Though it is not a joke that we’re moving to Denver it is funny to me that the move is so rapidly approaching, yet there’s some sense of make believe to the whole thing.
I can’t believe that I’m relocating to a place so far away, and I can’t imagine not getting up every week day and going into the office.
The office routine will have to change, but only in the sense that I won’t have a drive.
Every Monday through Friday I’m going to have to ‘go down the hall’ and work.
Speaking of which, work is getting a little complicated for me.
Our end users want bells and whistles, more features and more things like [insert something here. Almost anything, cow sounds, buttons that look like something else and new features we haven’t had time to implement yet].
I want to make sure that our application is accessible to handicapped users, I want to make sure that the code is up to standard (which it is not, and I’m spending a lot of time getting it there) and also make sure that it is optimized for use across dial-up connections.
The two ideas are almost at odds.
Almost.
Standards compliance does not mean that my code can’t do all of the tricks, it just means it does them in a way that most of the browsers will like and that it ‘dies gracefully’ when the browsers can’t handle the code I give them.
Accessibility doesn’t mean that the pages won’t look cool, it just means that tab works to get you where you want to go, that JavaScript doesn’t obfuscate something and that people can adjust the fonts.
However, much of what makes the LookOut theme ‘look cool’ is non-compliant, not accessible and really not very friendly to anyone not using a mouse.
The LookOut theme requires Windows 98 or higher (it may run on Windows 95, but I haven’t tested it since I haven’t seen a Windows 95 machine in years), it is inaccessible and people like it that way.
People being the ones reviewing the software.
I used to have the mindset that “handicaps don’t use the web.”
I was wrong and there’s no reason that anyone should think that.
I used to also think that standards were what the different browsers had and so you had to write code that would meet the standards of the browsers.
I’ve learned that those things I once believed are not true.
We’ll see what sorts of challenges I come across trying to make WorldClient a better application because of good code and because of good bells and whistles.
Who knows, I could become a better coder through all of this.
Anyway, we’re nearing the end of our stay here in Texas and so we’ll sojourn in Colorado for a while – I’ll keep you posted as to how things are going.
Resting in Him,
Randy “Code Guy” Peterman
