How Much is a Tweet Worth? Valuing Digital Influencers

WebmasterWorld Members discuss the value in a tweet, and, how you value a tweet by a "digital influencer."

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This week's sponsor: Squarespace

Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring us this week! Use offer code ALISTAPART for 10% off their simple, powerful tools for creating beautiful websites.

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Microsoft Confirms The Browser Codenamed "Spartan" Will Be Called Microsoft Edge

Microsoft has confirmed its browser, codenamed Spartan, will be called Microsoft Edge.

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Twitter Introduces The Best of Tweets With "Highlights"

Twitter's new Highlights is a summary of the best Tweets delivered via rich push notification.

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Google Inc. Q1, 2015 Results, Revenue was $17.3 billion

Google's first quarter ended with revenues up 12% year on year.

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Content-First Design

Twitter Introduces The Best of Tweets With "Highlights"

Twitter's new Highlights is a summary of the best Tweets delivered via rich push notification.

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Google Inc. Q1, 2015 Results, Revenue was $17.3 billion

Google's first quarter ended with revenues up 12% year on year.

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Google Mobile Algo Roll-Out April 21, 2015

WebmasterWorld Members discuss the Google smartphone mobile roll-out starting April 21, 2015.

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Facebook tweaks News Feed to show more status updates from friends

Tweaks to the News Feed will show more status updates from friends in lieu of Liked stories

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Yahoo and Microsoft Search Deal Now Includes Early Termination Clause

It seems there's a new termination clause included within the Yahoo and Microsoft deal, according to the SEC filing on April 20, 2015.

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Twitter Re-Enables Direct Messages Option From Non-Followers

Twitter has re-enabled the direct messaging option from anyone, even when not following each other.

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How Soon For a New Responsive Site to Appear in Google SERPs Showing "Mobile Friendly"

WebmasterWorld Members discuss the time-scales involved in getting a "mobile friendly" site in Google SERPs.

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Google Switches Mobile Search To Show Real-World Names

More changes to mobile search prior to the mobile update coming on 21 April.

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Twitter Introduces The Best of Tweets With "Highlights"

Twitter's new Highlights is a summary of the best Tweets delivered via rich push notification.

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Google Inc. Q1, 2015 Results, Revenue was $17.3 billion

Google's first quarter ended with revenues up 12% year on year.

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Context Makes Our Devices

Rian van der Merwe on A View from a Different Valley: Why?

This week's sponsor: Beagle

Thanks to Beagle​ for sponsoring A List Apart this week. Take a look at their tools to help you save time, collaborate with your team, and create more effective proposals.

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Rian van der Merwe on A View from a Different Valley: Why?

Facebook tweaks News Feed to show more status updates from friends

Tweaks to the News Feed will show more status updates from friends in lieu of Liked stories

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Yahoo and Microsoft Search Deal Now Includes Early Termination Clause

It seems there's a new termination clause included within the Yahoo and Microsoft deal, according to the SEC filing on April 20, 2015.

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Google Mobile Algo Roll-Out April 21, 2015

WebmasterWorld Members discuss the Google smartphone mobile roll-out starting April 21, 2015.

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What Really Matters: Focusing on Top Tasks

Standardization and the Open Web

Google Mobile Algo, Is This An Android Monopoly Play?

Observations and motives over Google's mobile algorithm update, April 21.

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Twitter Re-Enables Direct Messages From Non-Followers

Twitter has re-enabled it direct messaging capability from anyone, even when not following each other.

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How Soon For a New Responsive Site to Appear in Google SERPs Showing "Mobile Friendly"

WebmasterWorld Members discuss the time-scales involved in getting a "mobile friendly" site in Google SERPs.

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Google Switches Mobile Search To Show Real-World Names

More changes to mobile search prior to the mobile update coming on 21 April.

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Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg's Internet.org Project Under Fire

Several Indian firms have pulled out of the project claiming that it's confusing consumers into thinking Facebook is the Internet.



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Accepting Our Lack of Control

comScore: Bing Breaks Through 20pct US Search Share, March 2015

Overall searches are up, too, which is an interesting statistic.



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Yahoo and Microsoft Agree to Amend Search Partnership

"Over the past few months, Satya and I have worked closely together to establish a revised search agreement that allows us to enhance our user experience and innovate more in our search business."



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Coming May 6: Sass Talk

This week's sponsor: Web Designer News

Thanks to Web Designer News for sponsoring A List Apart this week! Take a look at their curated stories for designers and developers.

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Europe Readys Anti Trust Charges against Google

The E.U. is reportedly plotting a fine as large as $6.4 billion, roughly a tenth of Google�s annual revenue.



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Bing Now Labelling "Mobile Friendly" Sites In SERPs

WebmasterWorld Members reporting Bing labelling "Mobile Friendly" sites in its SERPs.



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Pew Internet Survey: Teens, Social Media and Technology Overview, 2015

Pew Internet survey published. If you're marketing to teens, you really ought to read the full report. Some of the stats will surprise you.



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New Googlebot IPs Whitelist Error, and Site Loses Rankings

A WebmasterWorld Member describes the problem of running a white-list for Googlebot, and when Google's IPs change, and the white-list is not updated, the site rapidly lost rankings and, importantly, traffic.



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New Google AdSense Performance Reports Cause Frustration

Google has announced new AdSense reports and, according to reports from WebmasterWorld Members, it's not an improvement.



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LinkedIn Acquires Lynda.com For $1.5 Billion

"The transaction is valued at approximately $1.5 billion, subject to adjustment, in a combination of approximately 52 percent cash and approximately 48 percent stock. Subject to the completion of customary conditions, the acquisition is expected to close during the second quarter of 2015."



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Lyza Danger Gardner on Building the Web Everywhere: WAI-finding with ARIA Landmark Roles

Recently, as part of my research for a presentation about web accessibility for non-specialized teams, I asked around about how people were applying the HTML role attribute in their day-to-day web practice.

Their answers didn’t surprise me. Many expressed chagrin at their apparent ignorance, admitting they copied and pasted examples a lot. Some had a passing familiarity with a few prevalent roles, but sensed beyond that a gaping chasm of things they didn’t know. The prevailing tone was guilt. It’s not that people don’t care about accessibility, it’s that the topic can feel overwhelming among all the other priorities we have.

I’ve noticed a lack of easily-Googled, applied documentation for certain technologies or practices. On one end, we have specs, sometimes exhaustive. On the other end, we have a smattering of implemented examples. Synthesized documentation can be thin on the ground.

I can’t change the world, but I can add some analytical documentation about something specific: my nutshell-in-a-nutshell view of landmark roles in WAI-ARIA, as I understand them, and as it translates to more easily adding website accessibility to your daily workflow.

The Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) suite from the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is one piece of the web accessibility puzzle. Now, the first rule of ARIA usage is—I am not making this up—we do not use ARIA (unless we need to). Before you set out to use it, you should already have a solid authoring craft: careful, semantic treatment of content; proper use of attributes and textual alternates; sensitivity to contrast and font sizes. Support for accessibility leads to well-crafted HTML and vice versa.

How ARIA fits in

Applied ARIA in HTML is a combination of two things: roles and aria-prefixed attributes. Roles identify an element’s purpose, and attributes describe things about it (properties) and what it’s up to (states).

ARIA is a gap-filler for HTML semantics. It allows you to be declarative beyond what HTML elements and attributes currently provide, and lets you be explicit about the relationships and meanings of elements on your page. It also provides a mechanism to attach semantic meaning when authors, by perversity or necessity, use non-standard elements to represent other things (e.g. using a div as button).

The ARIA specification provides a standardized way for browsers and assistive technologies to evaluate HTML documents for people who access and use the web in different ways. There’s a lot to know about ARIA, and we don’t have all day, so today I’m going to focus on one important topic: landmark roles.

Landmark roles for daily use

The HTML element attribute role is the piece of the ARIA iceberg most often visible above the waterline, and the chunk of ARIA most immediately recognizable to web builders. <div role=“main”> (or even <main role=“main”>) may be familiar to some of us.

main is one of a set of eight defined ARIA landmark roles. All defined roles express an element’s purpose, but landmark roles serve as key milestones, allowing AT (assistive technology) to map the lay of the land of an HTML document. This is why they’re a great set of roles to start with. Landmark roles make navigation between areas of your page more efficient for different kinds of users. They help convey basic semantic intent and can serve as hooks and helpers for other technologies (or even humans reading your source).

Here are some landmark roles that can be used on practically every HTML page you write:

• main: The main content of a document.


• banner: The main header or masthead of a page; typically assigned to a header element.


• navigation: A collection of links for navigation. A common usage is <nav role=“navigation”>.


• contentinfo: A collection of metadata, copyright information and the like. Commonly applied as <footer role=“contentinfo”>.

Those other landmark roles

There are two further straightforward landmark roles you might be interested in: complementary—a chunk of content that supports main but remains autonomous, and search—an element containing your site’s search interface.

The application landmark role should be used with care, so read up first if you want to use it. form is also a landmark role, but arguably redundant if you use it on a form element (doesn’t <form role=“form”> seem repetitive?).

When are roles redundant?

Here’s where it gets foggy. I’m arguing that <form role=“form”> is redundant and yet suggesting <main role=“main”> (or maybe <div role=“main”>) is good practice. What gives?

Roles are semantic extenders. One of the things they do is provide training wheels for semantic elements that don’t exist or haven’t been adopted fully by all browsers.

It’s safe to anticipate that all major browsers know what a form element is—its role is implicit in the element itself. This is less reliable, however, with the main element. Presently, Chrome and Firefox require <role=“main”> on an element to make the semantic role available to assistive technology and IE is all, main? Never heard of it. So we role on until broad adoption.

Though I lean slightly toward not using <form role=“form”>, there are varying and vigorous views on this (and other aspects of ARIA). Don’t take my opinion as fact.

Where to next?

I talked about documentation being thin on the ground. That’s not untrue, but it gives short shrift to some fabulous efforts. There are some killer resources, like a11yproject.com’s accessibility checklist. That’s exactly the kind of applied reference web generalists need. Analytical documentation targeted at web implementors isn’t completely absent, although there seems to be a scarcity of it compared to other topics.

There is far more to ARIA and accessibility. While landmark roles are a great place to start, your growing understanding may lead you to other kinds of roles (there are four categories, of which landmark is one) and to aria-*prefixed state and property attributes.

What I’ve talked about here only begins to scratch the surface. But even if all you do is commit to using some of the ARIA landmark roles in your HTML, I am a happy person.

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April First Fun Spawns a State of Google Search Discussion

WebmasterWorld Members start a discussion about an April Fools prank, and it develops into a serious discussion about search.



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Facebook launches Messenger for web browsers

The social network unveiled a Web version of Messenger



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Responsive Web Design vs. Alternatives: The Great Debate

WebmasterWorld Members debate responsive web design, and the alternatives when serving a mobile and desktop audience.



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15 Years of Dao

Google Updates and SERP Changes - April 2015

WebmasterWorld's monthly look at Google's SERPs changes.



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Report Says Facebook is Tracking All Site Visitors, Violating EU Law

Many privacy campaigners have been concerned about extensive levels of tracking, and this is especially important if a user chooses to opt out.



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ICANN Proposal to Release New Country and Territory Domains

ICANN has started a public comment over the release of new country and territory domains within the .HONDA, .AXA, .EPSON, .HSBC, .XYZ and .COLLEGE TLDs



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Microsoft Confirms Its Future Browsers Will Not Have Do Not Track as Standard

This is a turnaround from its previous stance, and users that want DNT can change the setting.



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Europe Ready to File Anti-Trust Charges Against Google

The European Commission nears an anti-trust investigation into Google and its practices in Europe.



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eCommerce and Google's SERPs

WebmasterWorld Members discuss the latest developments for eCommerce in Google's SERPs, and where it may go in the future.



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Firefox 37 Released With Changed URL Bar and Uprated Security Features

Firefox 37 released and there is improved security and a changed URL bar.



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Google to Pay Dividends

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced that for the first time in the company's history, dividends will be paid to shareholders starting in FY 2016. ;)



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