Posted in accessibility, web design on December 5th, 2009 by markcoppock – Be the first to comment
“10 Simple Web Accessibility Tips You Can Do Today.” Good reminders.
- on the title attribute, don’t use the same text as what it’s describing (same with alt attributes, duh)
- headings—may be easier to use as page nav for screen reader users (though they mention Skip Navigation, I’ve heard some users more rely on the header tags)
- Interesting link to WebAIM for Links that become visible with keyboard focus; addressing mobility-impaired users that can’t/don’t use a mouse. Might like that as a user myself.
- Labeling form elements, as we’ve mentioned here before.
Do check out the article.
Posted in Uncategorized on September 15th, 2009 by Jared – Be the first to comment
I’m not talking about cheat sheets that are going to get you busted for knocking the Aggie Honor Code. These cheat sheets will help you become more efficient and they are worth a look if you use any of these apps.
Some cheat sheets I have found helpful:
Posted in web design on September 8th, 2009 by markcoppock – Be the first to comment
Sent by Kim, a very comprehensive checklist. Items to check off in twenty categories. Some that may not be needed in all cases, some very obvious.
Much of it is/should be habit, but there are some good reminders.
Posted in accessibility, design on July 6th, 2009 by markcoppock – Be the first to comment
Rhonda and her group have done a bunch of work on using best practices in Word to create accessible PDFs from reports. This is the corresponding info for InDesign CS4.
Page on Adobe site PDF overview
From the PDF’s intro (emphasis added):
Can you read this document with your eyes closed? For people with visual disabilities, that’s a challenge they’re faced with everyday. Fortunately, you can use Adobe InDesign CS4 to make an accessible PDF document. You do this by adding “under the hood” features that don’t affect the look of your pages, but do allow screen readers and other assistive devices to function properly.
Posted in design on June 25th, 2009 by markcoppock – Be the first to comment
Bummer. But it’s fun to watch the twitter stream.
Historically, I’ve thought of HOW as solely a print designers’ conference. But Kim, who’s attending, set me straight:
Dude, it is all about design (ie: problem solving), not print. There are plenty of sessions on interactive!
So, maybe next year…
Posted in Uncategorized on June 8th, 2009 by markcoppock – Be the first to comment
Summary
Background
Remember when Windows was just becoming popular? People would say things like “Do this, this and this. Don’t worry, you can’t mess it up.” Of course, that was a lie.
Now, remember when OS X came out and you heard “the Terminal lets do all these things much faster than the Finder. But since you have direct access to the OS, you can destroy things just as quickly–and with no warning.* Therefore never touch the Terminal.”? Actually, that last part was just my subconscious speaking. It was lying, too.
It’s all about the workflow
But fast matters. Over the past few months I’ve gradually been reading up on the Terminal and practicing doing little things like copying files, setting permissions, opening/editing hidden files, etc. Check the list above for some of the resources I’ve found useful.
But be cool. Like learning to ride a motorcycle, the most dangerous time is six months in when you start thinking you can do this pretty good and start getting cocky.
*Confession: I once typed del *.* at a DOS command prompt thinking I was in a subdirectory. I wasn’t. I still shudder. <shudder> See?
The only good part was that all the files in the subdirectory were deleted, as I intended. Along with the rest of the C drive, which I didn’t. <Shaking it off>
Posted in accessibility, web design on May 11th, 2009 by markcoppock – Be the first to comment
I’ve come to think of this conference as a web standards and best practices conference.
A few, not all, highlights
- HTML 5 will be the next doctype for web standards. XHTML is going away since its benefits aren’t getting used (browsers…). So, for now, use the HTML 4.01 Strict doctype. Edit 7-7-2009: I know what you’re thinking. See Jeffrey Zeldman’s article defending XHTML 1.0, right after XHTML 2.0’s going away announcement. Short story: we’ll stick with XHTML 1.0 for now. Use strict when not impractical, transitional otherwise. btw, Jeremy Keith has a good overview of all this.
- IE 8: some seriously strange problems with its compatibility modes. Short answer (and there’s no short answer really), for now: design with tight web standards and don’t add MS’s suggested meta tag.
- There are many standards for accessible forms that I was not aware of. Example—here’s how to semantically connect a label with its associated input:
<label for="dogname">Dog's Name</label>
<input name="name" id="dogname" size="30" />
- Simple semantic stuff I needed reminding of:
- only one h1 per page (I think there was discussion of this in past years; that appears over), and it’s the title of that individual page
- h tags must be used successively; i.e., if you use an h4 tag, you must have at least one h2 and one h3 on the page
- The new 508 and state accessibility requirements (coming this fall? Sept. 1?) will be close to the same as the WCAG 2.0. Overview—content must be:
- technology-agnostic
- perceivable
- operable
- understandable (for non-traditional browsers; e.g., a ‘more info’ link whose content can’t be perceived by screen readers isn’t acceptable)
- robust
Posted in video compression on April 22nd, 2009 by markcoppock – Be the first to comment
Great Adobe Developer Connection article/white paper: H.264 for the rest of us.
The direct link to the PDF white paper is here.
Posted in After Effects, video on April 14th, 2009 by markcoppock – Be the first to comment
That's gotta hurt. The original shirt is of course without the bloody knife. That's an iron-on.
First of all, this is for video folks. Print and web people, breathe easy. I think.
The instigator of the shirt thing is planning to wear and distribute these shirts at the Adobe booth at NAB next week. Here’s some background, from the Avid-L2 yahoo group:
Premiere is the biggest villain.
You should do a review of Premiere and then you’d see clearly the
frustration. Lots of nice talking points for marketing, but no real
substance.
Encore is just as bad as Premiere. It is the only Adobe product that is not
cross-platform. Soundbooth and Audition are decent. Photoshop and AE are
very good. But Adobe only seems to care about selling suites, and not how
good/bad an individual product is. As long as they are selling well, they
could really care less about the issues that face editors every day. I
haven’t called Premiere “Pro” in quite some time. In fairness to Adobe, two
years ago at NAB a group of us called “Make It Pro” met with senior
management at NAB. They listened intently and upper management followed up
quite a bit, but the product manager of Premiere NEVER did. Apparently he
has been too busy with his Master degree in business to properly oversee
Premiere’s development. Not a single thing we discussed was addressed in
CS4.
The real issue is this: you cannot edit anything with clients over your
shoulder. CS4 is as flaky as a box of Post Toasties. It is not even close
to the stability of Final Cut or Avid. So Avid should be very happy that
Adobe has missed the boat. Sure all the metatdata sounds nice. So did
“dynamic link” but it reality it is totally useless. Avid or Apple have
nothing to fear as far as editing. What I wish is that Premiere would be
dumped completely and then that Adobe might work with Avid and/or Final Cut
to create links with Photoshop, Soundbooth, Illustrator, & AE. AE is a
wonderful product that continues to develop (even though they still don’t
understand fields for previewing and probably never will).
Sadly after all these years, there is NO ONE that “gets” the editor’s point
of view. That’s why I use several programs to achieve what I’ve always
wished one program could deliver. Having been on many different betas, and
even an employee dealing with 3rd party developers and technical support for
a major NLE company, I feel I can voice my displeasure based on a lot of
experience. Avid is the ONLY software that was designed from the ground up
AROUND the every day editor. I’d bet you would be hard pressed to find a
single manager of product development in this industry who has actually been
a professional editor with client supervised sessions. You know who does?
Avid and Autodesk. It clearly shows in their products.
I was “a professional editor with client supervised sessions” for a bunch of years, and what he is describing gives me the willies. Please fix, Adobe!
Posted in illustration on April 3rd, 2009 by markcoppock – 2 Comments
(update 4-18: found the full collection of Mike Rohde Sketchnotes on Flickr, so you can see them big and/or do a full-screen slideshow).
From the article “A Graphic Look at SXSWi 2009“:
Sharing notes at this year’s conference went beyond Twitter — there were a few folks at the SXSW Interactive Conference who took sketchnotes. Sketchnotes are elaborate notes with handwritten lettering and sketchy drawings of what is happening during the talk. They are an artform; a combination of comic strip and information design. It takes a good listener and fast illustrator to get down a good sketchnote. The popularity of taking sketchnotes has grown and many people are now scanning in the pages of their moleskin and uploading them to flickr. I thought I would share with you a few of my favorites from this year’s conference.
One commenter said: “I’m so glad to see people ditching their laptops and doing something as audience members more interesting than just regurgitating text into documents and blog posts.” Maybe I need to ditch the laptop more often and try this since the highlighted part is describing me pretty well…
I found this article especially interesting because the session that’s continuing to make me think the most was “Shift Happens–Moving from Words to Pictures.”
