![[Home]](/pics/arrow-r.gif){kind=icon}
katlalog
030828 21:42 Web design
A new challenge: ReUSEIT - redesign Jakob Nielsen's UseIt.com
030828 21:26 Intellectual property
Danny O'Brien talks about the BBC's Creative Archive:
Presenting its archive material without restrictions would allow the BBC to occupy a niche that no other commercial company would dare to assume. It would allow them to tap a vast distribution system that no other company feels confident enough to use. It would serve a public good, in refilling the public domain diminished by companies attempting to restrict their customers' use of their works.
030828 21:11 Weird world
Canadians aren't allowed to smile on passport photos anymore.
030822 21:18 Web development : accessibility
JAWS is an extremely expensive screenreader for the blind and visually impaired. As it is, most of us can only hope that if we design according to standards and apply all accessibility techniques, our sites will work in all the user agents we cannot test in. But it's never that simple, is it? We spend hours fiddling with our code to adjust it to each and every browser's quirks and from hearsay we know that JAWS has some of its own. A free or cheap version for testing would really help. Please sign this petition so that web designers can ensure that their sites are really accessible to its users.
We, the undersigned, request that the developers of JAWS for Windows please provide us a free/cost effective, stripped down testing alternative. This will lead to more websites being tested to suit your software, resulting in an increased audience and hence increased requirement for JAWS.
030822 20:10 Web development : CSS
In an interview at DMXZone (which features an awfully cluttered design) David Shea of CSS Zen Garden is calling for the development of CSS editors to make it possibles for 'designers' rather than 'coders' to create CSS driven sites without having to learn HTML.
I've seen discussion recently about coding vs. design. Some argue that being intimately familiar with the underlying code is the only way to problem-solve when issues arise. I suppose this is a fair claim given today's state of support for CSS. But my view remains that, simply, it's the wrong methodology if traditional designers are expected to learn this stuff.
Somewhere along the way, we're going to have to start seeing visual CSS editors for that to change. Table-based tools exist; using a combination of Dreamweaver and Fireworks I can build a reasonably good-looking site without learning much HTML. The code won't be pretty, but it will work well enough to please most clients. Until we have CSS editors that can match these tools in functionality and ease of use, you'll always see resistance from designers who can't be bothered to learn the code. We need InDesign for CSS. Who's working on it?
030816 18:08 Health
Why Hospitals Overcharge the Uninsured
...the approximately 41.2 million Americans who don't have health insurance today not only have to pay astronomically high healthcare bills out of their own pockets, but they actually pay around 50 to 70 percent more than insurance companies do for health coverage.
030816 16:20 War : aftermath
Every day you hear in the news that another american soldier was blown up by a bomb in Iraq. Maybe we should balance the reporting a little. Salam Pax mentions this in his latest report for the Guardian:
Earlier in the day I got frisked and the car I was in searched because the colonel or something who has just passed by thought that he didn't like the people who are standing by the car (me) and that I was giving him dirty looks. Habibi, you have no idea how dirty my looks can get, you didn't get one. What you saw was the I-have-been-standing-for-a-whole-hour-in-the-sun. But because you have the power to decide what a look means I got searched. You really should have looked more carefully before you shot the nine-year-old kid in Ramadi only to find out later that it was a water gun he had in his hands. Dirty looks - yeah, totally justified frisking me.
Also in the Guardian recently: Human shields face 12 years' jail for visiting Iraq..
030815 22:02 Movies / Politics
Arnie shoots himself in the foot:
Arnie's advisors told the press that Federal "equal time" rules apply, and if a station airs one of his movies, ALL of his opponents can claim equal time for free, and that's a lot of time - nearly 250 registered candidates.
030806 18:27 Internet / Civil liberties
Ryan Lackey, former chief technology officer of HavenCo, said on Sunday afternoon that he left the project because his business partners had become nervous about hosting objectionable material and were leading the company toward financial ruin, with only about six customers remaining.
030805 18:50 Civil liberties
The continuing debate about passengers being ejected from flights is a good indication for changing behavior in a big brother state. John Gilmore writes in the aftermath of his own treatment for wearing a 'Suspected Terrorist' button:
It didn't even occur to me to censor my reading material on the flight; I must need political retraining.
030805 18:16 Science
The Guardian has an interesting article about just how difficult it is to tell the correct time. Apart from all the different systems used around the world, the earth seems to be too slow for our accurate atomic clocks. (via boingboing)
The problem arises because the Earth cannot keep time as accurately as modern atomic clocks, which count the steady shaking of atoms. These atomic clocks replaced the motion of the Earth as the world's official timekeeper in 1967. The pull of the moon is gradually slowing our planet down, so every now and then our clocks are halted for a second to let it catch up.
030720 16:42 Politics
Discontented US citizens head for the less conservative Canada.
030720 15:53 War : aftermath
Blair is confident that history will forgive them for their lies and deceptions.
030720 15:45 Health
Bush goes after doctors recommending marijuana to sick patients.
030720 13:52 Jobs
'The 5th Wave' cartoon on the IT job market.
030715 23:11 Web development : accessibility
Joe Clark's Building Accessible Websites: all chapters online now.
In his usual blunt style he has this to say about stylesheets, media types in particular:
Also in principle, stylesheets provide for increased accessibility, though the actual accessibility provisions of CSS are so poorly supported that the entire project amounts to vapourware.
030715 22:20 Working life
I started a new job today. Archiving... which is closer to what i studied... but a long way from the fun i have as a web designer :(
No other job's ever been as good and as much fun.
030714 00:33 Personal
As the clock edges past midnight i finish another CSS design... again distracted from the re-design of this very site... and restricted by the client's newbie wishes ("Make sure you put that animation of the running horsey in").
Having stared at that heavy green background all day i headed over to the Zen Garden for some relief, some grace and elegance that I'm still dreaming to achieve... and came across the CV of one of the german based designers. I wish I'd come up with that.
030712 15:19 Culture
Going to Burning Man this year? You might want to print out the giantmonster map to take with. This year's theme is Beyond Belief with road names such as Profane, Imagined, Sublime and Dubious; Vision, Reality, Dogma and Authority.
030711 22:37 Web development
A treasure horde of useful articles and presentations, several about accessibility and usability, from the AusWeb03 Conference. (via Einfach für alle Access[B]log)
030711 21:41 Web development : Standards
Eric A. Meyer interview about web standards. (via webstandards.org)
The criticism that CSS websites have looked plain is really well deserved but the reason that CSS driven sites have looked plain to date is that the people who have created those sites have not been visual artists they haven’t have strong graphic design skills and I totally include myself in that category.
030711 16:14 Technology
Sensation Of Touch Transmitted Over The Internet. At last, Phillipa Forrester is vindicated.
030703 17:46 Web development : accessibility
Graphics used in sign-up processes and verification, such as the ones Yahoo has been using for a couple of years now, are becoming more and more popular in the battle to prevent spam bot abuse, but obviously they cause problems for visually impaired internet users. News.com has a detailed article about it.
quote of the month
...the reason that CSS driven sites have looked plain to date is that the people who have created those sites have not been visual artists...