We like Flash and all the things one can do with it. Our many Flash endeavours have proven to be success stories for us and our customers. Still we don’t mind the odd ray of transitory earthly glory shedding its light on our work. Be it a newspaper article or an award,  as just so happened with the as usual somewhat inscrutable ranking of this year’s 200 best Swiss websites which listed three of our works. Like every year, it left us wondering about the significance of the number 200 and the criteria that might have been applied. One thing we certainly share with the jury is the sentiment that innovation is lacking. Welcome to  a pretty faint-hearted digital Switzerland.

Be that as it may, we are happy that the only two Flash Sites spicing up the ranking of thoroughly usual suspects were forged by us robots. As we poured lots of our flashy sparks and circuit grease into both www.bkw-energielandschaft.ch and www.parlamentsgeschichte.ch (both on anthrazit.org) for our audacious customers we feel that is well deserved. And that’s the second thing we obviously share with the jury

Both websites are about providing information about  “serious” topics (energy sources and political history, respectively) in a playful and interactive way, buzzwords information design or edutainment. We took great care to build the websites as modular and adjustable as possible. While our customers have been happily editing the contents in a CMS, the websites could grow and adjust. The BKW-Energielandschaft gives a great example. The BKW-Energielandschaft has steadily been adapted and expanded. For the annual “Gurten” Open Air Festival which was sponsored by our client BKW, we added a concert stage to the landscape where in a quiz day passes for the Open Air Festival could be won. Also we brought the Energielandschaft and the quiz to the actual Festival in a console.

Meanwhile, we continue being busy with more flashy adventures!

Since the beginning of the Web, we web designers have always wished we could publish any font whatsoever on the web pages that we created. Will the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) realise this old dream?

WOFF’s strengths lie in its concept. First, instead of creating yet another technically new font format, WOFF just takes TrueType and OpenType, encapsulating and compressing them without any encryption to reduce download times. And secondly, meta information about copyright and usage can be inserted, thus elegantly avoiding complex Digital Rights Management.

The development of WOFF is on a good track. Originally recommended by two font designers, it has then been developed together with Mozilla and has already found support from many well-known font suppliers – an unofficial list even lists Adobe among the supporters. Even Microsoft – the initiator and distributor of its own proprietary Embedded Open Type (EOT) – has shown a keen interest in the development of WOFF and intends to consider its deployment.

A soon as Firefox 3.6 comes out, we will evaluate whether to make use of this technology. The support by all browsers and font provider is indispensable for WOFF to become a practical solution. The native embedding of a font is ultimately the ideal and logical approach.

Until then, we continue to embed fonts with SIFR, with our own in-house Flash solutions, or more recently with the fashionable Cufòn. These options are basically good, each one with its advantages and disadvantages, but they are all of course just workarounds.

Next Tuesday the SFUG Swiss Flash User Group meeting will take place at our spaceship in Wabern-Bern. Our latest crew member Sprog will speak about the state of the mobile products from Adobe, like Flash Lite 4 and Flash on the iPhone. And also sharing optimization tips while creating mobile Flash content. Michel Wacker will give a showcase about “Lernfragen 2.0“, an Adobe Flash based presentation layer for Moodle. Come join SFUG in the spaceship on 17 November. it starts at 7 pm. Go to Adobe Groups to find all the details.

Sprog was a contributing author for the first book about Flash on mobile devices published by FriendsOfED and has written a chapter for the book ‘Sams AIR Unleashed‘. When he stays on Mother Earth he works on the upcoming book Advanced AIR 2 book.

Is there an active game developers network in Switzerland? Commissioned by Pro Helvetia, Professor Dr. Beat Suter from the ZhdK surveyed 150 game developers and the resulting Swiss Game Design Studie 2009 shows that the respondents wished for an active game developers network. More specifically even, an IGDA Chapter.

This makes my news great news: The IGDA Switzerland Chapter is active again! The local group of the international game developers community IGDA wants to build up a network, advance careers in the area, promote professional game development and advocate on issues that affect the Swiss developer community. This Friday we will meet in the Gbanga Headquarters for the Inaugural Meeting.

After the Inaugural Meeting four more Meetings are planned in 2010. The first gathering next year will happen on 25th february 2010 here in the Nothing rocket.  As the Flash technology’s major role in Game development really can’t be doubted anymore, we thought it a great idea to dedicate it to the Flash Platform. Join the Swiss game developers network and attend the meetings!

More information: http://www.igda.ch.

In June, I took the opportunity to get up-to-date with Swiss accessibility, studying the Swiss accessibility survey (2007, in German only) before attending the 2. Swiss Accessibility Day. This post complements our previous article “Accessibility – far more than a mere checklist of measures“.

Now, accessibility is not about “if”, but about “how” or “how far” an application is made accessible. This post looks at the importance of usability for accessibility. Referring to Garrett’s elements of user experience and Nothing’s usability pyramid I found it astonishing how many accessibility requirements can be fulfilled by providing very high usability. Following the production steps of the usability pyramid this illustration shows just some examples:

So usability goes hand in hand with accessibility for quite a stretch, and achieving excellent usability already makes for the fundamental building stones of accessibility* (A Level). For making specific contents accessible however, additional measures are indispensable, like the description in sign language for the certification as AAA.

Where accessibility’s at in 2009

This overlapping of usability with accessibility is also palpable in the Accessibility survey, where the importance of consistent and semantic navigation or a well placed and functional search is a frequent topic.  So, how well accessibility gets implemented eventually depends on the user’s perspective, that is the type and intensity of the impairment. Even though a site built along the rules of usability will already provide good accessibility, specific measures are still necessary to make content accessible to certain handicapped user groups. In terms of project economy this means that the satisfaction of such measures are not prioritised.

Measures for the topmost level of the accessibility blueprint aren’t standard, but an ideal scenario. As of now, very good accessibility is only pushed where one is legally obliged to (confederation, cantons, communities), or, in the case of SFDRS with a scientific project as a driving force. Even despite this obligation some sites still don’t comply in terms of accessibility (German link only). A short check on sites that performed poorly in 2007 gave me the impression that not much has changed since, e.g. www.bger.ch and www.epfl.ch (which I always found inconsistent in terms of navigation and design anyway) still look the same. The need for action for all other sites is clear: More time, more money and more customer awareness of his very own efforts are necessary.

The customer’s choice

Consequently, it was emphasised during the accessibility day that accessibility starts with the customer’s mindset and could never be just a feature or final coating. For the producer, the customer’s project frame therefore sets the tone. And there’s the problem: In a market where negotiations are tough and sometimes unrealistic already, interests of relatively small groups that are only to be satisfied with relatively big effort are bound to get left behind.

* Caroline Ast, who evaluated the online presence of Swiss televison channel SF for her study: “If the requirements are part of the planning from the start [...] Accessibility [...] is just an aspect of Usability.”