Tt post mar 22, 2017 - c

http://toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/tt.pl/article/109008/14Feb2012/Phil_Copeland_for_Recorder

---

On my Linux desktop computer, I'm using the latest official release of Firefox, which is version 52.0.1.

And, like others, when I clicked on Online Recordings at the LC Recorder page, a new browser tab was opened, which said that I needed to install Silverlight to view the content.

I clicked the image, but since I used Linux, I was redirected to the Moonlight program, which was last updated in 2013.

From the Moonlight homepage:

Moonlight is an open source implementation of Silverlight, primarily for Linux and other Unix/X11 based operating systems. The last Moonlight release (Moonlight 4 Preview 1) provides support for most features of Silverlight 3, as well as compatibility with Silverlight 4.

The Mono project does not provide binary downloads for Moonlight; however, packages for most Linux distributions can be found online, either in official distro package repositories, or provided by popular third-party repositories.

Note: Moonlight isn’t actively developed anymore. If you’re feeling adventurous you can probably get it working by compiling from source, but we recommend you move away from Moonlight as soon as possible.

What makes the recorder data so sophisticated that it needs special, outdated software to view it?

The first website was published on December 20, 1990, and we can view the site's contents at the following URL:

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

(do a view-source on that page for some interesting markup style)

But in 2017, I cannot access Lucas County recorder data with a brand new Firefox web browser.

A few weeks ago, the feds released version 1.0 of their U.S. Web Design Standards. It's an interesting project. I don't agree with everything, but as the top comment in the Hacker News thread stated:

Even if you disagree, just the existence of a Gov standard will: Force software developers for public services to put up a minimal decent interface, instead of just a list of features.

Remember that software isn't intuitive, but familiar.

I wouldn't consider Silverlight to be familiar. Not now. Definitely not for accessing data at a government website.

Another HN comment:

Government sites should be snappy and accessible to all above all else.

https://standards.usa.gov/design-principles

We designed the U.S. Web Design Standards to help you create better experiences for the American public.

Requiring users to install Silverlight is not part of those standards.

It might take a while for some of those standards to trickle down to the local level, although we shouldn't have to wait for usefulness.