InformAction Forums

Sure is but unfortunately is not to all.

Identities Infinite wrote:Sure is but unfortunately is not to all.

That was the point I was trying to make without being on the nose with it. It is generally a good rule to block them but per personal need or use or necessity, vet it and go for it.

Identities Infinite wrote:Sure is but unfortunately is not to all.

Well, I preach to whoever will listen. [smile]

To further my understanding of JAWS and accessibility, is it difficult for you to use the "quote" button, to quote the post that you are replying to? It's not a big deal, but when posts or threads get very long, sometimes it helps readers to understand exactly which previous statement is being replied to.

Also, do you have voice recognition technology, in which you can speak into a microphone, and the robot will type the words for you, probably repeating them back so that you can ensure it understood you correctly?

One tool that may be helpful is Texter, if the tool itself has sufficient accessibility. You can create your own custom hotstrings, which when typed will produce a much longer string that you specify. For example, in mine, I created the hotstring a d d r. When I type those letters and hit "enter", my full name, address, phone, and fax numbers are typed on the page. This is very convenient in signing business e-mails, obviously.

One more example only: Here at the forum, if I want to quote a post in sections, then rather than using the Compose box's top toolbar, I type the letter q + enter, which produces the opening quote tag. At the point where I want to break off the quote, I type q w enter, and the closing quote tag is automatically typed. Similarly for the U R L tags.

If this would be of use to you, I can point you to the freeware tool, and offer any assistance in using it. It is a native install, not a browser add-on, which is why it works in word documents or anywhere else on your machine, not just in the browser. It is only about one megabyte in size, and requires very little configuration.

That is item 4 in a list of 4 links. Why do people always seem to call links buttons? I usually do not use it because I feel like I am repeating everything people can read themselves.

I have nothing but the internal microphone integrated in the internal IDT sound card and the what-you-hear integrated in the external Sound Blaster X-Fi Notebook. I like anything that simplifies anything and if I can have something type the BBcode for me instead of typing it myself I will try it.

Identities Infinite wrote:Why do people always seem to call links buttons?

Because there is a distinct visual difference between an HTML hyperlink, which is in text, either the actual U R L or the name given to the hotlink, and a visual style element that performs a function. In this case, that function is not merely to link to the post in question, but to put it in the compose box of your reply, along with the identity of the poster you are quoting, and a different visual appearance. Here, material in quote tags appears on a light tan background, versus light blue or light aqua for the original posts. This sets aside the quote from the reply. If I quote four sections of your post, and reply to each individually, it is immediately evident from the color-change which are your quotes and which are my replies. I assume that JAWS just reads, "quote equals Identities Infinite", or something similar?

At this forum, the quote and edit buttons in a post are rectangles with slightly rounded corners, with quote or edit in red letters on a white background. There are other buttons, such as an inverted triangle with an exclamation mark. Hovering the mouse shows the tooltip, "Report this post". This is how users can alert moderators of a post that is spam, disrespectful, obscene, etc.

So, the visual appearance of these is very different from a standard hyperlink, even though a U R L and an action mode, like edit or quote, does appear in the lower left of the browser if the mouse is hovered. That is why the term "buttons" is used. There are many other examples.

Identities Infinite wrote: I usually do not use it because I feel like I am repeating everything people can read themselves.

True, but where? I have seen topics run to double-digit number of pages, and 250 or more replies, often by a dozen different posters. The topic here,
NoScript Icon disappears after updating from Fx 3.x to Fx 4+, has six pages, 86 replies, and fifteen thousand views. Many individual posters join in as they encounter this problem. I might be replying to a post that is two pages earlier. It is much more convenient for all users to have that quote than to go searching through the thread for it. In short threads, with only two posters, it doesn't make much difference. However, if it is inconvenient for you, don't worry about it.

I have nothing but the internal microphone integrated in the internal IDT sound card and the what-you-hear integrated in the external Sound Blaster X-Fi Notebook.

So, no voice recognition. No capability to dictate to the machine and have it type. Perhaps look into acquiring that? Imagine the convenience. I don't know much about the present state of the art or the expense, though.

I like anything that simplifies anything and if I can have something type the BBcode for me instead of typing it myself I will try it.

The TEXTER home page is here. It goes beyond what I said. It can execute simple scripting commands that you program, which may make it easier to move around a page or to do other actions. Check it out.

I did not know about the visual styling on the links. I was referring specifically to the coding. I just viewed the source and there are <a tag followed by the anchor [href] attribute. I noticed image stuff in there too but there is different coding for buttons [just view the log-in page]. Not to start a feud or anything but those are visually-styled links. Coincidentally, I have been reading on my HTML lately and remember reading how buttons are coded.

Identities Infinite wrote:I did not know about the visual styling on the links. I was referring specifically to the coding. I just viewed the source and there are <a tag followed by the anchor [href] attribute. I noticed image stuff in there too but there is different coding for buttons [just view the log-in page]. Not to start a feud or anything but those are visually-styled links. Coincidentally, I have been reading on my HTML lately and remember reading how buttons are coded.

So "button" is a colloquialism that may not be techincally exact. Radio buttons are just that - a round buttonhole into which you insert a dot when you click.
In common usage, any stylized item that causes an action is often referred to as a button.

The stylization is not in the page source itself. Open JSView and click the Style Sheets tab. Open
http://forums.informaction.com/style.php?id=3&lang=en and search for "quote block".
There, you will find the colors, borders, font sizes, etc. of these elements defined.

Most sites these days make use of .css, or cascading style sheets, or at least, some style sheet that is called by the page. This lets the developer change the page contents, or users to change it by posting, without having to mess with the predefined style of it. Separating the two: that which may change frequently, and those attributes that the webmaster would like to remain constant, such as default fonts in various locations, style of "buttons' or whatever, logo, etc., etc.

Thanks for making me understand the colloquialism. Do people see what they call buttons are at times technically links or does the on-screen presentation not alert them to such things? I saw that styling code. I thought all those pages ended with .css.

Although BUTTON is a built-in tag and input element of HTML, you can actually create a button created entirely of an image or a custom CSS and NEVER ever even tap into the input tag, sub-section button segment at all. In fact in the early days of CSS, they would use an actual button and try to CSS its look but then most people decided to go away from it and just use pure CSS drawn buttons and avoid the input tag altogether. Just my two cents to muddy the waters a bit more

I did not know that. I thought HTML and JavaScript were the only ways. I thought CSS was only for visual styling and could not create activatable elements. I strongly hate buttons or anything else created in JavaScript to say the utmost least. If anything everything should be coded in HTML even if the page must be re-loaded. Some proxies as they should actively forbid JavaScript and it is completely senseless to make a clickable element in JavaScript only to not be able to use it 100% of the time.

Correct, I should have elaborated a bit. I am talking about actually creating a non-standard button, either images (like paypal does) or pure css (like facebook does) and so on. You still need evenlisteners and action methods which can be created often with JS but can also hook into the normally allowed and accepted button architecture of the HTML. Did that help clarify what I meant?

Yes, yes it did. It did not sound right to me for a minute.

Identities Infinite wrote:Thanks for making me understand the colloquialism. Do people see what they call buttons are at times technically links or does the on-screen presentation not alert them to such things?

A user who sees the quote button, edit button, etc. knows that clicking it will produce a certain action, which is probably all that they care about.

I never even thought about the fact that they are in fact links, visibly displayed in lower left onmouseover, until you brought it up. Even the so-called smiley faces or emoticons, if you know those terms, have a U R L where the corresponding image is stored and called, then its symbolic code is placed in the compose box. On preview or post, the symbolic code calls the image and displays it as an image.

The buttons below the compose box, "save draft", "preview", and "submit" (and "load draft", if one has been saved), do NOT show URLs. So they are actual buttons in the literal sense, as defined in the source code for, say, "preview" Note that "class" equals "button1". So I think that I am on safe ground in calling those buttons.

Also, those work without scripting enabled, even though the code looks script-ish. But disabling scripting here does in fact disable the smilies and the BBC tag tools - or, uh, "buttons" - such as quote, code, list, URL, and others. One must then write the tags manually -- or with Texter [smile].

Correct, they are buttons and the HTML code clearly depicts those as such. I also discern buttons from links because JAWS has different navigation keys: r for radio buttons, b for buttons and f for form fields which includes all types of boxes, buttons and editable fields. Adding Shift moves backwards respectively. I can change all these but there is no need. What really frustrates me is when a button or form field is unlabelled. JAWS favours the label field or I can have it speak the alt attribute, title or onmouseover I think just as I can a link. Most form fields have the label attribute set so there is no need for anything else just as most links have the alt attribute set. I think people should be more cognisant of what is what even if they do not care [which may or may not be an oxymoron].

It has been a long-standing pet peeve of mine when site designers do not include alt tags with their images. I tend to block a lot of unnecessary images, like the folder icons in Yahoo Mail for example. I don't like clutter, although clearly that is a minority viewpoint these days, as we have discussed elsewhere.

In some cases, I'd like to know quickly what the image is, so no alt tag is annoying.

Another related case: The science- and tech-oriented web comic, www.xkcd.com, has an additional hidden comment or afterthought as well as the words the characters speak. (Side note: The characters' words are in cartoon balloons, which are probably images. Can JAWS read "images" of text such as those?) Back on topic: This extra comment appears only as a tooltip onmouseover of the panel, but it does NOT stay visible for more than a few seconds, even if one keeps the mouse there. If the comment is short, no problem. But sometimes, it is too long to read in the few seconds that it is visible, or even exceeds the size of the tooltip. So I would search the source code for the alt tag that corresponded. What a pain.

Then he started producing a version optimized for small mobile devices. Here, this afterthought or additional joke line is a solid, permanent text element in a box. So I used that instead, m.xkcd.com.

Ha! I just went to the site, and could not reproduce the disappearing-tooltip issue. He must have had feedback and fixed to to remain static so long as the mouse pointer remains there. Or maybe he counted the number of "mobile-version" hits, realized that it was grossly disproportional, and figured out that users like me were using it even from full-sized screens. And maybe he figured out why.

Anyway, it works, and yes, alt tags should be required in good design.