This post from Tristan Nitot - president of Mozilla Europe -

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Firefox market share in Europe, January 2008, according to XitiMonitor

 {Music: Le Jazz Grand - Michel Legrand}

According to xkcd.

Craplets

One of the great QA (Quality Assurance) features of the latest developer builds of Minefield (as trunk Firefox is called) is the crash reporter. This sends a report when you get a crashing bug and Minefield restarts. Even better is that using the about:crashes URL gives a list of your crashes with links to the info sent onto Mozilla. So you can also create a bug report linking to the info and Mozilla QA can fix the problem more easily. E.g

 http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/6b46f9c0-d3fa-11dc-a5f0-001a4bd43e5c

 Unfortunately the reporter has always given an error about failing to send on my Ubuntu Gutsy desktop. The solution is to

 sudo apt-get install ca-certificates

Thanks to Aaron Leventhal for resolving this for me.

 

ExpertHandlers is a specification for how ATs can be extended to give  access to specialist web mark up like MathML and MusicML. The Open a11y group of the Linux Foundation have agreed the Unified Use Cases specification which describes the required user experiences. 

Details of the Open Source a11y project code from the SS12 code-a-thon at USC have started to appear on the Project:Possibility website. Included are a reading support program and a word predictor, both of which are gaps that need filling.

In addition a new ongoing project called Semester allows students to team up with professional programmers to work on Open a11y projects. This includes an eyegazer (using proprietary hardware, but perhaps eventually extendable to low cost cams).

Bruce Perens writes his 'State of Open Source Message: A new decade' on what's happened since he wrote the Open Source definition in Feb 1998. He also review the state of Software Patents. My overall impression is that great inroads have been made but the fight is still on.

Ubuntu Community Lead and Lug Radio 'star' Jono Bacon refutes that Open Source is the exclusive realm of the testosterone fueled in this post .

I can't help wondering if the rather excessive bloke-ish profanity that is oft' a feature of Lug Radio shows might be contributory to the low levels of papers from women (it certainly irritates me at times).

Jono Bacon's blog led me to this great post by erudite British entertainer Stephen Fry, in which he expounds the joy he experiences with Open Source. In his Guardian column 'Dork Talk' Stephen enthuses Firefox, Linux and the ASUS EEE PC (which features a version of Firefox).

In recent weeks I have banged on about Open Source, expending two articles on Firefox alone. Open Source applications make their code available to everyone. Disagreements and rabid balkanisation within the Open Source community aside, for our purposes the term might as well refer to free software whose licence allows you to share the source code, alter it, use it, do with it what you will.

The two great pillars of Open Source are the GNU project and Linux. I shan’t burden you with too much detail, I’ll just make the outrageous claim that your computer will be running some descendant of those two within the next five years and that your life will be better and happier as a result.

In 2 Previous posts Stephen gleafully explains how easy it is to install and use Firefox and how to use it's many add-ons to 'Pimp' your browser'

Internet Explorer (IE) and Safari are the browsers that come bundled with Windows and the Mac Operating System respectively. I'm going to suggest you say goodbye to them and try running around with Firefox for a while. IE is pants, pure and simple. Safari is clean, elegant and fast (and now comes in a superb Windows implementation), but Firefox has one advantage: customisability.

A nice post over at Mozilla LInks describes the new features in Firefox 3 Beta 3 due out today.

A Beta 4 is planned for the end of February and the release is positioned for mid March.

[Beta 3 is now available]

Year 5 & 6 Children with deafness at Longwill School use PSP video recording in various ways to communicate with BSL between school and home.

Gigajam TV's British idiosyncrasy is appealing (like the Indie band British Sea Power) but I find the bass lessons a little slow. It is also pretty obviously a vehicle for show casing Gigajam's course and midi player software Xtractor. Having a 'south-paws' bass player is an interesting decision and may add a level of confusion for some but they claim the course will get students to Level 1. All-in-all solid and at a relaxed pace and is used very effectively in UK schools.

I think I'll try learning with Guitar and Bass as it looks reasonable and works out very cheap at just over £12, plus being Flash based it should work on Linux (yet to try it). The hyped-up US scam-style selling of BassGuitarSecrests really just puts this cynical Brit right off.

Dell explain why you might choose Linux on one of their PCs

It appears that of all people the Open University or OU are forcing some students to use MS Windows. This despite their championing of Open Education and support of platform-agnostic Open Source software like the web-based Moodle. You can sign the petition against this barely legal descrimination .

Interesting program on BBC Listen Again about the records of Christian Pop groups in the 60s and 70s.

At roughly half the price of the ASUS EEE PC, Elonex's open source powered 'the One' will be aimed at educational uses but might also be useful for assistive technology uses such as VOCAs. While it  can run in tablet PC mode the fact that it doesn't have a touch screen makes that appear to be of limited use. It looks like the competition at the low end is really 'hotting up'.

xkcd's latest....

Danbri on Symbols, the web and CCF and here's Andy Judson's CCF project page.

[I previously blogged this in Oct]

Following on from PAS 78 an new standard will be created that specifies the process to follow in order to ensure that web sites are accessible. Julie Howell heads up the new IST/45 commitee which aims to get the standard out in Q1 2009.

David Asher's inaugral post about the new name for MailCO (owner of Thunderbird email client).

Roger Johansson reviews and recommends Design Accessible Websites by Jeremy Sydik

Due to high demand both Will Walker's Orca article and Eitan Isaacson's Accerciser article are on the prestigious Linux Journal website.

In addition my Introductory article for Python Magazine is now available on the GNOME wiki.

So now with 3 articles that introduce Open Source accessibility you've run out of excuses for not knowing about it .

In a great example of what 'Open' truely means, Mozilla give full details of how the latest Firefox 3.0 Beta got released. It's a 'warts and all' account of what happend in the 8 days from the point the devleopers said 'OK' to it being available on a majority of the download mirror sites. You can even drill down to read all the detailed discussion and activity that went on. It's obviously a complex process but well managed.

Such transparency is one of the things I love about open source and Mozilla do it so well.

Dasher is a totally unique text input tool that for some people makes all the difference between using computers or not. Text can be 'typed using an innovative up-down steering through a visual field of characters. Thus people with severe physical disabilities are able to communicate communicate as long as they can operate a 2-state switch and have vision. There are many language versions as well as one for symbol users. Dasher is cross platform, being available for the GNOME Linux Desktop and also WIndows.

Recently there has been increased activity on the project mail list with at least one enthusiastic user sharing advice and configuration options with other users (and example of the best of Open Source practice). In addiiton a new developer has come along wanting to help out.

However David MacKay has run out of funding and the latest full time developer can only spend small amounts of time on it. In the words of David:

Dasher is a drifting tanker with no engine, except for us volunteers.

You can read more details on this mail list thread and this message.

So if you fancy working on one of the most inovative software tools for years why not drop the Dasher team a line? It is written in the C programming language, but as  always there are many opportunities for supplying different skills, not just technical. For example; documentation, testing or developing the community.

[Update] David Bolter just pointed out to me that GOK, the GNOME on screen keyboard, is also in need of much TLC. David wants to find someone to train as a maintainer/porter. In general we need more volunteers in the alt input area to help make Open Source accessibility the platform for users with physical disabilities.

In this interview with Linux.com Christopher Blizzard talks about advocacy, transparency, XULRunner and Moziila's business model.

With regard to XULRunner it seems the decision has finally been made to make Firefox 3.0 a XULRunner application and Linux distro's will package them seperately thus making the platform available for other programs. This has been a long running debate and a product-centric strategy won over a platform-centric one.

At last, the full details of this exciting GNOME initiative to improve Linux accessibility. Sponsorship is by GNOME Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Google™'s Open Source Program Office, Canonical, and Novell.

As Nokia revent themselves to be at the nexus of the internet and mobility, there's some very interesting blue sky ideas from Nokia and Cambridge University Nanoscience dept. that could be only 7 - 11 years away. Be sure to watch the video.

There are some pretty obvious accessibility applications and you can't help thinking there are opportunities we have not yet started to think about.

Nice article comparing the main Python GUI contenders for Windows with example code. PyGTK appears to have been added later but comes out well. They missed out XULRunner though which thanks to ActiveState's Open Komodo work is becoming more of a realistic possibility (It's built on a version of XULRunner that is extendable with Python). Also Mark Hammond did some unfinished work on DOM scripting Mozilla with Python.

Gregory J. Rosmaita of OpenA11y has created a summary presentation of recent activity that is impacting  Open Accessibility through standards and initiatives. Adding to the existing work on IAccessible2, AT-SPI and keyboards, the Unified Use Cases for Expert Handlers is hot off the press and defines mechanism for access to complext specialist web markup such as MathML and MusicML.

[Updated] This will be presented at CSUN in March where there will also be an OpenA11y Panel discussion on the Expert handlers

As a side note, Frank Hecker, director of the Mozilla Foundation, has very kindly invited me to attend CSUN, so I will be able to attend this large and important expo. It's also a great chance to catch up and hack with most of the Open a11y folks from Mozilla, GNOME, open a11y and others. Plus I get to help out on the Mozilla booth where last year we had loads of people dropping by to say how much they 'love Firefox'. I particularly remember one person in particular being almost overcome that we were giving all that accessibility software away for free on the Mozilla OpenAccess CD. Since that time there have been some great advances in the Open a11y field so I'm even more excited about going.Thanks Frank.

We've made site of the day on Terri's special Children blog.

The ITCH wiki is back up at last (ITCH Network are a nationwide group of volunteers that assist disabled folks by supplying free computer support in their homes). I installed and run the wiki to provide a place to share experiences, though uptake has been slow so far.

When I tried to upgrade the MediWiki software that it runs on earlier in the year I hit a fatal error and as there seemed to be little interest I left it. However there has been a few requests so I tried again today. After investigating the PHP source and MYSQL database (both of which I know well) there was nothing obvious so I hopped over to the IRC channel where I got excellent support (one of the great things about Open Source projects). It turns out that this was known bug and the latest release (1.10.0) has a fix. Somehow I missed the new release when I had a peek at the downloads and thought I had the latest (1.11.0). The fault was a bad SQL statement in the version I previously used that broke upgrades and that I did not spot. So thanks to the MediaWiki community for sorting out my double daftness,

While I was at it I upgraded to the latest version of the excellent wiki spam filter BadBehaviour.

After thinking about it for a while I'm going to lead a short computer taster course for Age Concern Exeter, an excellent and friendly provider of a wide range of services to Exeter's older residents. The concept is along the lines of the many 'Computing for the terrified' courses and in a friendly atmosphere will demystify computers, email and the internet. I'm working with another trainer who is running similar courses and who also has experience with one to one, as I have as a ITCH volunteer.

A 2-hour session for 3 weeks is not a lot of time to cover it all, but should be enough for a confidence building taster. Most courses start at 10 hours Guided Learning but Age Concern offer 1 to 1 sessions with volunteers which should help consolidate new skills.

Although it is not part of the agenda I will of course mention the best Open Source programs like Firefox and Open Office who's low cost is an important factor to the folks who will be attending. And who know's we may find some great community contributors who have time to muck in and who gain a lot of satisfaction from it.

After the first course I'm concidering issuing My First INGOT certificates as having a paper certificate should boost confidence. I have discussed it with Ian Lynch and INGOTs are flexible enough plus there they provide progression to other levels should they wish to go further. The INGOTs are fantastic ICT certificates which are QCA approved and Open Source compatible.

My reasons for doing this are related to my involvement with Accessibility, namely using my skills and experience to help enable those who are marginalised or the wrong side of the digital divide. I also firmly believe that the web and Open Source have a huge amount to offer these groups who can also greatly benefit by contributing themselves. The trigger was this excellent report by Demos which helped to crystallise my thoughts. Another factor is that the elderly often benfit from accessibility and assistive technology and doing this course is one way to get closer to users and so help forge a bridge between users and developers. Idealistic? Perhaps, but it might just help and it's a way for me to dip my toe in the training waters. It also provides a great way for me to get some 'people contact', something I miss rather more than I thought I would working from home developing software.

The GNOME a11y team rock big time. As mentioned before Dasher is in need of volunteers as funding has run out. In a very short space of time the a11y outreach team contacted the dasher crew and there are now a set of bugs in the GNOME bug tracker ready to be picked up when the outreach program kicks off on 1 March.

Awesome.

Fed up with scrolling through a long list of places visited trying to find a particular page that you know you visited some time ago?

Marco Zehe has a great explanation of the excellent new Places system in Firefox 3.0. Ive been 'lovin it' for a while now.