Re: FrontPage for Mac..dont they make it?

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On 2005-12-04 11:49:43 -0800, Jim Gordon MVP <goldkey74@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:


The good news is that well over half the people do have high speed internet access. I do. My mom doesn't. I think it's unrealistic to expect the world to use PINE and LYNX as the standards for email and web browsing. The days of text only are over. Your advice about bandwidth, although sound, is probably not going to make a dent in today's web or the web of the future. I cringe whenever I visit a site that starts off with a flsh video that could have easily been done better in formatted HTML text instead.

Gee, I don't see 63% as well over half. Seventy-dfive percent, yes, but not 63%, and that is going up fractionally each month. I see it as a little over half, leaving a little less than half as still on dial-up. Glass half empty, half full, I suppose, but you'd better hope that those 40% (who have money to spend, BTW) are willing to waiting for your site to load. Most people are willing to wait no more than 10 seconds, and usually close to 7 seconds, unless they really, really want what you're selling. If they've never met you via your site, that is unlikely.

And blind people (who use computers, BTW) have money to spend too. They also deserve to have a web that they can utilize, which is why laws are in place now requiring government websites to be accessible under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Also, if the Federal government is a customer of yours, your site must be accesible. Providing a phone number that people can call is not considered adequate. Test readers for those unable to use a web site via normal means use Lynx and Lynx-type readers generally their basis for functionality.

What you will see is more and more of a push to accessibility, as disabled advocates make more inroads into accessibility for their charges. Since I'm disabled myself (in other ways), this is a subject near and dear to my heart. Since my husband is the primary webmaster for our county schools department, he is having to make their layers-deep site accessible.

I'm a designer who understands marketing. I look at disabled people and think, they still buy clothes, food, furniture, and all the other things abled people can buy. Why would I not try to accommodate that market? Why would I dismiss that source of income?

I cringe because the search engines can't read the site. Same thing with frames-based sites. Their only hope is lots of incoming links or a pay-per-click campaign.


Your comment about Google is not a good sign for the company. I just ran a quick test to see what Google reported for "red chevrolet camaro for sale." If Google had been using metadata properly it would have returned only red Chevrolet Camaros that are for sale and it would have transformed the results into some sort of nicely layed out report. Google failed to do that. It only returned pages with "red" "Chevrolet" "Camaro" and "used cars." This does not bode well for Google at all. Someone with some smarts could come up with a web search engine that uses meta data properly and their search would blow Google away. Maybe we should start our own search engine, do you think?

The downside of this is the people will begin doing what they were doing before, by keyword loading their metatags, among other things. It's a slippery slope to other black-hat techniques.


The best source I know of for info about the new Office XML formats is Brians blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/

The best general source for Microsoft technical information is the Microsoft Developer Network.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/

Beta versions of the upcoming Office 12 will be offered to the public shortly. You can sign up to be a preview tester here for Windows Office 12 (it's way too early to even think about the Mac version):
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx 

I do have a PC, too. I might do this.



-Jim 


--
Theresa Mesa
Mesa Design House
http://mesadesignhouse.com

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