James Burgess

I like JavaScript - I think it’s a great little bit of kit, and very useful for providing some more elegant ‘finish’ to web applications and websites than HTML affords by itself.  Of course, there are also many unhelpful and unwanted uses for it, and that’s why people like me run software like the NoScript extension for Firefox.

Since beginning browsing with NoScript, a good while ago, I have noticed just how broken many sites are without JavaScript enabled.  Big websites, such as eBay, lose vast amounts of functionality (e.g. the ability to perform an advanced search) when JS is not enabled within the browser.  Quite why these websites absolutely fail to provide simple non-JS fallbacks, is quite beyond me.

One can understand a degree of lack of fallbacks, such as this website’s top menu.  With JS enabled, tooltips appear to ‘aid’ (or not) the users navigation, by the means of visual feedback.  If, however, JS is not enabled, these tooltips aren’t displayed.  Whilst no direct fallback is provided, the site is designed so that no main functionality is lost or inaccessible due to the lack of scripting being enabled in the user’s browser - and this is how it should be.

Whilst enabling scripting in the browser may be a small price to pay to get a working website, it is a price that shouldn’t need to be paid by your users.  To further compound the problem, lack of suitable fallbacks often renders functionality unavailable to the sight-impaired, who may use a screen reader.  These readers often run with scripting disabled, so as to provide a more stable and consistent environment for impaired users - but with large features just failing to work (without even displaying so much as an error) when scripting is disabled, accessibility inevitably suffers.

The web should still be accessible with JS and with CSS turned off.  The only requirement for browsing and accessing features, on any website, should be a browser that can interpret HTML successfully.  I’m continually shocked how many designers/developers are ignorant of the browsing minorities, when good practice and common sense dictates that a small amount of effort should be undertaken to provide a graceful and gracious solution.

Don’t even get me started on the consequences of Flash for usability and accessibility…

Well, yesterday started out as an exciting day, but ended up as merely a frustrating one.  My PC upgrade parts arrived, and I proceeded to fit them - all went well until booting, when the BIOS reported CPU temps of approaching 100ºC… peculiar.  I did all the obvious checks, thermal paste, heatsink/fan correctly seated, etc. but to no avail.  Unfortunately, this means that both the CPU and the mobo have been RMA’d and I now have to wait until Monday to put my build together again.

On the plus side, the ASUS Xonar D2 card works with my current rig - and that, coupled with a new Logitech 5.1 speaker system, is at least improving my audio experience in the meanwhile.

For those that are interested, these are the upgrade parts I’ve got (or, in the case of the CPU/mobo, am waiting for).  Not the best rig on the planet but hey, a student income doesn’t really promote high-end systems, especially not with petrol prices as high as they are right now!

• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.00GHz) FSB1333 6MB Cache
• ASUS P5K AiLifestyle Series Mobo
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 PCI-E
• Asus Xonar D2 7.1 Sound Card
• Corsair 4GB (2×2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 DHX Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL4(4-4-4-12)

All-in-all, I can’t wait for next Monday to get this rig up and running!

One can understand entirely the uses of Windows in a desktop environment, as that’s what it was designed to be a - a desktop operating system.  What I can’t really understand, is how it worms its way into locations where simplistic, and more reliable, embedded systems should rule the roost.

With the news on one MSDN blog (by a Microsoft systems engineer) recently arising, that Windows 3.11 is to be ‘officially discontinued’, I began to wonder exactly where, except in PC environments, Windows would still be used on a regular basis.  I’d heard horror stories of Windows-based ATM’s crashing, and the like, but I thought these were probably rare incompetancies in IT departments - alas, ’tis not the case.

Whilst browsing around for information, I came upon a useful page that pretty much rendered my own ‘collation’ attempts rather useless.  So, instead of boring you with a repetition of what has already been written, may I present you with the Top Ten Worst Uses for Windows.

Enjoy