Google Maps

Very slick Mapping and Directions, when panning the map slides sideways instead of refreshing the page with a new image.

Google Maps

Feature Tour

How to rescue a broken Windows Installation

I had a inaccessible boot device problem on a machine at home, with the help of this I got it fixed in no time.

Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD

Too old to code ?

I'm nowhere near 40 yet thank god, but an interesting article on how you can be discriminated against because of your age.

I remember hearing that large companies like IBM and HP have recognised that a great developer does not make a great manager so they have well defined career paths for skilled but older developers who wish to still have a career but keep coding.

The value of experienced coders

Accessibility in website Design, a practical demonstration

I was lucky enough to attend a course that described the problems that people with all kinds of disabilities have to endure when navigating websites. It was presented by Donal Rice of the national disability authority (NDA) along with Dr. Donal Fitzpatrick from DCU.

The course was very informative and gave a lot of substance to the actual real world reasons for designing an accessible website other than to display a logo at the bottom of a page. Although I have developed a number of sites that were XHTML and Positional CSS compliant according to the w3c validators, getting it to validate is really only the 1st step.

The demos given by Donal Fitzpatrick were particularly compelling. Because he is blind he obviously has a great motivation to spread the word about developing accessible sites. He was using the JAWS screenreader to navigate a number of well known sites and commenting on the problems associated with them. My admiration for peoples ability to be able to navigate any site with a screen reader is hard to measure. The demos included myhome.ie and superquinn4food.ie which were horrendous to use from a screen reader perspective.

Some points from the course are:

- There are many types of disability, blindness, partial sighted, deafness, motor (limited mobility) etc. Try to accommodate as many as possible.

- There are legal requirements to design accessible sites based on US and EU legislation.

- Don't build an alternative site only for accessibility. Tesco tried to do this and omitted special offers from the accessible "other" site and were accused of discrimation.

- So build 1 site, not 2 and use a standards based XHTML approach separating content from presentation using positional CSS. Good example of ContentVsPresentation is www.csszengarden.com

- Access keys for navigation are usually a waste of time for people using screen readers because they have enough shortcut keys to remember as it is.

- Don't add alt text for meaningless images such as spacers or curvey images that make a box corner, leave them blank so a reader does not call them out.

- Make alt text short and concise, don't want a rambling description of your company logo on every page. "Logo" will do.

- the NDA have a standard which is a summary of the WCAG guidelines for Irish sites see http://accessit.nda.ie/ for more info.

- Avoid JavaScript for main navigation if possible.

There was a lot of other handy tips and advice given, too many to list.

All the developers attending had a sheepish kind of look by the end of the course each knowing full well that they had broken a number of the guidelines in past and present projects and potentially make life difficult for people with disabilities.

Craig

Leetspeak 101

A parent's primer to computer slang

Is Teleo the new Skype Killer...

Is Teleo the new Skype killer ?

It allows for a phone number to be created and assigned to you so that it can be called by a regular PSTN phone and using the magic of VOIP can be answered on your PC. Also allows for call forwarding when your offline. Usual very low call charges 2c per min etc.

XP reduced media edition ? EU tactics

Way to Go: Microsoft Tweaks EU, EU Tweaks Back

Amazing how a large company like microsoft can annoy the US and EU with the same tricks, all credit to Paul Thurrott from WinInfo, he can be very pro microsoft at times, good to see him adding some balance.