Facebook Face Lift
I just checked Facebook, and it has done a face lift on the site, and let me just say whoever designed it should be fired. Why? To quickly sum it up: Very very bad coding practice.
Facebook has started to put structure into their site. What I mean is using the various heading tags. Well, they did put a <h1> tag, but it is empty. That is completely useless, and bad coding for putting in empty tags that do nothing. Considering how big Facebook is now, they cannot make such errors. My only guess is they put it in to improve accessibility? If so, it just shows how little they actually know about accessibility. Header/heading tags DO NOT work like anchor tags, they are contextual!
Background on Headers
Think of headers as chapters in your average math or science book. You have Chapter 1, then part 1.1, and sometimes section 1.1.1 or 1.1.a, well “Chapter 1″ would receive an <h1> tag. “Part 1.1″, “Part 1.2″, etc would receive an <h2> tag. Sections, such as 1.1.1, would receive an <h3> tag. There are six heading tags in all, but unless you are doing something in the legal or scientific realm, I don’t think many people would have, for example, “Section 1.1.1.1.1.1″, but I may be wrong.
The way this has ties to the accessibility realm is mainly with individuals who use screen readers, such as JAWS. JAWS is a very popular screen reader for Windows. (Macs are stuck with the built-in screen reader.)
Next, they redesigned the sidebar menu. Once again, bad coding practice. Instead of making a simple unsorted list (without bullets), they did it all with divs. The genius who coded this named the class for each div list-item. On top of that each, link in the menu needs two divs to get it to look that way. Ok, this could be done dramatically easier and cleaner with a simple list!
I haven’t looked at the accessibility at all really, but seeing that they cannot design the simple elements, why on earth should I think they even consider accessibility. I wish there was a way to get these issues up with Facebook.
Technorati Tags: facebook, design, web design, standards
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Hi, I thought this was an interesting post and I’m quite amazed that Facebook would code that poorly. Talking of screenreaders I was wondering if you’re aware of the Fangs screenreader emulator plugin for Firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/402). I’d be interested to know what you think of it and how closely it renders compared to a screen reader eg. Jaws. I use OSX, so I have no way of checking this for myself. Nice site, keep up the good work.
Hi Al,
I have heard about Fangs. I know a few people that have used it way way back in Firefox 0.8/0.9. Without being too harsh, Fangs simply didn’t do the job. Now? I have no idea. The latest edition of Firefox works decently with JAWS. The people I know who use JAWS do use Firefox more often, but I am not sure if they use multiple tabs or not.
But, in regards to Facebook, I am amazed myself.