accessible websites by casey glass

Don't you think...

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:54:00 +1000

…iPhone web apps (and mobile web apps in general) make awesome sidebar pages in Firefox?

Far out. I’m trying to give this thing a 2nd, 3rd, 4th chance. I...

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:16:00 +1000

Far out. I’m trying to give this thing a ~~2nd,~~ ~~3rd~~, 4th chance. I got this when I logged in today.

Sigh.

Just added commenting via Disqus.

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:15:12 +1000

Just added commenting via Disqus.: The one feature that was missing from this site since I shifted it to Tumblr is now fix0red.

Firefox 3

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:43:00 +1000

I downloaded Firefox 3 this morning and it is pretty cool - for a browser.

Faster, lighter, it has finally become a real live ~~boy~~ Mac application.

It’s so good… I’m going to switch to it (from Camino).

It’s been a while since I’ve done a browser switch. But every few years one seems to happen and each time for different reasons.

The last switch I did was from Firefox to Camino. The reason for this was that my Powerbook wasn’t coping too well with Flash animation (why do PowerPC Macs totally choke on Flash?), and there wasn’t a Flash blocking extension for Firefox that ran on Mac OS X at the time. Also the UI in Camino was native Aqua which made it feel more integrated to the rest of the OS. It also wasn’t the resource hog that Firefox was.

But then the Firefox 3 betas started coming out, and I could feel myself being attracted to the little Red Panda again.

Why go back to the Fox?

It now uses Aqua (the native UI on Mac - the reason I moved to Camino)
It is faster and uses less memory (the reason I moved to Camino)
Google Gears is now properly implemented on the Mac (I’ve been shifting all my applications into “the cloud” so that I can work from anywhere using any computer)
Weave is Mozilla’s new cloud computing initiaitve, it will be interesting to see what they come up with on this front.
Add-ons - Camino has many of the basic extensions built in that I’d install with Firefox, but lately there have been some great ones that suit my online habits, and I’d like to take advantage of them
Prism - I can see myself using this to cobble together my own mashups

All of this is aligned with my personal mantra of accessible information. By putting all my information “in the cloud” its available from any machine connected to the internet. And for the applications that use Google Gears it is even available when I am offline. All my work is version controlled and backed up for me automatically saving me the hassle of setting up backup schedules, archiving and offsite storage - not to mention the costs of all these too.

There is a bad side to keeping everything in the cloud; when the connection to the net goes down (and not everything is hooked into Google Gears just yet), its like being locked out of the office.

Hang on, is that so bad?

Phase 2 - ?

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:34:00 +1000

I was quite surprised to see a mention of Twitter in a front page news article in an Australian newspaper - and it wasn’t in the IT section. I checked out the feed, and it was actually a pretty good example of how to use the technology effectively (no fluff, just had the facts - which really is the point of micro-blogging).

Although this is a pretty high profile use case scenario, I’m still not convinced Twitter is really mature enough to use as a business tool just yet. Its recent series of outages, system slowdowns (it took their servers over a week to restore my closed account) and their inability to uphold their terms of service doesn’t bode well for those wanting to use to as a key communications tool. It still has got a lot of bugs to be sorted out from both a technical and governance standpoint. When (or if) it does resolve these issues it will most likely still only be suited as an auxiliary communications tool. A useful one, but not one to base your whole comunications strategy upon.

Twitter needs to sort itself out fast. Google bought competing service Jaiku in October 2007 and has put the service in a holding pattern whilst it works on re-birthing it as a Google App. When that happens, expect it to be pretty well integrated into everything else they’ve already worked their magic on.

Twitter: this isn’t 1998, first mover advantage doesn’t mean anything anymore. And Underpant Gnome business plans aren’t going to convince VC’s to fund your business forever. I think you’re onto a good thing, and have a strong (although very geeky) userbase. But you really have to pull your socks up and get some very basic things sorted out, such as how are you going to make money off this thing?

Who in Sydney is good at building 3D visualisation Flash applications?

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:46:10 +1000

I’m working on a project at the moment that requires 3D rooms scenes to be rendered with different user selectable floor textures and am looking for an agency who has the skills to pull it off without having to “learn on the job”. If you have any contacts that would be able to do this, please email me on contactme at caseyg dot com dot au.

"Every facet, every department of your mind, is to be programmed by you. And unless you assume your..."

Tue, 20 May 2008 09:58:58 +1000

“Every facet, every department of your mind, is to be programmed by you. And unless you assume your rightful responsibility, and begin to program your own mind, the world will program it for you.”

- Evil 9, “Cake Hole”

Accessibility for Older Users

Sat, 17 May 2008 12:10:06 +1000

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Education and Outreach Working Group Working Group (EOWG) has published Web Accessibility for Older Users: A Literature Review as a First Public Working Draft. The document includes reviews and analysis of guidelines and articles covering the requirements of people with Web accessibility needs related to ageing. This literature review will inform WAI efforts to promote accessibility solutions for older Web users and potentially to develop profiles or extensions to WAI guidelines. The literature review is a deliverable of the WAI-AGE Project (Ageing Education and Harmonisation). See the call for review and participation for an introduction to the project and an invitation to contribute to the literature review and other WAI-AGE work; and about the Web Accessibility Initiative.

Worst. Graph. Ever.

Tue, 06 May 2008 13:50:38 +1000

I came across this graph today whilst doing some research on RSS market penetration. I’m sure there was a better way to display this information.

And I thought ASCII art was cool

Fri, 02 May 2008 09:21:00 +1000

And I thought ASCII art was cool:

A portrait of Homer Simpson, draw using HTML and CSS code.

(Totally inaccessible, but I do admire the creativity)

Watch it being made.

The Twits

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:46:00 +1000

I had clearly stated on my feed page that I was no longer using the service and had only ever made 3 or 4 posts on it over a period of six months. But I still got email notifications from Twitter every week informing me that another random ~~person~~ twit had subscribed to my Twitter feed.

For me, Twitter is a solution in search of a problem.

Twitter is not productive. The signal to noise ration is way too high. Using it in a controlled environment (or locking off your account so that only certain people to send you updates) I can start to see its usefulness, like in applications similar to In/Out at 37signals. But there are too many people out there using this microblog system to diarize every microscopic detail of their lives whilst constantly in search of someone who cares.

I don’t care what you had for lunch today. I’m out.

Super Mario Colours

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:29:14 +1000

Super Mario Colours: The first media article I’ve ever seen about accessibility in gaming.

"If you are a designer worth your salt, you know that no design project begins with creativity...."

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:51:40 +1100

“If you are a designer worth your salt, you know that no design project begins with creativity. Instead, it begins with client- and/or context-specific discovery, and lots of research to help you understand the fundamental nature of the challenges at hand. All designers must guard against the urge to invest in specific creative ideas before becoming intimately familiar with the contextual landscape of a design project.”

- Andy Rutledge

The best surprises are the most unexpected.

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +1100

The best surprises are the most unexpected.

"You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledgehammer on the construction site"

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:51:18 +1100

“You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledgehammer on the construction site”

- Frank Lloyd Wright

So the big news this week besides disappearing polar icecaps and multi-billion dollar stock market...

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:24:00 +1100

So the big news this week besides disappearing polar icecaps and multi-billion dollar stock market losses is that Internet Explorer 8 is going to be web standards compliant.

Let me say that again.

Internet Explorer 8 is going to be web standards compliant.

(Hmmm… maybe all the ice is going to hell so it can start freezing over?)

So what does this means? Will web developers be finally getting their wish and have standards compliant browsers from all the top browser manufacturers making web development easier, cheaper and faster?

Yes.. and .. uhm.. well.. maybe… not.

Microsoft are proposing that developers will be able to use all the great new web standards goodness of IE8 by adding a meta declaration to their files to tell IE8 they are using standards compliant code. Standards compliance will be opt-in. It will not be the default behaviour.

It seems that all those years at the top of the browser market share charts are now coming back to haunt the IE development team. They are now having to deal with the problems that the previous generations of IE have been giving web developers and designers for years. Ironically enough - they are faced with the task of having to maintain these problems.

But why would Microsoft want to maintain their buggy rendering engines for generations of IE to come? Because they sat on the same version (IE6) for five years. This resulted in masses of web pages, not to mention multi-million dollar corporate intranets that rely on these rendering bugs to deliver content to their users in a usable format. It’s all a matter of accessibility.

Microsoft are planning on distributing the IE6, IE7 and IE8 rendering engines within IE8. Developers will be able to declare what version of IE they want IE8 to render with. If developers don’t declare what version of IE they want to render with then IE will default to IE7.

All the other browser developers have been weighing in with their responses to this dilemma that Microsoft is facing and how the IE development team are proposing to deal with it;

Mozilla: META HTTP-EQUIV=”X-BALL-CHAIN” and Slipping The Ball And Chain

Webkit: Versioning, Compatibility and Standards

Opera: The Internet Explorer lock-in

For those with limited time or patience (quite frankly I don’t blame anyone for getting tired of this game that Microsoft started. It is really starting to get tedious) Ars Technica have written a concise overview of the whole situation and the solution that Microsoft has proposed.

Looking at the responses the aforementioned blogs are getting it is clear that a large majority of the web development community is displeased with the direction Microsoft has decided to take on this issue. It will be interesting to see if the IE development team respond to this feedback with another direction, or if they will stay the course on this one and see it through to the end.

Article graphic by Alan Foreman.

"If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough."

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:11:00 +1100

“If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.”

- Mario Andretti

Say "Hi" to the new UXnet Local Ambassador for Sydney, Australia

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:18:00 +1100

Over the holiday break, whilst waiting on callbacks from recruiters (I so picked the wrong time to start applying for jobs) I figured the best way to get more acquainted with the local web scene and inparticular UX in Sydney was to become a part of it. I was quite surprised to find that nobody in Sydney had yet volunteered to become the Local Ambassador for UXnet, so I jumped at the chance to apply for the position - and got it.

So, if you have a UX related event, or know of one that is happening in Sydney, let me know.

About UXnet.org

53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:47:00 +1100

53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without: This is a pretty impressive list of CSS techniques. One that caught my eye was #48 Snook’s Resizable Underlines which gives text an underlined look without resorting to using the old U element.

Do websites need to look exactly the same in every browser?

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:29:39 +1100

Do websites need to look exactly the same in every browser?