The @media conference is over and taught us mainly that there was a misconception of what the audience would be. The first day was a bit of preaching to the converted, whereas the second one seemed to realise that and start an expert discussion instead.

This afternoon, the JavaScript / DOM think tank will meet in the pub to discuss things further, mainly discussing the impact of DOM changes and screen readers.

Derek Featherstone of WATS fame uttered a quite interesting remark during his testing for accessibility presentation:

We advise screen reader users to turn JavaScript off. This is to avoid nasty surprises and because most JavaScript enhancements are visual only.

Excellent point, IMHO. We use object detection to check if the browser supports certain scripts, and punish Opera 6 by cheekily testing for createTextNode and getElementById.

This is a much cleaner way than browser sniffing and easy to check. However, when it comes to screen readers, a lot of our testing really is assuming what they should do or not. Especially new DOM developers assume that a screen reader works like a text browser, which is not true, as modern screen readers do detect and speak out DOM changes.

More over a pint later.

From Thursday on, I will attend the @media conference in London. In case anyone wants to have a chat there, I am rather easy to find:

Just came back home from a Tori Amos gig in Hammersmith. If you don’t know Tori Amos, go to the nearest independent record shop (don’t support the big ones) and buy one of her CDs, read the lyrics while listening to it and be amazed.
It was a very good gig, she is some wonder (playing a piano and an organ at the same time and singing does require some skill). Although, some things I have to remark:

• Ticketmaster are a bunch of c very greedy people indeed and when you buy a ticket that states “standing place only”, bring a spyglass, as you will be at the very end of the room far far away from the stage perched like tube commuters, and that for 28 pound!
• Our society consists to 10% of weak bladdered freaks who cannot stand a 100 minutes performance without two loobreaks. Please stop downing 5 pints before you go to a concert
• George Michael has lyrics! When Tori covered “Father figure” I realised that.
• There are not enough red haired stars on this planet

I bought Chuzzle for a friend last weekend and got totally addicted to it. While other developers go crazy about the latest 3D FPS releases I can spend hours exploding fluffy coloured things in a tetris / blocks clone. Will I ever grow up?

I didn’t think there were any, but I just stumbled upon Funnyfox.org showing some advertisments for FireFox. Personally I like the mobile one best.

Back to work!