Web Standards, Accessibility and Other Stuff

So I’m finally on Twitter, the social network that informs users of what each other is doing. The web site and service is excellent; it’s very easy, fast, and it just works! There’s an excellent Twitter API for developers to have fun with. My Twitter account is dennisl.

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

Last week, my wife Carey and I went to a Cirque du Soleil show, KOOZA, in downtown San Jose. I gotta say, it was well worth the $90 per seat we paid! Incredible performances, great stage set, and great music. It’s just so spectacular and entertaining, and the clown acts are hilarious. It was longer than I expected too; about 2 1/2 hours including the 1/2 hour intermission. If you ever get a chance, go see Cirque du Soleil. This year the KOOZA show is coming to Hartford, Philly, Chicago, and Boston.

So at my day job at Yodlee, Inc., we’re hiring professionals for a variety of open job positions. If you or someone you know wants a good job at a solid company, please take a serious look. Basically, the company develops an online personal finance application, and it’s very cool to work in Silicon Valley, between San Francisco and San Jose (California, USA, of course). Anyone interested please use my name as a reference or contact me directly at “dlembree at NOSPAM yodlee dot NOSPAM com”.

• Senior Helpdesk Administrator
• Product Manager- Personal Finance
• Accounts Payable and GL Generalist
• Product Marketing Manager
• Professional Services Sales Manager

The fourth annual Internet User Experience (IUE 2008) conference will be held at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Michigan the week of March 31, 2008-April 3, 2008.

Organized by the Michigan Usability Professionals Association in collaboration with Washtenaw Community College’s Internet Professional Program, the User Experience Network (UXnet), Refresh Detroit, and other sponsors, the conference provides four days of presentations,panels, training sessions, and workshops on optimizing web sites so they are effective, compelling, and profitable for businesses.

Experts in search engine optimization, online communities, and user experience management will lead sessions at the conference. Tutorials and training are also available to attendees with 1/2 day and full-day workshops before and after the main conference days.

Discounts are available for Usability Professionals Association members and several other organizations, as well as full-time non-working students.

For more information and details on registration, visit the Michigan Usability Professionals Association or the IUE Conference web sites.

I love the Firefox browser, but I’ve had a couple issues with it lately. The first is image caching; Firefox was just not putting images in its cache; the graphics had to keep loading over and over! How obnoxious! After some tedious searching, I finally found the solution, which was a big relief:

1. Type ‘about:config’ in the address bar
2. Find ‘browser.cache.disk.enable’, right-click on it and choose ‘reset’.
3. Find ‘browser.cache.memory.enable’, right-click on it and choose ‘reset’.

The second issue is the use of Gmail with Firefox and Firebug, the awesome web developer add-on. The latest version of Gmail doesn’t like the Firebug/Firefox combination. C’mon, Google, how did that happen?! The solution (unfortunately) is to disable Firebug with the Gmail URL; while in Gmail, right-click on the Firebug icon and select “Disable Firebug for mail.google.com”.

Anyone else had these problems?

I’m a tennis fan, and I’ve sure been enjoying the Australian Open this year. Incredible matches; the level of play has been remarkable. Unfortunately, not many Americans made it to far into the tournament.

Yesterday, Novak Djokovic crushed world number one Roger Federer in the semi-finals. Glad for this as Federer just wins too much! And my favorite two players on the women’s side are in the finals, Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic.

Ana Ivanovic

Here are some recent blog articles that are a must read for any web developer (especially front-end coders).

• Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone - Microsoft folks are claiming that IE8 will be standards-compliant.
• A Preview of HTML 5 - Wazzup with the next version of HTML?
• Add and Remove Elements with JavaScript (reprise) - very powerful code for implementing your unobtrusive JavaScript.
• Secure and Accessible Contact Form v3 - from Mike Cherim’s Beast-Blog, a great standards-friendly and accessible contact form (using PHP).