Category Archives: Browsers

Are browser-updates a thing of the past?

Chrome stats during the upgrade from three to four, they switch between February and March.

I noticed something in the browser stats before I noticed it on my laptop - Google's Chrome doesn't ask you about updates. I knew, almost subconsciously, that there was a Google updater programme running. However, I didn't realise the impact it could have on web development, and potentially users as well.

Google Chrome market share

I've seen a few articles recently about Google's Chrome browser market share, some sites seem to have had quite a lot of visits from people using Chrome, which then fell off again. However, these sort of stats are probably missing the point, what sites is it that people are most likely to use Chrome on?

Font-based layouts becoming fashionable?

Layouts are becoming an issue again. The (browser) landscape is changing, as are the fashion in layouts, but not really in unison. I can understand giving a greater weight towards design aspects, and maintaining the grid, however, I find the timing curious, as these changes seem likely to be obsolete soon.

CMS editable Flash

The Defacto-CMS website carousel widget.

With all the fuss over AJAX and Flash accessibility you get, I thought it might be worth outlining the process we used to create a Flash/AJAX widget and highlight one of the advantages you get with this method. It also means that the use of Flash has no impact on your Search Engine Optimisation.

Tabindex for keyboard accessibility

Steve Falkner did a good presentation to the WSG last week, outlining how and why AJAX can work with screen readers. One tiny little point I wanted to pick up on was whether it was a waste of time to update AJAX content if you've attached an event to an element that isn't a link or form control.

Closing the gap – User Agent improvements

screen shot from an accessibility extension.

Following up on the responsibilities in accessibility, some of the most critical gaps at the moment are on the User Agent (UA) end. This post highlights the things I think would make the most difference to people's experience of accessibility on the web.

Responsibilities in accessibility

The W3C has defined what to do for accessibility at each 'end' (i.e. client side or web site site), but there is quite a lot of overlap, and scant advice on who should be responsible for what. I'm going to try and show who's responsible now, and where things should go.

Perceptions of page loading speed

It is fairly amusing when people (clients or otherwise) demand that a page load in under x seconds (where 'x' varies by which guru article they were reading). This hit home today when David Hyatt (lead developer of Safari) highlighted people's mis-perceptions.

Firefox 3 accessibility

I've noticed that the Mozilla org has been doing quite a bit on accessibility, from working with IBM on Rich-apps accessibility, to funding people to make Firefox accessible with VoiceOver. Mark Pilgrim reports that Firefox 3 will include the option to block meta-redirects.

Mobile GMail

I've recently moved to using GMail as my primary interface, and I noticed a new mobile feature. The mobile access for GMail is much better than the one I installed on my hosting, which frankly was unusable on my phone despite an excellent mobile browser. Then I tried the Symbian GMail client.