FF3 anyone?

[Travis Newbury]

Nick. Stop. It's a trap! I can feel Travis setting it, fiddling with the
springs and stuff.

You are way too into conspiracy theory's dorayme.

I just find the new zoom to be beneficial on Flash microfont sites and
fixed width sites where you need to zoom the text size a little
without breaking the site. To me, this is a HUGE usability feature.
It potentially allows a visitor to use sites they could not use
before. I am just asking if others agree, and if not, why. I am not
arguing (nor do I care to) if flash is good or evil, and which is
better fixed width or flexible. That information is irrelivant to the
question in hand.

Sorry to disappoint you if you thought there is a trap somewhere in
all that.

 

[Bergamot]

Maybe it is because I am not what I would classify as
"vision impaired" (from your text I am assuming you are), but rather I
need a little assistance from larger fonts every now and then.

That's fine, and there may well be more of your type than there are of
mine out there. Just don't promote page zoom as a great accessibility
feature for "vision impaired" users, coz it isn't. If you really had a
vision impairment, you'd understand the difference better.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Not everyone cares about maintaining some dee-ziner's pixel-perfect
vision of things. Personally, I don't see page zoom as plus feature. I'd
rather just have zoomed text, and can get that already with the minimum
font-size pref. That can screw up inflexibly designed sites the same as
text zoom. So no benefit there.

Agree, but for those flash oriented designers it might be good...

Mostly, I hate the resulting horizontal scrolling zoomed pages
invariably end up with. Being forced to pan a page to read it does not
sound like good usability to me.

Agree. Good thing FF3 does have a toggle View > Zoom > Zoom Text Only to
put it back in good ol' 2.x mode...

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Travis Newbury

So, anyone have some comments on how this bad boy handles things?
Seems ok to me, and the extensions I use seem to be working (web
developer, Google, Download helper, download status bar, fire FTP, IE
tab)

Be careful out there - http://secunia.com/advisories/30761/

 

[Travis Newbury]

Riiiiiiight...  There exists no website that has unique content not
duplicated elsewhere with a better layout.  Every website has an
alternative site that is more accommodating to your browsing
environment, and thus no improvements to your browsing environment
will ever be required.

I have been saying this for years, and this is EXACTLY why I believe
that if I (some company) wants to make a site that is not usable for
everyone in the universe (for what ever reason), that is is ok,
because someone will fill the gap for those that can not (or don't
want) to see the page. You are absolutely correct.

On a side note, do you really want to have the line:  "and I am a
fairly good microcontroller assembly-language programmer." in your
online resume? Fairly good? I don't want someone that is "fairly
good", at the least I want someone good.... Just a thought.  

 

[Bergamot]

Every website has an
alternative site that is more accommodating to your browsing
environment, and thus no improvements to your browsing environment
will ever be required.

Now that's a bogus statement.

Mr Newbury pronounced that page zoom was a boon to vision impaired
folks, and I was illustrating that it's not quite the
best-thing-since-sliced-bread kind of feature he proclaimed it to be,
*especially* to those with a real vision impairment.

Overall, Firefox hasn't been all that friendly to those of us who need
some accessibility features. I haven't tried Fx3 yet, but I don't have
high hopes it will have tolerable keyboard usability. I've always
thought it very clumsy to use sans mouse. :-\

 

[Bergamot]

Try surfing the web with a 3840x2400 (QUXGA-W) monitor sometime.

Not in the budget. Care to buy one for me?

 

[Nik Coughlin]

Nick. Stop. It's a trap! I can feel Travis setting it, fiddling with the
springs and stuff.

Haha. Yeah I do think that having full zoom is good Travis. Mainly because
I used to sometimes fire Opera up specifically so that I could resize a page
(as you say, generally Flash), now I can do it from within my primary
browser. I'm liking FF3 a lot better now that I've applied the FF2 theme to
it though.

 

[Travis Newbury]

Yes, and perhaps Travis makes his other questionable claims in order to
lend weight to his claim about his penis.

weighing my penis... hmmmm interesting concept...

 

[Travis Newbury]

Mr Newbury pronounced that page zoom was a boon to vision impaired
folks, and I was illustrating that it's not quite the
best-thing-since-sliced-bread kind of feature he proclaimed it to be,
*especially* to those with a real vision impairment.

Well, I did not herald it as the second coming, I do think it is a
benefit to people like me that need a little boost every now and
then. And I think it is a big help with those that have a problem
with Flash microfont sites.

Overall, Firefox hasn't been all that friendly to those of us who need
some accessibility features.

Has anyone been friendly? Sounds like the vision impaired crowd needs
something between a reader and a browser. I am guessing there is not
a viable market for such an animal or someone would be making one.

 

[Travis Newbury]

Not in the budget. Care to buy one for me?

Got 2 of those bad boys (ViewSonic). Thank you Siemens...

 

[dorayme]

Hey! This is the nicer, kinder Travis...

I meant it literally, when you talk like that, rays come out of your
posts and damage me. I have ordered special glasses already.

 

[dorayme]

You are way too into conspiracy theory's dorayme.

I just find the new zoom to be beneficial on Flash microfont sites and
fixed width sites where you need to zoom the text size a little
without breaking the site. To me, this is a HUGE usability feature.
It potentially allows a visitor to use sites they could not use
before. I am just asking if others agree, and if not, why. I am not
arguing (nor do I care to) if flash is good or evil, and which is
better fixed width or flexible. That information is irrelivant to the
question in hand.

Sorry to disappoint you if you thought there is a trap somewhere in
all that.

Remember when - all those years back - you told me to lighten up?

Lets get heavier though now: give us some examples of sites that break
up so badly that they are unusable without zoom. Lets talk turkey, not
vague idealistic.

 

[dorayme]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Travis Newbury


Be careful out there - http://secunia.com/advisories/30761/

That's what the sergeant in Hill Street Blues used to say to the plods
at the start of every episode's 'shift briefing session'

 

[dorayme]

Now that's a bogus statement.

No, it is not a sarcasm-detector by-pass that Bergamot has had recently.

...I haven't tried Fx3 yet, but I don't have
high hopes it will have tolerable keyboard usability.

I wonder when Bergamot ever had high hopes for anything at all?

 

[dorayme]

Sounds like the vision impaired crowd needs
something between a reader and a browser.

It sounds like they need authors to be a bit more thoughtful in the
design of their websites. When I become ruler of the world, any browser
feature that masks bad design will be outlawed.

 

[Bergamot]

Has anyone been friendly?

Seamonkey is the best I've found so far. I never cared for Opera myself,
but it has some good features along accessibility lines, too.

Sounds like the vision impaired crowd needs
something between a reader and a browser.

I don't want or need a reader, but I do need something that provides
large size text, and good keyboard navigation. Firefox fails badly on
the keyboard end.

 

[dorayme]

In that case you should change your name to don'trayme...

Boom boom!

 

[Travis Newbury]

Lets get heavier though now: give us some examples of sites that break
up so badly that they are unusable without zoom. Lets talk turkey, not
vague idealistic.

I don't know of any, Berg should be able to provide an example of a
page that he would not use becuase it falls apart when you zoom the
text.

 

[Travis Newbury]

In that case you should change your name to don'trayme...

Ba-da-bing...