LSW

what more is to say, it is the same post as the old forum, we do not review forums. Did the policy change?

Only keep in mind that JAWS is the leader for a reason so this one may do things differently than most blind users do, also that when all is said and done you will not use the tool as a blind person really would, so just because it works well for you does not mean it will for them. Otherwise I do not know the program, but I have a demo version of JAWS and they are good to give you an idea of what it is like and what the issues are.

Typical CMSs have been notoriously not Accessible. This has changed a bit, so here I will be posting some of the more accessible versions of CMSs. This list will therefore be growing so keep an eye on it. What is a CMS for? Well anyone can use them, but they are meant for larger complicated sites, or sites with many people accessing them. Say a organization with many offices or departments and each group has their own information areas they update. But also if your customer wishes to care for the site themselves. You spend allot of time making the site accessible and error free, then your customer messes it up some how, then visitors think you messed it up. Best is to create the site from the ground up within the CMS. However in some you can insert sections of your already made site as well, but that is more troublesome. Another advantage is extensions like search scripts, calendars, guest books etc. that you can add more easily. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Free (mostly GNU license) Typo3 - This is a German CMS, but the main language is English and it supports over 20 languages in the Back end. It is GNU and based on PHP. It is a highend professional CMS with a steep learning curve, but it also has a large support community and lots of good extensions to it. It sells itself as accessible and is one of two CMS suggested by a German Accessibility group. [Comments: I spent over a week on this system. It has a steep learning curve. It also uses it's own language which you need to learn to really work with it. In the end it is to complicated for the simple sites I needed a CMS for. It seems to be a good corporate CMS, but be prepared to learn for quite a while first.] Papoo - Another German CMS (supports English as well) claiming accessibility. This one is rather new so the support community and extensions are not so large yet. The back end is much more simplified and better for private sites and I will be using this one next. [Comments: This has a very simple background and is easy enough to set up and the back end is simple. However you really need to use a variation on the Papoo design, I was not able to easily carry my design over into the script so I dropped it as a possibility for my projects.] Plone - this is the second CMS suggested by the German Accessibility group. It is powerful and easily extended to meet your needs. One possible drawback is that it is based on Python which is not as widely supported, so be sure your server supports Python first. [Comments: I never really worked with Plone so not much to say. I installed it while not really looking for one. It took over my server so I removed it again. It's use of Python may hold it back as few people really know the language.] [Comments from Stefan: I don't think Plone would be a good choice for most (though it is powerful,) because it requires massive server resources that most people simply don't have. This is direct from the Plone website: Plone is much heavier on RAM and CPU usage than your run-off-the-mill web system. It's built to do a lot of different things, and should preferably be hosted on a dedicated server if possible. The most important consideration when building a Plone server is to have enough RAM. To take plone.org as an example, it uses about 500-700MB of RAM fully cached. It is a very busy site, though - so you will get by with less, normally. For basic usage, you can get away with about 100MB RAM usage. You should have at least 512MB RAM] [Comments: Considering that standard hosting plans give you between 64 to 128 megs of ram - Plone simply doesn't fit.] PHP CMS - This is another German system (in English) I am looking at now. Sounds good, but am having a devil of a time with the installation. Sites made with it have tested well for accessibility by a leading German organization (of course a web sites accessibility still depends on the designer) [Comments: I never even got this running right on my local server, then when taking a break and trying to blend the template into the frame work..... I gave up. What goes where is not clear to see at all. It may be easier if you have experience with SmartyTemplate which it uses.] CMSimple - this came into a quick consideration as a tool but we never followed up on it, not fitted for our project, but may still be good for you. Textpattern - this was brought up in another forum when discussing CMSs and the poster claimed it is accessible, glancing around the web site it does claim to be standards compliant, I did not specifically see a claim for accessibility, but that does not mean that it is not. It does look interesting and maybe of interest to some of you. It also comes in multiple languages and is said to have a good community behind it, but the documentation is said to leave something to be desired. Joomla! - [Edit: It would seem that Joomla! has once again began working on accessibility and the member quoted before is once more involved with the development.] MKDoc - this one doesn't really even claim to be a CMS, but does much the same. I have no experience with it. CMS Made Simple - This is a new one to me. I was suggested in a forum and a member I respect said it looks good but was not fitting his project. It is not claiming to be accessible but would seem to be easily modified. I hope to check it out in the near future. Umbraco - This is an open source ASP.NET based CMS with good references for it's accessibility. Once again it seems to be the Europeans leading the way as this is one of the few CMS not based on PHP and is from Denmark. [Comments: No experience with this system] Shareware QnECMS - This one does cost money. This is a development of GAWDs (Guild of Accessible Web Designers). This would be my No. 1 choice if not for the English Back end. [Comments: This is the CMS I have settled for. It uses no Back end, the administration links are hidden and appear at the bottom of the site after you sign in. It is built in the style of a Blog. All articles and pages you create can be set to allow comments by the user, your choice. Plugins include a newsletter and a Pole. It has a built in RSS feed, all your newest postings to your site are automatically fed into the RSS and your subscribers can follow what has changed. Anyone can join your site and depending on how you set it up create their own pages that naturally will only be posted after you OK them. What I had not managed in any other CMS, I carried my template into this CMS in one day and was able to keep the design exactly as I wanted it. You simply copy and paste your HTML sections into a template and upload your CSS. It is not cheap, but the price is in my mind worth it. You can purchase a multiple license, then sell as many as you like or simply build it into your future projects and add it to the project cost, after say a half dozen uses, you have recovered the cost. There is a Demo available at the web site and I will likely allow a Demo from my DarkShadow-Designs when it is finished so you can see how I modified the CMS and blended my Template into it. The multilingual support is being developed and I am doing the German Translation which will be the first offered.] LiveStoryBoard - Subscription. Claims to be Standards compliant. No experience with it, but it is in my Bookmarks so someone must have suggested it to me at some point. [Comments: No experience with this system] Libertas-Systems - Offers a CMS, they are members of the Accessify Forum and I know they are interested in accessibility as well. [Comments: No experience with this system] Colony CMS - A Standards based Accessible CMS brought to my attention by Richard Conyard who is involved and I know from Accessify as well. Once again someone I know is interested in accessibility. [Comments: No experience with this system, Richard Conyard is however a developer I respect.] NQContent - this is new to me. However as you will see reading the main page many UK government councils and some organizations have chosen it for it's flexibility. [Comments: I have no experience on this CMS nor will I due to the Price. You must also expect to re-pay the licensing fee every 1 or 2 years. I have yet to note where it claims accessibility, however many choosing it fall under UK Government Guidelines so it clearly can not be unaccessible and is flexible enough to really tweak it to make it so.] Polopoly - this is a Swedish CMS for larger comapanies and corporations. There is no price to bee found easily when scanning the site but I assume it is not cheap. [Comments: No experience with this system. It has a rather impressive customer list. Many which come under the UK's DDA accessibility law, so it is said to be good as far as accessibility is concerned.] NQcontent - This one makes many claims to accessibility compliance. Again it is a CMS for larger organizations. [Comments: No experience with this system] Subdreamer - Not sure who suggested this one, nor do I see any apparent claims to accessibility. However it does look promising and has a price tag a normal person can swallow with a little struggle. Also offers a Photo Gallery ad different skins. [Comments: No experience with this system] Defacto - This is as I understand it a Hosted service, so on their servers and it does cost money. However their accessibility is said to be very good and they offer different account types like, Non-Profit, Educational, Corporate and Public Sector. [Comments: No experience with this system] I have also come across one named CMSimple. But keep in mind, a CMS is only a tool to help speed up site creation and maintenance, accessibility is still a matter of common sense, you have to change things by hand still sometimes. You may also find OpensourceCMS.com useful. Lastly, Mambo is well known but not an alternative in my mind if you wish accessibility. Although far from the best, if you want Mambo I would at least stress that you consider Drupal as the better of the two. Blogging Those of you into blogging have likely heard of WordPress as one of the best programs for it. However be default WordPress is not specifically Accessibility targeted. [There as been a major release improving Wordpress and a update of that a week later. It is sweet, we are using it at the paper for our blogs. 02/28/07] A web developer I know and respect has created a WordPress theme that you may find interesting and that will improve the accessibility of your site. Beast-Blog theme for WordPress You can learn about Wordpress right here at killersites in our Wordpress section. ------------------ Since the publishing of this thread there seems to have been some movement and a few more products have come to light... all of which I have not used. So I offer to you two more links, a piece on CMS accessibility from 456 Berea Street with allot of CMS suggestions in the comments and some CMS Test results from Juicy Studios. Content management systems and accessibility - 456 Berea Street Choosing an Accessible CMS - Juicy Studios

... So do not even bother asking. Forums are prefab clusters of code and script most people do not much bother with other than skinning them. If you did write your own forum and designed it - let admin know. But if it is out of the box with not much you did to it, we consider it spam as you are just as likely looking for members and links to it. At least that is the case usually. So we do not review Forums. Period.

[The following was originally posted by Billyboy in the FAQ, I find it fitting here as IM suggested. Please validate your code before asking for a review because we certainly will. Also we will check for accessibility issues as well.] Checking Your Code For Errors Often in the forum someone will post a request for help because something isn't displaying properly. Fixing coding errors first could save you and the people you are requesting help from a lot of time and trouble. While it is no guarantee that any display issues will be resolved, it is the first step that should be taken when there are problems, and valid code will help ensure your site displays consistently in all browsers. Online validators offer a quick and easy way to check your code. The W3C Validators can validate files uploaded from your computer, or online, or by copying and pasting the code. W3C Markup Validation Service W3C CSS Validation Service The WDG HTML Validator also works via upload, direct input or online and has the option of validating the code for an entire site. You can also check your CSS with WDG CSS Check via upload, or via direct input or online. There is also an extension available for Firefox: Html Validator that shows errors and warnings when you view the source code of a web page. And Firefox's Web Developer Toolbar has menu options for validating (x)html and CSS via the W3C Validators. Edit: There is also the Web Accessibility Toolbar (WAT) which is much like the Firefox Web Developer extention that is available for IE as well as Opera. LSW You may also wish to read: What do you mean with "Validation?" Validation: enjoy with care

Brief version: Validation simply means ensuring through a test program that your web site is written in valid code, or error free if you prefer. You call up a program, usually the W3C Validator (1 page at a time) or the WDG Validator (Multiple pages) and point it at a or multiple pages and you tell it to validate your code. It then says your good to go or you have "X"-many errors that need to be fixed. It tells you how many, where they are and what the error is with a cryptic hint as to what the problem is. You then fix it, test again and when it is error free you publish the web site or post a critique request. You want to do this because: You should be professional and trying to create error free pages for your customers. Errors do cause coding problems and a problem you have visually may be tied to a simple code error much earlier in the source code. You can often have 20 errors that vanish when you correct one thing earlier in the page. A gap in the visual elements of a page you can not figure out may be connected by a error in your code 200 lines before. The error in itself is not visible, but it effects elements later in the design. We must design for "User Agents," anything that can be used by the user to visit a web page, browsers are just one section of user agents, others are screen readers, cell phones, PDAs and Gaming Consoles like PSP or Nintendo Wii. Browsers may ignore mistakes in the code, but we can never know what software on what user agent may completely break due to an error. Error free code will work best across user agents. You should want your web site to work across user agnets, and not just to days user agents but tomorrows as well. Many misguided web designers thought designing for IE6 was enough as not enough people use Firefox, now more people do and IE7 actually supports standards so they discovered their designs for IE6 broke in IE7. We want to design for today and tomorrow. You may also wish to read: Validate before asking for a review Validation: enjoy with care --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Extended version: OK, we get allot of requests here for critiques. Far to often it is new members with their first posts... then they do not understand what we are telling them. One case in point is validation. Web sites can be critiqued in three forms Code - the hard rules of creating web sites, the code behind them, rules to follow and test against.. Usability/Accessibility - if the site can be used successfully by users and those with disabilities, again there are rules and ways of doing things you can test against. Look & Feel - whether or not a web site looks good/professional. This is a matter of personal taste with little true guidelines to test against, what one person likes others may hate and more indifferent. It is not clear cut. So back to the code, we get a request to critique it and we validate it and it shows dozens of silly errors that should not be there and should have been easily repaired before publishing or asking for a review, that is why we say to validate first as we are tired of masses of errors. But many reply "what do you mean validation?" If you stop to think about it, it is clear that we mean test your code to see if it is valid. The problem lies in two forms: Designers who do not think validation is needed as long as IE shows the site the way they want it and like to think web design is like the Wild West, with no rules and anyone can do anything they like. Beginners who do not know better and think web design is like the Wild West, with no rules and anyone can do anything they like. Well it is not. Web design is a structured way of creativity and has rules and guidelines. You can write novels or poems... but you still have to use correct grammar and spelling right? Web design is no different, only we use other languages, rather than English or German with their different rules and spellings, we use (X)HTML and CSS and co. with their rules and grammar. Just as you would not publish a novel with poor grammar or spelling, you should not publish web sites built with poor grammar in HTML. This is where validation comes in. It is about testing your code for errors and bad habits, missing tags and deprecated tags. Validating your code is about ensuring that your code is valid and error free, that it is written per norms and standards set forth and that the code is written the way it is supposed to be. These rules are set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) who defined what the tags in say HTML do and it is these standards and definitions of tags that tell the browser what to do with that tag when it finds it. Standards state the a tag that looks like is a paragraph and so space shall be added between these blocks of text. It also states that in HTML a closing tag may be left out, but should be added and that in XHTML closing tags MUST be used. In your HTML you are supposed to start the page with a tag that starts with DOCTYPE, this defines what language is being tested against. Just like you have to tell a spell or grammar checker that you are checking German and not English, you must tell the validator that you are testing HTML or XHTML so it knows if a closing must be there or not. Also if you are using "Transitional," so it may ignore errors you made or if you are using "Strict" and it must note every mistake. This is where the two groups above miss the point, they look at the web site in IE and it looks like the way they want it so all is fine. Well I could give my published novel to a drunk or a pot head and they would likely not care either about grammar or spelling. But should I not be publishing a quality product? Hence validation is very important, it finds those stupid little errors that we all make. The IE argument is a cop out by lazy people (if they know validation and choose not to, not if you do not know it.) who only want to do the minimal work and call it finished. IE was developed to be idiot proof and assumes you do not know what you are doing. It is programed to more or less note that there are errors but to ignore them as you do not know what you are doing and just act like the error was not there. For the most part all other browsers now expect you to know what you are doing and do not ignore mistakes, they show what you wrote. IE may be the majority browser, but it in not the only browser and is not guaranteed to always be the majority browser. So is it logical to design just for it? That is the point, not all the users use IE even if it is the majority browser. Even more important, browsers are not even the only issue anymore. Browsers are just a sub-section of the larger term "User Agent", specifically graphic browsers may be the majority of user agents, but we also now have to design for Cell Phones, PDAs, screen readers, text browsers and even game consoles like Nintendo's Wii and PlayStation Portable. User Agents are anything a user can choose or need to use to access the internet and that will one day include refrigerators to oder groceries and maybe coffee machines. Will IE ignore validation mistakes? Yes for the most part. Will a cell phone? You do not know do you. Well the fact is there are some PDAs running windows that have IE, but for the most part mobile devices run software developed by that company, there is no telling what a mistake will do to a web site. Opera has a mobile version that is good, Firefox is being developed for Mobile as well and their is a 3rd party browser that is good... but the vast majority of mobile units do not use these products so we cannot know what will break our site in the proprietary software used. That leads us back to validation. If we create a site that is error free and uses standards... then you can feel more secure that your web site will work over all possible user agents than a poorly written site full of errors. Lastly, like in programming, errors do not always show themselves where they lay. More often they appear quite far away from where the mistake was made so can be a bugger to find. One small unimportant mistake above can aggravate another mistake farther below in the code and snowball into a major issue. Correct that one small mistake at the beginning and "POOF!" all the others disappear. But all the good arguments aside, should you not simply take pride in your work and make it error free for the sake of doing it right?

Now I have had a a wonderful article pointed out to me about "Help Vampires." Quickly, Help Vampires are those individuals who join forums, then suck the life out of them by asking the same old tired questions, asking not to learn to do something - but to have it simply handed to them, or those who ask the impossible questions like "How do you make a Forum?" (M$N Groups are infested beyong help I think) The following is a excerpt from the article describing what a Help Vamire is: - Does he ask the same, tired questions others ask (at a rate of once or more per minute)? - Does he clearly lack the ability or inclination to ask the almighty Google? - Does he refuse to take the time to ask coherent, specific questions? - Does he think helping him must be the high point of your day? - Does he get offensive, as if you need to prove to him why he should use certain technologies? - Is he obviously just waiting for some poor, well-intentioned person to do all his thinking for him? - Can you tell he really isn't interested in having his question answered, so much as getting someone else to do his work? Now we at Killersites are lucky and get rather few Help Vampires here, but that may change. So I would ask all of you to please read this. This way we can identify Help Vampires and support their return to real forum users. Or so that you can identify yourself as a Help Vampire and Seek help joining the rest of us. So enjoy (I quite enjoyed reading this) and lets all make this a Vampire free zone. The Help Vampire: A Spotter's Guide

I get a kick out of this, just never ranted on it before. Firefox is abbreviated FX. That is what it is and that is what it always has been. Yet regardless of how often I reply with FX... no one asks or comments and most importantly, no one catches on. So because I am bored and a stickler and this should have been pointed out much more before millions of people got it wrong... I am pointing it out now. Firefox is abbreviated FX Is this important? Who knows. But considering that a few idiots who call themselves reporters mis identified Crackers as Hackers many years ago and now Hackers are blamed for anything bad on the net... I bet they would say it is important because they could proudly sat they are Hackers and not get stoned if someone way back when had corrected the fact that Crackers hack web sites to do damage and harm. Hackers hack web sites only on request to help people recover info or test security for the owners. Instead they are branded the bad guys and no one knows Crackers exist. So yea, may be the right abbreviation will be important one day, I bet the reports blew it off as unimportant to. As far back as 2005 people have been trying to correct the misuse http://www.iwdn.net/archive/index.php/t-1317.html I am sure it is way to late to change anything, but at least developers can do it right if we are trying to rewrite the web correctly, we should name the browsers correctly PS - it is a graphic browser, making it a subset of "User Agents." (Graphic browsers are what you know as browsers, but there are text browsers like Linx that show no images so are text browsers.)

Before I start I want to explain that this may sound like a self centered rant all about myself but if you will bear with it you will find it does have a point in fact. I went through web design school in 1999-2000, I got out of school three months after the "Dot Com Crash" flooded the market with experienced designers now unemployed. I never did get a really serious job. What I did was struggle with Freelance design to get a portfolio (which has now shrunk to 5 sites, two of which are mine as one after the other went offline for one reason or another) and I did so with no connections or friends to bounce ideas and techniques with. Now I can say that my schooling was not the best. We learned to do nothing more with CSS then replace tags, it was in fact a mere 2 hour class in that time. I was taught that HTML was dead and XHTML had replaced it and that XHTML is simply HTML that works with XML. We also no how wrong that is. This lead for me to what I consider "Stagnation." That is what is what I did, I stagnated. I kept the level of knowledge that I had and went no further, I merely did the same things wrong as I was taught for 3 years because it was taught that way and the school must know what they were doing. About 2003 I landed the job of creating a web portal for my District's Youth Services (I was living in Berlin Germany at the time) and this needed to be accessible (I thought I knew what that meant back then) according to the German BITV laws. Well this was a big deal and trying to figure out how to do it with tables I came across two articles and a old Bookmarks file. The articles were from Gez Lemon (Juicey Studios) & Patrick "Redux" Lauke and both pointed to a web site named Accessif.com and it's Forum. The Bookmarks were mine and I discovered a site called Killersites that I had been to a few times based on the book of a big name designer. Killersites Well Killersites had changed, a new fellow was running in named Stefan and it now had a forum. So I joined it and quickly was linked further to a web site named CSSZenGarden - my Jaw hit the floor! CSS can do that? I still do not know if my school was so bad or at that time CSS support was just so poor, but it opened a new world to me and I jumped in feet first. Stef and David Mead were a great help in those early days. David has since dropped off Killersites due to spending time with his fairly new child but stops by once in a while. Accessibility did not exist on KS, but as I became more proficient I brought it up more and more and Stef supported me and was open minded to changing his ideas of web design and I finally became a moderator here ...ok, the fact I was in Germany and online when he was offline likely helped to *grin*. not only did I learn allothere about web design but having to then find ways to describe these new ideas to other regulars and new members helped me focus and consider options for arguments and teaching web design and accessibility here taught me as much as anything. Now I find members such as Im, Tpatterson, Thelma, Billy and many more who came here with either no experience or limited experience with accessibility and such now answering the same questions they used to ask and many more pointing out accessibility issues and the likes. I see my answerers online before I even have a chance. This is not because I am a super designer or teacher, it is because these people were open to new ideas and counter points to what the believed when they came here. They have reached the point they are now at, being respected by newbies they help because they were willing to listen to some unknown guy named LSW with just as much or maybe less years in the business as they themselves had. But in the end, they are now where they are because they got involved in a forum where they had contact with Stef, David, myself and each other.Because they had a place they enjoyed where new ideas and old myths were discussed among experts and beginners and all as equals. It is Forums that brought us where we are today. Accessify I walked into Accessify Forum thinking I knew what I was talking about ... whoa was I wrong. I did not know beans about accessibility in the real world. That was quickly pointed out to me and once I toned down my postings and began asking more, those in the group accepted me and I have learned from some of the best in the business including but not limited to Joe Clark , Patrick "Redux" Lauke, Isofarrow, Malarkey, Tommy "Toolman" Olsson, Brother Cake, Gez Lemon, Diva, Nigel Peck, Molly Holzschlag, ... also contact with people who work with and/or represent the W3C, RNIB and many others like Universities. The vast majority being from Europe and giving me another way of looking at the web. I even today read more than I answer as people there are far above me in the learning curve. This time I started and remained a beginner in may ways and as a user and not admin or moderator can say that it is also invaluable as a resource, Many of the best links I share at Killersites come from threads at Accessify. Although it like every other forum is about learning, it tends to be more discussion oriented with points and counter points as accessibility is not a s clear cut as HTML and CSS. It is harder to answer with yes and no answers as at KS. So their is more discussion about peoples views and understandings of guidelines and real life real time discussions about what works and what does not. The best blogs out there post here quite often before going live to get feedback from other big names. Accessify Forum put me in contact with the Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS) who's membership I joined and discovered (members web sites are first examined to ensure that they truly understand or support accessibility) that my "Accessible web site" had more barriers then you could shake a stick at and that I did not know the first thing about accessibility. But Mel Pedley of Blackwidow Designs not only pointed out my failings but how to fix them and with her help the LSW of that time became accessible and I was accepted as a member. I still find myself slapping my forehead over there when I discover some accessibility consideration so logical I should have seen it myself ...so I am still learning today. As above, the acceptance of the regulars and in this case industry leaders and their patience mean that once again a Forum opened up new worlds for me and "brainstorming with the best" has boosted my knowledge in these last 3 years far beyond the first year and I have learned more then I ever did in school. Other forums There are other forums out there, each with a specialty, SitePoint is a great general forum with more knowledge in the direction of programming and business oriented things. Computer Arts Forum gets more into the artistic and software oriented with allot of 3D, Flash and artistic subjects. I just dropped out of actively going to these forums as they are very big and somewhat hard to deal with as well as the move, real life and more duties at killersites. It does not reflect on their usefulness, simply on lack of time to spend there. It does not matter what forum you join, the point is that forums are a must for web designers just to keep your creativity charged and keep you up to date on recent changes in the industry. Whether you are a beginner or advanced, learning or teaching does not matter, it is the participation that matters that keeps you at your best for your customers and helper or "helpee" you will find your self learning and improving either way. Projects Although not directly related to forums, face it, you can read tutorials, blogs, books or forums and it does no good if you cannot turn around and put it in use now or later. Bookmarks are a must! Bookmark everything! And do so logically and under different labels so you can find it again when you need it! So projects are a must, private or customer, actual or make believe ... you need projects to support you in the forums. Like I say above, my knowledge has multiplied beyond belief since joining KS and accessify. Here I made the jump in a short amount of time between beginner and now the expert here for accessibility. All because I had projects that challenged me and required things I have never done before. But since my contract with the portal ended I have had no real challenges and although I spend allot oftime at KS some may have noticed that I am not so vocal, I help less then before, I basically chase Spam. It has become somewhat boring as the challenge is gone, I learn little new and we have a flock of regulars now faster with the same answers then me. I find myself once more in a slump, once more stagnating. I am now finishing up on a re-code of my Host's site, it was harder than expected but the only real challenge was working with Data Tables. But again i turned to the forums to get help, advice and see what I have missed never having done serious data tables before and for a short time it was fun again. So i will likely write another post on the correct creation of accessible data tables. So that is my rant, maybe self centered but I enjoy seeing Thelma and Susie now helping others as David and Stef likely feel about me having seen me improve here. It is easy to get caught up in the web and forget your real life, I see that every time my daughter wants to play and I say no. But just burying yourself in projects or real life can be the death of a designer as well. If it is even just one, choose a forum you like and hit it regularly, at least once a week for a few hours just to help and see what is changing as it is changing to keep from stagnating. If you have no time for forums then try at least a news mail list or a few important blogs, preferably allowing comments. Stagnation is death in this field.

Here are the best links on the subject I have at this time. a "*" indicates new additions. You will find related subjects in Stef's News Letter Board What do you charge for a website? HOW TO BID ON A CONTRACT WEB DESIGN - A BUYERS GUIDE Here are more from Sitepoint and others Dice's IT Rate Survey Results page Salary.com Freelance Pricing Part 1 - Set Your Rate! How to Price Your Services (The Question on Everyone's Mind) Pricing Web Work - What Should You Charge? How a Core Relationship Strategy Can Help You Increase Profits How to price? - Question on forum, pay attention to the answer from Jackman - good stuff. How much do you charge? - Joshuaink.com Pricing Discussion FAQ - WebDeveloper.com