OLPC G1G1

Having taken part in the first round of OLPC's G1G1, I can definitely say that these things make fantastic ultra-portable machines. Since they run Redhat-based Linux (which you can of course replace with Debian if you prefer, or just replace the UI), you can easily install everything from FreeDoom to Apache HTTPD Server. In short order, I installed subversion, Apache HTTPD Server, PHP5, and MySQL (Vim and SSH come preinstalled). Since they designed these things for kids to carry to school through everything from rain storms to sand storms, they'll out-rugged anything else even remotely like it.

Or, you can give it to someone you know who can get use out of the myriad of Activities it includes for kids to learn everything from reading and writing to programming to music.

Either way, Go give one.

Opera may have just found what it needed

Today, the Opera Desktop Team and Jon Hicks both announced Jon's joining Opera as Senior Designer! This comes as very exciting news to someone who has had to continually add "...and Opera." to many browser discussions here in the States, even among fellow developers.

Jon's biggest challenge (and advantage) will, in my opinion, come in the form of making Opera approachable and continually usable to new users, without hiding its power from them. I definitely wish the both of them the best of luck, and eagerly wait to see what happens next.

Power Failure + Road Trip = Fail

Well, that sucked. Back on a normal hosting service...backup power supplies work much better when outages only last a matter of seconds.

S5 with CSS Slide Transitions in WebKit

So, in an effort to have the ability to post my slides for my Zend/PHP Conference talk online without having to rely on Flash or typically awkward HTML exports from other formats, I've decided to go with S5, as mentioned previously. I've also decided to add a little of WebKit's recent additions of CSS transforms and animation support for transitions.

Since CSS CSS animation only occurs when attributes change, it just means that the current and next slides need to have the changes applied at different times, or at the same time, depending. To make managing these things easier, I started with a base object:

function Transition() { }
Transition.prototype = {
 "duration" : 1,
 "cslide" : null,
 "nslide" : null,
 "transition" : function(toggle) {
  this.cslide.style.WebkitTransition =
   this.nslide.style.WebkitTransition =
    (toggle
     ? 'all ' + this.duration + 's ease-in-out'
     : 'all 0s none');
 },
 "prepare" : function() { },
 "perform" : function() { },
 "cleanup" : function() { },
 "run" : function(cid, nid) {
  this.cslide = document.getElementById(cid);
  this.nslide = document.getElementById(nid);
  this.cslide.style.visibility = this.nslide.style.visibility = 'visible';
  this.transition(false);
  this.prepare();
  var dis = this;
  setTimeout(function() {
   dis.transition(true);
   setTimeout(function() { dis.perform.apply(dis); }, 0);
  }, 0);
  setTimeout(function() {
   dis.transition(false);
   dis.cslide.style.visibility = 'hidden';
   dis.cleanup.apply(dis);
  }, dis.duration * 1000);
 }
}

The code managing the switch of the slides now calls RunTransition(transitions[snum], cid, nid);, where transitions just holds an array of constructor references corresponding to the slide numbers (snum):

var transitions = [
 null,
 Fade,
 Wipe,
 Rotate,
 Rotate,
 Fade
]

function RunTransition(className, cid, nid) {
 var trans = new className();
 trans.run.call(trans, cid, nid);
}

Each transition just extends Transition and overrides the applicable methods in order to change the slide CSS properties at the correct time, like this Fade transition:

function Fade() { }
Fade.prototype = new Transition;
Fade.prototype.prepare = function() {
 this.cslide.style.opacity = '1';
 this.nslide.style.opacity = '0';
}
Fade.prototype.perform = function() {
 this.cslide.style.opacity = '0';
 this.nslide.style.opacity = '1';
}

I've uploaded a very quick demo of the transitions in action, which will work in whichever builds of WebKit support CSS transforms and animation. It worked a bit smoother in WebKit builds a few weeks ago than those current (bugs galore at the moment), but nightly builds always tend introduce unpredictable behavior.

Google launching open source browser based on WebKit?

No idea whether this theory holds any water, but given the recent speculation hitting...everywhere, I checked http://code.google.com/p/chrome/ and found a login screen (quickly followed by a permission denied error), rather than a Not Found error for a project that doesn't exist.

Wondering what this will bring to WebKit that Safari doesn't (aside from Gears and even-more-targeted advertising), but I guess we'll see soon enough.

Edited to add: the more I read about this, the more it looks like they ported a bunch of features from Opera (tabs above window chrome, long-running scripts' threads not killing your browser, Speed Dial-like default page, etc.) to a WebKit-based browser with what sounds like XUL for the window chrome itself. I guess tomorrow we'll find out for sure, but it seems a bit odd that an open source project would outright deny access to the public before launch, and distribute the info under the most closed-minded CC license available (feel free to share it, just don't touch it, don't charge for it, and you'd better tell people who made it). I suppose after the recent Android SDK excitement, this still makes a decent step forward, but still. I guess so long as it takes market share away from IE, I shouldn't complain too much.

Target to pay out $6M and have quarterly/annual accessibility tests

Found via Glenda the Good, this marks a huge milestone in moving from infrequently enforced laws regarding government sites to making sites and web applications of private entities accessible to the general public.

"As part of the settlement, Target will establish a $6 million fund from which members of the California settlement class can make claims. In addition, the National Federation of the Blind will certify the Target Web site through its Nonvisual Accessibility Web Certification program once agreed upon improvements are completed in early 2009. Target and NFB have agreed to a three-year relationship during which NFB will perform accessibility testing of the Target Web site. For more information about the terms of the settlement, please visit www.nfbtargetlawsuit.com."

The $6,000,000 fund doled out to those who file claims will draw attention to this, but to me the (comparatively) rapid compliance and ongoing tests make this worthwhile. Target won't just throw money at the issue, but will make its site accessible to those using assistive technologies, and maintain that for at least three years following!

Zend DevZone book review

Cal Evans of Zend just posted a shining review of Advanced Ajax!

It’s not often that I review a book that is a year old for several reasons. The main reason is that technology changes so fast. In this day and age a book 12 months old usually contains out dated information. As with any good rule, there are exemptions, this book is one of them.

Having said that let me lay out a warning, “Advanced Ajax” means what it says, it is an advanced book. If you are a web designer who has just completed “Learn JavaScript in One Week” then you do not want to buy this book. Go play with the other crayons and come back when you’ve got a few years experience under your belt. This book is for those developers that already know what a pain it is to develop using JavaScript and love it anyhow. If you’ve already busted one flat-screen by banging your head on it because “the code should work!” then you are ready for this book.

Read the rest of the review.

Books to give away during my ZendCon08 talk!

In order to bribe more people to attend my talk at ZendCon08, my publisher has sent me three copies of my book to give away! I haven't quite figured out how to dole them out yet, or even have any idea how many people will attend the talk and want a copy, but I'll figure something out.

I think for the talk, I'll use a modified S5 theme I have in-progress using Safari's new CSS transforms and animation support for transitions. I'll post some examples of that as I make it ready for the talk, since I can't really post the content of my talk until I get the go-ahead from those who give it at IBM. The talk centers around looking at source code from work, and I'd rather not upset IBM's Higher Powers by exposing even part of the product without explicit permission...

W3C recently posts updated docs on relationship between usability and accessibility

The W3C posted an update to the Relationship between Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), something which I (for some reason) don't remember seeing go by in January when they posted the initial draft.

Work like this means a great deal to web developers who promote accessibility, as most people regard accessibility as little more than a drain or a checkbox on a compliance to-do list. The MWBP and WCAG relationship guidelines look at the similarities in issues and solutions found in each working group, providing a comprehensive list of direct connections between accessibility and usability. Until seeing this work, I have had little reference material to offer those who questioned my (and others') relentless insisting that they should use accessible markup and scripting in order to make their web applications both accessible and more usable in one fell swoop. All efforts had previously resulted in spontaneous lectures at the nearest machine where I could demonstrate examples, and (more recently) Chapter 1: Usability and Chapter 2: Accessibility in Advanced Ajax: Architectures and Best Practices.

The current MWBP and WCAG relationship guidelines have the following in-progress sections available, which will all prove exceedingly useful to web developers and designers, especially for those learning about one side of this after implementing the other:

• Overview
• WCAG 2.0 and MWBP Together
• MWBP to WCAG 2.0
• MWBP to WCAG 1.0
• WCAG 2.0 to MWBP
• WCAG 1.0 to MWBP

These sections cover specific examples of matching mobile web usability issues with accessibility issues, ranging from color contrast requirements (...unfavorable ambient light and the ability of devices to display contrasting color at all, while users may have color blindness and color perception deficits...) to the fact that large amounts of dry text becomes equally unreadable for those with attention deficit related disabilities to those with postage stamp-sized screen. Anyone who had clicked impatiently through an EULA displayed in a one-inch textarea knows the latter of these two quick examples all too well.

For a quick introduction to the correlation between web accessibility mobile web usability, the WAI has posted Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web: Making a Web Site Accessible Both for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices as part of their Implementation Plan for Web Accessibility.

Proposal accepted for ZendCon08

My proposal "Digging Through the Guts of Enterprise PHP: A Case Study," which looks at PHP usage, techniques, and features as used at my day job at IBM, got accepted for the Zend/PHP Conference and EXPO 2008!

An exploration of the features of PHP used in the Ajax-driven user interface of IBM Rational Build Forge, with a focus on inheritance, interfaces, and Iterators. This talk will demonstrate how we built its user interface on a solid foundation of PHP.

I submitted it shortly after the call for papers opened up and this year, I got in. I've never spoken at a conference before, but it'll at least make for an interesting (and hopefully even successful) experience.