About Dot and Co Web Site

Our Tools

This web site has been entirely created with free software, such as Debian GNU Linux for the operating system and distribution (here is why), GIMP for graphical work, as well as vi and its clones, such as VIM and Elvis for text editing.

Generation Process

This web site is processed with WML (Webiste META Language).

In greater details:

• all pages, splited in functionnal parts with a generic structure handling the global visual effect and web site homogeneity, are written using the WML language,
• IcannWatch and CircleId news are fetched as an XML feed and then transformed with XSLT,
• with the help of a Makefile, target XHTML files in two languages are automatically generated from WML files, and converted in UTF-8,
• and finally the web server gives out the correct page thanks to the content and compression negotiation, and changes at request time some headers to satisfy those browsers that are not completely standards compliant.

Language Selection

This web site is available in French (language in which it is originally written most of the time), and in English (internal translation).
Thanks to content negotiation, you can directly read pages in one of these two languages, depending on the way you have configured your browser.
Thus, if your browser correctly handles this functionnality, and depending on your configuration, the link http://www.dotandco.com/notresite (the page you are currently reading) will point to the English or French version.
In case of difficulties, or if your browser is not standards compliant, you can also directly reach all our pages in a specific language (ex: http://www.dotandco.com/notresite.en for the English version).

You can find more information on content negotiation on Debian web site and details on configuration of your browser.

Content negotiation also enables us to send compressed pages (smaller, thus faster to send) to browsers indicating they are able to handle this.

Standards compliance

At the end our web site complies with many standards: XHTML 1.0 Strict, CSS2, and multiple accessibility rules. Do not hesitate to click on the following logos to learn more:

Compliance is checked, in part automatically, before each update. Do not hesitate to contact us if you find something non compliant on our web site.
Same applies for all hypertextual links.

To be able to use all advanced functionnalities on this web site and many others we recommend you to use a browser compatible with all current standards from W3C, such as FireFox (coming from Mozilla suite) or some other browsers.
This web site displays itself better in a standards compliant browser (here is why), but remains usable in all cases, including without images or without CSS.

Our Sources

To create this web site, we used the following sources of information:

• OpenWeb for education about standards,
• UseIt.com from Jakob Nielsen about accessibility,
• Zeldman.com about use of standards on the web,
• W3C Recommendation on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and W3C HTML Techniques for WCAG 2.0 for accessibility and correct use of XHTML,
• W3C WAI Web Content Accessibility Curriculum (found on Getting Started: Making a Web Site Accessible), for easy steps to follow towards accessibility,
• W3C Note on Common HTTP Implementation Problems in particular to configure our web server,
• W3C Quality Tips for Webmasters for many tips,
• Dive Into Accessibility to a more accessible web site in 30 days,
• Opquast for good quality practices for online services.

Plus spécifiquement, sur l’accessibilité et le besoin ainsi que la nécessité d’avoir des sites web accessibles :

• «Usabilité, accessibilité et ... réalité» qui montre à la fois le besoin et la difficulté à faire des sites web accessibles,
• «Quatre bonnes raisons de rendre un site accessible»,
• le contexte légal, tant en France qu'à l’étranger,
• le référentiel accessibilité des services Internet de l’administration française.