User Agent Defn for the Survey

Hi there,

I've re-written the entire thing to try and make it all clearer (the  
examples ruin the flow - maybe they could be footnotes?). Jan and I  
have been exchanging emails on these and there are two comments that  
we think we'd like the group to discuss. Therefore, if we can add  
this to the survey Jan will make his comments that we can all discuss.

A User Agent is any software that retrieves, renders and facilitates  
end user interaction with Web content. More specifically, you can  
decide you your software application should conform to the User Agent  
Accessibility Guidelines by testing it against the following three  
criteria:

1) If the software application is a standalone application which  
interprets any w3c specified language and provides a user interface  
(such as Mozilla Firefox, Adobe Air, Microsoft Internet Explorer,  
etc), or supports a language (such as HTML, JavaScript, Java, etc.)  
to provide a user interface then it is a User Agent and must conform  
to UAAG.

2) If the software application is launched by, or extends the  
functionality of, a User Agent (as defined by 1) and the post-launch  
user interaction runs within the interactive context of that User  
Agent (such as Gmail Manager, Microsoft Silverlight, Embedded Acrobat  
Reader, etc), then it is a User Agent Extension, Add-On, or Plug-In  
and must conform to UAAG.

3) If the software application is coded in a User Agent (as defined  
by 1 or 2) supported language (such as HTML, JavaScript, Java, etc.)  
and reliant on a User Agent to render the application executable such  
as Google Docs), but hides information required for UAAG features to  
operate, then it is a Web Application requiring UAAG conformance.



Cheers
Si.

=======================

Simon Harper
University of Manchester (UK)

Human Centred Web Lab: http://hcw.cs.manchester.ac.uk

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Received on Thursday, 8 October 2009 17:36:29 UTC