Monday, 21 October 2002

Book Review: High Score! The Ultimate History of Electronic Games Title: High Score! The Ultimate History of Electronic Games Authors: Rusel DeMaria and Johnny L. Wilson Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Osborne Published: 2002 Pages: 328 Illustrations: Colour CD-ROM: No ISBN: 0072224282 Rating: 5 This book has become the all-time favourite around the office, despite almost none of us being anything like hard core gamers. Just take a quick flick through High Score’s pages and you will immediately see why.       I haven’t played games for years. I’ve got Riven, two editions of Myst, once owned SimCity 2000 and kept copies of a 3D version of Breakout and a Centipede clone on the Mac for my wife to bang away at after a hard day at work. And a form of Dungeons and Dragons was popular on the mainframe computer stashed away in the Physics department when I was at art school. I rarely played, but I was impressed by the invention, the creativity so evident in games and gaming, although I do have my reservations about shoot’em ups.       Flicking through High Score brought all those memories to vivid life, and reminded me of the good times I had around computer games in the past. The book is an amazing repository of electronic games history, lavishly illustrated with full colour screenshots, storyboards and sketches, packshots, PR photos and developer group portraits, and all those games consoles, cabinets and computers that are now long gone but not forgotten.       There is a legion of fascinating stories, too, about companies once at the top of the field but now vanished, high hopes and dashed dreams, amazing inventiveness, and truly remarkable individuals. I have read and reread High Score many times now, and each read is as rewarding as all the others. High Score! The Ultimate History of Electronic Games is a classic. 12:18:10 PM    Add a comment.

Book Review: Constructing Accessible Web Sites. Title: Constructing Accessible Web Sites Author: Jim Thatcher, Paul Bohman et al Publisher: Glasshaus Published: 2002 Pages: 415 Illustrations: Monochrome CD-ROM: No ISBN: 1904151000 Rating: 5 Two new words have joined the vocabulary of web designers in recent years—usability and accessibility. You will often come across them used in tandem.       Usability really became an issue when Jacob Nielsen infamously denounced Flash as 99% bad. Accessibility became a priority for web developers working on government projects after Section 508 was brought into law in the United States.       Accessibility became an issue in Australia during Maguire vs SOCOG in 1999, when a blind man filed a complaint with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) that neither Olympic Games tickets purchasing information nor the souvenir programme were available in Braille. Most importantly he alleged that the SOCOG website was not accessible, and to make it so would have been well within SOCOG’s IT partner IBM’s budget. SOCOG was found to have discriminated against the complainant and damages were awarded against the organization.       Accessibility is now a civil rights issue. It is also not that difficult to implement on a website, once you learn how it can be done. This excellent book, Constructing Accessible Web Sites, teaches you all that and more. It is the first on its subject, and will not be the last, but it is damned a good beginning.       All eight co-authors have been pioneers in the field of accessibility, and Glasshaus deserves praise for having assembled such a team. They cover more than website accessibility—their expertise extends to the accessibility of web design tools themselves. An apt reminder that the web is as much about reading as writing, for writers as much as readers, a real medium of two-way communication.       All websites can now be made accessible to varying degrees, even Flash websites since Flash MX, as Macromedia Senior Product Manager for Accessibility Bob Regan demonstrates in Chapter 10. So there are no excuses for failing to add increased accessibility, and usability for that matter, to that new project you are just about to commence.       Ensure you have a copy of Constructing Accessible Web Sites at hand when you begin. And also take a look at another equally essential reference on the subject due out any day now, Joe Clark’s Building Accessible Websites.       Accessibility is the newest and most necessary website building skill. There are no excuses now, with such excellent books on the subject becoming available. 12:08:44 PM    Add a comment.