With less than two weeks left before the mid-term elections, TechRepublic has compiled an amusing and bi-partisan photo gallery of the worst political sites. A veritable case study of really bad practices.

There is another interesting article on A List Apart about accessibility. This one focuses on user testing and how assumptions that many of us have made, regarding how differently-abled people use sites, often do not play out in real-life tests. There is some specific comment on how, since there seems to be no actual data to support many of their guidelines, simply following the WGAC recommendations does not guarantee an accessible site.

We often make something a law just because it’s been repeated over and over again. User testing is really the only way that we can prove, or disprove, our ideas about how websites shouold be built.

Some excerpts:

But more than that it turns out that while size matters, boldness also matters. In fact, a bigger text that is not bold, is less readable than a text of the same size that is bold.

and:

In short, we need less discussion and more user research. Especially when our guidelines form the basis of national laws, we need to ensure that they�??re founded on real user experience.

and finally:

I asked a reputable member of WCAG-WG what kind of user research WCAG 1.0 was based upon. He answered that �??WCAG are based on many things,�?� which sounded good, but didn�??t really answer the question. Exactly what were those �??many things�?�?

It’s a short article, and certainly worth the read.

After over five years, Microsoft has finally released a new version of Internet Explorer. Sometime soon, Windows users can expect to see a notification asking them to install it. As IE’s development team explains:

To help you become more secure and up-to-date, we will distribute IE7 via Automatic Updates as a high-priority update. We will start very soon with those of you who are already running IE7 pre-releases and then move onto IE6 users after a few weeks. We will progressively roll out to all IE6 users over a few months, so don’t be surprised if you don’t see the update right away. (Of course, users who can’t wait that long can download IE7 from http://www.microsoft.com/ie.)

Of course we want to make sure you are ready to upgrade, so AU will notify you when IE7 is ready to install by presenting a welcome screen. You can choose whether or not to install it; IE7 will not install without your consent.

If you haven’t been playing around with pre-release versions of IE, Web site managers should be prepared to rapidly test their sites’ designs in IE 7, or your site visitors will soon be doing it for you!

The blogosphere is abuzz this week with rumors that Microsoft will debut the its Internet Explorer 7 in the coming days or weeks. What’s significant is that some insiders now believe that Microsoft will "push" IE7 as an update to the current browser, effectively foisting it on current IE users rather than waiting for consumers to replace their computers or upgrade to the long awaited Vista operating system.

So what would it mean for nonprofit organizations if large numbers of their supporters suddently migrate to IE7? Quite a bit. The new Internet Explorer includes a native feed reader, and its debut will expose to this communications channel for the first time.

The move comes at a time it is becoming an increasingly uphill battle to successfully deliver emails to supporters and get them to open them. Once the general Internet using public becomes accustomed to subscribing to feeds, it is likely that they will demand that nonprofit organizations offer enewsletters and other communication activities on this more secure channel.

This will be a mixed blessing for nonprofit organizations that have worked hard to build large email lists of donors and activists. Nonprofits will enjoy the ease of delivering audio and video to their supporters via feeds, and feeds enhance other online collaboration tools like wikis, blogs, and social networking sites. On the other hand, consumers will be attracted to the higher degree of privacy and security that feeds offer and it may become even harder for nonprofits to determine who is supporting them and track their activities.

We’ll be watching these developments very closely!