Why web standards can cripple the web

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61

I wish I could get offended with your responses but I can’t stop laughing.

the stupid fade animation crap on load, the page content COMPLETELY falling apart with scripting disabled

You wanted to test fade functionality w/o JS on…ok…

I rollover a dropdowns parent I want the dropdown NOW, not after some stupid animation plays. I minimize a window, I want it gone NOW - NOT after some stupid animation plays. Get the idea? That’s not 'enhancing the experience" that’s “wasting the users time”.

Wow… you just ruined the concept of iPhone OS. So when you slide left or right. It shouldn’t have any animation right? no animation at all.

your user interface and data structures are such total CRAP you have no *** business even WRITING websites.

Too funny but I’m glad I have a job and I believe I can write a pretty good web application.

I’m taking it your petabyte sized databases don’t have proper indexes on them

this one I almost fell out of my chair. Ever heard of DBA? I guess you write such small application that one person can do everything.

jquery is reinventing the wheel as it’s just developers too lazy to type out the full name of existing functions or shoe-horning user objects into an INTERPRETED language (as if the system objects weren’t bad enough), and the other half is goofy trash you shouldn’t be wasting bandwidth and the users time on in the first place

LOL…c’mon people! I know there are jQuery fans out there.

Edit:

leave out the personal insults please sg707

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I fail to see your point? you went to a website and it was down? :confused:

Judge a technology because a website is down… wow, and you’re a mentor? :shifty:

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ooooooook, loving the discussion and passion - not loving the insults and *'s.

Please keep it civil or the thread will be closed

Ta

Spike

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I dont think Poes meant that the site was down ie 404 not found, she meant that she visited without the flash plugin and therefore got a blank, green screen with a line of text.

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I fail to see your point? you went to a website and it was down?

It wasn’t down, it was claiming (well, no, the design sites were claiming) to be accessible. In general “accessible Flash” means that the content can be gotten to. Now some people consider merely having the “accessibility tags” that Adobe provides for their PDFs and Flash which allow Google to grab the text as “accessible Flash” (accessible to search engines) however they seemed to mean this was accesible to humans.

Any all-Flash site who doesn’t have a non-Flash version or some other method of getting to the content without my needing to download some 3rd-party closed-source plugin means it’s not accessible. I also said that possibly the whole point of the site WAS the Flash— I don’t know, I can’t say the site claimed that because without Flash, there was no site, but this was what the design sites lauding it were saying.

As for the mentor thing, don’t think it means I know anything. I only have it because SpikeZ thinks I have a cute butt : )

I got the impression that it wasn’t the fades that were broken. Sites should not break when scripts are disabled (unless it’s a game or a video site, and even then, simply the video should not play or the game should not run). You can tell a site was well-built and well-thought out if you don’t notice scripts are off. Amazon.com is my example. I shop there without scripts, and I can order whatever I want and everything Just Works, which makes me a happy customer. And after all, it’s not a game or a video site. It’s a store. Everything should not need scripts to work. I should be talking via my client to their server, period.
However, go to a Magento-run site (I have a client with one and am crawling through the CSS). Without JS on, you cannot select the (mandatory) colour of the product you want to buy. There’s zero reason for that.

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No, I’m saying if you have javascript on you get this stupid slow fade in instead of a normal page load - so you dive to turn scripting off and thanks to the entire mess being DHTML there isn’t even any content on the page without scripting - for what is a handful of content images and plaintext! The page listing the examples is a CLASSIC example of ‘javascript for NOTHING’ - well, nothing apart from a complete lack of accessibility.

Actually, I find gesture interfaces annoying because they either don’t work, or I’m pressing so hard I’m flexing the rinky little thing. Probably why I wouldn’t spend money on one, as I’d rather just have a forward and back button, or maybe even a nice little slide-out keypad like on the VASTLY SUPERIOR Android based phones.

But then, Apple is on my **** list too since I find every one of their user interface choices completely counterintuitive and counterproductive as well. Maybe at three decades I’ve just been at this for too long.

Again with the broken engrish… Are you saying you ARE a database administrator, or are you referring to something else? As if we’re magically supposed to know details about who/what you are… or somehow make sense out of sentences without any determiners.

Though I’m wondering if “ranguage rarrier” is an issue, as you seem to have completely misunderstood several of my statements, missed a couple joke and quick comebacks, and I’m having difficulty putting together a coherent understanding of your piecemeal posts.

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I believe “accessible flash” means that the flash website is accessible to people with disabilities, not that the website can be accessed without flash. Pretty big difference IMO.

There is nothing wrong with having to install a 3rd party closed source plugin. If it wasn’t for closed source and non-standard software there wouldn’t be as many advances. No one group can ever have power to influence. The world needs opposites. Flash has given us so many things that HTML, CSS and JavaScript can not and will not for years to come. But you already knew that, still not listening to the fact though.

Climbing the ranks ey, well that’s one way to get a-head on the forums (: :goof:

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I believe “accessible flash” means that the flash website is accessible to people with disabilities, not that the website can be accessed without flash. Pretty big difference IMO.

That could have been what it meant… the pages referencing the rowling page (and other Flash sites) were talking about how everyone could get the content. It very well could be that they meant “everyone who happens to have Flash can now also use the keyboard and the Flash doesn’t steal their page focus”.

There is nothing wrong with having to install a 3rd party closed source plugin. If it wasn’t for closed source and non-standard software there wouldn’t be as many advances.

I very strongly disagree with this. There’s nothing wrong with having to install a 3rd party closed source plugin to do something special like play a game or watch a video. However it should NEVER be forced merely to get to content (again unless the only content IS video/games/etc). Needing to download the Flash Player to bloat my browser (which, by the way, I don’t even get a choice in… as a Linux user, my sole choice is Firefox, which I never ever want Flash on… if I want Flash on Opera or Chrome then it does not work without first sitting in the .mozilla directory… why “3rd party” and “closed source” really bother me here, I’m at the dangling whim of Adobe due to my not purchasing the OS of their choice) simply to find opening times of a business or their prices or any other plain text is totally not cool.
Might as well feel ok about demanding certain OSes to view a web site, or certain browsers. Demand they have mice. Demand they have speakers. Demand they can see or hear. Maybe I’m just a dirty unwashed hippy but I believe in The Web For All, man. Not the same as “everyone can view a video with just HTML and CSS” or “anyone can run this application with just HTML and CSS”, but Flash for those things aren’t bothering me. HTML was created for the sharing of documents and information. If it’s content, it should be available to all. It shouldn’t even need CSS or Javascript. I believe a good developer is one who can make such a site.

But you already knew that, still not listening to the fact though.

Don’t confuse me with those HTML5 people who are going around saying “Flash is dead because we have <canvas> and über-Javascript engines now.” Flash has its place, and its use is limited due to the face that it relies on a 3rd party plugin. I do not need my bank statements to sing and dance or even make a little “blup!” sound when I click on the correct account.

Flash has given us so many things that HTML, CSS and JavaScript can not and will not for years to come.

Why is it okay to be used in PLACE of HTML, CSS, Javascript? That’s my only beef with it (and I’m not saying that you are suggesting Flash should be in place of HTML etc, I’m explaining why I said what I said above). Advances, let those be for those with advanced computers, more memory, faster browsers, lots of bloataceous plugins. The problem is once people figure out they CAN turn a banking site into one big movie, then they DO it. That’s not accessible, that’s blocking content so other people get to sit through 3 minutes of INTRO… for no good reason. Oh wait, the Good Reason was, “it looks cool”. Great. Fine. Now make that content accessible to the rest of us.
I do applaud those who, when they DO make a page with a lot of Flash, that they work that much more to make it keyboard-accessible or keep the focus where the user wants and that sort of thing.

So, was I wrong about the jkrowling site? I’ll never know. I thought I’d be able to read something about jkrowling though. Or writing excerpts from new books. Or biographies on her characters. Or about her muse. Or whatever.

Climbing the ranks ey, well that’s one way to get a-head on the forums

Climbing ranks, brownnosing, sycofantism, and being full of yourself is the ONLY want to get ahead on forums : ) Problem is, I’m STILL not getting any convertibles or money or even free dinners at fancy restaurants for it, so I’m starting to wonder if I picked the wrong place. scratches head

69

Yes, vintage comedy indeed.

I’ve shown this thread to more than 30 people around the world and the overwhelming consensus is that Sitepoint is once again proving why it’s the best in its class.

Where else can you find such a blend of expertise, insight and humor?

Congratulations to Mr Darth Vader for providing such entertainment.

One day soon I might start a new thread entitled “why progress is important”. Can you imagine the comedy that would ensue?

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aw hell yeah! :smiley:

it would be side splitting I’m sure :rofl:

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beats the heck out of hair splitting any day

:cool:

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yes you’re right this place is a complete waste of time more often than not

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Having worked with visually and physically impaired users, I will concur that accessibility is about a lot more than just using some alt tags and some flash add-ons. The real key to accessibility is understanding that at rock bottom you are communicating to a machine. We’re so used to working with HTML / CSS and seeing how they act in a browser, that it’s easy to think we’re building “that” for human users. But even the browser is just a translator, like all other accessible devices. The two most important things you can do for accessibility is sit down with your XHTML and just read it through line by line. If everything your page says is there and makes sense, then your code is LINEARIZED and you have all the information you need in TEXT.

You can then add killer stylesheets and jQuery, any flash items you want on top of that; this in fact is the heart of progressive enhancement. But you start with TEXT and you make sure it’s LINEARIZED. Every other guideline is WCAG 2.0 and Section 508 is either about that or about providing additional guidance beyond that fundamental base. That’s what makes sure that it’s machine readable which is this case means browsers, web service APIs, accessible devices (including braille displays and voice output software), etc.

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I think I may have not been clear : me, as a user, can’t decide to open a flash link in another tab if I want. Not how the site designer wanted.

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Firstly, I agree entirely with everything deathshadow60 has said in this thread, it’s about time we had someone helping to de-fluff half of the junk that gets passed around in the name of web standards or accessibility. Shaun said earlier that we’re lucky that standards aren’t law, personally I think they should be made like that, what makes web accessibility much harder for those of us trying to promote it is often down to people making up false statements like “accessible flash” which is a total contradiction of terms. The only way Flash can be truly accessible is if you provide HTML alternative content for when the plug-in isn’t available or usable by the medium, anyone proclaiming Flash itself can be made accessible (for disabled users in the global sense) are simply blowing smoke, I’ve yet to see a single implementation which uses Flash (with no alternative) that can be labelled accessible. I think Hewitt has been sipping at the kool-aid if he really and honestly believes that pushing past the standards leads to anything good, have you seen the situation with rendering on the web?

In one camp you have HTML5 with the Canvas element, a totally redundant and pointless extension which removes and takes away from the much more accessible and logical SVG format, to which didn’t get much support in Internet Explorer because of their wishful innovation to produce VML as a result of their early obsession that the web would go 3D (as in VRML) and we would be floating around the web using some sort of Visor like we were in the movie Tron. And then you have Flash and Silverlight, trying to fill in the gaps using a proprietary extension because they got fed up with waiting for things to occur naturally… resulting in an inaccessible mostly un-usable seriously abused platform which has caused more damage to the integrity of web accessibility than anything else.

You want to know what the future of the web looks like (if things carry on as they are)? A whole load of competing technologies equally discriminatory requiring certain browsers, certain users (with abilities) or certain extensions (required to be downloaded) all firing up around each other proclaiming themselves as some kind of solution (which gives some future scope to extending the web but just ends up complicating things further). Strip any website to it’s core components, you don’t need jQuery and all the clutter it bundles inside to “make things easier”, you don’t need plug-in’s which shut half your audience in the dark… it really disturbs me how we’re basically making the same mistakes of the past. I’m totally glad that Apple have given Flash the finger, it’s about time the people who wouldn’t know what progressive enhancement means if it slapped them in the face got a sharp intake of reality and are being forced to push themselves onto another medium (which will probably get mutilated due to the lazy way people refuse to acknowledge their audiences needs). The situation is a joke, people look to buzzwords like Flash and AJAX and jQuery without questioning whether they could go about it in a more appropriate way, and already I see absurd uses of the technologies which pollute the content integrity.

Sorry but both Chrome and Opera are better than Firefox, with exception of the extensions, Firefox has become a bloated, overweight middle aged slacker :lol:

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Everything? What are they your lover? No one could agree on everything.

“accessible flash” is a flase statement but a means of communicating to try to get to a point, something you obviously could not see… and we all know why you can’t see much (:

“buzzwords like Flash and AJAX and jQuery”, yeah Flash and jQuery aren’t buzzwords love… might want to do a google to see what they are :wink:

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“buzzwords like Flash and AJAX and jQuery”, yeah Flash and jQuery aren’t buzzwords love… might want to do a google to see what they are

He knows what they are, and you know he knows what they are.

Companies ask for developers with experience “in AJAX., jQuery and Flash” because they see those things as hot and trendy, whether they actually need those technologies or not. You possibly haven’t been unlucky enough to get a pointy-haired boss who points at some €40,000 entirely-Flash website and asks if you can “build a web shop like that”.

It’s always been pretty easy for those with the newest fastest computers, the latest software, scripts enabled, and the biggest monitors to tell everyone else that they’re “holding back the web”.
“The people have no bread, m’lady.”
“Duh, then like, totally let them eat cake!”
If that doesn’t sound discriminatory I dunno what does. But then, Hewitt certainly has those things, doesn’t he?

[ot]

What are they your lover? …something you obviously could not see… and we all know why you can’t see much

If you disagree with someone, simply say so. I’ve managed to go through this whole thread without calling you any names at all.[/ot]

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That was implied towards the comments within this thread (which were well thought out and supportive of evidence). Though thanks for the straw-man argument. If you happen to investigate your claims further (beyond this thread) there’s plenty of instances where I disagree with him. :slight_smile:

So you’re using a false statement to communicate a point? Ironic that you claim I can’t see much, considering your total lack of foresight towards referencing accessibility. That and you reduce yourself to explaining things by using insults, incorrect information and illogical fallacies.

Sorry but Flash and jQuery are quickly becoming buzzwords, they have both become fashionable through abuse. jQuery is often used to smear all sorts of unnecessary effects and bloat on the page which requires scripting to be enabled for the website to even function, and Flash has become some sort of crazed solution for print designers to make a pixel perfect design which is so ingrained in the technology that it’s demanded to be installed for loads of websites to even function on a basic layer. I think this dictionary definition of “buzzword” pretty much sums up Flash and jQuery entirely “Buzzword: a trendy word or phrase that is used more to impress than explain” <<< in the case of accessibility it’s especially relevant in the case of Flash. :slight_smile:

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That’s your opinion unless you can tell the future, in which case give me the winning numbers! :lol:

The web isn’t some magical place (okay it was) where all your problems go away and you can dance with unicorns. It’s a virtual world and the real world what it was based from is not perfect, the web will never be perfect just like the real one. There is not equality and never will be. I want equality, ask anyone that has slept in my bed :shifty: :goof: :wink: (hope you take that the right way lol, might look bad for me!) Just because my favourite hamburger place doesn’t sell chicken doesn’t mean it’s discriminatory, it just doesn’t sell chicken or have a public toilet for me to use. I shall, go some where else. Another website / browser is another click away. Sure it would suck not being able to access my favourite site for free but oh well!

I’ve only just recently gotten into Flash, mainly because of what Flex can offer. Flash is a gap bridging technology and when used well does a good job. It will be good when HTML5 and CSS3 get here… just waiting… waiting…

Why the law? Why should someone have to make their website accessible to everyone? It’s not even appropriate that everyone go to a porn site, or a gaming website. If you have flippers for hands how can you play a PC game? In life we don’t always get what we want (although some of us do and therefore don’t see things straight) and sometimes you just have to take life a different way than you want. When I was younger I didn’t ask to grow up very differantly than most people. I have 3 challenges that affect me every day. I don’t call them disabilities. I call them challenges. Do I expect that people treat me differently? No, I have to try harder in life. Do I expect the law to change around me to suit me and my life? No, that would be selfish. Should the store Target make their website accessbile to all, yes, should they be forced, hell no! Should I make my gaming website available in german because most of the visitors are from germany, probably a good idea ey and I will. But no one will ever tell me how to run my website and who to offer the content to. That is my decision and no one will take that away.

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:shifty:

Alright, children. Play nice - all of you.

I’d hate to have what was a good discussion end because some of you can’t play without resorting to insults and namecalling. If you want people to respect your opinions, you need to show some respect as well.

Passion is a good thing, but once it crosses the line where you can’t respect that someone else has a differing point of view, that become fanatacism - and that’s never a good thing.