Everyone’s curious about new versions of Adobe’s Creative Suite. Here are a few more videos guaranteed to either satisfy or intensify that curiosity.

Sneak peek of new Adobe DreamWeaver CS5 technologies

Did someone say HTML v5?

Adobe Flash CS5 on Adobe MAX 2009

Adobe Flash CS5 applications for iPhone

Adobe Opens iPhone to Flash Developers

Evolution of Dance

You need a break! This video has nothing to do with web design or web development or CS5. But, it is one of the most viewed videos on YouTube! It has been viewed 131,347,048 times so far and has 620,635 ratings. It’s 4.5 out of 5, BTW. Do you think it deserves that high a rating? Let me know. Leave a comment. Thanks.

Models for simulating the severe forms of color blindness are well developed. Not so for the milder and much more common types of colorblindness, the so-called anomalous deficiencies. These are tougher to model because they vary on an individual basis and can actually change over time. This is a far more common condition than any type of complete color blindness. Most of these resources focus on modeling the severe types of color blindness. Nevertheless, they provide a good indication for the less severe types.

Here’s how they work: they model how the human eye perceives color based on the retina’s cone responses. Then, they adjust the model to mimic the modified cone responses of a color blind individual, thus allowing those of us with normal vision to get a better idea of what the world looks like to them.

If you want to get a better idea of what the your color blind web visitors actually see, I recommend looking at at least 50 different side-by-side examples. (I feel another blog post coming on.) Once you start to get an idea of what’s happening here, play with the tools that let you calibrate the degree of various color vision deficiencies. A few are listed below.

Color Blindness Simulator lets you upload an image file and see how it looks to those with any one of the three color blindness disorders.

Color Matrix Library is a free javascript library that can be used to simulate color blindness. There are several other interesting items that may be of interest to designers as well.

Accessibility Color Wheel shows you how text looks under different color blindness models. And, it lets you modify the contrast ratio. How cool is that? Just mouse over the unque color wheel and let the Javascript do it’s thing. I like this page a lot.

Visicheck has several interesting color blindness simulation tools (some online and even an Adobe Photoshop plugin you can download free) and copious amounts of great information.

You ever heard of John Dalton (1766-1844)? A fascinating character. He was a color blind scientist and one of the first men to research color blindness. He thought his color blindness was caused by a discoloration of his ocular fluid. Wrong, John! Perhaps that’s why he’s better known for his pioneering work in the development of modern atomic theory. On 21 October 1803, John Dalton presented the first table of atomic weights at a small gathering of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical society. He proposed that the properties of all materials were determined by the atoms of which they were made. His ideas laid the foundations of modern chemistry and inspired today’s nanotechnologists.

Color Oracle is a downloadable color blindness simulator for Windows, Mac and Linux. Windows and Linux users will need Java 6.

Color Doctor v2.1 from Fujitsu is a free download for Windows XP and Vista that simulates the display content according to grayscale and various color characteristics.

Sim Daltonism v1.0.3 is a free color blindness simulator for Mac OS X. It filters in real-time the area around the mouse pointer and displays the result as seen by a color blind person in a floating palette. It also works if the color blind person is not in a floating palette. What?

ColorSelector v5.1 is free software for judging the legibility of background and text colors. It runs on the Windows® and Mac OS X operating systems.

Web Accessibility Toolbar is provided free by the Accessible Information Solutions (AIS) team of Vision Australia. It runs on Windows XP, comes in several languages and is available for IE and Opera.

Huetility Colorblind Simulator let’s you “see what color blind people see using your iPhone” as they put it. I’m not sure I want other people looking at my iPhone, however.

Contrast Analyser, v2.2 is primarily a tool for checking foreground & background color combinations to determine if they provide good colour visibility. It also contains functionality to create simulations of certain visual conditions such as colour blindness.

W3C Contrast Ratio Guidelines A bit dry, but it informative. BTW, contrast becomes an issue for almost everyone as we age. That’s why older people need more light to see stuff.

ColorSchemer Studio is a software program for creating color schemes (duh) that has many useful features. Use the Color Blindness Simulation to see what your color schemes will look like to users with any one of 8 different types of color deficient vision.

Here’s a good article describing how to design web pages for color blind people.

The Facebook Awarness for Color blindness group can be found here. It isn’t very active, but it is a great way to meet color blind people on whom you can test your page designs.

There’s even a monitor, the Eizo SX2462W that “Simulates two types of red-green color vision deficiency – ptotanopia and deuteranopia – for verification of how color schemes appear to those with color blindness. Simulation is done in real time for still and moving images, making it a practical alternative to software-based tools.” You do have to download some free software from them to make it do that, however.

Also, check out Eizo’s Color Universal Design Handbook. The handbook is about design in general but it contains lots of interesting suggestions that can be adapted to web design. It’s very short and an easy read. I highly recommend it.

The WebSite of the future is already here. WebSites are like clothes. Consumers and web designers need to realize that. I don’t know about you, but I don’t get my clothes from a tailor. Tailor made clothes are for rich people. I buy my clothes off the rack. I don’t have a problem with that, either. It’s easy, I have a choice of prices, they’re easy to maintain (I can’t iron to save my life and I don’t have to) and they look great.

In theory, I do have another option, though. I can make my own clothes. I remember, when I was about 10 my mom got herself a sewing machine. She had a great time with it. She made herself all kinds of clothes. Well, dresses and skirts, mostly. And, they looked great! But, mom was an exceptional woman. Sewing clothes was fun for her. Along with raising a family, she also went to the public library and got 5 sci-fi books every week. She used to read them while she was knitting or doing needle point. As I said, mom was exceptional. I’m not. In fact, much like ironing, I just can’t sew. Once, while sewing a patch on the knee of my jeans, I sewed the leg together. My arm was in it, so I don’t know how I did that. But, I did. I’m great with a scissors (the secret is to rest it on a flat surface as you cut, so your hand is stable) but my stitches always bring Frankenstein to mind. So, in theory, I could make my own clothes. But, they’d look horrible.

Today, custom websites are expensive. Whether it’s a particular look that’s needed or special functionality doesn’t matter. Custom websites are pricey. Don’t expect that to change, either. In the year 2020, custom websites will only be for the very wealthy (read businesses) and there will be fewer of them. Let me re-phrase that. Custom websites will be a lower percentage of the total websites in 2020 than they are today. Why do I think that? Because, by then, people will understand that “off the rack” is just fine. Today, if you say the word “template” web designers and consumers who imagine themselves to be clever and in-the-know (like tire kickers at a car dealership) turn their noses up. The fact is, everything is made up of parts and I haven’t seen a particularly remarkable web page design in, well, ever. I have seen some wonderful interface elements, to be sure. But, page layout is just that. Layout.

One of the most popular platforms today is WordPress. You’re looking at an example of it, now. It’s an application that stores information, such as this text, in a database and displays it in a template. The Home page is one template. This article page is another template. You can apply themes, which change the look of all the templates on the site. People love WordPress, even though it is essentially a template, albeit one on steroids.

Another thing people like is Flash websites. You don’t see a lot of them in the wild today. However, you do see a lot of Flash advertisements. Why? Because people like animation. They like seein’ stuff move. When I show clients sample websites, they always like the Flash sites the best. The fact they’re tougher to update than an HTML or CMS based site is why people steer clear of them. But, in the last couple years, a new option has emerged: XML Flash WebSites. These let you control the modules and content of the Flash site through XML. There are programs (scripts) available that let you update the XML files in a web browser, so no need for FTP. MyFlashXML.com is a company that sells some very amazing XML Flash templates. Part of why they’re so interesting and unique is the use of a relatively new technology, PaperVision3D (See an example or their blog.) I think we are going to see a lot of this kind of stuff in the future. It may not be full websites but widgets that find their way into WordPress’ descendants.

In 2020, much of the work web designers do will be modifying and setting up these templates. Do-it-yourselfers and hobbyists will have better options available to them, but unless they are exceptional people, they will still have a very hard time making a professional looking website, because the bar will have been raised.

Everyone’s curious about new versions of Adobe’s Creative Suite. Here are a few videos guaranteed to either satisfy or intensify that curiosity.

Sneak peek of new Adobe Photoshop CS5 technologies

Adobe Flash CS5 Viper

Adobe Flash CS5 applications for iPhone

The connection between color blindness and leprosy I found and blogged about several days ago was so bizarre I had to investigate. The only reference to clinical research I could find on the subject was this page from PubMed:

Indian J Lepr. 1992 Oct-Dec;64(4):483-6.

Prevalence of colour blindness among patients with leprosy.

Shwe T.

Clinical Research Unit (Malaria), Department of Medical Research, Dagon, Yangon, Myanmar.

Using Ishihara test plates the prevalence of colour blindness was studied on six hundred and ninety-seven leprosy patients and two hundred and ninety-two normal healthy controls. 7.88% of male patients with tuberculoid leprosy, 12.18% of male patients with lepromatous leprosy, and 0.67% of male controls were detected to be colour blind (red-green deficiency or total colour weakness). The differences between the different groups are significant. Among female patients and controls, only one lepromatous leprosy patient was detected to have red-green deficiency. This suggests the possibility of a genetic predisposition to Mycobacterium leprae infection in patients with leprosy.

When I saw the numbers, my first reaction was, “This study is flawed. The number of color blind controls is way off.” After I thought about it for a moment, I realized the number of color blind male controls, 0.67%, is a typo. The number should be 6.7% (or 0.67). The percentage of color blind males is often reported to be 8.1%. In the study cited above, not all color blind males are part of the control group. The 1% with blue-yellow deficiency is not included. Hence, 6.7% sounds like a reasonable number.

What the researchers have reported is that a higher percentage of leprosy victims are color blind. To conclude that color blindness causes leprosy is wrong. Logically, it must be the other way around; leprosy causes color blindness. Color blindness impedes a person’s ability to see things. It does not cause disease. I’m sure we will all sleep better now that that’s been cleared up.

If you own or design websites, you should consider including a copyright notice, disclaimer, terms of use statement, privacy policy and a cookies policy. These don’t have to be separate pages but can often be combined. For example, it is common to combine a disclaimer with the terms of use.

The copyright notice
A copyright notice is a declaration of ownership which is intended to assist with cases of copyright infringement.

A copyright notice used to be a prerequisite to copyright protection. This is no longer the case in many places, including the United States.

A Copyright Notice may cover the following:

• Ownership
• License
• Permissions
• Infringment
• Enforcement

The Disclaimer Notice
The primary purpose of a website disclaimer is to limit or attempt to limit the liabilities that a website owner or publisher may suffer arising out of the website. Examples of the kinds of liability that we publishers must contend with include libel/defamation, copyright infringement and breach of privacy.

Most legal systems strictly control the effects of limitations and exclusions of liability. For this reason you should get local legal advice.

A Disclaimer or Terms of Use Statement may cover the following:

• No warranties
• Limitations of liability
• Trademarks and Copyrights
• Internet E-mail
• Third Party Links
• Jurisdiction
• Exceptions and Overrides
• Reasonableness
• Unenforceable Provisions
• Submissions

The Privacy Statement
Many if not most websites collect personal information. Personal information may be collected by simple means such as a website form or through more sophisticated means such as tracking cookies. Some kinds of websites collect and process large amounts of personal information.

EU data protection law and US data privacy law (and similar laws in other jurisdictions) protect individuals from the misues of their personal information. These laws regulate the collection of data, the storage of data, the use of data, the cross-border transfer of data and the disposal of data

The purpose of a website privacy statement is to help website owners with these the disclosure requirements of data protection and data privacy laws.

A Privacy Statement may contain any or all of the following:

• Personal Information Collection
• Using Personal Information
• Security of Collected Data
• Data Transfer and Transmission
• Other WebSites
• Contact Information
• Procedures For Removing Data

Cookies Policy
In some legal systems website operators are subject to a legal obligation to provide information to users about the use of cookies. The purpose of a cookies policy is to satisfy these obligations.

A Cookies Policy may contain the following sections:

• About Cookies
• Their Use
• Third Party Cookies
• Refusal
• Contents
• Expiration Time

I’ve tried to be as complete as possible. Most websites, including this one, do not have statements that exhaustively cover each of the points above, though they may touch on them. However, the presence of a copyright statement, a privacy policy and a disclaimer of some sort are essential if you want your website to look professional. Feel free to use my Privacy Policy and Terms of Use as models from which to craft your own policy statements.

While looking for technical definitions describing the different types of color blindness, I encountered this information. I copied the following section verbatim because it was so well stated and I was intrigued by the link to leprosy. The statement isn’t, “And, oh, by the way, more lepers have Red/Green color blindness than the population in general.” No. It is that having Re/Green color blindness somehow contributes to acquiring leprosy. WTF? Can someone shed some light on this, please?

Normal color vision requires the use of specialized receptor cells called cones, which are located in the retina of the eye. There are three types of cones, termed red, blue, and green, which enable people to see a wide spectrum of colors. An abnormality, or deficiency, of any of the types of cones will result in abnormal color vision.

There are three basic variants of color blindness. Red/green color blindness (deuteranopia) is the most common deficiency, affecting 8% of Caucasian males and 0.5% of Caucasian females. The prevalence varies with culture.

Blue color blindness (protanopia) is an inability to distinguish both blue and yellow, which are seen as white or gray. Protanopia is quite rare and has equal prevalence in males and females. It is common for young children to have blue/green confusion that becomes less pronounced in adulthood. Blue color deficiency often appears in people who have physical disorders such as liver disease or diabetes mellitus.

A total inability to distinguish colors (achromatopsia) is exceedingly rare. These affected individuals view the world in shades of gray. They frequently have poor visual acuity and are extremely sensitive to light (photophobia), which causes them to squint in ordinary light.

Researchers studying red/green color blindness in the United Kingdom reported an average prevalence of only 4.7% in one group. Only 1% of Eskimo males are color blind. Approximately 2.9% of boys from Saudi Arabia and 3.7% from India were found to have deficient color vision. Red/green color blindness may slightly increase an affected person’s chances of contracting leprosy. Pre-term infants exhibit an increased prevalence of blue color blindness. Achromatopsia has a prevalence of about 1 in 33,000 in the United States and affects males and females equally.

— L. Fleming Fallon, Jr., MD, MPH

via www.answers.com/topic/color-blindness

A buddy of mine told me my blog looked dull. I thought about this for a moment and asked him if it was gray and brown. He said, “Yes.” What he sees is the way my blog looks in the picture below. Interesting, eh? I have to run off to Venice Beach right now (I think I just invented the “Blitter”) but I will come up with a new color scheme after I get back. I may go with some kind of yellow/orange, a mix of red and green. At least it won’t look gray, I hope.

How My Buddy Ted Sees This Page

Update: 10/26/09 – I’ve changed the color scheme to something that looks brighter. – Randy

What Is It?
The most important document a freelance web designer or web developer has to create is a contract with their client. The contract is the written mutual agreement between you and your client stating what you will deliver, terms of your payment and what happens if things go awry. In part, it consists of all the items that were discussed beforehand. These items may have been mentioned in advertising, discussion or a written or verbal proposal.

Why Have One?
The reasons for having such a document seem obvious and some of them are. However, there are less obvious benefits you gain by having a written contract. The solemnity of the legal jargon, list of stipulations and the formality of signing impresses on both you and your client that you are making a commitment to each other. That is a very important psychological milestone. A third reason for a written contract is it provides the accepted opportunity for both parties to express their expectations of and obligations with respect to the project. Another reason is to prevent you from doing unpaid work. The contract limits what you are required to deliver. Without that, you may find yourself doing a lot of work for free in an effort to get the final payment for the website or application. The reasons just keep comin’… Having a contract forces your client to truly think through what they are asking for. The typical client will have a general idea of what they want, but they haven’t made the effort to think it all the way through. After all, that’s why they hired you. But, if you don’t help educate them and make them understand exactly what they will be getting, you run the risk of them being unhappy and you gong un-paid. Providing your client with a well written contract will help them think it through.

Tip: Write the most complete contract you possibly can and use it as a template. Review the template after each project and see if there’s anything you want to add to it. If your contract template is clearly written (and it will be) you will be able to simply remove any part of it that isn’t relevant to the the project at hand. Don’t forget to re-number of re-letter the sections below as required.

What Should It Include?
As stated above, the contract should include three things: what you will deliver, terms of your payment and what happens if things go awry. Let’s start with what you will deliver.
This should contain the following:
1. Overview: The name of the website and the major features/functions it will have.
2. Phases: If the work is to be completed in phases, enumerate and describe them here. You may want to include a schedule of client or stakeholder reviews, revisions and testing. Be sure to include what will be delivered at the end of each phase. Be specific. Name the of pages, describe what functionality will be included in the particular phase, etc. If completion of a phase is dependent on the client doing something, explicitly state that here.
3. Ownership: This is extremely important and you should discuss this before you surprise the client with it on the written contract. Typically, the graphic designs are owned by the client. But, there may be aspects of the work you want to retain ownership to. Some people think you should somehow copyright the design of the site. If the rights to the design pass to the client, it would prevent you from using that design, again. But, here you get into complications of what constitutes the design. Usually, a client owns all the HTML, CSS, XML, Javascipt and simple PHP/ASP files (eg. contact form) that comprise their site. In fact, you should, unless you’re trying to ensnare them in some sort of weird maintenance scheme – and you shouldn’t do that for the sake of our industry’s reputation and your karma. If you are a web developer and write a full blown application with a database backend, that’s another story. You may well want to keep the copyrights to that. If there’s any uncertainty in your mind talk to a lawyer, preferably one who specializes in the areas of copyright and intellectual property law. Actually, you should talk to a lawyer, anyway. I’ll cover that in a bit more detail below.
4. Maintenance: Include any maintenance or post delivery work you will be providing here.

The next section is about your compensation.
1. Compensation: State your hourly rate and the expected number of hours (calculate the total) or a fixed rate for the project.
2. Payment Schedule: Be sure to get 33%-50% upon signing the contract. Any “client” who balks at that is refusing to commit to the project. They are wasting your time. State when the remaining payments are to be made with reference to deliverable or project phases. Do not simply say, “Upon completion”. That’s a good way to never get paid.
3. Payment Terms: State the amount of time they will have to make the payment after receiving your invoice. For example, “Payments are due within 15 days of the invoice date. Late payment charges will accrue at the rate of 1.5% per month.” You may also want to state that no additional work will be delivered until the account is current. If you do say that, indicate the effect it will have on the overall project schedule.

TIP: The contract needs to be more “more perfect” than your final product. It is a real, live sample of your work. If there’s a problem with the final site you deliver, you can fix it. If there’s a problem with the contract, your client might not sign it. Then, where are you?

If everything goes as planned, no problem. But, life isn’t that predictable. Your client may decide to cancel the project, fail to provide the content or decide you didn’t deliver as promised. Anything can happen. The goal of this section of the contract is to make sure you get paid for your work and to stay out of court if things get ugly.
1. Limitation of Liability: A standard limitation in your contract should be the exclusion of consequential damages. These are losses that are not caused by a specific act but the consequences of an act. Suppose someone’s website is supposed to be finished by November 30 so it’ll be up in time for Christmas shopping. You try, but the site is late. Without this Limitation of Liability, they can sue you for lost revenue as a result of the site being late. You don’t want that.
2. Binding Arbitration: To help you stay out of court, your contract should state that all disputes will be handled by binding arbitration. Arbitrators are typically retired judges doing a little freelance work of their own. You can who say who will handle the arbitration and who has to pay for it.
3. Choice of Law: This should be stated and it should be the state or province in which you reside. That way, if you do get sued, you won’t have to travel to a different state or country to appear in court.
4. Cancellation: Without this section, there’s no way for either party to get out of the contract other than by fulfilling it or committing a breach of contract. Things are always changing in life and you should provide a way for either party to gracefully terminate the contract in such a way that you still get paid for any work you have already done. You also want to keep your client happy and comfortable with your business arrangement. So, this section of the contract should also protect your client. For instance, they’ve cut you a check for 50% of the cost and they decide to cancel after a week. You should have a schedule in this section outlining exactly what you will refund to them based on the time period involved. Don’t forget to include how many days you have to refund their money. Also, include some formal routine they have to go through to make the cancellation valid. A written request sent by certified mail is a good way to go. Make sure they really want to cancel your contract and aren’t just reacting to a temporary situation that’s put them in a bad mood.

Maintain Control
If possible, you should provide the contract. The client is already holding the purse strings. If they also want to provide the contract you might as well be their employee. The exception to this, of course, is if the job is so frappin’ lucrative that you’d be nuts not to go for it. Even then, show the contract to your lawyer before you sign it.

I’m No Lawyer. Get One.
I am not a lawyer and nothing I have said should be construed as legal advice. What I have provided is my ideas for what should go into a web design contract as well as my layman’s understanding of what these sections mean to you, someone trying to make an honest living creating websites or web applications. Your use of this information is at you own risk. Before you enter into any contract, I advise you to seek legal counsel.