It’s all about the hardware acceleration

We love hardware acceleration. Hardware acceleration is why a $40 DVD player from Walmart plays DVDs perfectly and a $1500 computer plays them poorly.

Use these resolutions to support hardware acceleration:

Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.Terminator 2: Judgment Day

That’s science fiction. This isn’t:

We must have this. Release date April 12. See the Adobe launch site.

As Photoshop continues to learn at a geometric rate, we may end up, in a panic, trying to pull the plug. Until then, we’ll keep using it.

• 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.

Some cheat sheets I have found helpful:

• Twitter (pdf)
• Adobe Photoshop CS4 Mac keyboard shortcuts or Windows keyboard shortcuts (pdfs)
• Adobe Flash CS4 Mac keyboard shortcuts or Windows keyboard shortcuts (pdfs)
• Periodic Table of Adobe shortcuts
• FireFox shortcuts
• WordPress Help Sheet
• WordPress Help Sheet 2
• WordPress Template tags
• WordPress Template Hierarchy
• TextMate cheat sheet basic (pdf) or TextMate cheat sheet advanced (pdf)
• CSS3
• HTML5
• jQuery 1.3 cheat sheet (pdf)
• Computer hardware (this is sweet)

Much of it is/should be habit, but there are some good reminders.

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.

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…

• The Mac OS X Finder is really kind of slow, clunky and lame.
• But like Quicksilver, once you get used to it, Terminal lets you do a lot of things smoother and faster.
• I purchased a video for our group: Meet the Command Line. Let me know if you’re interested and we’ll buy you a copy.
• Lynda.com Leopard Beyond the Basics
• A Mac User’s Guide to the Unix Command Line. Nice tutorial from the been-around-forever TidBITs site.
• An A-Z Index of the Apple OS X command line. Like a box of dynamite, fuses and a lighter, can be used for good or ill.
• PROCEED HUMBLY AND CAUTIOUSLY. But do proceed!

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.

• My notes (some excellent links)
• #AccessU09 Twitter stream

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