Doing Things Right

Often, businesses and entities put policies in place as preventive measures… usually because they’ve been burned before, either by personal negligence or customer/client abuse. Sounds logical, doesn’t it? After all, without a defined course of action the possibilities of error and loss only increase. However, there are times when being so rigid on policies only hurt those who honestly need a different course of fulfillment.

As a case in point, I went to the mall last night with my wife, daughter and two 4-month old twins to do some light shopping. We parked our car and carried the two babies a long distance inside, knowing that this mall rents strollers. After an unfruitful attempt at locating one, and well over a mile already on our feet, I had my wife sit down and keep an eye on the twins while I go further ahead to search. After another half-mile of walking, I found an information desk that had exactly two employees, thirteen strollers, and one stiff “policy”.

We left.

Whether you’re a business, a website, a church, or any other entity that services people, you’ll find that your “visitors” will come to you through many different avenues, with many different needs. If you’re serious about making the sale or providing the service, you’ll learn when your policies matter and when they can be relaxed in order to keep the customer alive.

As I wrote some time back on the subject of web accessibility, it appears the subject is enjoying a high-profile look as the 34 European Commission member countries just signed an agreement committing themselves to, “Internet for All”.

I’m quite interested in seeing how this plays out over the next few years, and whether the US makes a similar agreement to ensure accessibility to all Americans through the promotion of web-standards. The United States already requires government websites to be accessible to the disabled, and I think it is just a matter of time before regulations are imposed on all public entities to comply as well.

And when the time comes, it will mean a lucrative opportunity for many a standards-aficionado… and will cause a boon in things like standards instruction, books and site content.

Let’s cross our fingers.

Success is not an elusive, intangible thing. It is something you can have if you don’t give up… no matter what the goal is. I read a quote by Ross Perot today that was, to me, profound… even if it is common sense:

Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touch down.

Starting a business? taking a new direction in life? Learning a new hobby or trade? Beginning a new relationship? I believe it’s all attainable. Just don’t give up.

Fasten your seatbelts and sharpen up your Website Accessibility knowledge… it looks like the web may be revving up for a new revenue stream… on the backs of those with disabilities.

Sometime last year, a bubble began to emerge in the Internet world in the shape of “Web 2.o“, which is effectively nothing more than more streamlined web-based applications. The coolness factor, however, and the onset of various technologies that foster rapid development of these applications, has sparked a new revenue stream for developers.

Another area that looks like it may be poised to take the forefront in web developers’ and site owners’ minds alike is that of Accessibility. For quite some time, places of public entrance around the world have been bound by various governing laws, and effectively forced to provide easy access to all persons… with or without disabilities. The punishment for not complying? Stiff fines.

But since the onset of the Internet, few governments have enacted or enforced rules governing accessibility on websites and their owners. In the United States, for example, only government sites are expected to comply with ADA guidelines for accessiblity. But the current climate may be changing this.

News.com reports that a blind student is now suing Target, claiming that its inaccessible site violates the Americans With Disabilities Act and various U.S. state laws. This story comes after recent reports that Target was facing pressure from various advocacy groups to fix their site’s barriers to the blind. While Target reacted swiftly to fix some of their site issues, it’s still not over. They’re far from being accessible to those who must navigate their site with a screen-reader. Now, the possibility arises for an actual precedent-setting legal case to mandate that public companies take down the barriers from their sites on the web.

This interests me for more than one reason. First of all, I think everyone should have the ability to access the same information… even if it’s delivery comes in different shapes and sizes. So, it’s good to see equal opportunity coming about in more of a mass-medium.

The other great interest I have in this outcome is what it means to developers and companies who have the knowledge and ability to develop accessible websites. In my mind, it presents a great opportunity to take the lead on an issue that many companies are going to be concerned about very quickly. Getting your expertise promoted now, while this giant is only beginning to awake, will help educate people on who to turn to when the government comes breathing down their neck.

I have a feeling it will only take one lawsuit to turn in the favor of a blind “victim” of website inaccessibility for this behemoth to take shape and a flurry of lawsuits to follow. What will follow then will be a frantic flurry of companies trying to find someone to safeguard their site from their own nice little litigation nightmare.

So, could this be the next big Bubble in the web? We’ll see!

When developing websites for the widest audience, it’s important to pay attention to typography… the wrong fonts can destroy the entire message of the site.

Here are links to fonts for various platform/OS combinations that can be used in your websites.

Mac

• Mac OS X fonts
• Mac OS 9 fonts
• Microsoft IE core fonts

Windows

• Windows 98 fonts
• Windows XP fonts
• Six new Windows fonts in 2006 (not widely available for some time, but they provide some new options to anticipate.)

A quote often attributed to Mark Twain states, “sorry about the long letter, I didn’t have time to write a short one”.

Two things are implied here in Mark’s quote: 1) an apology for taking up more of someone’s time than he would have preferred, and 2) brief and succinct communication, while more difficult to compile, is preferable to a deluge of unnecessary words.

For some reason, a one-sentence thought always turns into a novel when I sit down to write. I need to work on that.

I recently followed an link is my RSS reader so I could comment on a thread over at 37 signals regarding Ridiculous uses for Photoshop.

In the post Ashley talks about using Photoshop, a rather large program, to do a tiny, menial task like picking a hex color from a photo. She seems to lament the fact that Photoshop is overkill for this task, and asks if there are any simple applications out there that do the job better.

At 37 Signals, it seems the mentality is that everything should be stripped down to a basic task and made into an application. The thought being that a single application that does one thing extremely well is better than a massive program that does tons of things you’ll never need.

I understand this on the surface, especially when most people may never use the advanced features of a larger program. But here is my issue: I would rather have one good, larger application (ie. Photoshop) that does everything I need within a specific taxonomy (ie. Raster manipulation) than a ton of tiny programs that each do one thing very well.

37 Signals’ viewpoint seems to assert that a large program cannot do all things well, and that somehow “small” translates into “more focused and refined”. But could it be that a program can actually have a large set of tasks and functions, and do them all well? I think so.

The advent of Web 2.0, as cool as it is, has really begun to irritate me with all these “tiny little apps” that all “do one thing very well”. Each of these apps comes with its own URL, it’s own login, it’s own password, own interface, own learning curve, etc. In this case, is it easier or harder to get things done?

I’m not at all against small apps. I’m not against entrepreneurialship, or options and choices either. In fact, I believe there are times when less really is more. But in many cases, could it be that the less we’re looking for is not less features and less size, but rather less apps and clutter to deal with?

Last night, I upgraded Firefox on my laptop to the new “1.5″, and was quickly disappointed that nearly all of my extensions that I had come to rely on so much were disabled. What really annoys me is that I now have a sub-par browser experience, even though this release is supposed to be “bigger and better”.

There are several updates to the browser that I’m glad they made, but I don’t think they went far enough to provide backward compatibility for extensions.

Over at LifeHacker, you can find instructions on how to enable Firefox 1.0 extensions for 1.5, which I did, but a few of my extensions still caused 1.5 some grief and I had to disable them again.

So, for now, I’m not upgrading my work computer’s browser… I guess I’ll have to wait for either Firefox to work better with it’s community’s extensions, or for the extension developers to update their extensions.

After spending some time researching and fiddling with .XML files in my Dreamweaver installation to enable code coloring for Ruby on Rails, I found a link to a new extension that does it for me. Just download and install the extension and install using the Dreamweaver extension manager.

From the “Riding the Clutch” website…

I’ve been working on an extension for Dreamweaver that adds file support and code coloring for Ruby and Rails files. I posted a question about it on the Macromedia form and have had a couple people asking for a copy, so I’ve decided to make it official! I hearby release the Rubyweaver 1.0.0 extension for Dreamweaver MX 2004 and up:

The new version has basic Code Hinting, Syntax Highlighting, and Code Coloring for both Ruby and Rails files.

Click here to download the “Rubyweaver” extension.

OK, I didn’t just crawl out of a cave somewhere, but I was recently struck by an awakening to an emerging trend in food packaging that… well… would be pretty cool if it were used in the right places.

Squeeze bottles for food products have been around for quite a long time, so this is nothing new in and of itself. I remember as a very young child in my grandmother’s corner store/restaurant playing with the red and yellow plastic bottles that she refilled each night with ketchup (spell it how you want… that’s how I spell it) and mustard. Those bottles were so much easier and faster than the glass Heinz bottles… just squeeze the middle and “Voila!” you had a decorated hot dog (or shirt, depending on how hard you squeeze).

But fast forward to 2005 and it seems that everything edible is being packaged in squeezable plastic bottles. What’s the deal with this?

I mean, some things make sense, but it’s getting a little out of hand. At a recent family get-together, I reached for the relish to finish making my hot-dog, and noticed it was in a squeeze-bottle. “Huh…” I thought to myself (profound, no?). And then I turned it over and gave it a squeeze. Out came… pickle juice. No relish. The relish was stuck inside the bottle, and the juice was turning my bun into a squishy mess.

Another day, I am in the grocery store looking for peanut butter, and wouldn’t you know it? Some idiot or prankster packed a squeeze bottle with peanut butter and is marketing it. That stuff is hard enough to try and carve out of a jar with a butter knife, and they expect folks to pop an artery in their forehead to get their product out? I don’t think so.

There is such thing as too much of a good thing. Now, I like the idea of squeezable ketchup, mustard, jelly, Miracle Whip, and other things that are typically smooth enough to squeeze out of a bottle, but enough is enough.

Now, where is my hot-dog?