

Jem wrote an article about this (and a blog entry), and I just had to pick up on it myself since I am seeing more and more of it going on.

Ok so let's say you've just bought your first domain. You've finally moved off free servers full of ads and you can make your site look exactly how you want without being restricted in terms of what you put where so you don't hide your hosts' ads. When I got my first domain, I was so happy to finally be free of adverts, as well as of course having a nice short name instead of somefreehost.com/somewhere/something/me/page.htm.

Right, so, after purchasing your domain, you suddenly notice you can't afford it any more. What to do? Cancel the hosting account and go back to free hosts until you make a bit of a saving? Oh no, you plaster your site with ads. Right. But that's not what annoys me most, I can deal with a couple of adverts here and there (except popups, I can't stand popups). What I find the most annoying these days is this sudden rise in "being paid to blog". Basically you write posts about a given topic, link some company 20985320958 times and you make dollaz. Easy. But say goodbye to your visitors - I won't be coming back to your site if it's full of this sort of thing:

The other day, I went shopping and it was really good! All the shops were really nice and I ended up buying loads of stuff!1!1!

Then I came home and decided we should move! We looked at online realtors and found ourselves the perfect home!

Fabricated blog entries full of keywords meant to up the PageRank of the company you're meant to be plugging. What I don't get is that I've seen countless sites full of these things, and each time there are loads of comments from idiots who obviously can't tell that it's a spam post (an intentionally spammy post, but a spammy post all the same). Gah. And these people who post these things - would they ever read an actual spammy site, i.e. one made by a bot? No, they wouldn't. At least two of the "paid to blog" bloggers I've seen go round actively reporting automated spam blogs. How would they like it if someone did that to them? I can't believe that these people still have visitors. Not one post they make is genuine any more.
/rant

In other news, I seem to have lost SpamAssassin since moving to my new host, so I now get all the spam sent to me delivered to my inbox. :( Before, SA would delete it all for me and I'd have a nice clean inbox to look at with only genuine emails arriving. Thunderbird is doing an excellent job of filtering things when they arrive, but it's annoying that they arrive in the first place. Oh well, at least people can actually get to my site now. I can live with a bit of email spam if it means my site isn't constantly down for people.