While the wiki on this project is being used for software testing, we can also put it to use for other things. One is to prepare new or replacement pages for the existing BOINC documentation, either for the Unofficial BOINC wiki or for the official Berkeley documentation.

A good place to start is at the beginning, on the first page a new user would see, or the first page an experienced user would jump into. I've taken a stab at such a page, but it's just a first draft and I would like to get feedback and suggestions from users with a wide range of experience with BOINC -- from newbies to seasoned veterans.

The page is [[Welcome to the BOINC Wiki]]. Any comments?

I have opened up the talk pages to anonymous contributions from the Internet, in case someone who is not a part of the crew wishes to comment, though of course they are also welcome to join the crew.

____________
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

I like the look of the pages, but I wonder if the opening line on the front page should be modified slightly since we have multiple BOINC projects that are not exactly scientific research (e.g., BURP, Pirates, etc.).

I like the look of the pages, but I wonder if the opening line on the front page should be modified slightly since we have multiple BOINC projects that are not exactly scientific research (e.g., BURP, Pirates, etc.)

More seriously: on the front page I think we want to talk "in general" and not worry about details like the fact that some projects are not, strictly speaking, research. That can be stated on a page deeper in.

On the other hand, it occured to me that there are indeed a fair number of projects which are doing research in mathematics, not science, so I have altered the first sentence to reflect that.

So thanks for making me think more about that.

I have added more to the page - recent news and an explicit link to recent changes, and a link to the How-To guide. Keep in mind that this is still just a draft.

____________
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

Just FYI...

I noticed an interesting quirk when accessing the new page. If I use the link above to go there from this message board, I don't have any of the editing tabs normally seen in the Wiki, and I have both a 'login' and 'logout' link. However, going in from the glossary (e.g., through recent changes) works as normal. An artifact of how you have opened the page up to anonymous contributions?

Edit: This also appears to be the case only the first time the page is accessed via the message board link. After that, it appears to recognize a logged-in user as normal.

Just FYI...

I noticed an interesting quirk when accessing the new page. If I use the link above to go there from this message board, I don't have any of the editing tabs normally seen in the Wiki, and I have both a 'login' and 'logout' link. However, going in from the glossary (e.g., through recent changes) works as normal. An artifact of how you have opened the page up to anonymous contributions?

Edit: This also appears to be the case only the first time the page is accessed via the message board link. After that, it appears to recognize a logged-in user as normal.

I also noticed that if I went to the page from the link in the forum I was not logged in. However by clicking on a link to another pirate wiki page and then hitting the back button I was logged in.
____________
BOINC WIKI

Dirty John Rackham

On the other hand, it occured to me that there are indeed a fair number of projects which are doing research in mathematics, not science, so I have altered the first sentence to reflect that.

So that everyone knows, Eric (Captian Wormholio) has invited me to comment on the new wiki and bring along ideas for the BOINC project front-end code - mainly from a front-end code (markup ((X)HTML), CSS, JavaScript etc.), accessibility, and usability point of view. So I'll be commenting on a whole bunch of things.

Suggestion for this forum: in each post there's a "reply to THIS post" link

obviously as a sighted person the "THIS" is emphasised, however, captialisation isn't the correct way to do it.
A better way would be using (hopefully I can enter straight HTML in here)

Glossary Comments:

"glossary" links in the header of non-wiki pages are missing a trailing slash ("/"):

another bug for this forum, it seems to have eaten my HTML code

I also noticed that if I went to the page from the link in the forum I was not logged in. However by clicking on a link to another pirate wiki page and then hitting the back button I was logged in.

Glossary Comments:

"glossary" links in the header of non-wiki pages are missing a trailing slash ("/"):

<a href="/glossary">Glossary</a>

to avoid an extra redirect (which costs bandwidth for both user and server, server resources to process the additional request & waiting time for the user) to /glossary/ they should be:

<a href="/glossary/">Glossary</a>

obviously this should applied to any link to the glossary

Call it a "Glossary" or "Knowledge Base" not a "wiki" most users don't know or care what a wiki is, but qutie a few know what a "knowledge base" is, and most can work it out

another bug for this forum, it seems to have eaten my HTML code

Lee Carre wrote:

"glossary" links in the header of non-wiki pages are missing a trailing slash ("/"):

Glossary

to avoid an extra redirect (which costs bandwidth for both user and server, server resources to process the additional request & waiting time for the user) to /glossary/ they should be:

Glossary

obviously this should applied to any link to the glossary

I'm not sure that is an issue for this server, but I added the extra slash.

Call it a "Glossary" or "Knowledge Base" not a "wiki" most users don't know or care what a wiki is, but qutie a few know what a "knowledge base" is, and most can work it out

Agreed. I need a good functional name for this on the I2U2 site as well. I picked "glossary" instead of "wiki" for this reason, but I'm finding that "glossary" is not very accurate, and I'm not sure "Knowledge Base" is the best name either. I agree with the principle.

Lee Carré wrote:

another bug for this forum, it seems to have eaten my HTML code

Yes, it does that. It's annoying, but keeps things clean. We should find a better way to balance the two needs.

Perhaps an option to enable HTML in a post?
per-post obviously

More suggestions:

shorter URLs like wikipedia

validity of all pages. Validity alone doesn't equal best practices, but it's a good start. A good place to start would be to make the root (home) page valid HTML 4 strict

CSS:
if possible, put all the CSS in an external CSS file and have nice lean, efficient markup rather than loading a bunch of inline styling every time.
For the proposed boinc wiki replacement page, set

Lee Carre wrote:

Perhaps an option to enable HTML in a post?
per-post obviously

No. BBcode is used here specifically to make formatting available, but with stricter limitations than HTML. People can abuse HTML in postings too easily.

in the "navigation" (left column) the link to the "Pirates@Home" root page (home page) shouldn't be

<a href="/index.php">Pirates@Home</a>

which defeats caching, and assumes your default document is "index.php" - it should be

<a href="/">Pirates@Home</a>

more usability for the home page:

in the news section, remove the "click here for more information" links and make the headings the links to the full article, much more descriptive and semantic :)

actually, for improving home page front-end code; Eric, are you available via Skype at some point?
____________

in the news section, remove the "click here for more information" links and make the headings the links to the full article, much more descriptive and semantic

Lee Carre wrote:

in the news section, remove the "click here for more information" links and make the headings the links to the full article, much more descriptive and semantic.

I like the extra link to further information, though we could change the text to be just "read more...". This makes the distinction that this list is just a summary of the main points (headlines) and there is more information elsewhere. Making the title/headline itself a link is more compact, but also more subtle. I want to show the distinction.

• What do these links mean?
  
• Where do they go?
  
• Because they all have the same link text, do they both go to the same location?
  

Flow is important and i agree with your point on the basis that the majority of people (due to previous experience with poorly usable sites) don't know that a title should be a link.
There are other ways to indicate that there's more information; a common one being to use a "…" character at the end of the sample text to indicate it continues (one character which is 3 dots; similar, but having different meaning to "..." (3 "." characters)). Another way is to literally stating so such as by including "(continues in full article)" or something to that effect. Possibly with "full article" as an accessible link ("full article" doesn't tell you anything about the full version of the article on it's own).

To clarify, considering I may come across as rather direct, my only intention is to help and point out improvements. Not to make your site like all others, but to tweak your existing content and design to be more digestable by most users (via better accessibility/usability).

If you really want to keep the "more" links then I can advise on how to make them vastly more accessible, this will require editing the markup in serveral ways, I assume you have access to it?

I agree that news titles should be chosen carefully (I read the article you suggested over in the Unofficial BOINC wiki) but unfortunately not everybody who posts an article will choose a good title. Having a separate distinct link called "read more..." can drive home the point that there is more information available, even if the title is possibly confusing.

The point i was making is that "click here for more informatin" and "read more..." are virtually meaningless link phrases, rather than descriptive of their target.

Appologies for my rather long absense, other projects demanding my time/attention and all...

Lee wrote:

The point i was making is that "click here for more informatin" and "read more..." are virtually meaningless link phrases, rather than descriptive of their target.

I have to disagree. The existence of those links tells the reader that there are more details available on the topic than what is presented here.

The reader can choose to drill down deeper, or not. If the link is not there then it says "this is all there is".

Each item in the news feed has a title and a description. That can be enough to get the message across, without a link to any further details.

In contrast, if the title were a link to further information, one has to know this relationship (from previous experience). What if there is no link to further information. Is something broken?

I like having the explicit extra link if there are further details, though I've taken the opportunity to make those links smaller.

...Basically, make the heading a link (which i assume is an actual heading, rather than just big text) ...

Lee, welcome back.

I think it would help me understand the points you are making if you explained what you mean by "accessible". It seems like there may be two different issues: making the pages "better" for sighted users, and making the pages usable to those using screen readers. (And ideally one can find a way to make the pages work well for both.) I think I don't get whether you are talking about one or the other of these, or sometimes one or the other?

I will look for the fangs extension, thanks. It is always useful to have an example of what the output would look like to someone else.

____________
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

I seriously suggest trying the "fangs" extension in firefox to get a simulation of screen-reader output. Then you might see the problems I'm trying to illustrate.

Lee Carre wrote:

I seriously suggest trying the "fangs" extension in firefox to get a simulation of screen-reader output. Then you might see the problems I'm trying to illustrate.

I have not tried out the fangs extension, but I did get as far as looking at screenshot of Fangs, and I think this helped me understand what you are talking about.

It seems that the screen readers digest the page into separate parts, the text, the headings, and the links. So a link which would have an obvious purpose to a sighted person based on visual proximity and context is now left hanging by itself in a long list.

My first reaction is to think that this is a design problem with the screen reader software (or hardware)? Instead of having the screen reader say "link" whenever there is a link, it could say "link seven" to tell you that if you want to follow the link then find the 7th link in the list of them. Or there may be other ways to improve the functionality.

My next reaction is to now think about how we might make a page work for both sighted readers and those using this kind of screen reader. I wonder if it's possible to use CSS to present a modified version of the page which would be better for use via the screenreader.

I think seeing the example is a big help. Thanks.

Lee, welcome back.

I think it would help me understand the points you are making if you explained what you mean by "accessible".

It seems like there may be two different issues: making the pages "better" for sighted users, and making the pages usable to those using screen readers. (And ideally one can find a way to make the pages work well for both.) I think I don't get whether you are talking about one or the other of these, or sometimes one or the other?

I will look for the fangs extension, thanks. It is always useful to have an example of what the output would look like to someone else.

Accessibility is basically about trying to make pages "usable" by people who have some sort of impairment (most often visual considering that's the main form of output generally - eg deaf users can still read etc.).
The principal idea of accessibility (and making things "accessible") is that anything should be able to use your pages, be it people with different needs, different technology (eg different computer platforms/browsers or user agents in general; like search engine crawler bots).

Accessibility usually affects the way something is done/implemented at a technical level, an example; due to the fact that you can't, and shouldn't anyway, rely on javascript being available, the implications on how to achieve this require very different methods of writing JS compared to the "old school" ways.

...but if you're really insistent on "more" links then the suggestion I made in a previous post about accessible more links is one that uses full link text, then hides the full name with CSS (via a wrapped around the text following "read more..."

<a href="...">read more <span>about ...%full (descriptive) article name%...</span></a>

then with CSS you could make the following declaration:

a span {display:none}

So while the front page news articles still have links that say "More information...", the article title is actually appended within a span which CSS says should not be displayed. But when the link is extracted by the screen reader, ignoring that CSS, the link should be 'More information about "title of item"... '

Lee Carre wrote:

...but if you're really insistent on "more" links then the suggestion I made in a previous post about accessible more links is one that uses full link text, then hides the full name with CSS (via a <span> wrapped around the text following "read more..."

<a href="...">read more<span> about ...%full (descriptive) article name%...</span></a>

then with CSS you could make the following declaration:

a span {display:none}

I decided to give this idea a try. It turns out to be fairly simple to implement. So while the front page news articles still have links that say "More information...", the article title is actually appended within a span which CSS says should not be displayed. But when the link is extracted by the screen reader, ignoring that CSS, the link should be 'More information about "title of item"... '

I don't have fangs installed. How do we test this to see that it actually works as it should?

Wormholio wrote:

So while the front page news articles still have links that say "More information...", the article title is actually appended within a span which CSS says should not be displayed. But when the link is extracted by the screen reader, ignoring that CSS, the link should be 'More information about "title of item"... '

SeaMonkey (FireFox) is displaying it as "More information...", whereas IE7 displays "More information about "E-mail is working again"...". The CSS are probably not accepted equally.

Eric, considering the sheer number of issues and considerations involved in producing a quality website, perhaps it would be a good idea to revamp/overhaul the pirates site first, as an example to learn from if you will, the benefits could also be integrated into the boinc CVS for other project's to take advantage of.
The forum code especially is hugely inaccessible, and badly lacking in usability too.
I just think this would be the more sensible option to gain experience before attempting to rework the whole boinc documentation/wiki side of things - my point being to try and avoid making another "botched" site which is hard to use and doesn't meet it's requirements.

Plus, it's infinitely easier to plan well and decide how things should be done from the start (eg implement best-practices) than trying to change things afterwards - especially when it comes to URL structure, which requires redirects all over the place to avoid breaking any links - starting with a good plan from the begining avoids many of these such issues. In the case of URLs & redirects, good planning/design and structure means almost no redirects have to be created etc. making site management much easier/quicker :)
____________

SeaMonkey (FireFox) is displaying it as "More information...", whereas IE7 displays "More information about "E-mail is working again"...". The CSS are probably not accepted equally.

Pepo wrote:

SeaMonkey (FireFox) is displaying it as "More information...", whereas IE7 displays "More information about "E-mail is working again"...". The CSS are probably not accepted equally.

Ah, thanks for the report. I know IE7 support for CSS has improved, but it appears that it's still not as good as FF.

Maybe there is some trick I can use to get it to work for both.

Meanwhile, the text of link is not bad on IE7, just redundant. And hopefully more usable in a screen reader.

Wormholio wrote:

I don't have fangs installed. How do we test this to see that it actually works as it should?

That depends what you mean. The most obvious is to install Fangs ...

Okay you lazy sods, I've set something up which needs to be tested, so which members of this scurvy crew are able and willing enough to show some initiative and try this thing out and see how it works (or doesn't)?

Lee Carre wrote:

Wormholio wrote:

I don't have fangs installed. How do we test this to see that it actually works as it should?

That depends what you mean. The most obvious is to install Fangs ...

Not quite what I meant. I guess I have to translate it into Pirate speak:

Wormholio (translated to Pirate speak) wrote:

Okay you lazy sods, I've set something up which needs to be tested, so which members of this scurvy crew are able and willing enough to show some initiative and try this thing out and see how it works (or doesn't)?

That's what I meant to say.

Page has twelve headings and sixty-nine linksPirates at Home dash Internet ExplorerTable with one column and three rowsTable with four columns and two rowsLinkGraphicPirates at Home logoHeading level oneGraphicPirates at GraphicHome Powered byLinkGraphicBOINCTable with one column and one row Logged in as Lee CarreLinkGraphicLogoutTable endTable endTable endTable with six columns and one rowLink Main PageLink Help!Link StatusLink DiscussionLink GlossaryLink Your AccountTable endTable with one column and one row AAARGH! Welcome, mates, to the Pirates at Home project! Table endTable with one column and one row Pirates at Home is an ongoing test of Link BOINC, the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing . Pirates at Home is currently being used to test BOINC's forum software for possible use by another project, Interactions in Understanding the Universe . At present Pirates at Home is not doing any real scientific computation, we are just having 'fun' with BOINC. You can Link read more about our current goals here . Table endTable with two columns and seven rowsTable with one column and three rowsHeading level three Status Pirates at Home is always under development, so please don't expect it to work all the time. In fact, right now we have very little work, just occasional tests. Heading level three News July sixteen two thousand seven fourteen colon thirty-five UTC E dash mail is working again Outbound e dash mail from the Pirates at Home server was backed up from eleven July left paren last Wedensday right paren until fifteen July left paren Sunday right paren , but should now be working normally. Link More information ... June eight two thousand seven thirteen colon forty-seven UTC Network outage Pirates at Home was unavailable last night for about six hours due to network problems. Link More information ... January seventeen two thousand seven thirteen colon forty-nine UTC A Pirates' Glossary Pirates at Home now introduces a new glossary, using the same software used to run the WikipediaLink More information ... January six two thousand seven thirteen colon forty-nine UTC Server crash The Pirates at Home server crashed around ten colon thirty PM EST on Jan five th, and was brought up just before nine AM the next day. The cause of the crash is unknown. December fifteen two thousand six seventeen colon twenty-two UTC Pirates at Home upgraded to BOINC five point seven point five The Pirates at Home server software, including web pages, has been updated to BOINC version five point seven point fiveLink More information ...Link News archive...LinkGraphic slash rss plus xml.gif Pirates at Home News via RSS Don't forget colon Link International Talk Like a Pirate Day is September nineteen th!Heading level three Powered by LinkGraphicBOINCTable endTable with one column and three rowsHeading level three Pirate of the dayLinkGraphicPirates at Home User of the Day colon totoshiLink totoshiLinkGraphic slash head underline twenty .png Hey folks, I'm twenty-eight years old and I live in Hildesheim, Germany. I'm interesting in DC 'cause I see a high potential in these projects. Whether it helps? I don't know, but I hope so. Table with one column and one row BOINC Online SchedulersLinkGraphic left bracket Status Display of BOINC projects right bracket Table endHeading level three Getting Help List of four itemsbulletLink Getting started, or getting HelpbulletLink Helpdesk colon Questions or ProblemsbulletLink BOINC FAQ Service bulletLink BOINC on dash line help left paren using Skype right paren List endHeading level three CommunityList of three itemsbulletLink Message Boards colon Crew Discussion bulletLink Participant ProfilesbulletLink TeamsList endHeading level three Returning ParticipantsList of five itemsbulletLink Your account dash view stats, modify preferences bulletLink Logout from your accountbulletLink Pirates at Home Certificate of ComputationbulletLink Update your BOINCbulletLink Project StatusList endHeading level three Project Totals and Leader BoardsList of five itemsbulletLink Top participantsbulletLink Top teamsbulletLink Top computersbulletLink stats in XML formbulletLink Other statisticsList endHeading level three More about Pirates at Home List of eight itemsbulletLink A Pirates' GlossarybulletLink Pirate ApplicationsbulletLink Sextant screensaver descriptionbulletLink Read the General Rules and PoliciesbulletLink Read the forum posting rulesbulletLink Pirates at Home team stats for Einstein at HomebulletLink Pirates at Home Mission one archivebulletLink Contact project administratorsList endHeading level three More about BOINC List of seven itemsbulletLink How BOINC worksbulletLink How BOINC gives creditbulletLink Other BOINC projectsbulletLink BOINC home pagebulletLink The Unofficial BOINC WikibulletLink Add dash ons left paren from SETI at home right paren bulletLink BOINC Developer's notesList endTable endTable endHeading level three Pirates at Home may some day be sponsored by colon Table with seven columns and two rowsLinkGraphicNSFLinkGraphic vertical bar APSLinkGraphic vertical bar CaltechLinkGraphic vertical bar LIGOLinkGraphic vertical bar World Year of Physics two thousand five LinkGraphic vertical bar GEOsix hundred LinkGraphic vertical bar Talk Like a Pirate Day National Science Foundation American Physical Society Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory LIGO Scientific Collaboration World Year of Physics two thousand five GEO six hundred International Talk Like a Pirate Day Table endTable with six columns and one rowLink Main PageLink Help!Link StatusLink DiscussionLink GlossaryLink Your AccountTable endLink Return to Pirates at Home main page Copyright copyright two thousand seven Capt. Jack Sparrow · Contact the project administrators at pirates dash admin at spy dash hill.net Generated twenty Jul two thousand seven thirteen colon forty-four colon twenty-four UTC

The next thing I think should get focus is replacing all the layout tables with CSS positioning - which from the looks of the code is going to require a bit of a rewrite.

But doing so should make the page much more comprehendable when those who hear pages rather than see them.

It'll also greatly improve the general efficiency of the code. At present it's rather bloated and filled with much reduntant data. Resulting in faster page loads and reduced server load :)

Oh, and another speed gain comes from the fact that standards compliant non-layout-table code renders much much faster - tables and invalid code are quite processing heavy
____________

What's important is what screen readers/audio browsers output (according to Fangs the pirates web root (home page) renders thus) - notice that in it's current form (using {display:none} i assume) that the extra text is removed from JAWS too:

Fangs wrote:

Page has twelve headings and sixty-nine linksPirates at Home dash Internet ExplorerTable with one column and three rowsTable with four columns and two rowsLinkGraphicPirates at Home logoHeading level oneGraphicPirates at GraphicHome Powered byLinkGraphicBOINCTable with one column and one row Logged in as Lee CarreLinkGraphicLogoutTable endTable endTable endTable with six columns and one rowLink Main PageLink Help!Link StatusLink DiscussionLink GlossaryLink Your AccountTable endTable with one column and one row AAARGH! Welcome, mates, to the Pirates at Home project...

Webpage: Pirates@Home
Link 1: Pirates@Home logo
Page Headline: @
Powered by
Link 2: BOINC
Logged in as Contact
Link 3: Logout
Link 4: Main Page
Link 5: Help!
Link 6: Status
Link 7: Discussion
Link 8: Glossary
Link 9: Your Account
AAARGH! Welcome, mates, to the Pirates@Home project!
Pirates@Home is an ongoing test of
Link 10: BOINC, the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
. Pirates@Home is currently being used to test BOINC's forum software for possible use by another project, Interactions in Understanding the Universe . At present Pirates@Home is not doing any real scientific computation, we are just having 'fun' with BOINC. You can
Link 11: read more about our current goals here .
Status
Pirates@Home is always under development, so please don't expect it to work all the time. In fact, right now we have very little work, just occasional tests.
News
July 16, 2007 14:35 UTC
E-mail is working again
Outbound e-mail from the Pirates@Home server was backed up from 11 July (last Wedensday) until 15 July (Sunday), but should now be working normally.
Link 12: More information about "E-mail is working again"...
June 8, 2007 13:47 UTC
Network outage
Pirates@Home was unavailable last night for about 6 hours due to network problems.
Link 13: More information about "Network outage"...
January 17, 2007 13:49 UTC
A Pirates' Glossary
Pirates@Home now introduces a new glossary, using the same software used to run the Wikipedia
Link 14: More information about "A Pirates' Glossary"...
January 6, 2007 13:49 UTC
Server crash
The Pirates@Home server crashed around 10:30PM EST on Jan 5th, and was brought up just before 9AM the next day. The cause of the crash is unknown.
December 15, 2006 17:22 UTC
Pirates@Home upgraded to BOINC 5.7.5
The Pirates@Home server software, including web pages, has been updated to BOINC version 5.7.5
Link 15: More information about "Pirates@Home upgraded to BOINC 5.7.5"...
Link 16: News archive...
Link 17: Pirates@Home News via RSS
Don't forget:
Link 18: International Talk Like a Pirate Day is September 19th!
Powered by
Link 19: BOINC
Pirate of the day
Link 20: view_profile.php
Link 21: Zwitschi
Link 22: view_profile.php
Mein Name ist Georg, ich bin in München am 9. Dezember 1982 geboren und lebe immer noch dort, derzeit im Osten der Stadt in Berg am Laim. Beruflich habe ich nur soweit mit Computern zu tun, wie sie mir nützlich sind und es notwendig ist. Privat...
BOINC Online Schedulers
Link 23: [Status Display of BOINC projects]
Getting Help
Link 24: Getting started, or getting Help
Link 25: Helpdesk: Questions or Problems
Link 26: BOINC FAQ Service
Link 27: BOINC on-line help
(using Skype)
Community
Link 28: Message Boards: Crew Discussion
Link 29: Participant Profiles
Link 30: Teams
Returning Participants
Link 31: Your account
- view stats, modify preferences
Link 32: Logout from your account
Link 33: Pirates@Home Certificate of Computation
Link 34: Update your BOINC
Link 35: Project Status
Project Totals and Leader Boards
Link 36: Top participants
Link 37: Top teams
Link 38: Top computers
Link 39: stats in XML form
Link 40: Other statistics
More about Pirates@Home
Link 41: A Pirates' Glossary
Link 42: Pirate Applications
Link 43: Sextant screensaver description
Link 44: Read the General Rules and Policies
Link 45: Read the forum posting rules
Link 46: Pirates@Home team stats for Einstein@Home
Link 47: Pirates@Home Mission 1 archive
Link 48: Contact project administrators
More about BOINC
Link 49: How BOINC works
Link 50: How BOINC gives credit
Link 51: Other BOINC projects
Link 52: BOINC home page
Link 53: The Unofficial BOINC Wiki
Link 54: Add-ons
(from SETI@home)
Link 55: BOINC Developer's notes
_____________________________________________________________________________
Pirates@Home may some day be sponsored by:
Link 56: NSF
Link 57: | APS
Link 58: | Caltech
Link 59: | LIGO
Link 60: | World Year of Physics 2005
Link 61: | GEO600
Link 62: | Talk Like a Pirate Day
National Science
Foundation American Physical
Society Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory LIGO Scientific Collaboration World Year of
Physics 2005 GEO 600 International Talk Like a Pirate Day
Link 63: Main Page
Link 64: Help!
Link 65: Status
Link 66: Discussion
Link 67: Glossary
Link 68: Your Account
_____________________________________________________________________________
Link 69: Return to Pirates@Home main page
Copyright © 2007 Capt. Jack Sparrow · Contact the project administrators at pirates-admin@ spy-hill.net
Generated 21 Jul 2007 3:10:30 UTC

Lee Carre wrote:

What's important is what screen readers/audio browsers output (according to Fangs the pirates web root (home page) renders thus) - notice that in it's current form (using {display:none} i assume) that the extra text is removed from JAWS too:

Fangs wrote:

Page has twelve headings and sixty-nine linksPirates at Home dash Internet ExplorerTable with one column and three rowsTable with four columns and two rowsLinkGraphicPirates at Home logoHeading level oneGraphicPirates at GraphicHome Powered byLinkGraphicBOINCTable with one column and one row Logged in as Lee CarreLinkGraphicLogoutTable endTable endTable endTable with six columns and one rowLink Main PageLink Help!Link StatusLink DiscussionLink GlossaryLink Your AccountTable endTable with one column and one row AAARGH! Welcome, mates, to the Pirates at Home project...

Lazy sod here...
The page does look bad in Fangs. Even reader friendly sites didn't look so good.

So then tried thunder screen reader. Looks and navigates pages far better than Fangs would have me believe.

thunder wrote:

Webpage: Pirates@Home
Link 1: Pirates@Home logo
Page Headline: @
Powered by
Link 2: BOINC
Logged in as Contact
Link 3: Logout
Link 4: Main Page
Link 5: Help!
Link 6: Status
Link 7: Discussion
Link 8: Glossary
Link 9: Your Account

1. Displays things differently to how they'd be read/spoken
   
2. Displays elements in a way which is easier for a sighted developer to read, considering those changes won't affect how the page is "read". Point being that blind users will still get a big block of serialized speech.
   

The reason being that because it looks easier to comprehend (elements are sectioned off etc.) it's misleading.

Thunder seems to not be able to load some php pages. With ? in url maybe. Oh well.

So then tried thunder screen reader. Looks and navigates pages far better than Fangs would have me believe.

thunder wrote:

Webpage: Pirates@Home
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Besides, JAWS is the most popular screen reader anyway - good luck trying to get everyone to change.

Fangs is an emulator after all, designed to replicate what would be "spoken" but as text to aid speedy testing/development by sighted developers. I have reservations about using an emulator which;

1. Displays things differently to how they'd be read/spoken
   
2. Displays elements in a way which is easier for a sighted developer to read, considering those changes won't affect how the page is "read". Point being that blind users will still get a big block of serialized speech.
   

Thunder seems to not be able to load some php pages. With ? in url maybe. Oh well.

because the query string (the stuff after the "?") is meant to be optional (most sites ignore this and abuse/require the query string). This basically comes down to poor URL structure.

Suggestion for this forum: in each post there's a "reply to THIS post" link

obviously as a sighted person the "THIS" is emphasised, however, captialisation isn't the correct way to do it.
A better way would be using (hopefully I can enter straight HTML in here)

<strong class="all-caps">this</strong>

for the emphasis as screen readers especially will probably spell out T. H. I. S. rather than the word "this"

All captials takes longer to read due to the way we process words (so is probably counter-productive, I can give details), but if all captials is really needed (buti advise against it), then CSS can be used to change the capitalisation thus:

.all-caps {font-variant: small-caps}

This thread has gone off on a new direction which I find very interesting and useful, but I think it's appropriate to move it to a new thread, which you will find here.

I'm locking this thread for now to encourage the move (but I should unlock it later when that thread is going.)

____________
-- Eric Myers

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats