Re: Pop-Ups

"John Foliot - bytown internet" <foliot@bytowninternet.com> wrote in
message news:GKEFJJEKDDIMBHJOGLENIEOFCMAA.foliot@bytowninternet.com...

> What concerns me the most is that 99 times out of 100 there are
alternative
> solutions which developers can emply which will deliver similar or
identical
> functionality, yet not require the end users system set up to match a
> certain profile - just about everything *important* that you might do
with
> JavaScript can be done with a server side script.

The main problem here though is you lose response time, slowing the
interaction down does not make content usable, so it's often important to
use script to ensure that users find the experience responsive enough.
What's really needed are techniques examples of how you can do both
without undue burden (ie have javascript which degrades gracefully)


> Using a combination of
> server include and session tracking (cookies?) can provide almost
identical
> functionality to the end user as having a "popup" open and close...
after
> all the main reason (especially in the situation you illustrate) is to
keep
> a user session open.

I personally find session cookies more invasive than script, and
certainly harder to provide sensible degrade paths.

> How is that valuable or accessible?  Besides, in my experience,
> Powerpoint presentations *usually* require a "voice" to explain the
> "slides" - it is rare that all relevant information is included into
the
> slide - more often it is bullet points or eye candy to be used in
> conjunction with a narrative.

Absolutely, I'd love to make PowerPoint presentations accessible, they
certainly need commentary (be it audio or an attendant text one) but the
technology isn't there yet, even if the specs are - my current "best
effort" relies on script and lots of different options - audio+PPT,
audio+JPEGs, SVG, Flash, PocketPC, with the fallback situation be "here's
the audio, here's the slide materials make of it what you can, I can't
really give you a player" with the hope that there's some combination
everyone can access. We don't produce text equivalent of the audio as it
would be an undue burden on the content we produce currently, but it
could easily be done.

> Thowing that into an eLearning application
> does a disservice to the end user - again here the accessibilty issue
is
> more about requiring installed software rather than the content being
served
> up.

It also requires that the software both exists, and is accessible, you
could easily create an accessible to published w3 standards e-learning
app, but it would be utterly useless as not a UA in the world could do
anything with it, to actually deliver more than HTML+images you have to
live within what's provided by UA's  - Integration of content-types is as
you say the most serious problem.

Jim.

Received on Friday, 18 October 2002 10:05:37 UTC