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Archive for January, 2007

Photoshop “Reflection” tutorial

by Khaled on January 17th, 2007

Photoshop tutorial: Reflection effect - Photoshop tuts series

So this is the second simple Photoshop tutorial I am posting in the new Photoshop tutorials series. As I’ve stated before, this is to show to achieve the reflection effect that was created at the end of the Photoshop “Glass Text” Tutorial. And yes! many of you were requesting it.

This tutorial was done using Adobe Photoshop CS2 but, of course, it can be achieved using older Photoshop versions. So we are going to start where we ended in the previous Photoshop “Glass Text” Tutorial. You are curious aren’t you ? Dig for it to find out

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Can I always use a 100% AJAX Solution?

by Khaled on January 12th, 2007

Lately I have been discussing this matter with different people on some forums or in real life. The discussion was about whether it is wise to totally rely on AJAX to design a web site or a web application without introducing any alternative way of usage. Some guys were claiming that it is safe to do so as most of the internet users now have Javascript-capable browsers. I believe that the best practice for the moment is to build your accessible application then add AJAX to make it better.

In my Opinion it is totally wrong to consider that JavaScript is always available, as this not the case at all for the moment at least.

Some visitors are not using Javascript-capable browsers (yes, they might be a minority, but remember your site should be accessible to potentially everyone), sometimes they are behind a script blocking firewall so even if their browsers are JavaScript capable the script won’t work for them!
I’ve read some nice articles by Ian Lloyd on this matter and I believe they are really interesting:

- Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut: Ma.gnolia’s case.
- Blogger: Can I get in please?
- Bloglines is broken! (at least for me)

Those are articles exhibiting some accessibility errors made by some very known “guys” just because they are totally relying on JavaScript!
and they forgot that for some reason or another their Javascripts are not executed…

Roger Johansson sums up the whole issue in a very nice way!