Language of Soul of the World! January 30, 2008

No prize in guessing that I am reading Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist“. Since I have been reading this book, I have been thinking too much about things like ‘Language of the Soul’, ‘Soul of the World’, ‘Omen’, ‘Destiny of Life’ and so on. I have started thinking about it and most importantly realised the importance of ‘living in the present’. Also how all of us are so well equipped to chart out in unknown & create our destiny. How one should not stop hearing the Omens and regret later for not being courageous enough to acheive what one is destined for. This prevents us from miseries & afterthoughts of not doing what one always wanted to do cause of some constraints. It has freed me in more ways then other and has instilled in me courage to embark what I want to do, no matter how much I fear of failure for “Failure is the obstacles to success“

Happy Republic Day 2008! January 28, 2008

It has been 8yrs since we are staying in Delhi, but had never been to India Gate during Republic Day. This time we decided to visit one as my daughter was interested in seeing the fighter planes as she’s taken fancy for it. It was chilly Saturday morning when we started of for India gate. We encounter high security on road just a few meters from our house…though India gate was about 18kms from our house in dwarka. There was proper traffic management so that people take certain route to reach their alloted cabin booth. We reached on time to take a seat in front row. Although the prime minister’s cabin was far from where we were seated & hence we missed all the action over that stretch. But the overall experience of watching different states cultural activities as well as missiles & armaments were too good. Their was parade by different states cantonment & finally a bike stunt show. Helicopters from above showered rose petals on the crowd from top. As we got exhausted & was moving towards parking to go home, their was final act of fighter plane for which my daughter had specially come. We managed to show her that too & that saved us from her questioning eyes as to why did we come here in first place, if we have to leave before the show is over? But any given day if I am given a choice to come again for Republic Day Celebration I would choose the comfort of my home as we get the best possible view of all the happenings.

Saturday Discovery January 21, 2008

It was a usual Saturday morning. I woke up at my own pace, leisurely enjoyed breakfast & drank my cuppa of tea. Its been a ritual since quite a long time that Saturday was never spend at home unless we are having some guest over. But today their was no plan in place & I was cribbing to my hubby that our social life sucks. How I had been uprooted from my birth place & been separated from all my contacts, had we been in Mumbai, we would be having a rocking social life.

Anywayz after lunch their was impromptu plan to visit air-force museum, as my daughter was asking us to go for a long time now. So we packed up for the Saturday night out. Alas! when we reached to the destination it was staring blank on our face. We quickly read the board put outside it which read “Holidays on Monday & Gazetted holidays”. Recollecting that today is Moharrum & probably that’s the reason why the museum was closed, I informed my disappointed daughter that we will try to take her somewhere more exciting place then this. Although I had no clue where.

I started thinking where could my daughter can have more fun so as to forget the museum thing. I know she loves swings et al….but had just been to children’s park last Saturday. Finally an idea of taking her to “Rail Museum” came to my mind, to which she whole-heartedly agreed. We had a great fun there & finally went to another happening place for my daughter called “Eatopia” at India Habitat Center. This is best eating joint to be in chilling evening as it has a cosy warm interior & children section is separate where they can play video games. So a family is most happy coming over here as it serves the purpose of parents as well as children.

While going out of this place I spotted beautiful paintings in the lobby. On close inspection I came to know that those paintings has been done by disabled children from umang organisation.

It was so beautifully done…you can take look here:

Seeing those painting stirred my desire to once again take the easel & brush in my hand & do painting. I also got assured that in long run I have one skill to keep my self occupied apart from reading & watching movies.

Usability Resources January 17, 2008

Useful Resources on Usability and HCI Links

Jacob Nielsen’s Web site – http://www.useit.com/

The Usability Professionals’ Association – http://www.upassoc.org/

Usability Matters – http://www.usabilitymatters.org

STC Usability & User Experience Community –http://www.stcsig.org/usability/index.html

Factors International – http://www.humanfactors.com/home/usability.asp

US government Usability site – http://usability.gov/

508 The road to accessibility – http://www.section508.gov/

Sameer Chavan – http://www.sameerchavan.com/web_hci.htm

Dr. Dinesh katres web site – http://www.hceye.org/

Styling your site January 16, 2008

Style sheets can be associated with documents using a list of link elements in the head. There are three different relationships external style sheets can have with the document: persistent, preferred, and alternate.

Persistent

These style sheets are always enabled (they are always “on”) and are combined with the active style sheet. They can be used for shared rules common to every style sheet. To make a style sheet persistent, the rel attribute is set to “stylesheet” and no title attribute is set.

To make the style sheet paul.css persistent, the following link element would be included in the head:

“”

Preferred

These style sheets are enabled by default (they are “on” when the page is loaded). They can then be disabled if the user selects an alternate style sheet.

To make a style sheet preferred, the rel attribute is set to “stylesheet” and the style sheet is named with the title attribute.

Several preferred style sheets can be grouped together by giving them identical title attributes. These grouped style sheets are then all enabled and disabled together. If more than one group of preferred style sheets are declared, the first group takes precedence.

To make paul.css preferred, a title attribute is added, giving the default style a name.

“”

Alternate

These style sheets can be selected by the visitor as alternatives to the preferred style sheet. This allows the visitor to personalize a site and choose his or her favorite scheme. They can also be used for accessibility.

To specify an alternate style sheet, the rel attribute is set to “alternate stylesheet” and the style sheet is named with a title attribute. As with preferred sheets, these style sheets can also be grouped together by giving them identical title attributes.

Using the previous example again; to make paul.css into an alternate style sheet, the keyword “alternate” is added to the rel attribute.

“”

Note that these relationships only apply to external style sheets which are included using the link element.

Swapping Styles

When a document is initially loaded, the persistent and preferred style sheets are applied to the document. The alternate style sheets can then be selected by the user. The W3C tells us that the browser should give us a choice of the style sheet we want to use, and suggests that perhaps a drop–down menu or tool bar will be provided.

So far, so good. We have several style sheets and the visitor can choose their favorite from a menu. But then we encounter a problem. A major one. Mozilla provides a menu to select the style sheet we want to use under the view menu item. But Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) provides no such menu. So we have several style sheets, and no way to access them in MSIE.

Here’s where a little bit of JavaScript can be used along with the DOM to provide a way for MSIE and Mozilla users to select the style sheet they want to use. Their preference can also be stored in a cookie. And because we are using the link tags as the W3C tells us to, the JavaScript doesn’t interfere with the menu in Mozilla, and it degrades very gracefully.