Alex Hardy

Hmm. I think this is irresponsible, self-serving and disgusting. If their aim was to make computing more secure for users of Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla etc products, they would inform the company in question and give them an opportunity to fix the vulnerability, rather than advertise it to people who would exploit it. Of course, their aim is to sell their services.

I would quite like to see a scenario where a company wasn’t able to fix a vulnerability that these wankers had announced before an exploit was created and doing harm. I’d like then for those who suffered disruption or data loss to sue them.

The Transformers teaser trailer is live now on Yahoo! Promotions. I really don’t like Jon Voight as an actor, but this trailer is looking pretty good

If there’s one thing Michael Bay does well, it’s Blowing Shit Up. With big-ass robots and (please) a half decent script, this one could be a winner.

[UPDATE] This version is much higher res.

I’m in the habit of adding several minor accessibility features as a matter of course. “Skip links” are one such technique. In principle, hidden links at the top of the page allow screen reader users to move directly to defined content areas. This bypasses elements (such as navigation menus) that they wouldn’t wish to hear every time they load a page.

Dive Into Accessibility recommends the CSS that I’ve used so far to hide them:

#skiplink {display:none;}

Yet Bite Size Standards specifically discourages this technique…

Why not use (display: none;) in the style sheet? It seems like it would make sense, but it doesn’t work. Screen readers will respect the display property of “none” and the link will not be there.

#skiplink {position: absolute; margin-left: -9999px;}

This declaration positions the skip nav off the viewport -9999 pixels, rendering it, in effect, invisible. The skip nav is still there, though, for screen readers, text-browsers (Lynx), and those with style sheets disabled.

Finding something like this questions the expertise of not only the originating article, but the whole website and its author. Clearly, Dive Into Accessibility haven’t tested this method before recommending it, or its inadequacy would have been revealed.

It’s instances like this that makes Brent’s view that accessibility discussion is a passing fad, whose recommendations are meritless seem entirely justified. Obviously the first technique does not serve those that it’s intended to help and so cannot possibly be a product of user request. Unfortunately, as a web developer who does not use a screen reader I have to take on faith that these techniques are from a credible source and actually work. Without conducting my own research I see no more reason to trust the second technique.

Philosophically speaking, I’m committed to making my work as accessible as I can. When my website goes live, it will represent the best of my knowledge at that time. I’m resigned to the fact though that many of the techniques I take for granted may be utterly useless, so I will appeal to my users to feed back. In the end, that is the only solution.

If like me you’re using WordPress to get your fevered rantings out there, you really must check out WP Tiger Administration v3.0 by Steve Smith.

A simple plugin install, it does away with the out-of-the-box WP admin, and replaces it with a slick, subtle interface. Fantastic stuff!

We’re going to have a pint and a pow-wow on Tuesday night to see if this is the one…

… not down with the kids and their hippity-hop?

You need The AOLer Translator!

Type a message in the first box, and turn it into the manner that a 12-year-old AOLer would write it. For instance, it turned my…

“Hello there, I’d just like to wish you all a very happy Christmas!”

…into…

“HELO THERA ID JUST LIEK 2 WISH U AL A VERY HAPY CHRISTMAS!!111 OMG WTF LOL”

Instant illiteracy! I feel so with it now.

I thought I’d start posting little tips and tricks that I’ve found or come up with in the course of my web monkey activities. The aim is to share ideas and who knows, maybe improve on my own humble efforts through discussion

I’ll start with something that I cooked up and used on John Bishop Online and John Smith's Bitter. Not so much something new as a combination of a couple of techniques, this is how I currently include Flash content on web pages.

This technique uses the SWFObject script. This script has advantages over typical object embed techniques because it is more concise and doesn’t present the”click to activate control” message in Internet Explorer 7.

I’ve uploaded an example page.

The technique

To use the “progressive enhancement” approach that Yahoo! promote, we start with a H1:

<h1 id="swapme"><span>This header will be replaced</span></h1>

With CSS and JavaScript turned off (or the specified version of Flash unavailable), this header text will be shown.

CSS is used to swap the header text for an image. The contents of the span are made invisible, and the H1 is set to a size and background:

h1 span {
	display: none;
	visibility: hidden;
}

#swapme {
	width: 300px;
	height: 300px;
	background: #ff0000 url(image.gif) no-repeat;
}

After that, the SWFObject script is used to replace the contents of the H1 with the Flash object.

Room for improvement

• I’m going to remove the JavaScript to an external file.
• #swapme isn’t ideal semantically speaking… you’d have to give it an appropriate id for your site.

A lion. As seen only in Kenya. Another present ticked off…

Me like eBay too! Grimlock no stoopid Mustang, Grimlock is T-Rex! RaaaaaRRR! *wiggles puny forearms*

Me also want Bumblebee. Will get. Oh yes.

I think we’ve got to the tricky stage, where its close but not right. There’s also the matter of committing to a style and going with it. Ste and I are having a catch up tomorrow night - who knows, maybe we’ll have our winner!