Easy Reader

The fine follks over at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital are looking for a designer/developer to join their 5-person Intranet team. This year, they will be redesigning their employee intranet and moving from a static website to a role-based portal. They will also be implementing a new CMS to run the show.So if you’re an experienced designer/developer with good information architecture skills (an ar comfortable working in a Microsoft shop) who is interested in leading a team (not just coding alone in the dark), give them a shout.

I had a fantastic time at SXSWi this year. It was great to catch up with old friends, make some new ones, and see what everyone’s been working on for the last year. If you’re interested in seeing the shennanigans you can check out my SXSWi 2006 photostream. Highlights are below:

“How to Bluff Your Way in DOM Scripting” — Jeremy and I had a blast walking the audience through the wonderful world of DOM Scripting. And, based on the audience feedback, we made quite an impact too. Hopefully we managed to break down some of the misconceptions about JavaScript and the DOM being hard to work with. After all, DOM Scripting doesn’t suffer from nearly as many compatibility issues as CSS. There are some great reviews and blow-by-blows out there if you’re interested.

“Web Standards and Search/SEO” — It was nice to finally get some dialogue going between the web standards community, the search engines and the SEO folks. It was great to have such incredible people working to make it happen too. Many thanks to Molly, Peter, Tim, Andy, Ed and Eric for putting in the time (and putting up with a little abuse) to get the ball rolling.

The people — Cameron Adams, John Allsopp, Faruk Ateş, Kimberly Blessing, Nate Bolt, Kyle Bradshaw, Andy Budd, Tantek Çelik, Andy Clarke, Craig Cross, Mike Davidson, James Edwards, Derek Featherstone, Nick Finck, Jesse James Garrett, Porter Glendinning, Jenifer Hanen, Jon Hicks, Kenneth Himschoot, Molly Holzschlag, Shaun Inman, Lauren Isaacson, Leslie Jensen, Chris Kaminski, Jeremy Keith, Jessica Keith, Geert Leyseele, Cindy Li, Ian Lloyd, Stuart Langridge, Ethan Marcotte, Tim Mayer, Eric, Kat & Carolyn Meyer, Drew McLellan, Chris Mills, Cameron Moll, Peter Morville, Matt Mullenweg, Dunstan Orchard, Veerle Pieters, Jeff Robbins, Jen Robbins, D. Keith Robinson, Richard Rutter, Jason “Stan” Santa Maria, Christopher Schmitt, Maxine Sherrin, Eris Stassi, Greg Storey, Elly Thompson, Mark Trammell, Jeff Veen, Sergio Villarreal, Khoi Vinh, Rob Weychert, Meri Williams, Simon Willison, Jeffrey Zeldman, and a bunch more I’ve probably left out (but not forgotten, mind you).

Getting my wings (and stinger) — Faruk and I were asked (and agreed) to join the Web Standards Project (WaSP) while at SXSW. As the new kids on the block, we’ll be dealing with comment moderation on the new site, so please… be gentle.

The partiesy — I didn’t make it to many parties this year, mostly because Kel was ill, but the one I did make it to—hosted by Adaptive Path, Odeo, and Consumating—was fantastic. Next year, Kel & I will take lots of vitamins to make sure we’re in top form for the evening activities.

So now, after a long night of flying and a few days of recouperating, it’s back to work.

Apparently I missed the release of Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition. It hit bookshelves February 23rd. I haven’t seen a physical copy yet, but Jen’s got a few copies for me when I get down to SXSW.

Getting prepped for SXSW has me kinda crazed right now, but I wanted to get a quick plug in for the book, since I think it’s such a great reference for doing things the web standards way (and a vast improvement over the 2nd Editon). It was a lot of fun working with Jen on this and I’m looking forward to seeing Derek’s contribution to the title as well. It was also really great to work with Molly, Tantek and Jeremy on the Technical Editing side. Their input was greatly appreciated and, I think, made this book even more valuable.

As opposed to just adding it to the comments in my original post, I decided to post the continuation of my email conversation with the unnamed executive at my former employer about the Target.com lawsuit as a new entry. This is mostly for Derek’s amusement, but I thought of a few other things to say on the subject as well.

We’ll start with his response. This is copied directly from his email; I take no credit for the spelling, grammar, etc.:

I understand all that you are saying. The difference I see is a “public” building like a Target store is an impediment of it doesn’t have a ramp, etc. and it does matter. It is a physical, public places that discriminates if they don’t have the ramps, etc.

I just see the web as slightly different. While ‘public’ in a sense, it is just as easy for a disabled person to find a web accessible site as it is to find a non-accessible one. You don’t have to drive or walk anywhere. Just click on a different URL. If Target discriminates against people with disabilities it is their problem, not mine.

So if Target doesn’t make their site accessible, they lose for all the reasons you state. And why do I care if Target loses out on all the things you mention? It is just as easy to click on walmart.com or wherever to find the accessibility you need.

And my response to his:

I agree that it is not your problem as a citizen of the USA/world/universe/whatever. And, personally, I could care less if most major corporations blipped out of existence. But we (as marketers and people responsible for our clients’ online marketing/branding/presence/etc.) need to be aware of this and know that overcoming this “obstacle” does not take much and that the benefits far outweigh the time and money involved. We need to be able to work with our clients in their best interests, guiding them down the right path from a business standpoint, even if the benefits are not immediately apparent to them.

Now I’m not condoning the lawsuit, but it also helps from a PR standpoint not to get sued by a group of citizens with disabilities. After all, who’s going to look like the asshole there?

After hitting send, I (of course) thought of a bunch of other stuff to say. I will spare you the entirety of my thoughts save this one:

It is not just as easy for a disabled person to find a web accessible site as it is to find a non-accessible one. There is a real dearth of e-commerce sites on the web that are accessible. That is a major part of the problem. Perhaps if more e-commerce software companies took a page from Karova, users surfing the web with disabilities or (shock) JavaScript turned off might be able to choose to shop somewhere other than a Target or a Wal-Mart or any other store which does not meet their accessibility (or availability) requirements.

Anyway, he hasn’t responded to that last email and perhaps he never will. After all, I gave my notice the next day. And, no, this exchange was not responsible for that in any way.

While working on a new site, I started playing around a little more with 8-bit PNG files, comparing them to GIFs. In a few cases the PNG was smaller (it didn’t used to be that way, but perhaps Photoshop CS2 does a better job of compressing PNG files or something), so used it. All was good until I started testing the design in IE, where the colors were all off. Here’s a breakdown of how the same graphic (placed as a CSS background image against a background color equal to its own background color) rendered between the two browsers:

I am well-aware of the issues regarding IE’s handling of alpha transparency in 24-bit PNGs, but had not heard of any color-related issues with 8-bit PNGs in IE6. I did a test in IE7B2 to see if the error was there too and it was.

I did some searching on Google and couldn’t seem to find any documentation on this bug, but it’s certainly something I’d recommend they fix for the final release of IE7. For now, however, the only solutions appear to be adding color-correction to your CSS for IE (if you are dead-set on using an 8-bit PNG) or using a GIF.