note
· · to read

I have several Facebook pages I have to manage or help manage for work, so I downloaded the Facebook Business app on my phone after I realized I can’t accept an admin invite from the standard Facebook mobile site.

I totally get why this app has a two-star rating on the app store, because this thing is a pile.

Shout-out to everyone else who has to use it.

Facebook: We make your life miserable just because we can. Move fast and break things yeah!

note

· · to read

The quickest way to get your web developer to hate you, and I mean really really hate you, is to send them content that you’ve copied into a Microsoft Word document from various emails and ask that that content be formatted, (properly marked up), for the web. Your newsletter also counts as “for the web”. Do not do this. Ever. Microsoft Word is not a text editor. It is not the thing you use to create content for the web, even if your gold-plated screen reader assists you in doing so with its handy “keep-all-the-formatting-from-shit-you-copy-off-webpages” feature. Why any screen reader assists in doing this is beyond me. The fact that you couldn’t just copy shit off the web and paste it into a Word document formatting intact as a screen reader user was a good thing. In fact, they should just take that feature away from everybody. It shouldn’t be allowed. Under any circumstances. While I’m at it, let’s take away the ability for people to copy things into the WordPress editor from Microsoft Word and keep the formatting too. We shouldn’t be encouraging that at all. We’re contributing to the human race circling the drain by allowing it. Every time you copy something into a Word document from the web, and opt to keep the formatting, kittens die. You may as well have kicked several puppies. You hate your country, adopted or otherwise. And you’ll probably be the ones we really need to keep an eye on when the zomby apocalypse happens, because you’ll get yourselves bitten and then not tell anybody you’ve been bitten.

I’m going to shove this bastard of a newsletter out the door. Then, I’m going to go for a long walk and try to convince myself not to go drink the beers that are left in the fridge this early in the day.

note

· · to read

I am primarily an NVDA user. I switched after close to twenty years of Jaws for Windows usage, (including a stint as a technical support rep, so yeah, I’m really familiar with how it works), because as a web developer NVDA meets my needs better than Jaws does when it comes to less hand-holding and more stability. But I still keep a copy of the latest Jaws for Windows around because part of my job as a web developer is ensuring as much cross-screen-reader compatibility as possible along with cross-browser compatibility. Every single time I load Jaws to test something I re-encounter a host of bugs, random crashes, the need to kill the jfw.exe process when it randomly stops speaking and reload, only to find that now the display chain is fucked so let’s kill process after process after process and load clean. And yet, the National Federation of the Blind feels it necessary to go after Apple and leave Freedom Scientific alone. I’ll be the first one to tell you as a web developer that there are times I’d like to see VoiceOver die in a healthy forest fire. But Jaws for Windows is buggier by far, and I expect that the only reason the NFB is going after Apple is because it’s not giving proper obeisance and providing a suitable offering as its act of worship. Why doesn’t the NFB just come out and say that, as long as you pay for an indulgence, you’ll be fine. The NFB will leave you alone, look the other way, ETC. Also, how can the NFB be trusted as an accessibility advocacy organization when it’s more than clearly indicated that it’s willing to jump in bed with, and snuggle up to, any organization that’s willing to fill its coffers, regardless of whether or not they’re doing anything about accessibility? That’s not an advocacy organization, it’s a shake-down organization. But yes, we should totally trust their judgment when they sue people over websites.

note

· · to read

I keep a browser open all the time. And in that browser I have any number of open tabs going at any given moment. The only thing that’s inconvenient about this by default is having to move from one tab to another single file. There are shortcut keys for the first ten, but anything past that becomes “What’s behind door number three!” This makes supporting my tab habbit cumbersome. But thanks to this little addon for Firefox, I get all my tabs in a neat little menu that I can access with alt+a, and then cycle through at will. This warms my little efficiency-driven heart. Now all I have to do is remember to close the ones I’m no longer using.