The LangaList

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4) Hi-Tech Saints and Sinners

A number of readers took exception to my comments on Netscape's problems of the last few years (see http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2000/2000-04-13.htm#3), interpreting those comments as reflexively pro-Microsoft.

Man, this whole Microsoft thing has polarized the thinking of so many people. If you criticize any element of a non-Microsoft product or find anything positive about any product from Microsoft, it means you're an unthinking stooge; in Bill Gates' pocket.

The only politically-correct thinking, I guess, is to hold that there is nothing bad about any Microsoft competitor, ever. Likewise, there is nothing good about Microsoft, period.

But political correctness doesn't stop there: Any report about something negative about Microsoft must automatically be true. Any report about anything bad about Netscape must be false. No fact-checking is required because Netscape is a high-tech saint; and Microsoft a sinner, right?

What a crock. Netscape and Microsoft both make good products and bad products; and each product has its own good points and bad points. I discuss the good and the bad.

As I said in the above-cited newsletter, if the new Netscape browser ships with all the features it's promising, it'll be a worthy contender in the browser wars.

But that's a big "if." Anyone can make up a list of features; making a list is easy. Actually implementing the features is the hard part, and it remains to be seen if Netscape/Mozilla can do it.

But because of the influence of politically correct groupthink, some people are willing to take Netscape's paper promises at face value---despite a long history of broken vows from Netscape. Me, I'll make up my mind only after I actually test the browser, rather than relying on the untested assertions of some PR flack's white paper. Same with Microsoft's browser--- or anyone's.

But ironically, some of the same writers who took me to task for "being a Microsoft fanatic" cited a report that made the rounds last week about how Microsoft was abandoning Web standards in IE 5.5: This was proof, the writers said, of how duplicitous Microsoft is--- despite the fact that Microsoft actually, objectively and demonstrably has by far the better record of Web standards support in their browser products. (IE's standards support is by no means perfect, but it's literally years ahead that of Netscape's shipping browser's.)

For what it's worth, Microsoft has formally denied the charges in that report, and has renewed its pledge of support for Web standards. But the same people who *will* take Netscape's word *won't* take Microsoft's word. Frankly, I disbelieve the marketing-speak and position papers of them *both*. I'll wait and see what the final, shipping products actually do and don't do before I decide whether they're OK or not. Let the facts---not heated, politically-correct groupthink---decide.

I recommend you to do the same. IMHO, getting swept up in groupthink rarely fosters good decision-making. The world isn't as simple as the good/evil dualists would like you to think.

By the way, to cut through the hype and help introduce some preliminary facts into the Netscape 6.0 discussion, in next Monday's column at WinMag.com, I'll have a ton of detail from a long series of tests I've run on the preview version of Netscape 6. Stay tuned!

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5) Make Your Web Site Accessible To The Visually Impaired

Aaron Smith works at GW Micro (gwmicro.com), a company that produces "Window-Eyes." It's a screen-reader used by people with visual impairments.

Aaron wrote to me about a couple of small changes I could make to Langa.Com that would make the site far more friendly to the visually impaired. If you have a site, perhaps you could use these tips too:

Aaron first reminded me of an item that had been on my to-do list after I launched the new site design a few weeks ago: making sure that every image on the site had an "alt" tag--- text that displays in a tool tip when you hold your mouse stationary over an image. Screen reading software also uses alt tags to describe what an image is to those who cannot see it. I'd included alt tags on many (but not all) images on the site, so my first order of business was to tag the rest.

For example, the LangaList banner on my home page was coded this way:

<img src="images/indexbanner.jpg" width="520" height="121">

but simply adding an alt tag means that screen readers can now describe what the image is:

<img src="images/indexbanner.jpg" width="520" height="121" alt="langalist home page">

With the tag in place, screen-reading software will announce "LangaList Home Page" when it comes to that image.

There's a similar technique you can use on image maps (an image that has clickable areas on it), but it's called a "title" tag within the image map. I'd completely forgotten about adding titles to the LangaList's navigational bar, which is actually an image map.

For example, the code that makes the part of the navigation bar image that says "reader sites" clickable was this:

<area href="readersites.htm" shape="rect" coords="6, 606, 129, 639">

but that made the nav bar useless to the visually impaired because they had no easy way to know what each link was. Changing that line to this solved the problem:

<area href="readersites.htm" shape="rect" coords="6, 606, 129, 639" title="reader sites">

Thanks, Aaron, for bringing this to my attention. I don't want to raise barriers to anyone. I'd like my site to be as accessible as I can make it--- and I bet you feel the same way about your site. Check out your tags!

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6) $10,000 For Your Trouble?