Pemaquid Communications

There’s no question that Internet Explorer 6 has replaced Netscape 4 as the most reviled browser known to Web development. Just do a quick real-time search to see how Web designers feel.

There’s a lot not to like. To name just a few short-comings:

• It doesn’t render the transparency of Portable Network Graphics (*.PNG files) properly, requiring a browser-specific filter
• It doesn’t render a lot of the latest CSS declarations

(I could go on and on, but why relive the agony?)

This means that Web designers need to invest extra time making sure IE6 renders their creations properly, and that makes us, um… cranky, and rightly so.

Some designers actually seem to be personally offended by people who use IE6, and want to force them to switch browsers by denying them access to their Web sites if they use IE6.

This approach is miguided and does not take into account the fact that many people cannot upgrade because they access the Web from corporate IT environments that only support IE6.

Other designers are bewildered that some people would continue to use IE6 when other options exist. The reason has to do with usability, and is best characterized by the phrase “if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it”. In other words, people who use IE6, many of whom are non-technical, get along just fine, thank you, sending email and surfing and purchasing with adequate security. These folks have no incentive to switch.

It’s hard to get angry with people for that.

Designer Andy Clarke recently considered the options regarding the IE6 question and proposed a Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS file as a solution. Basically, Clarke, says, serve up a plain jane style sheet that allows folks with IE6 to view a Web page’s content, but conveys the message that their browser is not up to par in terms of rendering its layout.

Some top flight designers have adopted this approach, as Jina Bolton did recently when she redesigned her personal site, Sushi and Robots. UIE6 has popped up on a couple of sites here in the Portland area as well.

So, has the time come to employ the Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS more routinely? The answer depends on the audience for your site as well as its content.

A quick spot check of W3Schools browser stats suggests that roughly 10% of all Internet users view it through IE6 (about 4% of the visitors to this site use IE6).

If your site caters to the general public and traffic analytics show one in ten visitors are using IE6, I’d say the time has not yet come for you to switch. You’re still better off employing progressive enhancement techniques in your CSS to serve up a design that still looks sharp, if not a pixel-perfect clone of what’s seen in other browsers.

If 4% or less are using IE6, and you’re not conducting any e-commerce, I’d say you’re safe giving UIE6 CSS a spin.

But if you do use UIE6 CSS, make sure you check to see that things are rendering properly. Sometimes goodies like jQuery, bereft of the CSS used in other browsers, leave the interface looking a little messy and content unreadable. Yep, I’ve seen that on at least one local site-that-shall-remain-nameless.

Remember, IE6 users are people too. They deserve a great (if not pixel-perfect) user experience like everybody else.

Next week we’ll be talking about Pemaquid’s current approach to handling CSS for IE6.

Have any of you out there used UIE6 CSS? Let us know how in the comments.

Google’s new Chrome browser could help w/t/universal adoption of Web Standards by browser makers. Google’s browser uses the Webkit rendering engine, the same one used by Apple’s Safari, which also closely applies Web Standards, so Chrome should do the same.

I downloaded Chrome last night and ran pemaquid.com and several other sites that apply Web Standards through it, and they all checked out, even the features fortified w/(Progressively Enhanced) Ajax.

Separately, a CSS bug has been reported by Jeremy Jarratt, in that Google Chrome improperly displays alternate style sheets. This is apparently a bug that has existed in Webkit and Safari for some time. (information via Jeffrey Zeldman).

Because of Google’s high profile, Chrome could have more of an immediate impact than Firefox did when it came on the scene. I’m hoping that’s going to be a good thing.

For example, it might wake up certain IE6-centric developers slumbering blissfully ignorant to the existence of Web Standard design principles, when they wonder why their sites don’t render consistently in a suddenly-popular Chrome.

Still, it remains to be seen if Google Chrome will make a sizeable dent in the browser market. As we’ve seen with the continuing significant market share held by IE6, people don’t easily switch browsers unless they find it compelling to do so.

One thing’s for sure, as Zeldman says, we once again live in interesting times regarding Web Standards, Web content and Web browsers.

Last night I noticed John Resig twittering about a new Web browser from Google, called Chrome. It’s hitting the news in other places; here’s a piece from yesterday’s New York Times.

Reports say Google intends to release the browser for download from its site today at: google.com/chrome but so far nothing’s available.

I haven’t had time to immerse myself the details yet, but here are some of the important details:

• It will be open source
• It will offer a way for people to see how Web sites are consuming system resources
• It will handle tabbed browsing in a slightly different way

This could have a major impact on both Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser as well as the Mozilla Project’s Firefox.

You can find out more about the Google Chrome features at Google Blogscoped, a blog which follows the company; learn more about some of the technical implications of Google Chrome from John Resig on his blog.

As far as the impact on front end Web designers? It remains to be seen, but if you assume that Chrome adheres to Web standards and standard CSS implementations, it shouldn’t change the game all that much. Stay tuned….

More than 8 million people downloaded Firefox 3 in a 24-hour period, setting a world record, and more than 28 million download have taken place since the browser was released June 17.

BBC News »

Today turned out to be an interesting study in usability, the power of Habit, and backwards compatibility. A colleague – she’s an über-geek – casually asked if I was running Firefox 3, the latest (beta) version of the popular open source browser put out by the Mozilla Project and released into the wild last Tuesday. Nope, I said, but I can fix that soon enough (it sounded like something worth doing). I downloaded it.

Alas! My productivity took a detour.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to knock FF3, and it’s got lots of worthy improvements, especially in the area of security. It easily updated my bookmarks and reconfigured my plug-ins. New plug-ins were easier to install and pop ups were easier to deal with. But, as they say, it is the little things that count.

For me, that was things like the browser chrome. Whoever designed FF3 must have loved Netscape 6+ and Safari, because the chrome looks very similar to those browsers. Not a big deal, but it was a “little” detail. It took a split-second longer for me to find my bookmarks and links in the chrome (which were not _quite_ where they used to be), and all those microseconds added up to a usability issue. It reminded me of a basic tenet of usability – Don’t Make Me Think!.

In other words, the more a person has to think about how to complete a task, the less they are thinking about the task itself – and that makes it tough to concentrate. Apps that make you think will ultimately be less successful than those that don’t.

I could have lived w/that. But the clincher for me was the download error I got when I tried to install Firebug 1.1 (the version that is supposed to run on FF3). That did it – I need my Firebug! Back to Firefox 2 – at least for now.

Editor’s Note: Eureka! I found Firebug 1.2, which does in fact work on FF3. So… with that, I can bounce back up to version 3.

Firefox fans will be interested to know that version three of their favorite surfboard for the Web just went Beta yesterday. However, unless your inner geek can’t resist, you might want to hold of on downloading it for a bit. V3 lacks a number of important plug-ins, and it sometimes doesn’t render sites as it should (that’s why there’s a beta period, right?).

The word on the street is that Firefox 3 has solved most issues related to memory leaks and security – already very good – is new and improved.

Firefox is now used by roughly 20% of Internet users.

Firefox 3 download page & release notes »

More from recent wanderings about the ‘Net:

• Mystery of the flat input buttons in Leopard – explained! – Have you noticed flat form inputs in Safari 3/Leopard? Dominey gives you the skinny.
• No more ‘click to activate’ – soon you won’t have to click to activate that control in the IE browser that makes an object play. Microsoft has licensed the component in question from Eolas. I think we’ll still use SWFObject and UFO, though. (Ajaxian)
• Anatomy of a good Web page (hotlinked image) – good markup, w/t/Cliff notes…
• Foamee – brought to you by Dan Cederholm. Ever wanted to keep track of who owes you a beer – and who you owe? Dan’s app makes it go down smooth. I’m linking you right to the How-to page…

Cheers!

If you’re a Web designer, 2007 is the year that Internet Explorer 6 became “the new Netscape 4″. Actually, no, things could never be that bad again, but when you’re designing Web sites using CSS and Web standards, IE6 is the one that now throws up the most humdingers.

A question I often hear from other designers is why, with IE7 and Firefox offering better support for Web standards, aren’t more people upgrading from IE6? (The latest browser statistics show IE6 use falling from about 42% to 36% during the past 8 months.)

The reason has to do with usability and cost-benefit analysis.

While most Web designers wouldn’t dream of using IE6 as their primary browser these days, especially with add-ons like the Web developer toolbar and Firebug available for Firefox, it works just fine for what most people want to do online. Checking email, reading up on sports scores and stock prices, buying shirts from LL Bean and using social network sites like LinkedIn, Flickr, Facebook and MySpace all can be done just fine w/IE6. There’s no compelling reason to switch.

Kevin Hale of Particle Tree has written an interesting article on the subject.

The upshot for Web designers? Remember to focus on usability when working with Clients to design features for an interactive Web site. Think about how customers, employees and other groups will do on your site before investing a lot of development time in creating a cool Web site feature that won’t get used all that much.

And it looks like IE6 will be with us for some time to come.

Apple has launched Safari 3, the latest version of its Web browser. Probably the most interesting thing about it is that for the first time it is available for Windows.

In terms of Web design, one of the good things about this announcement is that Web designers will now – finally – be able to apply CSS to form elements like input and submit.

Downloading….