Re: WAVE

Hi Amy
(As you can see I'm peeking at my email on my day off... gotta stop doing 
that...)

- Please encourage the critic to send his or her feedback to the addresses 
on the tool, that's either me
kasday@acm.org
or
w3c-wai-er-ig@w3.org

- Said critic said "I hate the fact that it's a frame site"

The WAVE isn't a frames site.   What URL are they looking at?  Hmmm.  Maybe 
you gave the URL of the talk which happened to show the WAVE in a 
frame.  The direct URL is

http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/

And yes, I'd be interested in presenting it in Austin.  It's at the tail 
end of my web tutorial on ACOLUG but that shouldn't be a problem, 
especially if we have a laptop for me to keep up on the email.

Meanwhile, I'm glad said critic found one thing to like ("It does do a good 
job on showing potential problems with tables used for
layouts by demonstrating what gets read first.)"

The key phrase is

  "However, Bobby does highlight any code it finds suspect"

This person is someone who apparently codes the HTML by hand.  The WAVE 
isn't that useful for such purposes.  The WAVE is targeted at  people who 
use graphical editors or who just monitor sites and don't care about the 
code at all.  So I'll have to think about adding that sort of feature... 
but it will likely get very low priority.

Len




At 01:07 PM 3/22/00 -0500, you wrote:
>HOpe your CSUN meetings were productive...
>
>The following comments come from a hypercritical knowitall on the work
>group for 508 in NY (those New Yorkers!). In anycase, you may find SOME of
>the comments helpful.
>I had passed the Wave along to my ATAP colleagues (that's how it got to
>those New Yorkers!).
>Would you be interested in presenting on the WAVE to ATAP in Austin next
>month? 4/27-28.  Let me know?
>Amy
>
>
>"I hate the fact that it's a frames site, and aside from linking to various
>resources (which Bobby does in context) the left frame is really pretty
>useless.  Bobby takes the time to link directly to the specific section of
>the WAI guidelines that you need to refer to for any particular problem.
>And the other links in the left-hand frame (e.g., the link for table info)
>doesn't really provide any useful information beyond telling you what you
>can and can't do.  It would be much more useful if it included code
>examples (which, in fairness, Bobby doesn't do either).  However, Bobby
>does highlight any code it finds suspect, which is much more useful than
>making the programmer go through all of the code for the page on their own.
>
>I really didn't like the fact that you had to flip back and forth to find
>out what each of the cutesy little icons meant.   But I suppose that
>wouldn't be necessary if you used it long enough.  I imagine that the
>person who wrote the program thought that the many little icons might be
>more meaningful than just the one icon, with variations, that Bobby uses.
>
>It does do a good job on showing potential problems with tables used for
>layouts by demonstrating what gets read first.  However, the report
>generated by Bobby is much more useful for non-technical individuals, in
>that it tells gives you an idea of how to fix perceived problems on the
>same page.
>
>Overall, this doesn't appear to be as comprehensive as Bobby, but if this
>is just a draft, maybe there are plans to improve it.  The interface would
>be the first place to start; it looks really amateurish.  I can't see a
>sophisticated programmer taking it seriously.
>
>

-------
Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
Institute on Disabilities/UAP, and
Department of Electrical Engineering
Temple University
423 Ritter Annex, Philadelphia, PA 19122

kasday@acm.org
http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday

(215) 204-2247 (voice)
(800) 750-7428 (TTY)

Received on Wednesday, 22 March 2000 14:09:39 UTC