Out of the way

Steve Faulkner wondered how long it would take to make title tooltips show on keyboard navigation. As an extension, it took me about 20 minutes of research and about half that in programming, plus some time to make a pretty icon.

Published! The extensions is available for Opera 11+

Read more...

Ésta pagina contiene descripciones de las imagenes en la documentación de mi Opera extensión 'swaplang'.

Read more...

This is a page for image descriptions from my swaplang documentation.

Read more...

This is long descriptions of images in my excesskey documentation page. (Right now there is only one image). If you don't know what the description is for, you'll probably find that page more interesting (and it has pictures). In any case the most important information is there, not here

Read more...

The "WIMP" (Windows, Icons, Mouse Pointer) interface paradigm has been dominant on desktops for almost 2 decades now - about the time that the Web has been with us. So it has been the dominant design paradigm for the Web. Which has introduced some complex problems that don't seem to get better.

(This is effectively a write up of the last section of a presentation I gave at CSUN recently. And it is a request for thoughts and comments so I can solidify it and push any good bits to proper standardisation).

Read more...

Well, around the top half of the world, followed by a break over easter...

Read more...

Ben Buchanan, just quietly, is a great bloke. As well as being a choice companion for sharing a beer or three, nice guy, and champion of accessibility and other good things, he has actually done some really basic practical stuff that takes time to show results. And recently he announced something really cool...

Read more...

I have new glasses. This is lovely, because it means I can actually see well again.

My left eye is not bad. My right eye is not very good. A couple of months ago I lost my glasses, and had to revert to my "emergency" pair. Which had become my emergency pair becaus the right lens dropped out and was lost forever.

A month of working with those (and needing them, because my right eye was so often useless that I was really pushing the left) had me wondering if I would have learned to favour one eye.

At Gregory's place, the courier delivered my glasses. They are new, funky, don't have real frames, just arms and things stuck onto the lenses. They sit high, and they are amazingly light. (I have worn glasses for about ten years. When I was younger my eyesight was just as bad, but I had more energy to strain my eyes. I started with glass lenses, and have moved to ever-lighter glasses bit by bit).

Funnily enough, the courier also delivered my privacy screen to Gregory. It's a bit of plastic, made by the same people who invented those little yello sticky notes that are everywhere now. It is almost transparent, so long as you look at it straight on. From about 45˚ it is hard to see much at all, so I can sitin a meeting and read confidential mail in large type without worrying about who else is having it waved in front of them.

I wonder if the couriers thought about this, as they asked a blind guy to sign for a package. When I was younger I delivered televisions and the like around the suburbs of Melbourne for a while. Occasionally I would be asked to explain how to operate a new television or video recorder - and I remember that while blind people would ask for detailed explanations, they would also actually be good at remembering them. It struck me that having a couple of video recorders and a couple of TV's, all connected together, it would make sense to be good at remembering how each one worked. I don't think I had thought about it much before, but it seemed reasonable for people who had a lot of spare time to want to copy video cassettes, and record a lot of stuff.

Someone recently asked what blind people do with a photo website. I recall going to buy my first digital camera, with a blind friend who was replacing his (I should have just bought his old one, I guess), and asking him where he put his photos. He collected them, asked a bunch of friends to tell him which were good and which weren't (and what was in them), and then he stored them or sent them to people. Same as anyone does. After all, there are only a few things you can do with photos.

The web, and particularly the rise of the "blog", has enabled more people than ever before to publishto a global audience. And while there aren't necessarily more great writers than before, there are more people trying to get a bit of attention and love online. Or share something. Or just get something out of their system...

Read more...

If you're lucky enough to have a new Macintosh, it might have come with a remote control.

And if you are curious, or keen on some of the accessibility features in Opera, or just can't go past the preferences of a new program without looking into it, you might have come across the feature released as an easter egg in one of the preview releases of Opera 9.

Or if you look into the keyboard shortcuts, you might find some odd ones for Mac, like RC_PLAY as a key.

Yes, you can use your remote control for browsing (or anything you can do in Opera, although text entry requires a fair bit more customisation).

If you leave alone the menu button, to move out of Opera, you can apparently click or longclick each of the four directions on the remote, and the play button in the middle, which effectively gives 10 free buttons.

What are the 10 most important functions? Could you survive with a 10-button keyboard? What would it be epecially good for?