Re: window.print ()

> for the elderly, children and those with a learning disability.
          ^^^^^^^
> Don't forget that when we are old something else will need to be learnt 
> by us, and its very dull if there is only one way to skin the cat.

My experience is that the elderly will write themselves little sets of
intructions.  You can only do that if the instructions work for every
site, which is the case using the built in controls.  The instructions
also need to be short, which means that there must be simple and
consistent rules for identifying links, even if there is a lobby that
thinks that designers have a fundamental right to use many different
presentations for links.

More generally, what you are trying to do is work round user agent 
limitations by trying to put programs into documents, and moreover, rather
than campaigning to fix the user agents, you are campaigning to have the
user agents better handle your work arounds.  It may be a fact of economics
that doing things properly is just not going to get funded, but I think
you are campaigning for features that are going to lead to more
abuses, not less.

With regard to the Flash, I think the Flash pages you are looking at
are designed for people with good intrinsic literacy skills.  If they
are aimed at the under 6s, they are using the natural ability to learn
languages at that age.  If they are aimed at teens and young adults,
they may be relying on a rebellion against school teaching, but they
are also relying on the ability to learn a peer group language for which
the exclusion of older generations may even be considered an advantage.

Received on Thursday, 29 May 2003 16:52:52 UTC