Welcome to News from trif.com! First time readers, I am glad you're here! Returning readers, welcome back!

As always, we try to keep you up to date on the latest trends and issues that face us. Please keep in mind, I don't want to waste your time. Articles will contain generally less than 250 words. Please have a look and give me your feedback. If you want to see the Newsletter archives, there are more than 6-years available on our Newsletter page. Have a look and by all means, forward to a friend. Thanks. Questions? Send me an email!

Printing This Newsletter From Outlook

Printing this Newsletter from Outlook to a printer does not work well. It is too wide and cuts off the right side when printed. It worked at one time when Internet Explorer was used as the display engine for Outlook, but in Outlook version 2010, Microsoft changed to using Microsoft Word as the display and printing engine. So it handles email better, but HTML, like this Newsletter – not so much.  There is a work-around.

At the bottom of the Newsletter is a link Newsletters On Line. It is a link to the Browser version of this Newsletter. For example, this month, it links to http://www.trif.com/wp-content/uploads/Newsletters/2017-07.htm and if you click that, you will see the Newsletter in a browser window. Printing from this window will size to fit width-wise.

For other documents, here are the crazy work-arounds Microsoft suggests:

• Open the email message in Outlook, click the Actions button, and then click Edit Message. Resize the large image before you print it.
• Copy the contents of the email message to a new Microsoft Word document and resize the image in Word.
• Request the sender to send you the picture or graphic as an attachment. Open the file using a program that supports resizing or shrinking the image.
• Right-click on the large image and save it to disk. Open the file using a program that supports resizing or shrinking the image.

Highway and Byways

Have you been on the roads recently. OMG! To get anywhere today, day or night, takes twice as long or longer. There are more construction projects going on right now than we have seen at any time in the past.

In MassHighway District 6 (Greater Boston) alone, there are 180 projects under construction right now with 220 in the design stage. In Worcester County, there are 147 projects in construction of which 27 are bridge projects with 262 projects in the design stage. North shore communities have 221 projects under design with 128 projects underway.

MassDOT's contractors for the District 6 I-90 Toll Demolition Project continue construction operations. DW White will continue their work at the Weston Toll Plazas, SPS New England will continue their work at the Allston-Brighton and Ted Williams Tunnel Toll Plazas and S&R Corporation will continue work on demolition at the Sumner Tunnel Toll Plaza. Work at all locations is set to be completed at the same time in November of 2017.

Get more detail:

• I-90; Toll Plaza Demolition
• Current Road and Bridge Projects
• DOT Web Cams

Autoplay on the Web

Autoplay a functionality that causes a video, audio file, etc. to play automatically, without action from a user.

In essence, autoplay is a bad idea not just for accessibility but for usability and general sanity while browsing. Autoplay of embedded audio and video clips is often requested from clients for a number of reasons. However, it is generally an interruption to browsing. The sound or video will conflict with other sounds that any user is listening to or will prove a distraction to the content that brought them to the page in the first place. At best, this is intrusive for someone who is listening to music or in a quiet area while browsing.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) WEB Accessibility Initiative provides guidelines for web content in WCAG 2.0. https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/). W3C says autoplay is bad.

They say “playing audio automatically when landing on a page may affect a screen reader user’s ability to find the mechanism to stop it because they navigate by listening and automatically started sounds might interfere with that navigation. Therefore, we discourage the practice of automatically starting sounds (especially if they last more than 3 seconds), and encourage that the sound be started by an action initiated by the user after they reach the page, rather than requiring that the sound be stopped by an action of the user after they land on the page.”

If the business case for autoplay is too strong to counter there are ways you can mitigate it’s use.  Only autoplay if the clip lasts for five seconds or less. If the clip lasts over five seconds, you must provide the user with the option to stop or pause it.  Autoplay is generally acceptable if the user was aware, when they clicked the link, that the proceeding page was going to play a clip.