Re:Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face
by jonknee on Tuesday January 20, 2009 @09:29PM
(#442667)
Good markup can't handle it all, text-only mode allows for stuff like having a transcript instead of a video with a link to a transcript. Text-only mode is even available on the new site:
Re:Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face
by sh1mmer on Tuesday January 20, 2009 @10:42PM
(#442753)
I'm going to disagree. Let me share some background, I spent several years helping to write the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 spec. The original WCAG 1.0 as well as Section 508 specify an alternate text only site as a viable method.
Real world experience shows us those sites quickly fall behind. Text-alternatives are necessary for multimedia content, text-only sites as an alternative to good markup aren't.
Re:Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face
by bmelton on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @01:39PM
(#443587)
Fall behind in what sense? Obviously, if the multimedia content isn't transcribed quickly enough, then that makes sense, but I would also guess less consequential than if a given page weren't transformed from 'marked up' to 'text', but in the latter case, if the backend is dynamic, and just changing the output format, why would it fall behind?
Re:Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face
by sh1mmer on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @03:48PM
(#443776)
People just don't want to maintain 2 sites. Extra features and sections often don't get updated to the text only rendering.
I guess my point is that screen readers like (even prefer) well written markup. A text-only site is a kickback from when they couldn't and the accessibility guidelines were written to deal with that.
Re:Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face
by trickjarrett on Tuesday January 20, 2009 @01:11PM
(#441994)
It's also built using jQuery as tweeted by jResig. I was hoping Obama would begin using twitter immediately after taking the Presidency. We'll see if the twitter account falls into the history books and is not utilized.
"Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Whitehouse.gov under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License."
Re:Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face
by danielrhodes on Tuesday January 20, 2009 @08:19PM
(#442567)
This doesn't mean much. I believe all works produced by the federal government are in the public domain and you don't need permission to reproduce them.
Re:Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face
by callahad on Tuesday January 20, 2009 @09:08PM
(#442637)
True, and covered in the first of the three paragraphs at that link:
"Pursuant to federal law, government-produced materials appearing on this site are not copyright protected. The United States Government may receive and hold copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise."
The news is that they're defaulting to Creative Commons for all "third-party content" on the site, including user submissions. That's the part that got me. Even if they're not producing it, they're trying to keep information open (as opposed to just requiring copyright assignment, for instance)
Re:Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face
by brandonkm on Tuesday January 20, 2009 @06:47PM
(#442464)
I'm sure a ton of people will. In fact, I would bet that the whitehouse blog may introduce lots of people to RSS for the first time ever. The concept of a more transparent government where citizens are informed about the happenings inside the white house will be heavily at play here.
Re:Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face
by cmos on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @08:17AM
(#443162)
ok, am I the only fool who got a bit teary eyed when going through whitehouse.gov? Whether you agree with his politics or not, you have to admit that he is going to change the way we interact with our government.
"President Obama started his career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he saw firsthand what people can do when they come together for a common cause"
Re:Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face
by tptacek on Tuesday January 20, 2009 @02:46PM
(#442150)
Blue State Digital built CHANGE.GOV, and this is pretty clearly a continuation, although the impression I get is that they've brought a lot of it in-house.
Re:Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face
by smhinsey on Tuesday January 20, 2009 @04:30PM
(#442330)
I thought BSD was a shoe-in for this as well, but if you view source you'll see the hallmarks of ASP.NET (viewstate and control naming), which throws me.
If you search google for 'whitehouse' and 'robots' then you can still see the cache of the robots.txt file of the Bush Administration (http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:tCfemw3M-aUJ:www.whiteho...)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/accessibility/
"In addition to the features that make the graphics version of the site more accessible, a text-only version provides added convenience for users."
I'm not sure how to access it though, maybe that feature hasn't launched yet.
Real world experience shows us those sites quickly fall behind. Text-alternatives are necessary for multimedia content, text-only sites as an alternative to good markup aren't.
I guess my point is that screen readers like (even prefer) well written markup. A text-only site is a kickback from when they couldn't and the accessibility guidelines were written to deal with that.
http://66.218.69.11/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=site%3Awhite...
"Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Whitehouse.gov under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License."
"Pursuant to federal law, government-produced materials appearing on this site are not copyright protected. The United States Government may receive and hold copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise."
The news is that they're defaulting to Creative Commons for all "third-party content" on the site, including user submissions. That's the part that got me. Even if they're not producing it, they're trying to keep information open (as opposed to just requiring copyright assignment, for instance)
Just because it validates doesn't mean it's a well-coded website.
Other than that it's an awesome site, definitely the best government agency site I've ever seen.
Unbelievable only a year ago, really.
"President Obama started his career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he saw firsthand what people can do when they come together for a common cause"
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/7974/chinahousehd8.png