Blog Question Week 9

Blog Questions for Week 9



How could you advise a visually disabled friend to complain about a website they couldn't access?

There seems to be widespread speculation about the legislation introduced under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), which ensures that websites are accessible to blind and disabled users. As you know the chances are you'll come up empty handed. So therefore, If I had a friend that was in this position I would tell the friend to take strong legal action as it appears that certain websites are singling out certain individuals (discrimination), so therefore the strongest possible action that could be taken in order to give this person a voice and teach the company a lesson is to take the company to court and sue them for going against the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA),

(For this particular case)

5.23 (p71): “For people with visual impairments, the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include ... accessible websites.”

LEGAL CASE

Location: Califonia

Bruce Sexton

California law may require websites to be accessible to disabled internet users, according to a ruling in a case against retail giant Target. Despite recent improvements to the accessibility of Target.com, the case has now been certified as a class action.

Target was sued by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and one of its blind members, Bruce Sexton, under a federal law, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and also under two state laws, the California Disabled Persons Act and the California Unruh Civil Rights Act.
The NFB and Sexton argue that Target.com is not accessible to blind internet users, in breach of these federal and state laws. They complained that images on the site were missing alternative text upon which blind users rely; keyboard controls do not work, meaning users must be able to work a mouse; and headings are missing that are needed for navigation.

Since the case began, Target has made improvements to the site's accessibility. accessibility had improved, making it "more likely that a blind user could complete a transaction,"

SOLUTIONS

3 solutions which can improve accessibility are as followed:

(screen reader) if user is blind they can get the CPU to read out text for them this may as include images as well.

(text size function) (increase) this can be used people with impaired vision the process can be carried out as follows:

• top of browser click VIEW
• select TEXT SIZE from drop down menu
• select the size you are comfortable
• proceed with the reading
  
  (special keyboard) which is in brail for the blind, allows them to eaisly navigate around the net.

References

http://www.w3.org/WAI/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/14/california_target_web_accessibility/

http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/uk-website-legal-requirements.shtml

Blog Questions for Week 8

In your own words explain what are the advantages and disadvantages of 3-Tier Architecture in Web development?

The 3-tier architecture is an application architecture that splits up the user interface which is also referred to as the presentation layer from the application logic i.e. application server that handles the application logic and also interacts with the database.
This scales better and is less complicated, new user interfaces can be added easily without changing the database or the application.

The structure:

a) Web server, (top level)
b) Database server, (information stored / retrieved from database)
c) Application server. (coordinates the application commands)


ADVANTAGES

· Application server logic is portable to other database server platforms by virtue of the application software

· Simplicity

· Superior performance for medium to high volume environments



DISADVANTAGES

· Has a more complex structure

· It is more difficult to setup and maintain.

· Relative Poor security

· Relative immaturity of technology



Referencing

http://members.tripod.com/ChannuKambalyal/NTierArchitecture.pdf
Thursday 15th November 2007 @ 12:18


http://tbs.moodle.uce.ac.uk/file.php/843/Karims_Seminar/Three_Tier_Architecture_Model_answer_.doc

http://orafaq.com/glossary/faqglos_.htm
Thursday 15th November 2007 @ 12:30

Blog Questions for Week 7

Blog Questions for Week 7

“With hindsight, what advice would you give to next year's students about preparing for the A1W group presentation?”

The advice that I would give to next years students who are preparing for their A1W group presentations is to firstly form a group with the people you are most likely to get on with as soon as possible, don’t wait to be put into groups as you will be wasting valuable time you can be using for the preparation.

When you have formed a group plan out regular meetings, and make sure you tell your entire group in advance as you don’t want members missing on the day of the meeting as this will only set you back. Make sure the meeting times are lengthy as you get to cover a lot more instead of having 1 hour time slots. Roughly have 3 to 4 meetings per week prior to the presentation.

Another thing that I would advise is to not go over the top with printouts as this will only slow you down when you come to putting the PowerPoint presentation together, its good to have a lot of data to work it but its not good to have a bunch of useless data, before you print out make sure whatever you print out will benefit you and your presentation.

make sure you always reference any websites you have visited to extract information from.

Finally make sure you have enough time for rehearsals preferably a week give your self a lengthy period which allows you to master your presentation this means having no notes on you and not keep on looking back at the presentation notes as you will be accused of reading straight of the PowerPoint.

Blog Question Week 6

Blog Questions for Week 6

Describe THREE typical functions performed by the Apache HTTP Web Server? Usage

Apache is primarily used to serve both static content and dynamic Web pages on the World Wide Web.

Apache is used for many tasks where the content needs to be made available in a secure and reliable way.

Three functions that it performs are the following:

1) An example of one function is sharing files from a personal computer over the Internet. A user who has Apache installed on their desktop can put arbitrary files in the Apache's document root which can then be shared.

2) Programmers developing web applications often use a locally installed version of Apache in order to preview and test code as it is being developed.

3) Apache features configurable error messages,

(i) Compare the similarities and differences between the terms ‘Static’ and Dynamic’ Web sites?

There are many similarities and differences between the two, I will begin by comparing the differences, firstly the obvious comparison is static pages end with (.html or .htm) however dynamic pages end in (.stm or .asp or .php etc)

Another difference is static pages tend to have simple non complex web addresses as for dynamic pages they are seen as more complex.

The final difference that I will mention is the following, static pages do not hold or store any personal data about you as for dynamic pages hey usually intended to store your data you will know this when you visit a previous website and your name appears for example (welcome back Mr Smith).

The similarities between static and dynamic pages are they both manage and store website content from around the world.

With out static and dynamic pages there would be no (WWW).

Both static and dynamic translate url into file names and programme names, and they both maintain arunning log file.

They both also manage a number of clients.

Blog Questions for Week 5

You must hold regular meetings and post the minutes on your section of moodle in the groupwork forum. Your group and tutors can see this, but other students can’t.

The reason why I have chosen this point is because I personally believe that regular meetings is a must have when it comes to group work, as you get to discover how the group is getting on.
Having group meetings also enables the group to bond and actually work as a group instead of working individually, the reason why I think group meetings are important is because you get the chance to raise issues that certain individuals have encountered which can be sorted out you can also help each other with inputting ideas and thoughts to come up with effective ideas which can be used towards the final project.

The overall benefit of group meetings is as a group you can plan ahead of what you want as a group, and you can also assign certain roles to individuals to help keep the group on track.

It’s also important to post the meeting dates and time to show that you have been really working as a group and how often as a group we have been meeting up.

Blog Question Week 4

Now a days the internet is slowly being taken over by mobile internet devices such ad PDA'S (BlackBerry) this can be backed up by the following statistic



"12.3 million people used their mobile phone to access the Mobile Internet in the UK during June 2006, according to figures from the Mobile Data Association (MDA).



The figure shows that close to 20% of mobile phone users are now regularly using the WAP capability on their phones to download ringtones, games or wallpapers, or to simply browse the Mobile Internet while on the move."



The following are advantages of using a mobile internet device for sending and retrieving messages?



ADVANTAGES

• Through the access of mobile internet "WAP" you can communicate on the go which is an advantage, this provides advantages such as having the ability to communicate by email with others and to also recieve information anywhere.

• Privacy is also another advantage forinstance on the internet anyone can intrude on your privacy such as hackers as for a mobile its all personel as its your own personel space which cannot be accessed by 3rd party.

However there are also limitations to using mobile internet to sending and retrieving



Here are the disasvantages of using a mobile internet device for sending and retrieving email messages?



DISADVANTAGES

• The small screen size, having a small screen size makes it difficult and unclear to see text and graphics, many devices have a certain limits regarding characters so therefore you could end up with incomplete emails or the email comes in two parts.

• Speed and navigation is another problem forexample mobile devices do not use pointers which Pc's have but they use the up, down, sideways function which limits the navigation. Regarding speed the service speed usually tends to be quite slow.

The following was examples of advantages and disadvantages of using a mobile internet for emailing.

REFERENCE



http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk/2006/08/12_million_hit_.html (this is the link to the statistics on mobile internet)

August 23, 2006

Blog Question Week 3

Blog Questions for Week 3

IP is an Internet protocol address this acts as a unique identifier which is then used to identify and to communicate with other stations on the computer network.

The reason why IP addresses are due to run out is because of the sortage of addresses as more and more users are joining every day which limits the amount of IP address that are available to new users. This has lead to IP addresses running out on IPv4

Another main cause of the problem is overload beacuse of double requests that are made my the user this tends to stall the server, another cause of the problem has been Vista which has also put load on DNS servers which will overtax the system causing it probally to crash and process requests slowly

DNS has many functions such as

• 
  
  answering requests


• 
  
  contacting other DNS


• 
  
  pass on requests to other servers


• 
  
  display an error message

having excessive IP addresses will lead DNS not functioning propally leading to it running out

To solve the problem IPv6 could be introduced to act as a back up which can work along side IPv4 they can work accordingly to prevent the run out.