Comments on: Easy Vector Graphics with the Raphaël JavaScript Library

By: Brian Lowe

Brian Lowe — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:07:05 +0000

I’m not sure whether this is a comment about the library or browser support for the library but…

The demo works seamlessly in FireFox, Safari and Google’s Chrome, but IE8 reports invalid JavaScript unless I tell it to work in “compatibility mode” (emulating IE7).

It appears IE8’s default “standards mode” is still out of step with the other browsers? :(

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:19:27 +0000

How about a more realistic demo?

This example really needs an abstraction layer, so much so that it is almost impossible to digest how good or bad this thing is as a graphics library.

By: brothercake

brothercake — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:46:28 +0000

Oh I meant this one actually, but the other one is still interesting — http://www.sitepoint.com/article/ajax-screenreaders-work/

By: brothercake

brothercake — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:44:45 +0000

There’s no way to update page content via Ajax and remain accessible. Not if you’re being realistic.

But then I suppose it depends on your benchmark. It depends whether you count JS support as an accessibility issue (I do; many don’t), and whether you can presume that a screenreader user is using the latest and greatest version (which may support ARIA, where older ones don’t).

ARIA = Accessible Rich Internet Applications (to me, an oxymoron if ever there was one; but I’m not gonna get into that here — have a look at some of this for more:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/waiaria (thinks it’s cool)
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/accessible-javascript/ (not at all convinced .. actually I wrote that one, just so you know where the bias is coming from ;))

By: Andrew Tetlaw

Andrew Tetlaw — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:09:34 +0000

Well the library is purely for the creation of vector graphics, so I don’t think it’s the responsibility of this library. In the demo, I’ve updated the heading of the graph, a h1 element, with the current performance value each time the graph updates. No reason why the heading couldn’t have the initial value on page load.

But, what’s the best way to update page content via Ajax and remain accessible?

I guess, you could also have a manual refresh control, that grabs the latest perf data (since last update) and then produces a static graph from the data in the HTML.

By: brothercake

brothercake — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:59:41 +0000

Does the data have to be written in script, or does the library have the capability to extract its data from existing HTML? If it’s pure JS there’s no fallback content for assistive devices to interpret, or for non-scrip users to see, therefore no legitimate way of using it at all (without adding that layer yourself).