Re: Crawling ants?

At 5:23 AM -0800 3/6/01, William Loughborough wrote:
>At 01:00 PM 3/6/01 +0200, Lisa Seeman wrote:
>>"minimize" and not "do not use" so that you can have alert boxes or 
>>other necessary distractions.
>Repeat after me: "user-controllable".

I try, but whenever I attempt it I say "edapta."  Oops, was that a
product plug? :)

>"Guideline 2. Design content that allows interaction according to 
>the user's needs and preferences" - checkpoints may need crafting 
>and techniques might be elaborate, but the *principle* is what we 
>should keep in focus. If a user's environment would be ruined by 
>crawling ants, but must still permit fire alarms, then we deal with 
>that in techniques for achieving *needs* (P1) and *preferences* 
>(P2/P3?).

I'm not sure if P1/P2/P3 break down that way but I do acknowledge the
wisdom of what you are saying.

>LS:: "The problem is concentrating or following and not interaction."
>WL: IMO "interaction" is still OK because diverting one's attention 
>to ants/spiders/fireworks is clearly interactive. Thus 
>"concentrating/following" are interactions in the sense used here.

Yes.

At 5:28 AM -0800 3/6/01, William Loughborough wrote:
>Not to speak for Lisa but I don't think we want to say either 
>"minimize" or "do not use" but rather "provide escape route" from 
>crawling ants, etc. with "exception" for life-threatening alarms?

Yes, but I feel that her specific example above was of the sort "don't
put crawling ants on the screen."  :)

I agree 100% that it should be user-configurable -- on the client, on
the server, or BOTH -- whether or not ants are a distraction.  The
default, I think, should be to assume that they _are_ a distraction and
to only use them if there is a specific need by the author to attract
the user's attention to something.

Note:  This does still allow the author to create an animated banner
specifically for the purpose of attracting the user's attention away
from the rest of the information on a page.  However, this is a feature,
not a bug; it's intended that if the author wishes to do this, that is
a _legitimate_ use of "distractive" techniques.

(The conflict here is between the desire of the user to use a page
for a certain purpose, and the desire of the content provider to
use a page for a different purpose.  The example in the current 2.0
draft, that says "you may want to provide a banner-free version of
the page", is hopelessly naive in understanding this conflict and
reduces it to a simple "well, just don't make money" business
non-decision!)

--Kynn
-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com>
Technical Developer Liaison
Reef North America
Tel +1 949-567-7006
_________________________________________
ACCESSIBILITY IS DYNAMIC. TAKE CONTROL.
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http://www.reef.com

Received on Tuesday, 6 March 2001 09:46:06 UTC