Inversarium

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World E-Book Fair

So many versions for GROW, I played a new one. It must have been added in the last 8 months then. GROW is the cutest sweetest bestest coolest game I've ever found online. Any online game better? Let me know.

Nielsen's Guidelines For link titles

I like the name and I like the red website... but not the white squares or big pixels which pop up a lot especially in the 'about' and 'promo' section.. Noooo!

fFurious. I love the fF name

UPDATE: October 21, 2007: fFurious website updated! To worse.

I checked the website today and remembered this post, so thought I'd update it. It's a black frames based side scroller now. The frames should really be replaced considering it doesn't fare well at all from an accessibility and SEO perspective. Iframes will accomplish the same without these problems. I'd also think of replacing the side scroller with a multi-page pagination based navigation for the portfolio section, especially since there are more than 50 images not particularly low on individual file size displayed at all a time.

Sounds interesting? It's not a degree but really interesting. Follow the link below to read more here.

You love lomography? But do you know how it all began? Here's an article that explains how it came around? This article talks about just that.

1982

General Igor Petrowitsch Kornitzky, right-hand man to the USSR Minister of Defense and Industry, slammed a little Japanese mini-camera onto the ornate desk of his comrade Michail Panfilowitsch Panfiloff. Mr Panfiloff, Director of the powerful LOMO Russian Arms and Optical factory, examined the camera closely, noting its sharp glass lens, extremely high light sensitivity and robust casing. The two gentlemen, realizing the superior nature and extreme potential of this strange little item, gave immediate orders to copy and improve the design - with the ultimate goal of producing the largest quantity possible for the pleasure and glory of the Soviet population. It was decided - every respectable Communist should have a LOMO KOMPAKT AUTOMAT of their own.

The LOMO LC-A was born, and millions of cameras were promptly produced and sold. The Soviets and their Socialist playmates in Vietnam, Cuba and East Germany snapped happily away throughout the nineteen eighties, fully documenting the last gasps of Communism, and the occasional beach vacation on the Black Sea.

Go ahead. Follow the link to read the entire article, The Lomography Story

I'm always on the lookout for accessible open source CMS's. Here's a list of some which are 508 compliant.

TYPO3- 508 compliant by using an extension(s) I think? But one big issue before you use it. I almost decided to use it once for a client website whose target audience included mostly novice computer users but then it had this problem with generating simple url's because of which I backed out.

PostNuke- Any comments on this?

Are there any more CMS's you know that output accessible code? If so, drop a comment and let me know. I would like to build up this list.

UPDATE: 18 July 2006
Plone- As said on the website, Plone is 508 compliant, works with all browsers, and is in conformance with W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, level Double-A. Plone also conforms to XHTML and CSS standards.

UX Magazine has been in its beta stage for quite a few months now. It looks fabulous and definitely reflects upon enhanced usability and user experience as you can see if you go to their website.

However, I do think that the 'Open in New Window" checkbox located in the footer on the right is not going to be a feature that increases usability, not because of its location, rather because it's not going to be used much.

For instance, most people who visit UX Magazine are, I'm guessing as should be the case, power users. IMHO, a power user and novice alike would prefer that they choose depending on the link they are about to explore whether to open it in a new window or the same rather than have an option that simply opens all links in a new window whether they like it or not.

Secondly, a power user would use the right-click menu to open up links in the same window or new so the 'Open in New Window' is not going to be used much by them. If the developers are tracking how much this feature has been used, I'm sure they'd find a few hits from first time visitors, power users to be precise, who would like to simply check it out.

It's a cool feature to try out but I'm not sure whether it really is enhancing usability on the website. If the website had a target audience which was balanced by a fair amount of novice users, it would have made good sense, of course.

Geoff did a really nice job of listing out browser specific shortcuts keys that one should take into consideration when assigning accesskeys to elements.

Reserved Keys in IE 5.5/6

• F – File
• E – Edit
• V – View
• A – Favorites
• T – Tools
• D – Address
• H – Help

Reserved Keys in NS 7

• F – File
• E – Edit
• V – View
• G – Go
• B – Bookmarks
• T – Tools
• H – Help
• W – Window

Reserved Keys in Opera 7

• F – File
• E – Edit
• V – View
• N – Navigate
• B – Bookmark
• M – Mail
• W – Window
• H – Help

Thus the remaining available accesskey values are (at most):
`, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, -, =, [, ], /, C, I, J, K, L, O, P, Q, R, S, U, X, Y, Z

Find out at designsalaries.org because as they put it, this is the design professions most comprehensive and unbiased survey of salaries in the US.