Jared Smith of WebAIM has written a comprehensive article on Creating Accessible Macromedia Flash Content.
Run Mac apps on your PC
MacCentral: Cherry OS lets PCs emulate Macs This does for Windows what Virtual PC does for Mac. Let’s you run the other guys OS on your machine. The Cherry OS is only about $50, but you still have to buy a Mac OS to run with it.
The Web Essentials Conference Presentations
Presentations from the Web Essentials Conference are online, including these:
- Zen and the Art of Web Improvement by Dave Shea
- Designing with CSS: Past, Present, and Future by Dave Shea
- The Beauty and Business of CSS by Doug Bowman
- Pushing Your Limits by Doug Bowman
- An Introduction to Web Standards by Russ Weakley
- The People in the Neighborhood by Joe Clark
- Modus Operandi by Joe Clark
- Pokemons in the Amazon Jungle by Bruce Maguire
Is Browse Happy making a difference?
First sign of malicious code exploiting Windows Jpeg security flaw – vnunet.com describes a new security hole in Internet Explorer involving JPEG images. We hear this type of news almost every day about IE. There are also more and more reports every day that Microsoft is losing users to the safer and more standards-compliant browsers such as Opera, Firefox, and Safari.
I’m wondering how much effect the Browse Happy. Online. Worry Free campaign has had to do with this trend. If you have switched browsers because of the encouragement of Browse Happy, I’d like to hear your comments.
Ranting on Symantec
Today I went to the Symantec site to renew my subscription to Norton’s Anti-Virus. After I paid my money, they gave me an 11 digit Subscripton Key to enter into my software to keep my subscription going for another year. The only problem is, the field where Norton’s requests that you enter your Subscription Key only allows 8 digits.
Well, okay, there is a reference to a web page that will tell you how to enter your Subscription Key in your particular version of the software. Just so you know, when I renewed the subscription I told them the particular version of the software as prompted to do, but nevertheless I got back an unusable Subscription Key. I went to the referenced web page, clicked on the link that is supposed to provide directions for my particular version of the software. I got a page that says, Oops, our knowledge base has an error. Check back later. Well, it’s been over 12 hours and the knowledge base still is in error state.
In the meantime, I look through all the Help files, Support files, and Contact files on the Symantec web site. There is no way to communicate with these people! If you call them on the phone and talk to a human, they charge you $10. If you send in an email question they charge you $30.
I’m just going to have to wait for the illusive Knowledge Base to start working (my Subscription Key is only good for a week) and hope there is some magic there that will tell me how to squeeze 11 digits in a field that only allows 8 digits. Frankly, I think I’ve just been robbed by Symantec.
PBS Accessibility Program: POV Freedom Machines
P.O.V. – Freedom Machines . The Promise of the Web | PBS is an interview with Judy Brewer of the W3C’s Web Accessiblity Initiative. It is related to a PBS program scheduled for this week’s POV program: POV: Freedom Machines. Other very useful related articles are What is Assistive Technology? and the photo gallery of examples showing The Principles of Universal Design.
The Eyes Have It
Here’s a small but very interesting study at Eyetrack III – What You Most Need to Know that examines the eye movements users exhibit when reading web pages.