I just found out how they do the accessibility test on web sites.
This is how blind people browse the net.

This particular round of testing is trying to sort out blind and text-based browser users preferences in certain aspects of page layout.

Via: Web Graphics.com

Sometime last month, I was given an opportunity to try out the beta test of the newly created roll your own search engine site, “Rollyo”.
The owner has requested not to shout/blog/publicize about it so I barred myself from blogging here.
Now that Rollyo’s been officially released, I’m able to talk about it here.

Rollyo allows you to create personal search engines using only the sources you trust. Just add the sites into a form and boom, bingo, whamo, you’ve created a custom search engine (we call them Searchrolls).

Rollyo is integrated with yahoo search and from my experience, it produces very fast and accurate results.

Rollyo puts the power of Yahoo! Search in your hands, by giving you the tools to create your own personal search engines – with no programming required. All you have to do is pick the sites you want to search, and we’ll create a custom search engine for you.

You can create unlimited search rolls for yourself according to the subject you want to group as. Say for example, I have created search roll “Web Development Resources”, where I add all the related web development site links and once it’s been search, the results will come only from the links I’ve added and nothing else.

More effective and specific search result can be achieved as you limit your search rolls with fewer links. The maximum of 25 links can be added to each roll. It was said that the fewer the links in each roll, the better the search result will be.

One of the features I like about there is, the pop up box listing all the links as well as a small image and info of the roller, once you click on search rolls. You can also save other users’ search rolls as you’ll find many interesting rolls for your own use. There are some tools like firefox plugin and bookmarking to go with and some more will come later on.

Well now that the news is out, you can pay a visit to Rollyo and try it for yourself.

This is very well organized reference for XHTML Character Entities that you should keep note and make use of.

The first line shows how the entity will be displayed on your webpage. The
second line contains the entity reference, in the form &entity_name; (i.e.
an ampersand, the entity name, and then a semi colon). This is the code that
you should place in your webpage. The third line contains the numerical reference
for the same character. Finally the fourth line contains the unicode representation
of the entity.

XHTML Character Entity Reference : Via Thoughts from Eric – Recent Links

Have you guys been following with weekly XHTML-CSS course from "westciv.com"?
I posted about it last time.

Well it’s week 5 now and the current topic is "Organizing
and managing files and directories". Ok this is just a reminder in
case if you forgot.

This is a good opportunity for some of us who like to learn some html, xhtml and CSS basic stuffs.
Web standards software and learning is having 14 weeks long free course on HTML and XHTML for CSS, starting this week.
Every week they will be updating the page with new chapter and old chapter will disappear, so you better not miss out on this. The following is the schedule of the course:

About this free course

In HTML and XHTML for CSS we cover the foundations of standards based markup with HTML or XHTML. At the end of this course you will have seen all the basic elements and attributes and be able to use them confidently to create valid, standards based web pages. The course is very hands on: you get to develop a site as you work through the various aspects of HTML. But all the necessary theory, explanation and illustration is covered as well, so by the end of the course, you won’t just know what to do, you’ll also know why.

• Week 1: (15/08/05 – 21/08/05) Introductions
• Week 2: (29/08/05 – 04/09/05) HTML and XHTML
• Week 3: (05/09/05 – 11/09/05) Elements and attributes
• Week 4: (12/09/05 – 18/09/05) Block and inline elements
• Week 5: (19/09/05 – 25/09/05) Site management
• Week 6: (26/09/05 – 02/10/05) Links 1
• Week 7: (03/10/05 – 09/10/05) Links 2
• Week 8: (10/10/05 – 16/10/05) Graphical elements 1
• Week 9: (17/10/05 – 23/10/05) Graphical elements 2
• Week 10: (24/10/05 – 30/10/05) Validation and meta data
• Week 11: (31/10/05 – 06/10/05) Frames and special characters
• Week 12: (07/11/05 – 13/11/05) Tables
• Week 13: (14/11/05 – 20/11/05) Forms 1
• Week 14: (21/11/05 – 27/11/05) Forms 2 + revision quiz

Have fun following along the course.

This is one nice color picking palette for designers. It allows you do choose edit mode and provide RGB code as well as Hex numbers.
colorblender.com/

Colourlovers.com is another good site with lots of color sets and palettes.

By default, once you create web applications/services, the project files are saved in Inetpub > wwwroot directory.

To move from default location to your own project directory you must:

1. first, set up the folder in required directory,
2. Create Virtuary Directory using IIS to point to your folder,
3. Using VS.net create new web application with the same virtuary directory name you created in Step 2.

The new project now will be saved in the folder you speficied rather than in default wwwroot folder. This makes it alot easier to manage your project files and better work folder organization.