Menu Control
Yahoo has a pretty neat menu control example recently added to their ever growing YUI Library. The really interesting part isn’t the scripts functionality, which is very well executed and explained, but the paragraph at the bottom of the page:
“Since the Menu code provides its own, desktop-like keyboard functionality when JavaScript is enabled, having every MenuItem label in the browser’s default tab order can be a nuisance to users of screen readers.”
This is an about-face for my personal logic when approaching navigation design for a web page. At first, I felt the need to wave the “need for graceful degradation of web sites design” flag when I looked at the page source and saw no HTML outside of the html and body tags.
This struck me as a no-no first because what if one does not have JavaScript enabled? What if something, like a weather widget, prevents the JavaScript from functioning correctly? The user might be left with partial or unusable navigation. What then?
Well, you’ll get a simplified navigation scheme.
The example Yahoo demonstrates here may lack that simplified navigation but it does show forethought and the possibilities for improving the user experience of screen readers as well as anyone else living a slightly more secure and private life of JavaScript-less web browsing.
If you are not sure what I am taking about, you can disable JavaScript (For Safari > Preferences > Security and uncheck the “Enable JavaScript” box) and take some time to surf the web and see difference in your user experience.
You might not even see a difference for many site, but the site owners will. Possibly the most valuable JavaScript running on many sites these days which comes in the form of tracking scripts feeding information back in real-time.
Open Directory and .htpasswd
Fascinating! I worked on a project* once that involved a complete rewrite of the command-line utility passwd in order to keep a number of system services including a .htpasswd file in sync with users account passwords. Mac OS X Hints noted this is made simple with Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) and Open Directory.
Virtualized Xserver
Media Temple labs has a private beta for what it’s calling Xserve-Virtual . This system has been added quickly added to my MT wish list along with the Django GridContainer which, perhaps I wont need if I move over to a full-on-mirror of my development environment using a virtual OS X Server.
A virtual Mac OS X Leopard Server running on a fully loaded cluster of Xserves virtualized using Parallels Server . I want one, … or three, … yeah that should be enough …. maybe four, for symmetry.
Fedora 9 root password mismatch resolution
Having started my journey down the command-line with Fedora 3, I was excited to try out Fedora 9. The install completed with ease (the first time around) but once I logged onto the system and attempted to configure some of the system settings, my root password didn’t work.
Why? CAPS LOCK bit was set by default during the install process making a different root password.