Stuff about Software Engineering

Author: Peter Birkholm-Buch (Page 16 of 17)

Pre-Announcing the “Accessibility Kit for SharePoint” (AKS)

Cross posting from: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/09/05/pre-announcing-the-accessibility-kit-for-sharepoint-aks.aspx 

Background

About a month ago on July 31st, HiSoftware issued a press release, announcing an agreement with Microsoft to develop the Accessibility Kit for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. The kit will provide templates, master pages, controls and Web parts along with technical documentation to advance the accessibility of MOSS based web sites and applications for people with disabilities, especially those who are vision impaired. All of the source code will be provided via the Microsoft Permissive License and will be available on CodePlex and/or another (more accessible) web site later this year for customers and other Microsoft partners to download, reuse, and extend. This e-mail provides more details about the announcement.

Overview

Microsoft has hired HiSoftware as a vendor to develop the Accessibility Kit for MOSS 2007, also known as Accessibility Kit for SharePoint or AKS. The decision was made primary based on HiSoftware’s in-depth expertise and broad industry experience in providing tools and services for improving accessibility to the point of compliance with various standards and beyond. The contractual Statement of Work calls for HiSoftware to deliver a kit that can significantly reduce the time, knowledge, and effort required to implement a SharePoint-based web site that conforms to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints, which are collectively known as WCAG 1.0 AA. The AKS can also be used to address the exceptions that have been identified in the U.S. government’s Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act’s Voluntary Product Accessibility Template or VPAT documents for MOSS 2007. While most of our customers find the improvements in accessibility (more info at Office Online) over previous versions of SharePoint to be adequate for their needs, a growing number has asked us to provide even more.

Approach

The AKS is being developed as a set of building blocks rather than an end-to-end solution. We expect many SharePoint partners to take various pieces of the kit and integrate them into their respective product or service offerings while some customers will integrate particular components of the kit into their deployment processes. Furthermore, HiSoftware and Microsoft will jointly establish and nurture a community of SharePoint site designers and developers that’s focused on accessibility advancement and standards compliance.

To ensure optimal prioritization and completeness of features and documentation, the AKS project team is planning to work with a small group of partners and customers in a private beta program that will kick off within the next couple of weeks. If you are very seriously interested, please contact Dana Simberkoff, VP of Business Development at HiSoftware, but be forewarned that the acceptance criteria will be quite stringent due to the aggressive timeline of the deliverables described below.

Deliverables

These deliverables were established based on customer and partner feedback that we’ve received thus far and are prioritized based on the scenarios that would impact the most end users of a MOSS-based web site down to the least.

  • Milestone 1: AKS 1.0 Private Beta – ETA September 17, 2007
    This initial milestone will provide a testable version of the kit that focuses on the web content publishing and authoring scenarios for Internet facing web sites as well as intranet portals.
  • Milestone 2: AKS 1.0 Release to Web – ETA October 29, 2007
    This milestone will provide a production ready version of the kit that can be used in the implementation of live MOSS based web sites or portals.
  • Milestone 3: AKS 1.5 Update – ETA December 17, 2007
    This milestone will provide accessibility improvements for advanced web content authoring and team collaboration scenarios.

Conclusion

The Microsoft product teams for Windows SharePoint Services, Office SharePoint Server, and Office SharePoint Designer are committed to improving accessibility and enabling everyone to utilize the power of SharePoint. More details about the AKS will be forthcoming as the project progresses over the next few months. In the meantime, if you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns about accessibility, please post them in the SharePoint – Accessibility forum.

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Pre-Announcing the “Accessibility Kit for SharePoint” (AKS)

WSS3.0 and MOSS2007 Webcasts

To quickly get an introduction Microsoft Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 go and view these excellent webcasts:

TechNet Webcast: Windows SharePoint Services: Overview and What’s New (Level 200)

This webcast covers the technical fundamentals of Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, the next generation of Web workspace technology from Microsoft. Find out what is new with Windows SharePoint Services, what has changed, how it works, and why you should use it to develop and deploy information sharing solutions. We recommend that you view this session before viewing the “Office SharePoint Server 2007: Overview and What’s New” webcast.

Presenter: Mike Fitzmaurice, Senior Product Manager – Portals, Microsoft Corporation

TechNet Webcast: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Overview and What’s New (Level 200)

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is much more than an upgrade from Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Microsoft Content Management Server 2002. This webcast provides an overview of the features in SharePoint Server 2007, and covers technical fundamentals, new sets of server functionality, and other factors developers and IT professionals must consider. Since Office SharePoint Server 2007 is built on Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, it is recommended that you attend the “Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 – Overview and What’s New” webcast first.

Presenter: Mike Fitzmaurice, Senior Product Manager – Portals, Microsoft Corporation

Speed Up Windows Vista Startup with a Processor Tweak

  • Click on Start>Run
  • type msconfig and click OK.
  • Once that box opens, click on the bootup tab.
  • Under the Boot tab, click on Advanced
  • Click the box next to the number of Cores, and choose the proper number from the dropdown box.
  • Apply and save the changes. Your computer may require a reboot. If it does, go ahead and do so, and notice the difference!

    image 

  • Windows Home Server – what you always needed at home, but can’t install on an existing computer

    Although Windows Vista was just launched it’s not everyday that Microsoft reveals new operating systems. So I was really exited to hear about Windows Home Server (WHS). Here’s the lowdown from Engadget:

    • Units are headless and embedded only — you cannot buy WHS and put it on an old PC — yikes 🙁
    • There is no common web interface. Interaction is entirely client software based, or done over SMB — make sure to turn off the “there’s no external monitor error beep in the bios”.
    • It cannot directly stream media to Media Center Extenders, but it can stream media directly to Windows Media Connect-enabled devices — Why?!
    • It does not use RAID, but instead uses a RAID-like drive pooling system with built-in redundancy. Expanding capacity is as simple as adding additional drives internally or externally via USB — Hmm, will have to wait and see..
    • The client software, which is installable only on Windows PCs (duh) monitors PC health, manages backups, and supports full disk images and versions. If your computer crashes hard you can pop in an restore CD and it’ll pull the disk image over the network – OK, great.
    • Your WHS device gets registered with your Windows Live account and is made easily-findable by authorized parties (i.e. you and anyone you designate) while on the go. You can even connect to it via Live and pipe a Remote Desktop connection to a PC on your home network through this Home-finding Live feature — cool and not so cool. Although I’m sure that Microsoft will go to every extent to make sure that this is secure and “hacker proof” this sounds like a prime target for hacking.

    Needled to say, I’m going to try and install one as soon as I can get my hands on the software.

    The great divide…

    From a IT point of view I think there are basically two categories of companies in the world:

    1. Those who think that IT is a cost and it should be kept as low as possible.
    2. Those who think that IT can be used to drive the business.

    Let me explain a bit more. In my work as a consultant I’ve consulted with many different types of companies both private and public and in all the different sectors; Life Science, Manufactoring, Financial and so on. It seems to me that all of these companies organize their IT deparment in one of two ways; either their CIO reports to the CFO or their CIO reports to the CEO. In the first case the company is a category (1) and in the latter case the company is a category (2).

    Category (1) companies are typically from the Life Science and Manufactoring sectors. Category (2) companies are typically from the Financial and Manufactoring sectors. So there’s a continuum here probably with Life Science going to Manufactoring going to Financial.

    So how does this apply to IT?

    Category (1) companies are clueless about Enterprise Architecture and Category (2) companies are leaders in Enterprise Architecture.

    I’ve worked for some of the largest Life Science companies in Denmark, and they all have fierce measurement programs in place for all their IT projects. Nothing gets started without a business plan that details costs and tangible benefits. All IT projects are benchmarked against eachother and progress, costs, time registrations and so on are compared and analyzed. Enterprise Architecture in these companies have a really hard time, as even Gartner have yet to quantify the tangible benefits of Enterprise Architecture.

    I’ve also worked for some large Manufactoring and Financial companies in Denmark – and these companies use IT as a business driver. Can you imagine a bank without IT? IT is the business – and any intiative that can make IT more effective and cost efficient is exploited. So in these companies Enterprise Architecture is very effective and after a while most companies find tangible benefits that they didn’t expect to find (or even was looking for…).

    So if you’re looking for a job, consulting with a company or even in the very company you work for – if the CIO reports to the CFO then from a Enterprise Architecture perspective you’re probably screwed.

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