Chris Hanrath

The more i talk to Jesse and Trek about their project “Red” that lets you write Ruby code that is converted to Javascript – the more i like it. When done, developers can write their applications completely in Ruby and don’t have to worry about the generated Javascript for the browser. Whatever Ruby specific code people come up with (class creation, inheritance…) Red translates it into Javascript. Looking into the future, this will enable developers to write great applications that can leverage all advantages of an object oriented language.

[ github.com ]

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Access Matters conducted an interesting test on how information is visible to screen readers using different approaches in hiding content from being displayed on the actual page. The provide a table or matrix to compare the different test cases with different screen reader products and versions.

[ Found via access-matters.com ]

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Yesterday i attended a presentation of Expedia on the University of Michigan Campus. They came to recruit Software designers and Project Managers. I was positively surprised to see how much they focus on usability and user-centered design to improve the user experience of their website. The presenter showed the audience a very interesting and promising take on booking your next vacation using expedia. Instead of using the traditional “day, time, destination” input, she showed us a very interesting wizard that selects vacation packages using other inputs such as an interactive map and vacation activities.

Unfortunately this is only visible to random users visiting Expedia.com who fall into the right category of the bucket test. But you can get an idea of Expedia’s attempts to improve the user experience at labs.expedia.com

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I was calling Verizon 411 the other day, they connected me to the desired phone number and as it has happened before nobody picked up the phone… So i repeated to call 411 to get the number once again. This time i was positively surprised, because as soon as i dialed, i was asked if i want to be reconnected to the last number. Great! This is what i call user experience.

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A sweet new user interface for any kind of search request.

Welcome to a new kind of search bar! Wundrbar is a next generation
search bar that lets you control your personal accounts and launch any
kind of web search. For example, you can manage your online calendar,
start a flight search, update your twitter status, and much more. And
you can do it all from the same search bar.

[ wundrbar.com ]

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To run the latest Firefox alpha nightly build, download the portable zip file and the latest firefox zip trunk. Copy the “firefox” folder into the “App” folder… done!

[ cybernetnews.com, grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com ]

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