spiderwebwoman …

(Shared from noupe.com)

In the past, Microsoft was not known as a business that cared about web standards. However, at least since the new browser Edge, Microsoft tries to stick to HTML and CSS standards. Now, there’s a new tool called Sonar, which checks if websites meet the standards, and tests them regarding optimization options and safety issues.

Sonar checks your website in five different categories: Accessibility, HTML validity, Optimization Suggestions For Faster Websites, Support for Progressive Web Applications (PWA), and assessing Security Gaps.

Original post at: https://www.noupe.com/design/sonar-microsofts-free-new-tool-tells-you-how-good-your-website-really-is.html

The Windows 10 Accessibility Handbook: Supporting Windows Users with Special Visual, Auditory, Motor, and Cognitive Needs is now available to order at Amazon. In this book you will learn everything you need to know about making Windows 10 easier to use, see, hear, touch, or read, whether you are using it yourself, setting it up for another person, teaching others about ease of use at work or in the home, or working with a variety of people with specific needs in the community.

This book is for Windows users with special visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive needs, at home and in the workplace. It provides guidance for IT and management professionals who work with such users, as well as the community and statutory groups, organizations, colleges, universities, and government agencies that support them. It is also a guide for friends and family supporting elderly or disabled Windows users in the home, and for anyone else looking for advice on how to make their PC simpler, easier, more productive, and ultimately more enjoyable to use.

You will learn:

• How to manage accessibility in the Settings app, and make use of the Ease of Access Center
• Make your keyboard and mouse easier to use
• Make text and windows easier to read
• Use text or visual alternatives for sounds
• Use the narrator, and control it using touch and with the keyboard
• Use Cortana as a smart PC assistant
• Make use of Windows 10 shortcut keys, and touch and trackpad gestures
• Use and train the handwriting recognition feature
• Dictate or navigate using speech recognition

Windows 10 Revealed is published by Apress and tech reviewed by yours truly.

For more on Microsoft’s commitment to Accessibility, go to the Microsoft Accessibility blog.

If you have a Facebook Business page for your business, you’ve probably noticed you can only upload photos and videos to your page. No PDFs, no Word documents, just photos and videos. Not sure of the reason behind it, but it is what it is.

After a few hours of searching, I found a very easy (and free) solution. It doesn’t allow you to upload the PDF to Facebook, but it does give you a link to the PDF that you can include in a post on your page. The solution is docdroid. You can upload documents in any format – they support PDF, DOCX, DOC, ODT, RTF, XLS, XLSX, ODS, PPT, PPTX, ODP, TXT and more.

You don’t need to register with docdroid to upload documents, but they encourage you to do so. It makes it easier to upload a newer version of your document without having to change all the places it’s linked to or from. Also – and this is important – their site says "Privacy is important to us! Uploaded documents are not publicly listed. If you want to, you can set up password protection or set your document to private at anytime."

With the launch of Windows 10 came a new browser, Microsoft Edge. As every web designer/developer knows, you should preview your web pages in as many browsers as you can. However, Microsoft didn’t make it possible to add Microsoft Edge to the browser list in Expression Web. The searching I did said that the executable was at C:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\MicrosoftEdge.exe but adding that to the browser list didn’t work. I also found an executable at GitHub but that didn’t work either. I reached out to the Microsoft MVPs on Facebook to see if someone could look at the code of the exe on Github and figure out why it wasn’t working. I heard back from David Ching – he had downloaded the code, found the problem, and fixed it. Thank you David!

I have zipped the file and and made it available for download from my web site. All you need to do is unzip the file and then add MicrosoftEdgeLauncher.exe to the list of of browsers you use in Expression Web.

Windows 10 officially launched today and there’s a new Windows 10 book available for pre-order on Amazon today as well. Windows 10 Revealed: The Universal Windows Operating System for PC, Tablets, and Windows Phone 1st Edition, is your essential step-by-step guide to using a desktop, laptop, Surface or Windows Phone running Microsoft Windows 10, providing a complete resource for both the beginner and the enthusiast. Techniques are illustrated step-by-step using photography and screen shots throughout, together with concise, easy to follow text from an established expert in the field, providing a comprehensive guide to Windows.

Whether you have just bought your first computer, laptop or are a keen computer user who has just upgraded to Windows 10, this book will provide you with a firm grasp of the underpinning foundations and equip you with the skills needed to use a computer like a pro.

Windows 10 Revealed is published by Apress and tech reviewed by yours truly.

The closer it gets to April 21st, the more the term “Mobile-geddon” is showing up in my feeds, including Twitter.

“Mobilegeddon” Is Coming on April 21 – Are You Ready?

Google changes mobile search – Mobile-geddon!

The Google “Mobile-geddon” Update — Are You Prepared?

Last month I received an email from The Google Webmaster Tools Team, letting me know that “Google systems have tested 47 pages from your site and found that 100% of them have critical mobile usability errors. The errors on these 47 pages severely affect how mobile users are able to experience your website. These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.” The email also said “Fix this now” and gave some suggestions on how to fix the issues.

When they said “Fix this now” they really meant it. On Thursday, April 16th, I received an email from Google AdSense that said beginning April 21, 2015, “Google Search will be expanding its use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.” They provided a link for testing my site, using their Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool.

Fortunately I had used a template from CSS Menu Maker that was pretty easy to tweak, and it also meant I could maintain the same web site structure, without having to change any page names. I uploaded the new version of the site and ran it through the Testing Tool again:

Obviously, I’ll be testing my site with other tools, but at least I’m ready for Mobile-geddon.

If you are waiting for Windows 10 to be officially released before you upgrade, but want to know what all the buzz is about, Mike Halsey, a Microsoft MVP for Windows, has written the perfect book for you. Windows 10 Primer: What to Expect from Microsoft’s New Operating System is now available at Amazon. Mike answers the questions you have and details hidden and improved features that can revolutionize your security, productivity and user experience. Whether you’re an IT professional considering or planning an upgrade to your company’s PCs or a Windows enthusiast eager to find out if Microsoft has finally built a truly modern Windows experience, Windows 10 Primer has the answers to all your most important questions.

You can read an excerpt from Chapter 2 – New and Improved Features in Windows 10 – Cortana – on the Microsoft MVP Program Blog.

Windows 10 Primer: What to Expect from Microsoft’s New Operating System is published by Apress and tech reviewed by yours truly.

Microsoft announced today that they are opening up access to .NET and Visual Studio to an even broader set of developers by beginning the process of open-sourcing the full .NET server core stack and introducing a new free and fully-featured edition of Visual Studio, Visual Studio Community 2013.  They are also releasing previews of the next generation of Visual Studio, .NET and Visual Studio Online.

On his blog, Scott Henselman says: “ There is a new FREE SKU for Visual Studio for open source developers and students called Visual Studio Community. It supports extensions and lots more all in one download. This is not Express. This is basically Pro.”

Using Microsoft Expression Web, I recently redesigned my web site to remove its reliance on the FrontPage Server Extensions and the FrontPage Search Component.

Removing the FrontPage Search Component meant finding a replacement – I chose Google’s Custom Search Engine – $100 gets you 20,000 search queries a year. It was very easy to implement on my site – create an account with Google, grab the code that verifies you own the site, and you’re good to go. I actually did this on the old site before I started the redesign.

Removing the dependence on the FrontPage Server Extensions meant, among other things, changing the filename extension on any .asp page to .htm. I did this as part of the site redesign.

Once the redesigned site was launched, however, I found that the renamed and/or deleted pages with the .asp extension were still showing up in the search results on my site. Fortunately, Google makes it very easy to fix that. Go to the "sites" link in the Control Panel of your Custom Search. On the "Basics" page, under Sites to search, click "Advanced" and under "Excluded Sites" add the URLs of the pages you want removed from the index. You can exclude individual pages, or exclude sites in bulk, one per line.

The great thing about this feature? It takes effect immediately.

What would you do if you got an email like this?

If you practice “safe-hex” you would know not to click on the link to confirm your email address – to anybody, any time. Not your bank, not the government, not any business, and not Network Solutions. But that’s who sent me this email – Network Solutions.

This email has all the characteristics of a “phishing” email – “Phishing is typically carried out by email spoofing or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one.”

I’m sure if I had clicked on the Confirm button it would have taken me to a web site where I would have been asked to enter my Network Solutions Username and Password.

Sorry, Network Solutions, I’m not going to do that. Clicking that link would go against everything we’ve been trying to teach people about how to practice safe computing. 

If you want me to confirm my email address, send me an email that contains the instructions on how to do that.

I had a conversation on Twitter this morning with Network Solutions about this – they apologized for the “inconvenience” and pointed me to a post on their blog that says: “please rest assured that these are legitimate, and not a “phishing” scam.”

I’m still not going to click that link, Network Solutions. Sorry – you’ll have to find another way.