ARIA - Accessibility Rich Internet Applications

Accessibility is a key to good design. Ease in which we can access, determines the uniqueness and richness of a web-designer. Accessibility has been taken up as another area to explore, re-invent and improvise as a component of Web 2.0

CSS was the beginning for accessibility (apart from (X)HTML). Then came AJAX (Asynchronous Java-Script and XML), AxsAJAX (this seems to be a term introduced by Google - Access-Enabling AJAX). WAI-ARIA is an evolving standard for enhancing accessibility on Web 2.0.

According to W3C, "The Roadmap for Accessible Rich Internet Applications addresses the accessibility of dynamic Web content for people with disabilities" [W3C on WAI-ARIA]. Google is using AxsAJAX and is on its way to improve all its products to make them ARIA compatible.

ARIA has been introduced in Google Reader with a magnification with '=' and '-' keys. Read this article from Readers' blog.

Adding to this effect, an extension has been creator by Charles Chen, a fellow Googler, called FireVox.

A comprehensive article on Web 2.0 and ARIA has been written here.

Microsoft products - subscription basis?

Microsoft is going to sell its products on subscription basis starting mid-July - Microsoft Office + OneCare for $70 per year. This, they hope, will reduce piracy of their products. At the same, help consumers with easy upgradation of their newer release as well.

Many say, with this move, Microsoft will be improving Google's popularity with GDocs!

Story here.

Worlds' First 16 layer Optical Disc - 400GB

Pioneer Succeeds in Developing World's First 16-Layer Optical Disc with a capacity of 400GB.

Read the complete story from its press release.

Mozilla in Guiness Book of World Records

Mozilla claims to have got maximum number of downloads of FF3 in 24 hours.

Inspiration came from this page of Mozilla with a view to host a party !

Complete details here

Account History available in Gmail

Account History of signing into Gmail including

• IP addresses from where you logged in
• How you logged in, through Browser, Mobile, or POP3
• Whether there is any activity in the current logged-in sessions
• Sign out Remotely from other sessions (on remote systems) sitting at one terminal

Gmail Blog holds all the information in detail. This shows what importance Google gives to Gmail and also its (& users' )content

Useless Services in XP

Some services in XP may not be useful to us at all. Here is a Guide to Useless Services in XP, using which we will get some idea about some services which can be easily disabled.

Snippets of services that can be disabled:

For Any Computer:
Error Reporting Service
Help and Support
Secondary Logon
Security Center
System Restore Service
Uninterruptible Power Supply, more...

For a Standalone Computer alone:
Net Logon
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
Network Provisioning Service
QoS RSVP
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Registry
Server
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper, more...

For complete details, download this short-PDF