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Archive for January, 2007

Weight Watchers: Inaccessible Design

26 Jan

Today I tried logging into weightwatchers.com to track my points for today.

After a brand-spanking new install of Kubuntu on my 64-bit computer, I tried accessing the site in KDE’s default browser – Konqueror.

The result was not pleasant…

Browser Error Page

Unfortunately for me, and many others, we have to have Flash 9 installed on one of 3 browser (IE, Safari, or Mozilla). This is rather poor design on WW’s decision to simply block access for unsupported browsers.

There are many, many more than 3 browsers, and perhaps they don’t care about 2-3 people a week in their stats that won’t be able to access their site, but when it happens to me – I write about it.

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Posted in Advocacy

 

Flash 9 Broken on x64

26 Jan

I recently installed Kubuntu 64-bit on my desktop, which went off without a hitch – about 20 minutes to install and I had a working dual boot system (the other OS being Windows XP 64-bit).

I have to say the windows install was more trouble than the Ubunut install, mainly in XP’s lack of a SATA driver.

I have come across one problem of which I have no solution – yet.

Flash 9 is not supporting the x64 architecture. After downloading the .tar.gz file for Flash 9, and following Adobe’s instructions on their Flash 9 download page, I got the following error:


$ ./flashplayer-installer

ERROR: Your architecture, \'x86_64\', is not supported by the
Adobe Flash Player installer.

This is a bummer for me, as one site I regularly use everyday requires Flash. I’m even more disappointed that a major web site does not realize the inaccessibility of using Flash.

Here are a few threads about Flash 9 and getting it to work on Linux + 64-bit (actually, that is a mis-statement), because it requires you convert your browser and kernel to 32-bit…now what’s the fun in that?

  1. ubuntu
  2. adobe blog

My advice? Don’t support these “flash-only” sites…find an alternative. Another work-around is to install Opera + ia32-libs ;)

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