Accessibility
WARNING : May contain traces of geekspeak!
Best Viewing Setup
This site is built using XHTML and CSS. It relies heavily on stylesheets for its layout and appearance. For this reason the site is best viewed using a fairly modern web browser that supports CSS. You will also need to make sure that JavaScript and cookies are enabled on your browser to get the full functionality from the site.
In an ideal world I'd have you viewing ...barelynaked in Firefox (hint, hint) on a monitor with a 1024 x 768 screen resolution as this is the setup I use on my own home computer ;-) I've tried to make my pages reasonably flexible so they can withstand some minor text and window resizing in your weapon of choice.
Browser Support
I've got to confess that I haven't done extensive testing with different browsers to discover/fix all potential problems. Straight off the bat I would strongly urge you to check that you have the most up-to-date version of whatever browser you're using. I looked over a few screenshots I captured at BrowserCam and noticed a few issues with older browsers :
Internet Explorer
| IE 4 | Browser crashes (though to be fair if you're running IE4, your PC is antique anyway!) |
| IE 5 and 5.5 | Browser displays pages unstyled (this is deliberate scripting on my part to avoid known CSS rendering issues in these browsers - it's very ugly but functional) |
| IE6 and IE7 | No known issues so far |
Netscape
| Netscape 4 | The browser crashes when loading some pages on my site |
| Netscape 6 | The browser renders some pages incorrectly, notably placing the footer section in the middle of the screen on some pages |
| Netscape 7 and 8 | No known issues so far |
AOL
| AOL 8.0 and below | No testing done |
| AOL 9.0 | No known issues so far |
| AOL Explorer | No known issues so far |
Opera
| Opera 6 and below | No testing done |
| Opera 7 and 8 | No known issues so far |
Firefox
| Firefox 1 and 2 | No known issues so far |
Mac Users
| IE5 for Mac | Browser seems to have issues displaying CSS defined background images |
| Safari | No known issues so far |
| Camino | No known issues so far |
Linux Users
| Firefox | No known issues so far |
| Opera | No known issues so far |
| Konqueror | No known issues so far |
I have no idea about any issues that may exist with any other minority browsers. If any of the above information is incorrect, you can contact me here with details so that I can update this page.
Monitor Size
The best screen resolution for viewing my website is 1024 x 768 pixels. If your screen display is set to 600 x 800 pixels, it will still display okay but does appear a bit cramped with the site's default width. For this reason, I have created a separate stylesheet that uses the full width of the browser window to alleviate this problem (unfortunately the layout still breaks in places, although it's still readable and usable). It is therefore recommended you set the stylesheet to full width if you are viewing my site at this lower resolution.
Most browsers allow you to switch stylesheets by going to the 'View' menu and then 'Page style'. You'll notice I have created two styles ('default width' and 'full width') which you can toggle between. Unfortunately IE browsers don't have this 'Page style' menu option. To solve this I have included two buttons on my site home page, just below the main menu, which allow you to set the page width. To work properly, you must ensure JavaScript and cookies are enabled on your browser.
If you have a monitor with a screen resolution higher than 1024 x 768, it should as far as I'm aware render fine. At most you'll have the opposite feeling of there being too much space in places.
Access Keys
Access keys are a great way of navigating through web pages quickly and can be really beneficial to site users with limited mobility, but unfortunately not all browsers support them.
I had grand plans to create accesskeys for every menu item I created on ...barelynaked. As you'll have discovered I use two main menus on my site pages - a main navigation menu on the left and a secondary menu on the right. In the end I had to scale my plans down a bit as some of my secondary menus ended up being a lot bigger than I expected.
Different browsers activate accesskeys with different key combinations, e.g.
IE | alt + accesskey, then enter. |
Netscape | alt + accesskey. |
Opera | shift + escape for accesskeys, plus many other navigation keys. |
Firefox 1 | alt + accesskey. |
Firefox 2 | alt + shift + accesskey. |
Mac users | command + accesskey. |
Here is a breakdown of the the accesskeys for my main menu items :
| Menu Item | Accesskey |
|---|---|
| Home | o |
| Band | d |
| Music | m |
| Lyrics | l |
| News | n |
| Tour | u |
| Audio | i |
| Video | v |
| Gallery | g |
| Forum | r |
| About | z |
| Contact | x |
| Accessibilty | y |
| Sitemap | p |
The secondary menu uses numeric keys in ascending order, but runs into an obvious problem when there are more than 10 items! So not a perfect system all in all, but it'll have to do until I come up with something better. If you're really into your keyboard shortcuts then I would say Opera is the browser for you.
The Gallery
To use the gallery as intended you will need to have CSS and JavaScript enabled on your browser. For more info on the scripts I used, you should check out the Thickbox website.
Dial Up Users
I have tried as far as possible to make my website reasonably lightweight in recognition of the fact many people still use dial-up internet access. There will be places though where pages might load a bit more slowly than I would ideally like - these include things like the gallery pages. Sorry, but you're just gonna have to exercise a little patience if you really want to view them :-)
RSS Feed
For those of you unfamiliar with it, an RSS Feed is a method websites use to send little snippets of information across the internet to end users or subscribers. It is particularly good because it allows a website to send info to a subscriber without them having to visit the site at all (not that I don't want you to return frequently!).
It is especially suited to keeping subscribers informed of any news or updates made on a website. I have created a feed for exactly this purpose to keep folks up-to-speed with any BNL and ..barelynaked news items.
If you're using a modern web browser, chances are it will already offer built-in functionality for RSS feeds. The latest version of Firefox offers a handy feature called Live Bookmarks. All you need do is click on the orange feed logo in the address bar and you can subscribe straight away!
If you are using IE7, you should notice the feed logo light up at the top of your browser. Again just click on it as described here and you should be able to subscribe straight away. Opera users can also access feeds using Opera Mail as described here.
Google, Yahoo, and MSN also provide services for subscribing to RSS feeds. To make things easy, I've provided buttons on the main news page so you can subscribe to my feed with a single click. The 'Add To Any' button should cover most of the other minority subscription services.
Failing that you can download and install a standalone RSS aggregator on your PC.
