Web Standards, Accessibility and Other Stuff

Every once in a while, one comes across an establishment that is unique and one soon comes to love. I recently discovered one of these places, Barefoot Coffee Roasters.

This coffee shop is unlike all others. First of all, they take pride in great coffee. In their words, Barefoot Coffee is great coffee, coffee as a culinary art and sustainability. The coffee is roasted right on the spot, and the coffee shop has won many awards. And besides coffee, you can purchase something to eat such as an oatmeal & raisin cookie (my favorite).

Just as good as the coffee is the atmosphere. There are always many “interesting” and “creative” individuals hanging out. Local art decorates the walls, and even some of the furniture is art. Even the walls of the bathroom are blackboards with chalk writings and drawings. The music is unique, hip, and no matter how diverse, always seems to mesh well with the atmosphere. In the outdoor seating, enjoy a smoke and/or listen to the guy with the acoustic guitar. Free Wifi is provided, which is essential, and the prices are reasonable.

If you’re in the South Bay area, make a visit to the Barefoot Coffee Roasters.

Just released the 2-year anniversary podcast for Web Axe, my podcast and blog on web accessibility. It’s been a lot of work, but a lot of fun too…

Today is September 11. In the States, the date is abbreviated as 9/11. This date has obviously become massively significant since September 11, 2001, when thousands of innocent people were murdered during the World Trade Center disaster.

OK, George Bush and the CIA messed up when it came to solidifying an alliance and finding chemical weapons. If the United Nations wasn’t so wimpy and wishy-washy about its own rules, then the U.S. wouldn’t have had to step in the problem in the first place (and thus save the world from an evil murderous regime, again).

Before you bash Bush, remember the answer to these questions:

• Who is killing hundreds of innocent people every month with car bombs and other cowardly acts of destruction?
• Who is stopping the people of Iraq from creating their own government and having a peaceful life?
• Who is hiding behind the name of “Islam” to excuse their terrorism?

The damn terrorist “insurgents”, that’s who.

And:

• What country freed the Iraqi population from a greedy, murdering tyrant?
• What country is helping the Iraqis create their own government?
• What country is spending billions of dollars of its own money and sacrificing hundreds of its own lives to do so?

The United States, that’s who.

Yes, I’m a web programmer/coder, but I also have a keen eye for punctuation, grammar and spelling. I don’t expect the general public to have Harvard-like writing skills, but come on, there’s got to be some kind of level of acceptance! These are the things that get me the most. (By the way, my degree is actually in communications, and I’ve done some professional tech writing also, so I can say these things…)

In case you’re not sure, the points below include mistakes on purpose; I’m feeling twisted.

1. Why don’t people put question marks at the end of sentences. I hate that!
2. People say and type the hyphen instead of a dash-very naive. Didn’t anyone take typing in High School? If you are unable to create the proper dash symbol (—), then just use two hyphens. Remember, a hyphen is used either to join words together, or to indicate a word division at the end of a line.
3. Commonly mispelled misspelled words:
   1. calendar — programmers especially need to learn this!
   2. their/they’re/there — Possessive is “their”, and the contraction of “they are” is “they’re.” Everywhere else, it is “there.”
   3. its/it’s — The apostrophe marks a contraction of “it is.” Something that belongs to it is “its.”
   4. separate — Note that the Es surround the As.
4. Apostrophes. Its bad when I remember that in the 80’s, all of my fellow student’s paper’s were wrong.
   1. Indicating letters missing. The apostrophe replaces the text. So, “cannot” is “can’t”, therefore “remember the 70’s” should be “remember the ’70s”.
   2. Indicating possession:
      1. This is the boy’s glove. [One boy owns this glove.]
      2. This is the boys’ glove. [More than one boy owns this glove.]
      3. These are the boys’ gloves. [More than one boy owns more than one glove.]
5. AND OF COURSE, WRITING IN ALL CAPS IN REALLY OBNOXIOUS.

Last week I attended The Ajax Experience 2007 3-day conference in downtown San Francisco. There sure were some big guys speaking including Brendan Eich, CTO Mozilla; Douglas Crawford, Senior Architect, Yahoo!; and Kevin Lynch, Chief Software Architect at Adobe.

The sessions varied from Ajax security, to Javascript frameworks, to advanced techniques with forms. Fortunately, there was even a session on Ajax and accessibility, given by Orbitz. I also was happy to meet Aaron Gustafson, and attend his session relating to progressive enhancement. There was definitely a concentrate of topics around Javascript frameworks (a.k.a. libraries, toolkits) such as jQuery, Dojo, Prototype, and more.

On a personal note, I decided to make a family vacation out of the event, so I booked a hotel a few blocks from the conference, and brought the wife and kids. Yes, it was tough dragging around two boys–who are barely toddlers–but nonetheless it was worth it.

Union Square in downtown San Francisco:

OK, I admit it. I am a judge show junkie. When possible, I watch a lot of those cheesy courtroom TV shows. They usually feature a charismatic judge (almost always a minority) and many times some pretty weird and stupid people. Anyhow, here are my favorites:

1. Judge Judy - She rocks. She’s stern. She doesn’t give a break to these morons in her courtroom. Gotta love her.
2. Judge Mathis - Judge Mathis is a cool dude. He went from a troubled childhood to becoming a lawyer then judge.
3. The People’s Court - The show that started it all! In the new version, Judge Marilyn Milian is a nice judge. Sometimes almost too nice. But she’s fun and fair. More about The People’s Court

So I’ve been in the Bay area (south of San Francisco, California, a.k.a. Silicon Valley) for almost two weeks now. It’s pretty awesome, and I’m discovering some interesting things about the difference between living here and in the midwest–some bad, some good.

• Motorcycles can legally ride between lanes/cars in California. Personally, I think this is pretty stupid.
• To rent a house in this area, move fast! Use Craig’s List. And be ready to get a cashier’s check. And it’s very expensive of course.
• Garbage/recycling pickup is treated as an extra utility, you pay monthly to the city. This is pretty silly; it should just be included with property taxes like other places.
• Wireless internet at Starbucks in Mountain View is free–because wireless internet is free in the whole city! Thanks to Google.
• The cost of living is obviously higher here than most American cities, but gasoline prices are relatively not too bad.
• The weather’s real nice as expected. Temperatures are not too hot in the day; pretty cool at night. But the sun is much stronger than I thought. I’ll have to get my car windows tinted, man.
• There’s no White Castle!
• Cruising along the coast is as fun and beautiful as I’d hoped. Santa Cruz is especially cool.