August 16th, 2010
Everyone seems to be having a go at Flash these days. Steve Jobs rants about it, HTML5 fans look down on it, browsers are taking steps to shield themselves from some of its more buggy aspects.
Firefox is the latest browser to corral Flash to lessen crashes. Version 3.6.4 allowed only 10 seconds grace to unresponsive plugins before terminating them. Version 3.6.6 grants a more generous 45 seconds. Some say this time extension was granted with Flash in mind, because it “routinely hangs on for more than 10 seconds without crashing.”
Flash is facing stiff opposition from a combination of HTML5, CSS3 and various JavaScript frameworks. Early adopters are pushing these technologies to extraordinary lengths. Steve Dennis created an animated version of Twitter’s “Fail Whale” illustration, using only CSS3. Jacob Seidelin used Javascript, Canvas and Ajax to recreate Wolfenstein 3D in a browser. Apple has a Safari-only showcase of online video, audio and animation, with not a .swf to be seen.
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Tags: Apple, charts, Flash, javascript, usability
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May 16th, 2010
It’s really important to find out how visitors are using your site. Using web analytics you can find out what country they’re visiting from, how many colours their monitor is displaying, and how they got to your site.
There are two main techniques for keeping an eye on your users; log analysis and page tagging.
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Tags: analytics, log analysis, page tagging
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December 14th, 2009
Home automation is a bit of a paradox. It’s all inspired by selective laziness. Such is mankind’s obsession with tools, that we will go through all kind of trials, and spend hours drudging, tinkering and designing, to create a labour-saving device. No more exhausting light switches!
But this is nothing new. Through the ages we’ve come from bonfires, to burning torches, to oil lamps, to light bulbs, so it’s in our nature to try to find the next innovation to make things easier and cleaner.
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Tags: gadgets, home automation
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November 2nd, 2009
We have recently added WAI ARIA landmark roles to accessible.ie, to improve navigation for visitors using assistive technologies. The diagram below shows how the sections of the page are divided into logical chunks. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: accessibility, standards, W3C, WAI ARIA
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September 14th, 2009
Combining useful learning with an enjoyable reward system
Computer games get a lot of bad press at times, but they aren’t just for pure entertainment or promoting violence and gore. They can also be used to impart useful skills and communicate ideas. According to Kathy Sierra, the best teaching systems utilize some of the most engaging aspects of games. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: education, games, usability
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