BurningbirdThe importance of supporting diversity
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
PepsiCo names Indra Nooyi as CEO. She comes with a very impressive record, and one can see why she floated to the top of this company. I guess I’ll have to do my Mentos rocket with diet Pepsi now, instead of diet Coke.
Thanks to Karen Walrond for the link, as well as her own personal story about corporate employment and diversity.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
In her OPML weblog, Hilary questioned the seeming double standard of calling Dave Winer out for sexist behavior, but not dong the same with Maryam Scoble. She has a good point.
I had noticed Scoble’s original posting related to BlogHer, where she wrote:
Are you a a single male geek wondering why your love life sucks? Are you a married male geek wondering what’s wrong with your marriage? I can tell you what your problem is and there is an easy solution for it too. You should be at Blogher. Or you should send your significant other to Blogher and if at all possible attend the conference with her. If you are mising Blogher conference, I am gonna tell you in my best Dr. Phil voice: What were you thinking?
There are rooms full of beautiful, smart and smiling women here at Blogher. We have exotic brunettes, brilliant blondes and sexy red heads.
I’ve never heard a tech conference described in this way, whereby the members of the conference were called beautiful in dozens of different ways–as if to assure one and all that though the ladies may be independent, they’re still cute as buttons. As for calling all the ‘geeks’ with the assumption that they’re men…well.
Why didn’t I say anything? Because I had already been critical of actions undertaken, or not undertaken, by women associated with BlogHer; actions I thought were more important to discuss than Ms. Scoble’s tossaway remarks. Frankly, I didn’t need to generate a discussion on yet another front.
As for Scoble’s more recent post:
Geek to me stands for someone like my husband, addicted to his gadgets and his email and his Internet connection, very intelligent when it comes to machines, technology, and Internet and not so savvy when it comes to dealing with people, fashion and emotions.
I am lucky enough to know many smart and technologically advanced women, but I don’t categorize them as geeks even though they are as good as if not better than any male geeks I know when it comes to dealing with computers. I guess what I want to say is that women as hard ass as they can be in the technical field still have some RAM left for the soft stuff. They are more than just geeks. Is my logic flawed? What do you all think?
I think your logic is flawed.
First, I want to go on record, right here and now, as saying I don’t see Robert Scoble as a ‘geek’. I see him as a very astute marketing person with a great deal of discretionary income and a short attention span.
So, if Robert Scoble is not ‘geek’, what is a geek? According to the dictionary:
n.
1.
1. A person regarded as foolish, inept, or clumsy.
2. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept.2. A carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken.
I think I can safely say that no woman I know of would want to be a ‘geek’ according to this definition. Oddly enough, I don’t know of any man who would aspire to be the dictionary example of ‘geek’, either. That’s not to say there aren’t men and women who like to bite heads off of live chickens; just that I don’t, personally, know of any.
I like what Wikipedia has to say on ‘geek‘:
A geek is a person who is fascinated, perhaps obsessively, by obscure or very specific areas of knowledge and imagination.
Whether you agree with this definition or not, it’s beautiful, isn’t it? I could accept this as a label. I could live with being a Wikipedia geek.
The article also goes on to make some other distinctions on ‘geek’, including the fact that geek is not anchored to technology: one can be a music geek, literature geek, history geek, and so on. As for geek behavior, the article has the following:
Many teenage and college students adopt the stereotypical outward traits of geeks in order to fit in with the so-called geek subculture. It has been observed that many of the classic eccentricities associated with geeks has been due to their social awkwardness and were thus naturally occurring instead of contrived behavior. However, in the recent decade, many geeks have cultivated for themselves a number of behavioral traits that one sports as an indication of being “in the know” and “out of the mainstream”. These range from geek humor and obscure references to t-shirts sporting references to geek culture or interests. Also, many individuals, male and female, in an effort to avoid the dry, academic, no-nonsense stereotype associated with those in the intellectual, technical, and scientific fields (who historically have often been depicted as being quiet and reserved if not socially inept), cultivate personality quirks and eccentricities in order to appear more interesting.
Notice the reference to male and female: the article makes no assumption as to sex of the geek, only behavior. However, if one looks in the discussion page, this wasn’t always so. There, in one section related to geek girls we find:
sigh False hope: this link redirects to the top of the regular Geek page. As the daughter of a NASA scientist (therefore well versed in classical Geek culture) I have a few questions to raise:
* Can a pretty girl be a geek?
Yes. It’s worth pointing out though, that most of the girls who call themselves geeks have very little geek cred, and are actually what are known as scene whores in the Linux community. This would be descriptive of a hanger-on who is attracted to the “culture” of geekdom. Amazingly, there is such a thing as a “geek groupie’.
* What’s the relationship of geekdom and sex?
I have a thoroughly nonscientific theory, probably non-PC as well.
The formative Geek years are adolescence. It’s pretty easy for a guy to become a geek even if he’s fairly good looking. A teenage girl who’s good looking is going to get attention. She’ll also experience far more social pressure to maintain her appearance. This leads toward the social mainstream and away from advanced Linux skills, strangely worded t-shirts, and the Monty Python oeuvre.
Geekery could be called a set of behaviors that people engage in when they can’t have sex. Once a geek persona is firmly established it withstands romance. Developing geeks need abstinence. A young woman with natural geek tendencies who seeks out geek gatherings is probably going to get laid. Or at least get hit on by a huge number of guys. This inhibits the proper development of her geek nature. There are exceptions to this rule…but that kind of proves the rule, y’know?
Thankfully, this person’s attempt to establish a separate ‘geek girl’ page at Wikipedia was halted, and the effort redirected back to geek.
From all of this, do I consider Maryam Scoble to be sexist? Hard to say. I don’t read her weblog and my only exposure to her, online, has been her participation at BlogHer. At a minimum, I’ll say that she’s confused and perhaps lacking in empathy about what’s important to women who are technologists.
Returning, then, to my old standby–the literal meaning of things–according to the dictionary ’sexist’ is defined:
n.
1. Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women.
2. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.
I’d have to say that Maryam Scoble is sexist according to the second definition: for labeling and limiting men. After all, women can be anti-social, spendthrift, goods obsessed slobs, too.
As for Mr. Winer and his disappeared post from yesterday, and the more extensive version posted today–now I do have a long, long history with Dave. If I thought he, and others, wanted a dialog on sexism, in the past I would have tried. In fact, in the past I did try.
Unfortunately I can’t now, because I no longer know how to have a dialog on sexism in weblogging. I don’t know how to separate out the bits that are meaningful from the bits that are tossed out only to seek attention. I don’t know how to make my points without someone taking whatever I say, no matter how indirect, and making it personal. Disagreement is seen as criticism and criticism is seen as flames–you can’t have a dialog with these rules.
Someone else will have to have that dialog with Dave. Perhaps the folks of BlogHer; perhaps no one at all. As to the question that drives all of this: is Dave sexist? Is Dave not sexist? You know, I really don’t care one way or the other.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Before I started the new weblog(s), I told a friend that I was going to avoid saying anything even remotely critical about BlogHer. It does no good to do so, I told him.
I’m sure he knew that I could not follow this vow. I don’t know if being critical of Blogher will do any ‘good’ or not. I do know that fighting for women to be heard–inside blogging or not– has been a part of me for too many years to see it co-opted into a new business model; or used as an excuse to disregard women (even the flirty, sexy, beautiful ones) the other 360 ought days when BlogHer is not running.
I wanted to point you to Jeneane and Stowe Boyd’s response to Dave Winer’s Blogher recap. I particularly want to empathize Boyd’s reaction to the conference, which I found honest and direct. Tara Hunt also came out with a post related to some of the ‘bloghim’ responses. In addition, she provided her reasons why Blogger is not for her–most of which parallel other’s thoughts.
I’d already mentioned my concerns about the marketing aspects of BlogHer. These were, in a way, enforced by Lisa Stone’s only mention of the conference at the BlogHer site. In it she discusses the ’success’ of the women in the keynote panel of the conference; their success, and how, it would seem, the new BlogHer measures such:
If success is the best revenge, revenge must be sweet indeed for this quartet. For today, each of these women todays enjoys kudos from their readers/users (even critics), while at the same time being able to point to cold, hard facts such as Web traffic and revenue that demonstrate their ideas were worth pursuing.
Is that the true mark of a good idea within weblogging? Web traffic and revenue? Not writing or worth of the thought or the person…web traffic and revenue?
Women make up 50% of weblogging. That used to be a rallying cry, demanding that we be heard. Now it’s been reduced to facts and figures to place in front of the likes of Johnson & Johnson, GM, or some condom maker. This is influencing, heavily, the direction BlogHer seems to be taking.
Barbara Ganley wrote on some of this, in reference to the fact that DOPA passed–a law that has dangerous implications to the freedom of the Net in our country. Not a word was mentioned at BlogHer:
…rumbling through the two days was, as Laura points out, a strong whiff of the almighty dollar. People were looking for hints on increasing traffic to their blogs, making money blogging, encouraging advertisers. In sessions I attended, and in the buzz around the pool, there was a whole lot of attention paid to getting people to your blogs. Fascinating.
Okay, so I learned that my world is indeed what I expected to find out–a bit out of touch. But I expected there to be a huge outcry against DOPA–after all, Danah Boyd spoke on Day Two. But no–NOTHING within my earshot. And in fact, as I went around talking about it, I found out that many, many bloggers, including those in academic circles, hadn’t even heard of it. How can that be? I was shocked and not a little bothered–we were surrounded by the sponsors giving us everything from zipdrives to condoms, fake flowers to souped up water; but no talk about legislation that will deepen the digital divide by making blogs and other social networking sites out of reach for kids without computers in the home, and force those who do use the sites underground to form their communities. Read Danah Boyd’s inspired research on MySpace and adolescents if you don’t believe me.
If DOPA did not generate interest, where was the emphasis at BlogHer? From what many of the attendees stated: Mommyblogging.
I salute parents (and grandparents, and uncles, and aunts, and close family friends) who write about their children but that term is offensive–to women and to men. It forms a clique, a ring that keeps women without children on the outside, as if we’re freaks of the natural order. However, it has a catchy sound, doesn’t it?
Not all think so, though. One blogger, after a night at the conference seated next to a table of mommybloggers, wrote her opinion of it in no uncertain terms. The backlash was immediate, and not unexpected. I didn’t agree with much of what she said, but I can understand why at 2 in the morning she felt the need to say it.
What was unexpected, though, was that at so many of the sites that condemned her, there was a strong element of their being right, with much murmuring that there will always be women who turn against their own kind; women who aren’t warm and nurturing because they use such harsh terms. Wait until she has a child, they would say, then she’ll see. I must have read that dozens of times. Wait until she has a child. All the while, of course, not being able to link to her because it might shock the sensibilities of their audience. Or worse: give her attention.
(I thought the comment, I hope one of their kids barfs on your shoes was rather funny, though.)
Mothers, and empowerment. Leaving aside their disbelief that a woman would actually choose not to have children, these women, these mothers who feel so empowered, have forgotten their history. The earliest advertisements on TV were geared towards mothers. Much of the ads in early print were geared towards mothers. Yet mothers still send their children off to war. Mothers still worry over their sick babies, because they can’t afford a doctor and health insurance costs too much. If mothers have power, where are the changes we must assume every mother wants?
If we, women and men both, follow a path where the only measure of success is the number of ads at our site, the links we have, the money we make, then the only power we’re exercising is that of consumer–catered to, perhaps; but essentially meaningless.
Melinda Casino, who is both a contributing editor and was a panel presenter at BlogHer, wrote a long and thoughtful response about her impressions of Blogher tonight. It was titled, appropriately enough, Goodby Grassroots BlogHer. In it she lists out her disappointments of the conference, including the marketing and, ironically, the lack of diversity.
She talked about one incident:
…I was sitting in the audience waiting for a presentation to start, when a woman came up and knelt down by my side. She seemed friendly and I thought perhaps she’d seen my presentation on Day One, and wanted to chat about it. Or maybe she was familiar with my BlogHer posts…
I realized with a sinking feeling, as she handed me her card and a book, that she was making a one-to-one sales pitch. I politely accepted her “gifts”, sensing she’d then move on to the next customer, and she did.
I read in the liveblogging of the session on sex how the representative of the company that supplied the condoms for the goodie bag participated in the discussion. From this, I gather we can rest assured that the constuction of their condoms is of the highest quality.
I will freely admit that it is Melinda’s post that spurred me to write this one last post on BlogHer. When she mentioned this event, it reminded of all the concerns that have been expressed the last few years about the growing ’selling’ of weblogging–that one day we would be sitting there, in pleasant expectation of a conversation, only to be given a sales pitch. When the lines start blurring, we don’t know what’s real anymore. That will kill this environment faster than any law like DOPA.
Melinda also mentioned about the married, heterosexual, mother focus of the event:
Lisa WilliamsAn audience member got up and contributed a comment during the closing discussion on Day Two. She said something like, “There are a lot of married women with children here…” I thought she was going to segue into making a point about how we’re not all heterosexual married mothers. But to my surprise her statement—and it was just a statement at that point—was interrupted with a big round of applause.
I’d like to point out, sans applause, that:
woman ≠ mother
woman ≠ heterosexual
I don’t do Melinda’s writing justice. I suggest that you read the rest of what she wrote. It took a lot of guts to write it, and I admire her greatly for doing so. I wish now that I still had Burningbird, so I could send her and the others I mention in this post more traffic. Barring this, I hope a heartfelt “Well done”, will do.
I won’t write on BlogHer again. No truly, this time I won’t. I would ask that the company remove the tagline “Where the Women are”, because it really isn’t all that true anymore. Is it? Still, if they don’t, such is life.
I also wish, and I mean it, much success for the organization. I have no illusions that I will change anyone’s viewpoint with this writing. Perhaps the emphasis on women’s purchasing power can, this time, be used as a weapon for social change. In this, I hope they succeed.
I’m going a different path, though. One that doesn’t measure success based on ads, links, and revenue. And I’m not going to look back.
Update
An excellent somewhat alternative perspective of the conference, via a metaphor of shoes, by Maria of alembic. These boots are made for walking, indeed.
Kevin Marks also posted another thoughtful viewpoint of the event and some of the responses.
Less than impressed with Jory Des Jardin’s defense against accusations of ’selling out’, which was not a part of the criticism.
Update
According to Phil in my comments, and this post the blogger who stood up may have said she was unmarried and didn’t have kids.
Regardless, this shouldn’t be an issue at an all inclusive women’s weblogging conference.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I wrote a relatively positive piece on Blogher over at Just Shelley. I guess I’ll use the Bb Gun to write the negative stuff. Or a better way of looking at this: address some of the comments that bring out the bitch in me.
There’s this from a twenty something who since she’s never experienced any problems of gender bias in her life, women can’t possibly have any problems, and should stop ‘whining’ about such:
I don’t know how else to put it, but I say that to encompass my almost zero interest in most women’s issues and female activism and empowerment. Now, I think women deserve to vote and can have careers and can do whatever they want to. However, I hate the male-bashing and whining about it being a male world that so often dominates feminist conversations (but, as a caveat, not all conversations). For example, one of the take away points from the session was to hire women or help other women get hired, etc. Are you kidding me?! Hiring someone because they’re a woman is just as bad as hiring someone because they are a man. There seems to be a little bit of a double standard going on there.
There’s already a double standard. Do you know that all interview techniques at Google, Yahoo, and other major companies are primarily devised by male engineers between the ages of 25 and 45? Now, you tell me: who is going to do better with these techniques? A woman of any age? An older man or woman? Or a male engineer, between the ages of 25 and 45. Most likely from the same socioeconomic background as those who devised such tests?
To assume that because bias isn’t blatant it doesn’t exist makes one naive at best; self-centered at worst. Am I being hard on this young woman? Damn straight. She’ll most likely only get reaffirmation from her own set as to the justice of her views. What I’m suggesting, strongly, is that she develop a bit of empathy. The quality of empathy is understanding that just because you’ve not experienced an event directly, doesn’t mean the event doesn’t happen.
ValleyWag already touched on Dave Winer’s obsessive use of chick when referencing anything women were doing at Blogher. To give Winer credit, he did make a statement about how being a man at Blogher must be how a woman feels at ETech. I noticed he hasn’t said one word on the second day, but to give him the benefit of the doubt, much of this could be because of the blatant marketing of the conference.
Robert Scoble wrote:
Other things I learned from BlogHer?
That the stereotypes about women are true (they talk about things like mothering, cooking, sewing, and soft stuff like feelings, sex, relationships, along with broader things like books and movies far more often than I usually hear among the male dominated groups I usually find myself in after conferences). But, the fact that they are true gives women HUGE economic power and content power that the tech bloggers simply won’t touch.
So that’s what women are good for other than sex, having babies, and taking care of the house. We buy things.
I shouldn’t rise to such bait, but I suppose it would be too much for anyone to contemplate that Blogher attracted primarly women who do want to discuss such issues. That’s more or less how the conference was promoted. Would Scoble be surprised to hear both men and women talking about open source products at OSCON? Or new technology at ETech?
Having said that, there is a part of me that wishes the Blogher folks would not stress so much that they’re representative of ALL women in weblogging–because they aren’t. Theirs is a commercial enterprise which, more and more, is catering to specific types of interest; reflected in the conference, which was geared more toward certain types of topics and discussions. By stressing the company’s all inclusiveness, rather than band us, they’re branding us.
Media companies have to have a focus audience, and Blogher is a media company. Linux Journal, where Doc Searls works, focuses on men with certain interests. That doesn’t mean that Linux Journal will appeal to all men, the same as Blogher’s conference will appeal to all women. To draw inferences from the given sampling to the global all is an example of failed logic.
Now, having said all of that: what’s wrong with the ladies (and gents) of Blogher discussing these things? They’re terrific discussion points, and obviously, for the most part, the people who attended enjoyed the topics. The world is full of infinite variety–including men who liked the discussions just as much as the women. In fact, much of the more positive commentary I’ve heard on Blogher has been from men, and not just about women as marketing target.
One of the DHTML (Dynamic HTML) effects not built into my own libraries is a fish-eye effect. Those of you who have a Mac will know the effect I’m talking about: when you move your mouse over a menu bar, the items expand but in a way that emulates a ‘fish-eye’ magnifier.
This isn’t a trivial effect to create. You not only have to capture the web page reader’s mouse movements, you also have to size objects in relation to each other and the mouse. Luckily, the popular Ajax library Dojo Toolkit, created by a consortium of interested developers has just such an effect.
Though Dojo has documentation, it’s coverage is like Wikipedia’s coverage: it’s added by interested parties, and as such, there are gaps in how to use some of the library objects–including the Fisheye Widget. However, there are plenty of demos, includin one for this object.
To use this functionality, according to the demo, you create a series of div elements: one outer, one that acts as control, and several inner (for each menu item). You then add Dojo class names, as well as element attributes providing information for the menu caption, source file for the icon, minimum and maximum image sizes and so on. The markup in the demo is as follows:
<div class="outerbar">
<div class="dojo-FisheyeList"
dojo:itemWidth="50" dojo:itemHeight="50"
dojo:itemMaxWidth="200" dojo:itemMaxHeight="200"
dojo:orientation="horizontal"
dojo:effectUnits="2"
dojo:itemPadding="10"
dojo:attachEdge="top"
dojo:labelEdge="bottom"
dojo:enableCrappySvgSupport="false"
>
<div class="dojo-FisheyeListItem" onClick="load_app(1);"
dojo:iconsrc="images/icon_browser.png" caption="Web Browser">
</div>
<div class="dojo-FisheyeListItem" onClick="load_app(2);"
dojo:iconsrc="images/icon_calendar.png" caption="Calendar">
</div>
<div class="dojo-FisheyeListItem" onClick="load_app(3);"
dojo:iconsrc="images/icon_email.png" caption="Email">
</div>
<div class="dojo-FisheyeListItem" onClick="load_app(4);"
dojo:iconsrc="images/icon_texteditor.png" caption="Text Editor">
</div>
<div class="dojo-FisheyeListItem" onClick="load_app(5);"
dojo:iconsrc="images/icon_update.png" caption="Software Update">
</div>
<div class="dojo-FisheyeListItem" onClick="load_app(6);"
dojo:iconsrc="images/icon_users.png" dojo:caption="Users" >
</div>
</div>
</div>
It’s an interesting approach to take: embed the necessary information as tag attributes, so that the person doesn’t have to touch code. However it has two major drawbacks: it doesn’t validate, and it’s not accessible.
Dojo, like many other of the new Ajax libraries, make use of custom attributes on standard HTML and XHTML objects, which don’t validate as either HTML or XHTML. In addition, the menu is JS driven, so a person who doesn’t have JavaScript enabled won’t have access to the menu. Not only JavaScript driven, it’s also mouse driven menu, which makes it unusuable within text-to-speech browsers.
Modifying the code so that it validates is a bit tricky, but doable. What is required is removing the tag attributes for the elements, and adding these using the DOM, or Document Object Model, API.
I have six menu items, which means removing the custom attributes for one controller and the six menu item div elements:
<div class="dojo-FisheyeList" id="controller">
<div id="menu1" class="dojo-FisheyeListItem">
</div>
...
<div id="menu6" class="dojo-FisheyeListItem">
</div>
</div>
In JavaScript, I use the DOM setAttribute to re-set these custom attributes. The following code re-sets the attributes for the controller object:
var cont = document.getElementById("controller");
cont.setAttribute("itemWidth","60");
cont.setAttribute("itemHeight","100");
cont.setAttribute("itemMaxWidth", "200");
cont.setAttribute("itemMaxHeight", "300");
cont.setAttribute("orientation","horizontal");
cont.setAttribute("effectUnits","2");
cont.setAttribute("itemPadding","10");
cont.setAttribute("attachEdige","top");
cont.setAttribute("labelEdge","bottom");
cont.setAttribute("enableCrappySvgSupport","false");
These attribute settings are exactly as they were found in the tag attributes, other than altering the image sizes to fit my own GIFs.
For each of the menu options, again the element is accessed by identifier, and attributes added with setAttribute. The following sets the attributes for the first menu item, but all other menu objects are modified using the exact same code (but different images and captions):
var menu1 = document.getElementById("menu1");
menu1.setAttribute("onClick","load_page('http://learningjavascript.info')");
menu1.setAttribute("iconsrc","/dotty/dotty.gif");
menu1.setAttribute("caption","Learning JavaScript");
Since Dojo requires these attribute settings before its functionality, and it processes the data on page load, the function that contains the attribute setting needs to be called right after the div elements are created in the page. One way is to embed a script block calling the function in the web page right after the div elements are created:
<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
setMenuProps();
//]]>
</script>
(Notice the use of the CDATA section surrounding the script? This, also, is required in order for the page to validate as XHTML.)
Once the attributes are set, the Dojo fisheye menu loads cleanly, without having to use custom attributes. But something’s still missing: attributes that are required. Each img tag requires an alt attribute, which is a legitimate X(HTML) attribute, but one that’s not provided.
I explored the Dojo code and tried a couple of alternatives to add attributes for the images, but nothing worked. There’s also nothing in documentation. So, back again to my own custom code.
Unlike setting the initial attributes, the alt attribute needs to be added afterDojo has done its work and created the menu. Dojo captures the window.onload event, which I also needed to capture. However, I had to do so in such a way as to not ‘break’, or override Dojo’s event handler.
I needed to use the DOM again, but this time to attach an event handler on the window onload event, chaining it with the Dojo event handler. The following code does the trick:
function addWindowOnLoad(func) {
// test for object model
if (window.addEventListener) {
window.addEventListener("load",finish,false);
} else if (window.attachEvent) {
window.attachEvent("onload", finish);
}
}
addWindowOnLoad(finish);
The finish method then accesses each image in the page, checks for class name, and when it matches the Dojo class name, checks the source attribute on the image. Based on the text, the related alt tag value is set:
function finish() {
for(var i = 0; i The page now validates as XHTML transitional. Thought it takes more code, it’s preferable than just blowing off XHTML as ‘not useful’, or unimportant. We haven’t walked three steps forward in our use of web standards the last decade, only to take two steps back now for the sake of a little sizzle.
Even if we decide to blow off valid markup, we can’t justify blowing off accessibilty (of which valid markup is one component). A pretty or cool effect is not worth putting barriers around our pages. Unfortunately, though, accessibility is both easier and more difficult to implement.
The simplest accessibility option is to provide a NOSCRIPT block with content to display if JavaScript is disabled. In this case, a straight menu with hypertext links around images is all that’s needed:
<noscript>
<a href="http://scriptteaser.com/learningjavascript/"><img src="/dotty/dotty.gif"
alt="ScriptTeasing News" /></a>
...
</noscript>
Unfortunately, other accessibility issues aren’t as easy to resolve. A truly accessible menu needs to be keyboard sensitive for many text-to-speech browsers. Adding this into the Dojo menu is going to take additional thought. In addition, the behavior of the menu is off with Internet Explorer 6.x (the entire menu doesn’t display until you move your mouse over the bar).
Then there’s the issue of the size of the Dojo libraries. There’s a noticeable delay loading this page with Dojo’s large code base in addition to mine, just to create a visual effect.
Sometimes, though, you want both the sizzle and the steak. I’ll return later with more on whether I’ll keep the Dojo fisheye menu, and how I’ll resolve the last issue of accessibility if I do.