I have to wonder, was there really a need to an invent an all-digital touchscreen soda machine? Even if there was, the following screenshot taken from a local mall offers very little solace to the thirsty consumer:
I attempted to give a Head First style speech at the Toastmasters humorous speech competition. As a moderator at JavaRanch, it seemed fitting to put a transcript of one iteration online. While it changes a bit each time I give it, this is the idea.. Shown here with a bit of organization.
This was given to a largely non-technical audience. For the more technical readers here, ARIA actually has four levels: off, polite, assertive and rude. This article on ARIA is an excellent read. My audience tells me the concepts were memorable and the speech was funny. So I guess I accomplished my goal. I did win at my club and get to go on to the next level. Which gives me the chance to give this speech in front of people I don’t know.
You no longer have to imagine the sock puppets :). I had two – one for the browser and one (with glasses) for the screenreader.
Anyway, here we go:
Introduction
Me: When you think of technology, do you think of humor? I do. My goal is to teach you about a technical topic called ARIA – Accessible Rich Internet Applications. Boring? Just you wait. I brought sock puppets.
Welcome the characters
Me: We all know what a browser is. We use it every day to browse the web. I’ll let you imagine that this sock puppet is IE 7. You may not know what a screenreader is. Imagine you can’t see the screen. What does our browser friend here look like? Well, the screenreader reads the words in the browser to you. The glasses remind us of reading so it will be easy to remember that this guy is the screenreader. Lets listen in on how things worked up until now.
Scenario 1 – Before ARIA
Browser: I’m IE 7. Who are you?
Screenreader: I’m a screenreader product called Jaws.
Browser: Ah! A shark! And I can’t see my users! A shark ate my users!
Screenreader: Stop being so dramatic. Your user is write here – safe and sound. I help your user.
Browser: My user is just find without your help.
Screenreader: Want to be IE 7? Watch what happens when a blind or vision impaired users tries to fill out a form without a standard called ARIA.
Browser: I’ll set the scene. It was a dark and stormy night.
Screenreader: Get on with it. I can’t read to the user until you get around to rendering the page.
Browser: Fine. Here’s your page.
Screenreader: Ok. User? I’ve got some questions on a form for you. <hum as they go back and forth>
Browser: Uh oh. The user entered a bad country. I know because I checked with the website while the user was filling out the form. I know! I’ll put a big red message on the screen. Surely the user will see that.
Screenreader: <back to humming>. Submit. My masterpiece. All done now – time for a nap.
Browser: Wait a minute! The country is still invalid. Jaws – can sharks swim with their eyes close? You’re falling asleep on the job. I told you there was a message.
Screenreader: Did not! You place a secret message and didn’t tell me it was there. That’s like putting a note in a dictionary in a basement in Europe and claiming I should have seen it.
Browser/ Screenreader: Did not! Did too! Did not! Did too!
Me: All right guys. Break it up. Luckily this is a thing of the past. Let’s upgrade to IE 8 and see how it looks now. Ready IE 8?
Scenario 2 – Urgent Message with ARIA
Browser: Yes! I’m all bright, shiny, new and upgraded. My father was IE 7. Parents are so backwards! I’ll set the scene. It was a dark and stormy night.
Screenreader: Just like you father. Get on with it.
Browser: Where’s the fire? Here’s your page.
Screenreader: <hum to user while fill out form>
Browser: Uh oh. The website says we can’t ship a book to North Korea. I know! I’ll set the rude ARIA property to tell the user.
Screenreader: I see the rube property is set. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! I must tell the king, I mean the user. User – Abort! Abort! Urgent message – no books can go to North Korea.
Screenreader: Browser, that was a close one. But we save the day – and the user – thanks to ARIA. Remember what that stands for?
Browser: Yeah. Accessible rich internet applications. Accessible. That would be you screenreader – reading to the user. Internet Application. That’s a website where we can fill out forms. And rich. That must mean the website has a pot o’gold.
Screenreader: Not quite. Rich means dynamic and interactive. Like gmail. You can do things without reloading the whole page.
Interlude
Me: As you can see, IE 8 support is much better than IE 7. But does this mean we have to interrupt the user for ever little thing. Seems distracting. T-O-P- Wait! I have something unimportant to tell you. ! Let’s watch. Browser?
Scenario 3 – Informational Message with ARIA
Browser: I’ll set the scene. It was a dark and stormy night.
Screenreader:Oh for crying out loud! Can’t we skip that prt?
Browser: Fine. Here’s your page already.
Screenreader: <hum while fill out form>
Browser: Hmm. The website says that city and zip code don’t match. Probably a typo, but I should tell the user. I’ll set the polite ARIA property.
Screenreader: Interesting. I see the polite property has a message. I’ll wait for a good time to tell the user. <hum more>. Perfect. User, while you are between fields, can you check this? Oh, it’s wrong? I see. Good, we get to fix our mistake.
Browser: That was nice and polite of you.
Conclusion
You came to hear a funny speech. You learned what ARIA – accessible rich internet applications are all about. Without even feeling like you were learning. My motivation for doing this was the Head First series of books which often teaches through humor, dialog and personification. Remember ARIA may be rude or polite, but always helpful. Just like Head First.
[edited to add sock puppet picture]
There’s been a growing number of users claiming have issues installing Apple’s new Snow Leopard operating system that was released yesterday, and as I was one of those users, I thought I’d share my experience. I purchased the Family pack of Snow Leopard to install on 3 Mac’s in my home, all Intel-based, relatively new computers. Snow Leopard installed fine on two of the computers, but the third computer, an early 2009 Unibody MacBook, took all day. This is the story of that MacBook installation.
Attempt #1: The never-ending boot screen
First, I installed Snow Leopard over the existing 10.5 system and everything seemed to go fine. The MacBook finished the installation and afterward restarted. At which point the following screen “loading” appeared on reboot and stayed for over an hour:
I waited and I waited. Finally, I decided to shutdown and restart the computer only to see this screen again. I waited and I waited again, another hour passed, no change. At this point I decided to call Apple. I paid for AppleCare, after all.
The Apple Store was booked up for appointments for 4 days. The phone support was actually decent and they told me try a number of things such as resetting the PRAM (hold down command-option-p-r on bootup), pulling out the battery, etc. They also instructed me to boot from the install DVD and run Disk Utility to check for errors. Unfortunately, no errors on the hard drive came up. Even attempting to start in safe mode (hold shift on bootup) left me with the screen above. At this point the only logical choice that the AppleCare representative and I could think of was to boot off the install DVD and reinstall. So they wished me luck and we said our goodbyes.
Attempt #2: I don’t need no stinking input device
Since booting off the install DVD was possible, I ran the install again. Fast forward another hour, and the computer asked to be restarted at the end of installation. Holding my breadth, I pressed the restart the key. Patiently I waited as the previous “loading” appeared, but with some luck, it disappeared and the screen turned blue. Snow Leopard was finally starting! A prompt came up showing my username and asking for my password – it had saved my account settings! (my username, anyway) Then, as I moved my mouse toward the blinking cursor I noticed something odd. My mouse wouldn’t move. In fact, my keyboard was not responding either. Both the built-in MacBook keyboard and mouse were completely non-responsive.
Despite being tempted to throw the computer out a window, I went through the usual recovery ideas: plug in a USB mouse/keyboard, restart in safe mode, reset the PRAM, etc. None of them worked. The external USB devices were as inactive as the built-in ones. Safe mode had the same problem as regular mode, with no response from the built-in devices. Resetting the PRAM, even pulling the battery… no change.
At that point, I called AppleCare again. They were pleased that the ‘previous solution’ had ‘resolved’ the issue and requested I close the AppleCare incident and open a new one. Not really interested in their paperwork and increasing their ‘success’ statistics, I obliged. Since I was able to boot from the install DVD with an active keyboard and mouse, they determined it was not a hardware problem and it must be software.
The only solution they offered me, though, was to format the hard drive completely and reinstall a third time. I suggested doing one more installation on top of the existing system in order to preserve all of my settings, to which the representative responded, and I’ll never forget this, “Reformatting the drive is your best bet. Reinstalling a third time on the existing system is not likely to fix the issue, although I didn’t expect reinstalling a second time to do too much”.
Attempt #3: Success
Against the opinion of the AppleCare representative, I decided to do one more install off the DVD without formatting the hard drive. Before I’m ready to wipe a disc, I like to know I’ve accomplished all possible courses of action. And the result? All issues resolved. For whatever reason, Snow Leopard required 3 installations to work on this MacBook.
Aftermath: Ring! Ring! Doesn’t Apple know it’s 10pm?
While all this was going on, I detailed my experience as it happened on Apple’s Discussion Forum, hoping someone might have a good suggestion. As I saw in the responses, others experienced the infinite boot screen as well as the keyboard/mouse failures. Fast forward to 10pm later that night, when Apple representatives called me personally. Not so much to see how I was doing, but saying they had seen my posts on the forums and were eager to access my log and system files. While they had contacted a number of people with these types of issues, I was one of the few (perhaps only) one they could find who hadn’t yet formatted their harddrive. In other words, the logs were still fresh.
I offered up my install logs, somewhat truncated to the last install, in the hopes of isolating and resolving these issues for the community. But before I got off the phone with the representative, I did get one last laugh. I indicated that, had the third install failed, I planned to wipe the hard drive and reinstall. The reason being, “Well, if three install attempts failed, it’s never going to work”. He responded “I see no reason you could not keep reinstalling indefinitely!”. Apparently, Apple representatives have a lot more time on their hands than me.
UPDATE: It appears I am far from alone in having issues: Information Week: Snow Leopard Causes ‘Spinning Wheel Of Death’