No you don't, any decent AJAX site should degrade gracefully (gmail does this with the basic html mode)
Gmail does, a lot of other Google goodies don't. And we're talking about Google here. They have some of the best programmers in the world. In many scenarios, making the accessible version is significantly harder than making the ajax-based one. I know with my AJAX apps, doing the exact same thing without would easily triple the complexity of the app. Again: this is far too short sighted. Oh, and some features of Gmail don't work at -all- in the degraded version, btw.
The web is the great leveller, it can bring people and business together who wouldn't normally be able - why lose 200,000 potential customers in the U.S. alone?
Because depending on the scenario you are trying to handle, it can throw you out of business. I have worked for small consulting firms, that worked on a smaller scale, making web apps targeted to a smaller amount of people. This is fine because the laws don't account for these kind of apps. But if they were? The customer would have to pay a significant amount extra (even if I do code XHTML compliant as much as I can, just the time to deal with the last 5% is large, plus, while -I- have that knowledge, not all web app developers do), and in some case, have to pay for a full dupplicate of the app. They would simply refuse the contract altogether instead of paying for the extra time.
Thats why I say: If all you have is a ecommerce site with nothing else on top, its one thing. If you're trying to tap into what the web can do (ajax, etc), you're almost doubling your work (if all you do is replace postbacks with callbacks, its EASY to make it degrade well. But there are other scenarios where you need to completly rework your logic, for example if your site depends on some technologies like JSON, you need to completly replace that by a server side component), and then its simply not worth it.
In other words: Some things on the web have no excuse not to be accessible. Some other things simply can't be without holding the world back. (again: thats why part of google's services degrade well, others do not). Either make the distinction between the two in the law (they do to some extent, with WHO has to comply, but not with WHAT), or they take out the law. Anything else (like the current situation) is totally rediculous and shortsighted.
Because technology to make a brick and mortar store is mature, it is well understood, the laws made for them are made with people who have insight on how the real world works, and because the difference between a commercial building and a non-commercial one tends to be clear cut (they are registered as such, the land is registered as such, there's a bunch of permits involved, etc).
Online is a relatively new technology (I mean, compared to buildings which could be made centuries ago), legislator don't get it at all (as seen by the patent laws), accomodations are not mature (IE6), the difference between a e-commerce site and another is not clear cut.
Plus, web sites can be made in different kind. You have documents, repositories, web application, so called "web 2.0" software, etc. Saying all sites should be accessible is a bit like saying -anything- in an urban area should be accessible: including garbage cans, -all- housing, etc. The laws have to be more precise, otherwise they will destroy innovation. -AND- they need to make more powerful screen readers.
Spoken like an old table based layout "web designer" who hasn't been able to adapt with the times
Spoken like an old web page designer who hasn't seen what the web can do.
Again: if all I'm doing is a standard web page, thats fine. Its pretty easy (to some extent). Being purely XHTML compliant doesn't make you accessible, and there are some things in some situations that are pretty rough to deal with.
That being said, as soon as you use something like, let say, Ajax (I use this as an example because everyone heard of it, and from your post you really don't seem to realise what people have used the web for these days, so I won't go in any more details), screen readers don't pick up the refresh, and thus its not compliant. So woohoo, I have to kiss ajax good bye. If I was using Ajax to refresh a dropdown list or something, thats easily remedied. If I'm doing something akin to Google Calendar in features, making an "accessible" version can take months.
Again: The Web is not a giant e-book reader anymore.
The problem here is that maybe, right now, target doesn't want to allocate their ressources to their web development. Maybe they have limited ressources, and don't have time to hire more in that department, or their IT staff doesn't have time to train a newcomer, or something. So maybe (probably, actualy) they don't even care about -normal- customers visiting their web site. From looking at it, I'd say thats the case.
There is no one forcing them to care about normal customers. So they don't. But because they have the site up at all, they should make it accessible? Thats the problem I have with this: It comes down to, a LOT of businesses would be better off -taking down- their web site entirely, instead of making it accessible. Thats a bit silly.
It reminds me of last time this subject came up on slashdot: some teacher was explaining how they were putting some slides up on their personal web space on the school server. Then a rule/law came up because they were receiving public fund, that ANY page was supposed to be accessible. So anything ajaxy, "web 2.0" (damn I hate that term), or even personal teacher's sites, had to be accessible. Said teacher unfortunately was not a web designer, and didn't have time to learn: it was just something they were doing for students in 10 minutes. They were saying if they were forced to comply, they pretty much had to remove the web site instead. Thats retarded as hell: it would punish everyone (including the blind person!, since a hard to navigate site is better than none at all!).
The law is poorly done, and it lives in fairy land of the days when the web was a big e-book.
The accessibilities regulation when it comes to web sites have the same issues a LOT of things have when it comes to the web: They imply that the web is nothing more than a variant of a PDF browser. It doesn't consider that HTML/CSS were very poorly designed, that we have to deal with IE6 (even though IE7 came out), that the web already requires 10 bazillion skills, and if you need experts in every categories to do anything, a lot of companies will have to retire from the field, that a lot of the content is beyond the developer's control, etc etc etc.
The only thing one should require is to stick a div tag with CSS to make it invisible at the very very top of the site, that says "If you are a disabled person using a screen reader to navigate this page, and wishes to make a purchase, dial the following number and talk with one of our friendly representative who will be happy to help you, and give you any web-only discounts you deserve".
Otherwise, if you ever thought IE6 was holding the web back, never freagin mind screen readers. If your page is nothing more than documents with information, and maybe 1 form (which I guess a lot of e-commerce stores are), then go ahead and make it accessible. Its not very rough. But depending on your target audience, it very well might be a desktop-like application with all the wiz and buzz that it implies, and there's simply no way to make that accessible without ruinning your normal user's experience. And if you DO manage to make it accessible, it will be in the terms of the law only: it will still be useless a to a blind person. Those laws are out of date, simple as that: they consider the web as being nothing more than a giant e-book. It doesn't work like that anymore.
50-100$ less? thats almost the price of a freagin OEM disc. The last time I checked, I think OEM Windows on Dells and such is like, 10-20$, if that (its really an insignificant price, even if I don't have the exact number. Might even be less than that actualy).
That probably comes with good usage more than just the OS though. I've ran NT4, 2k, and XP for about 9 years over (I think thats right?), and didn't get even as much as a spyware on any of those, without any permanent scanners (I scan like once every 6 months or so). But the whole running in non-admin and mean something thing does sound cool.
Yes and no. This flaw is specific to XMLHTTP, which is kind of developed independantly. You also can use XMLHTTP without using IE at all, thats why I say its independant. Its probably a buffer overflow, and not much to do about it in this case. So yes IE7 has a flaw, but there really isn't anything they could do in the current context. -HOWEVER-, while IE7 is more secure than IE6 in a million ways, the WinXP version is nothing but a shadow of the real thing. The sandboxed IE7 is on Vista only, and I'm pretty damn sure this vulnerability is not an issue there.
Anyway, so its more semantic here, but you could say "yes, IE7 has a vulnerability".
however, its a little bit like if there was a vulnerability in KDELIB across the board...obviously that would touch Konqueror, no matter how secure Konquerer itself is... Can't excuse that one though. IE7 on XP is far, far from secure. More secure, but not secure.
Its the forever plague of the ActiveX vulnerabilities (though semi-indirectly in this case). So Firefox is safe. Anything that uses XMLHTTP control in a way that it could get arbitrairy inputs is vulnerable.. In other words, Internet Explorer, anything that uses MSHTML straight to connect to random web sites (its safe if its only trusted web sites), so that includes Outlook, etc. Thats about it. But thats too much for my taste.
Sorry, my argument was only related to the pseudo-conspiracy theories people have been pushing around. I don't have an answer as to why its not being pushed in Japan. Japanese have fairly different business process than most of the rest of the world, work in environments 10x more stressful than most of the rest of us, have a weirdo 4-mode written language, and are very involved in the tech world. So maybe their problems were bigger, and their voice louder.
Normally from my experience, Microsoft tends to listen a lot to their certified developers and partners, so this seems to just show that the Japanese were raising hell for one reason or another, while the rest didn't have -too- much problem (relatively speaking) than they did. Either that, or there were large issues with the japanese localisation (thats my guess actualy).
Don't most people make sites that work in Firefox/Opera and validate, then hack them for IE?
The peanut gallery in their spare times do. A -couple- of significant companies. Go on any mainstream web site, and right click and look at the source. Its about 50/50, give or take. Last I checked, Google didn't even have a freagin doctype.
If I had to guess, I would say going from IE6 to IE7 would be harder than IE6 to something standards compliant. The web standards are fairly well documented by w3c. The bugs and incompatibilites in IE7 are not
Actualy, Microsoft is fairly decent at documenting that stuff. My point though, is if you have a 600+ individual pages made for IE, or you are using the MSHTML rendering engine (a LOT of applications do that you wouldn't expect to use anything like that), fixing a few things for IE7 (which is probably just switching a doctype, and a couple of fixes... over 600 pages its significant, but its still better than nothing) is a lot easier than moving everything to standard compliance. I expected the hit, so as much as I could, I kept my code (even in IE-only apps) relatively close to standard, so fixing things for Firefox was a matter of changing a few shared javascript functions, and a bit of CSS in specific sections. Same with IE7, so I was ok. Some companies have millions of lines of old HTML/CSS to fix... moving it to IE7 is a lot easier, trust me.
Why don't people just use this as an opportunity to switch to Firefox or Opera
Time and ressource restrictions (and in some cases, lack of knowledge)
IE7, while still crap, is lighyears better than IE6 when it comes to standards. I have done a few things on IE7, which I tend opened in Firefox, and often it worked on first try. Sometimes I had 1-2 things to fix. Its not -perfect-, but it can literally slash in half the time it takes to make things cross-browser, if you work in a world without IE6. Also while IE7 isn't perfectly secure, it is still a lot more, and on Vista, it is sandboxed (so again, not perfect, but easily an order of magnitude more secure than IE6, or IE7 on XP). So it is a required upgrade, unless you figure out a way to move everyone to Firefox tomorrow
All the issues people are having are bad. But if an application is made IE6 only, what do you think is harder? Fixing it to work in IE7, or fixing it to work in Firefox? If these people are freaking out over IE7, its gonna take them decades to fix their apps for a true compliant browser... This was needed.
Its kind of funny. Usualy we hear about how its the developer's fault that they are writting "non-standard compliant" code, and that they deserve what they get if it breaks in Firefox, or whatever... Now though, since code break because the code isn't standard compliant enough (while IE7 isn't very good still, it does a much better job rendering standard CSS than it does randering IE6 targetted crap) in a microsoft browser, its Microsoft thats evil:)
A lot of the software that are breaking which are not related to web, however, do so because of their use of the MSHTML rendering engine... In a -lot- of cases, just changing the doctype tend to make things -relatively- OK. For the rest...well, IE7 has been in beta and RC for how long now? I know that IT stuff doesn't happen overnight, but Microsoft gave as much warning as they possibly could. If stuff broke (and I'm guilty of that, some web apps I wrote did break, and I didn't take time to test it in IE7), its the developer's own damn fault. They had like a year or something. Jesus...
Yes, marketting is one of the reasons. Security is however, another one (is the browser perfect? HELL NO! Is it better than IE6? HELL YEAH). The main one, in my opinion, is to get rid of IE6 as quickly as humanly possible. And this, the slashdot crowd, especialy the ones who do commercial web design, should appreciate it. Freagin FUD. Yes, Microsoft is evil blah blah blah: Doesn't change anything. The internet will benifit from being rid of IE6, even if it means another IE replacing it.
Vernor Vinge described a future where software is created by 'programmer archaeologists' who search archives for existing pieces of code, contextualize them, and combine them into new applications.
Yeah, thats the present for a lot of us (most of us even?
Unless you're working in R&D or making things that don't exist (a lot of game engines that are from scratch, a lot of open source projects, new protocole implementation, etc), thats probably what you do 40 hours a week. I know a lot of people for example who have to work with web services, and for a reason or another have to do contract first (because they do things their toolkit, if they even use one, doesn't handle), they often copy paste a WSDL template and modify it. A lot of database management tools have a librairy of template stored procedures. Googling for code snippets and samples is always good...
Especialy with environments like Java or.NET, you're almost always sure that someone else did something before you, and did it better. Copy and paste their code, modify it, integrate it. Its what I do all day (always making sure to understand how everything works though!!). That allows me to do a lot of things I have no experience in. I'm sure i'm not the only one.
As per canadian pacifist policies, they will not have weapons, only armor platings and they'll be acting cute to get americans to glee as they surrender.
Yeah, they should give a spoiler warning. That information however, is quite relevent: The amount of dungeons in Wind Waker was half of the reason it sucked so bad...
Ironically, it is because no one on this planet seems to care until it affects their own sorry daily life. Hell, even telling people that losing all the fish would mean the end of the human race, they don't care. What you have to tell them is that losing all the fish would mean, let say, that the fish industry would die, and that the government will raise the income taxe. THEN they start caring.
Slashdot Mirror
Because depending on the scenario you are trying to handle, it can throw you out of business. I have worked for small consulting firms, that worked on a smaller scale, making web apps targeted to a smaller amount of people. This is fine because the laws don't account for these kind of apps. But if they were? The customer would have to pay a significant amount extra (even if I do code XHTML compliant as much as I can, just the time to deal with the last 5% is large, plus, while -I- have that knowledge, not all web app developers do), and in some case, have to pay for a full dupplicate of the app. They would simply refuse the contract altogether instead of paying for the extra time.
Thats why I say: If all you have is a ecommerce site with nothing else on top, its one thing. If you're trying to tap into what the web can do (ajax, etc), you're almost doubling your work (if all you do is replace postbacks with callbacks, its EASY to make it degrade well. But there are other scenarios where you need to completly rework your logic, for example if your site depends on some technologies like JSON, you need to completly replace that by a server side component), and then its simply not worth it.
In other words: Some things on the web have no excuse not to be accessible. Some other things simply can't be without holding the world back. (again: thats why part of google's services degrade well, others do not). Either make the distinction between the two in the law (they do to some extent, with WHO has to comply, but not with WHAT), or they take out the law. Anything else (like the current situation) is totally rediculous and shortsighted.
Because technology to make a brick and mortar store is mature, it is well understood, the laws made for them are made with people who have insight on how the real world works, and because the difference between a commercial building and a non-commercial one tends to be clear cut (they are registered as such, the land is registered as such, there's a bunch of permits involved, etc).
Online is a relatively new technology (I mean, compared to buildings which could be made centuries ago), legislator don't get it at all (as seen by the patent laws), accomodations are not mature (IE6), the difference between a e-commerce site and another is not clear cut.
Plus, web sites can be made in different kind. You have documents, repositories, web application, so called "web 2.0" software, etc. Saying all sites should be accessible is a bit like saying -anything- in an urban area should be accessible: including garbage cans, -all- housing, etc. The laws have to be more precise, otherwise they will destroy innovation. -AND- they need to make more powerful screen readers.
Spoken like an old web page designer who hasn't seen what the web can do.
Again: if all I'm doing is a standard web page, thats fine. Its pretty easy (to some extent). Being purely XHTML compliant doesn't make you accessible, and there are some things in some situations that are pretty rough to deal with.
That being said, as soon as you use something like, let say, Ajax (I use this as an example because everyone heard of it, and from your post you really don't seem to realise what people have used the web for these days, so I won't go in any more details), screen readers don't pick up the refresh, and thus its not compliant. So woohoo, I have to kiss ajax good bye. If I was using Ajax to refresh a dropdown list or something, thats easily remedied. If I'm doing something akin to Google Calendar in features, making an "accessible" version can take months.
Again: The Web is not a giant e-book reader anymore.
The problem here is that maybe, right now, target doesn't want to allocate their ressources to their web development. Maybe they have limited ressources, and don't have time to hire more in that department, or their IT staff doesn't have time to train a newcomer, or something. So maybe (probably, actualy) they don't even care about -normal- customers visiting their web site. From looking at it, I'd say thats the case.
There is no one forcing them to care about normal customers. So they don't. But because they have the site up at all, they should make it accessible? Thats the problem I have with this: It comes down to, a LOT of businesses would be better off -taking down- their web site entirely, instead of making it accessible. Thats a bit silly.
It reminds me of last time this subject came up on slashdot: some teacher was explaining how they were putting some slides up on their personal web space on the school server. Then a rule/law came up because they were receiving public fund, that ANY page was supposed to be accessible. So anything ajaxy, "web 2.0" (damn I hate that term), or even personal teacher's sites, had to be accessible. Said teacher unfortunately was not a web designer, and didn't have time to learn: it was just something they were doing for students in 10 minutes. They were saying if they were forced to comply, they pretty much had to remove the web site instead. Thats retarded as hell: it would punish everyone (including the blind person!, since a hard to navigate site is better than none at all!).
The law is poorly done, and it lives in fairy land of the days when the web was a big e-book.
The accessibilities regulation when it comes to web sites have the same issues a LOT of things have when it comes to the web: They imply that the web is nothing more than a variant of a PDF browser. It doesn't consider that HTML/CSS were very poorly designed, that we have to deal with IE6 (even though IE7 came out), that the web already requires 10 bazillion skills, and if you need experts in every categories to do anything, a lot of companies will have to retire from the field, that a lot of the content is beyond the developer's control, etc etc etc.
The only thing one should require is to stick a div tag with CSS to make it invisible at the very very top of the site, that says "If you are a disabled person using a screen reader to navigate this page, and wishes to make a purchase, dial the following number and talk with one of our friendly representative who will be happy to help you, and give you any web-only discounts you deserve".
Otherwise, if you ever thought IE6 was holding the web back, never freagin mind screen readers. If your page is nothing more than documents with information, and maybe 1 form (which I guess a lot of e-commerce stores are), then go ahead and make it accessible. Its not very rough. But depending on your target audience, it very well might be a desktop-like application with all the wiz and buzz that it implies, and there's simply no way to make that accessible without ruinning your normal user's experience. And if you DO manage to make it accessible, it will be in the terms of the law only: it will still be useless a to a blind person. Those laws are out of date, simple as that: they consider the web as being nothing more than a giant e-book. It doesn't work like that anymore.
I can't talk for the poster you replied to, but my interpretation is that it was EXACTLY the point they were trying to put across...
50-100$ less? thats almost the price of a freagin OEM disc. The last time I checked, I think OEM Windows on Dells and such is like, 10-20$, if that (its really an insignificant price, even if I don't have the exact number. Might even be less than that actualy).
---insert 350 "they should get Macs instead!" posts here---
That probably comes with good usage more than just the OS though. I've ran NT4, 2k, and XP for about 9 years over (I think thats right?), and didn't get even as much as a spyware on any of those, without any permanent scanners (I scan like once every 6 months or so). But the whole running in non-admin and mean something thing does sound cool.
Yes and no. This flaw is specific to XMLHTTP, which is kind of developed independantly. You also can use XMLHTTP without using IE at all, thats why I say its independant. Its probably a buffer overflow, and not much to do about it in this case. So yes IE7 has a flaw, but there really isn't anything they could do in the current context. -HOWEVER-, while IE7 is more secure than IE6 in a million ways, the WinXP version is nothing but a shadow of the real thing. The sandboxed IE7 is on Vista only, and I'm pretty damn sure this vulnerability is not an issue there. Anyway, so its more semantic here, but you could say "yes, IE7 has a vulnerability". however, its a little bit like if there was a vulnerability in KDELIB across the board...obviously that would touch Konqueror, no matter how secure Konquerer itself is... Can't excuse that one though. IE7 on XP is far, far from secure. More secure, but not secure.
Its sad when you think that Windows 2003 is a better desktop OS than Windows XP...a bit pricey for a desktop, too =P
Its the forever plague of the ActiveX vulnerabilities (though semi-indirectly in this case). So Firefox is safe. Anything that uses XMLHTTP control in a way that it could get arbitrairy inputs is vulnerable.. In other words, Internet Explorer, anything that uses MSHTML straight to connect to random web sites (its safe if its only trusted web sites), so that includes Outlook, etc. Thats about it. But thats too much for my taste.
Sorry, my argument was only related to the pseudo-conspiracy theories people have been pushing around. I don't have an answer as to why its not being pushed in Japan. Japanese have fairly different business process than most of the rest of the world, work in environments 10x more stressful than most of the rest of us, have a weirdo 4-mode written language, and are very involved in the tech world. So maybe their problems were bigger, and their voice louder.
Normally from my experience, Microsoft tends to listen a lot to their certified developers and partners, so this seems to just show that the Japanese were raising hell for one reason or another, while the rest didn't have -too- much problem (relatively speaking) than they did. Either that, or there were large issues with the japanese localisation (thats my guess actualy).
Actualy, Microsoft is fairly decent at documenting that stuff. My point though, is if you have a 600+ individual pages made for IE, or you are using the MSHTML rendering engine (a LOT of applications do that you wouldn't expect to use anything like that), fixing a few things for IE7 (which is probably just switching a doctype, and a couple of fixes... over 600 pages its significant, but its still better than nothing) is a lot easier than moving everything to standard compliance. I expected the hit, so as much as I could, I kept my code (even in IE-only apps) relatively close to standard, so fixing things for Firefox was a matter of changing a few shared javascript functions, and a bit of CSS in specific sections. Same with IE7, so I was ok. Some companies have millions of lines of old HTML/CSS to fix... moving it to IE7 is a lot easier, trust me. Time and ressource restrictions (and in some cases, lack of knowledge)
Its an feature in Windows Vista. All programs => Accessories => Accessibility => Time Manipulation
Finally, I'm not alone feeling that way.
IE7, while still crap, is lighyears better than IE6 when it comes to standards. I have done a few things on IE7, which I tend opened in Firefox, and often it worked on first try. Sometimes I had 1-2 things to fix. Its not -perfect-, but it can literally slash in half the time it takes to make things cross-browser, if you work in a world without IE6. Also while IE7 isn't perfectly secure, it is still a lot more, and on Vista, it is sandboxed (so again, not perfect, but easily an order of magnitude more secure than IE6, or IE7 on XP). So it is a required upgrade, unless you figure out a way to move everyone to Firefox tomorrow
All the issues people are having are bad. But if an application is made IE6 only, what do you think is harder? Fixing it to work in IE7, or fixing it to work in Firefox? If these people are freaking out over IE7, its gonna take them decades to fix their apps for a true compliant browser... This was needed.
Its kind of funny. Usualy we hear about how its the developer's fault that they are writting "non-standard compliant" code, and that they deserve what they get if it breaks in Firefox, or whatever... Now though, since code break because the code isn't standard compliant enough (while IE7 isn't very good still, it does a much better job rendering standard CSS than it does randering IE6 targetted crap) in a microsoft browser, its Microsoft thats evil :)
A lot of the software that are breaking which are not related to web, however, do so because of their use of the MSHTML rendering engine... In a -lot- of cases, just changing the doctype tend to make things -relatively- OK. For the rest...well, IE7 has been in beta and RC for how long now? I know that IT stuff doesn't happen overnight, but Microsoft gave as much warning as they possibly could. If stuff broke (and I'm guilty of that, some web apps I wrote did break, and I didn't take time to test it in IE7), its the developer's own damn fault. They had like a year or something. Jesus...
Yes, marketting is one of the reasons. Security is however, another one (is the browser perfect? HELL NO! Is it better than IE6? HELL YEAH). The main one, in my opinion, is to get rid of IE6 as quickly as humanly possible. And this, the slashdot crowd, especialy the ones who do commercial web design, should appreciate it. Freagin FUD. Yes, Microsoft is evil blah blah blah: Doesn't change anything. The internet will benifit from being rid of IE6, even if it means another IE replacing it.
Unless you're working in R&D or making things that don't exist (a lot of game engines that are from scratch, a lot of open source projects, new protocole implementation, etc), thats probably what you do 40 hours a week. I know a lot of people for example who have to work with web services, and for a reason or another have to do contract first (because they do things their toolkit, if they even use one, doesn't handle), they often copy paste a WSDL template and modify it. A lot of database management tools have a librairy of template stored procedures. Googling for code snippets and samples is always good...
Especialy with environments like Java or
As per canadian pacifist policies, they will not have weapons, only armor platings and they'll be acting cute to get americans to glee as they surrender.
As soon as we, Canadian, finish perfecting and training our mighty armored seals and polar bear army.
Yeah, they should give a spoiler warning. That information however, is quite relevent: The amount of dungeons in Wind Waker was half of the reason it sucked so bad...
Ironically, it is because no one on this planet seems to care until it affects their own sorry daily life. Hell, even telling people that losing all the fish would mean the end of the human race, they don't care. What you have to tell them is that losing all the fish would mean, let say, that the fish industry would die, and that the government will raise the income taxe. THEN they start caring.
Humans are pathetic.