- From: David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 00:33:57 +0100 (BST)
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> > and JavaScript links, so I switched to Netscape, to discover that all > the images were broken (status 404 - not found), which meant I was still I finally got the images in the office, and it wasn't just the paper instruction sheet, however it was only one product, and was either there to test the market for flash instructions or to provide a sample to give the general impression. I'll take one point out of sequence, in case it gets lost... Not strictly an accessibility issue, in the sense that it affects everyone, but I believe it arose for the same sort of reasons that accessibility problems arise, is that the site is abysmally slow. This is not a case where paying for a fast client and a T1 line will help; the problem seems to be server side. What they seem to have done is taken a site that is basically static HTML and static graphics, and forced all the HTML to be loaded from the same underpowered server, on every request, including repeat requests in the same session. They have done three things that frustrate caching, the last of which is normally only done to frustrate caching which is so aggressive that it violates the protocol. All the pages are dynamic, ASP, pages, which means they don't get the information that enables a cache to test for changes, so caches have to re-fetch every time. They have ? marks in the URL; this wasn't meant to prevent caching, but abuse of it for non-repeatable content means the current advice is to inhibit caching. Finally, they have Cache-Control: private, which essentially tells ISP and company level caches not to cache the page under any circumstances - only the browser can, but the current browsers don't cache that aggressively. (Cache-Control: private is intended to prevent mixing of different users' personal data.) The only reasons I can think of for doing this is that they consider 100% complete market research data (click trails) much much more important than adequate responsiveness. At a guess, they have been told this is what they need for the click trails, but not told the down side. I actually have the CD rack version of the product. Unfortunately I think I left the instructions under the base, so I can't look at them, but my impression is that the animation left the same questions unanswered (which way round to put certain pieces, and exactly where to put the tacks, I think) as the paper version. The only real benefit was that one didn't have to match up a code letter with the that on the manifest of pieces. The great disadvantage was that you couldn't lay it on the ground near where you were working. On paper, you can see all the detail balloons at once. There were quite a few omissions in the animation, e.g. only one set of dowels got hammered, how you got the side onto the dowels and how you got the first side on. Other accessibility problems are that even the Java animation page produces a blank screen (some JS gibberish on the first line with Netscape) with scripting off. You also get a blank screen in both modes with the WebTV emulator, even though, when you hit Download Shockwave, you get told, with a working demonstration, that Flash actually works for WebTV! (I'm not sure whether the UK products that provide set top box, or TV based web access support Flash.) My estimation would be that there would be quite a strong overlap with the WebTV type market in the UK.
Received on Wednesday, 25 October 2000 02:52:27 UTC