Disappointed in Google WAVE
Posted by rbwatson1 on November 23, 2009
Google WAVE logo
What can I say besides I’m just plain disappointed in Google WAVE. There was so much hype, so much excitement about it, and now it’s evaporated.
No HTML5
I understood that WAVE was to be done in HTML5, but it has a doc type of HTML 4.01. And actually, I found that it has a very serious case of “Divitis” (too many DIV tags). Can’t find any type of HTML5 tag at all, not even a
sectiontag,headertag, nuthin’. Just a ton of DIVs and SPANs.If you’re curious, here’s a look at the top of the source:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html><head><meta name="gwt:property" content="locale=en">And the generated source:
<html><head><meta name="gwt:property" content="locale=en">Not Accessible
Google WAVE is not web accessible. Period. Simplistically, this means that people with disabilities cannot use it, or it’s very difficult. For more on this, check out my Web Axe entry Podcast #75: Jeremy Keith Interview, Google Wave and Google Wave Preview Accessibility Review by WebAIM’s Jared Smith.
To further frustrate us web accessibility professionals, Google has stolen the name of WebAIM’s free tool WAVE (web accessibility evaluation tool).
No Usage
No one’s using WAVE. Most people I know now who want a WAVE invite (and that’s a lot of folks), has received one by now. And I haven’t seen much activity at all. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen any new messages for a month now.
Dennis
Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:12:56 GMT
