Sunday, January 28th, 2007

It appears I have’t posted anything in far too long. In light of any real content of my own, I’ll link to some I think you should look at:

Over at Yahoo Developer Network Theatre, they’ve put up a variety of video lectures on everything Javascripty. Obviously there’s a distinct bias to the YUI library, but some of the talks are rather good. I’d recommend them to anybody who’s got an interest in taking JS beyond the basics and isn’t sure where to start. The talks by Douglas Crockford (The JavaScript Programming Langauge, Advanced Javascript and The Dom: An inconvenient API) are well worth the watch, they contain one of the clearest explanations of the concept of Closure in JS I’ve yet seen, as well as discussion of various techniques and tricks of utility in larger JS-based apps.

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Wednesday, July 5th, 2006

Following on the theme of AJAX, Javascript and accessibility, Jeremy Keith has posted a nice rundown of Flashaid and its origins.

It’s a proof of concept idea, whereby you take advantage of the Flash plugin’s ability to detect screenreaders (more accurately whether a user is using assistive technology) and use that to substitute for the browser’s inability to do similar. It’s one of those elegant ideas you wish you’d thought of yourself. By detecting it automatically, you avoid the panic button approach’s reliance on the user.

While not a perfect solution, it’s another tool that can help make your spangly new AJAXified site available to more people, which can only be a good thing. It does beg the question though - if you’re relying on the Flash / Javascript integration, why not just build it as an accessible Flash application?

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