Bruce Lawson’s personal site

The loony United States Patent and Trademark Office have decided that Eolas own the patent on the idea of a web browser automatically calling a helper application.

Therefore, any browser that doesn’t prompt for a user to confirm before allowing FlashPlayer to show Flash, a movie player to show a movie clip or passing control to the PDF plugin contravenes Eolas’ patent.
Continue reading Eolas patent upheld: lunatics run asylum

My last post explores in detail why you can’t rely on a title attribute to warn a user that a link opens in a new window, as you’re required to under checkpoint 10.1 of WCAG 1.0.

Here’s Gez Lemon’s script that opens any link marked rel="external" and opens it in a new window without being invalid. He’s just too damn modest to post this himself.
Continue reading Opening links in new windows in xhtml strict

Sun 18 Sept, 8.30 p.m. This post is already marked “considered harmful” as the script does not give maximum accessibility, nor fill the browser with nourishing valid code. The comments are good, though: thanks Gez and Lachlan. A proper script will appear in a couple of days, so watch this space. (Hey, does that mean I’m a script-tease artist?). There’s also a good discussion of the subject on the Accessify forum.

target=”_blank”. We’ve all done it - whether because the boss says “open external links in new windows so our site is still open”, or for non-html documents, or just because we want to drive Jakob into an early grave.
Continue reading New windows in xhtml strict

I’ve noticed from my server stats that it’s IP addresses from Japan that are my biggest group of visitors (after Blighty and the thirteen colonies).

Co-incidentally, I’m doing a site based on Japanese Kawaii so if any Japanese visitors have photos of themselves looking super-cute, in urban fashions (e.g. decorer or Gothic Lolita), some kao anis, or just very cute Japanses icons or gifs that I could use for authenticity, please email or leave a comment. I’ll credit you on the site if I use it.

Please, you must own the copyright and consent for me to use it in a non-commercial web design.

I was thinking the other day about the Web, and how useful it would’ve been in the mid-eighties when I was at University. Not for plagiarism, but just for access to primary texts - of which there’s lots in an English Literature degree. For example, I ordered the only book of the poems of Robert Henryson, which took 4 weeks to arrive and cost me £13 - when a week’s rent on my room was £12.50. If the Web had been around then, I could’ve just Googled for Henryson’s poetry, printed it out and drunk the cash.

Indubitably, though, the biggest boon that the Web has given young men is easy access to porn. Yet the Web giveth and the Web taketh away: what young people today have lost is the adventure and camaraderie that were necessary in the the hunt for masturbatory fodder.
Continue reading The Web: young people today don’t know they’re born

Yesterday, I went to a posh hotel in Birmimgham for the 10th birthday party of Jooly’s Joint, a community web site for people with Multiple Sclerosis, founded and run by Julie Howell.
Continue reading Jooly’s Joint 10th birthday party