Wikipedia refers to the browser as:

…a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network. Text and images on a Web page can contain hyperlinks to other Web pages at the same or different website. Web browsers allow a user to quickly and easily access information provided on many Web pages at many websites by traversing these links. Web browsers format HTML information for display, so the appearance of a Web page may differ between browsers.

The one area that should not cause accessibilty problems is the browser. Standards and rules have existed for many years that should have negated browser issues. However, as each browser is owned and developed by a different company, each competing for your custom, they have been developed without unification and standardization in mind. This is gradually improving but we still encounter problems moving from on browser to another.

The graph below shows the distribution of browsers visiting the w3c site over the last 2 years. This graph is biased towards ‘alternative’ (to Internet Explorer) browsers because of the content of the site but it does provide a good insight in the future of browser usage.

The graph shows how IE6 is being replaced by IE7 and also that Firefox usage is growing. I will talk about each of the browsers in more depth in a later article.

The point to be taken here is not which browser is better - that is pretty much agreed - it is that that the users accessing your site will be using a number of different browsers and you must do all you can to accomodate each of them or else risk losing part of your audience.

A quirky design, unusal enough to inspire further creativity in this direction, we may develop a site with this as inspiration.

The lamps are available from Viable.

One of the most important issues in accessibility is that of the users screen resolution. Users are now using a broader range of resolutions than ever before, from the old 800 x 600 pixels to the latest widescreen offerings of 1920 x 1080 and above.

The most cited procedure for overcoming this diversity is in using a fluid-based format that adjusts itself to fit the screen but this means that one has to relinquish a great deal of the control of the design of the site. The other option is to use a fixed width approach based on the lowest resolution screensize (generally 800 x 600) which leads to lots of whitespace appearing on larger resolution monitors. Take a look here for a list of all of the different screensizes that may be encountered.

The graph below shows how the market has progressed over the last few years. It can be seen that there seems to be a move from to greater than 1024 x 768 resolutions from the older 800 x 600 (now down to about 14% of users). However, 14% is a large number of users and an accessible website will have to take this into account.

The truth of the situation is that there is no single solution to this problem. The solution is very much application-specific: some sites will suit different solutions. The only thing that is not optional is that all resolutions must be able to view the content.

JavaScript has always been the predominant client-side scripting language of the Internet. However, content should never be restricted by JavaScript as many users will be accessing your content via browsers without JavaScript (whether the JavaScript is disabled or not available). The graph below shows the percentage of users accessing the Internet without JavaScript over the last five years.

While it is now becoming commonplace to see extensive client-side programming users without JavaScript should not be overlooked. The W3C WAI Guidelines states:

“Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported.
If this is not possible, provide equivalent information on an alternative accessible page.”

Personally, I am not in favour of ever creating two versions of the same page as keeping the two in sync often becomes a task in itself, and a rather unnecessary one at that. What I believe the W3C to be advocating is that the page content be delivered such a way that it can be viewed with or without JavaScript, i.e. delivered in non-JavaScript friendly format which is then acted upon by client-side JavaScript. If this approach is used both camps will be kept happy and the website will be accessible by all.

Take a look at the image below. The tiny white dot that can just about be made out is the Earth as seen from Voyager I, some 4 billion miles away. The late Carl Sagan had the following to say on the image.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

A very interesting video detailing a the history of the web from digital text and HTML all the way through to Web 2.0.

Quotiki is a new social quotes site that lets you quickly find and enjoy quotes. You can tag submit rate and collect quotes.

Does for quotes what Digg, Technorati, Delicious does for blogs.

The following video is from the BBC’s Click programme and it goes a long way in pointing out the need for accessibility.

Nokia’s idea of the future of mobile GUI: Compare with that of nVidia - who is thinking of usabilty, time to learn the systems? Are they intuitive or simply gimmicky adverts?

Mobile GUI will catch up with that of console and web very quickly. Take a look at nVidia’s vision of the future of the mobile interface. Pay attention to the graphics on the game!