Month: January 2001

The combined force of Nielson, Norman, Tog, and Laurel raining down ideas…it’s all kind of staggering this time of night.

So, should I support Netscape 6? The web standards project is creaming over it, while some web gurus are calling it a “crappy bug-ridden piece of beta software.” My developer friends tell me they have to write code differently for the new software, and if it’s standards-compliant I tend to think that’s a good thing. But if it’s buggy then people won’t use it and it’s not worth adapting to.

Right now Statmarket says N6’s market share is .33%, which is the reason why we’re not supporting Netscape 2 (and in some cases v3) anymore. But this should trend up, right? It seems .33% of people immediately adapted it and then it leveled off there. Maybe people are tired of chasing upgrades. Maybe it’s buggy. Maybe no one cares.

uh, I should probably practice what I preach (see the rant below). Here’s a first draft of a 3 year vision for the future of the web:

In 2003 anyone who in the year 2000 had access to a television will have the ability to access any information in a library or on the Internet without any prior computing experience.

This speaks both to the design of the user interface as well as the availability and price of technology.

Speaking of usability rants, I so rarely see folks state a vision of what they really want user interfaces to be like in the future. I don’t think we should sit back and wait for Tog or Stephen Johnson to think about the future if all of us are responsible for building it. We have an understanding of common, current points of view (“make it usable”, “make it beautiful”, “increase brand equity”…). Wouldn’t it be great if we had similar common understandings of what we should all have 3 years from now? This could then guide all our efforts, instead of only bickering about what we did yesterday. Of course, we’ll never agree and will continue to have multiple points of view, but diversity is what makes us strong.

I need to go post this on some lists and see what happens…

Joe Clark’s lucid and thorough analysis of Flash accessibility is a good read, pulling in fresh refrences to non-web practices and his oh-so-clever metaphors. But I can’t help but feel that Flash has been singled out for bashing. Flash exhibits the same accessiblity problems as 99% of software: accessiblity is an afterthought rather than a requirement.

I’m guilty of this attitude, and you probably are too. The silent discrimination against the disabled is still endemic in our society. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act went a long way toward changing this, but couldn’t foresee the issues we’re dealing with today.

If we really believe the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are a good thing, then shouldn’t we assume they need to be followed 100% of the time (when disabled persons are part of our target audience)?

Excuse me while I go redesign some web sites…