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InternetWideWorld.com Blog - Browser Compliance
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# Thursday, September 20, 2007

An article located at http://etech.eweek.com/content/web_technology/top_web_developer_mistakes.html makes really good reading.  It's a slide show, but below is a condensed list of what the article says!

My additional comments are in dark blue, you got any?

1) Click, Click, Click - This is great, someone is at your site and they're ready to make a purchase. Here they go; one click, two clicks, three clicks, just one more! And.... they're gone. Maybe if they could get to where they wanted to go right away you would have made a sale. (I disagree slightly in that as long as the navigation is logical and correct then it should not matter to the user how many clicks...)

2) Just Click on the Magic Compass - It's great that new web technologies make it possible to add lots of cool new navigation and interaction techniques. But don't put access to important features and content behind a strange graphic or icon. People know how links work on web pages. Some icons might as well be in elvish.

3) Don't be too Graphic - The Following Web Content Contains Massive Image Files and Graphics That May not Be Suitable For Visitors With Anything But the Fastest Possible Internet Connections. Toning Down the Giant Graphics Files Is Advised For Site Developers. (This is becoming an increasing problem given that mobile internet is really taking off!)

4) Registry of Lost Web Sites - The legend of the Invisible Web Site. Unseen by search engines, web users or anyone who might actually use the services of the website. It uses the magic of enforced site registration to keep its valuable content hidden from all who might want to use it, especially those who want to give the owners of the site some business.

5) Sticking to the Script - Scripting languages are so useful. They make it possible to do lots of cool things in web design. Click this link for an example. Mmm, getting a script error. If only there was some other way to link to content, you know like an HTML link. Don't use scripting where HTML will work just fine.

6) Too Rich - Animation is great, when it comes to Saturday morning cartoons. On the web too many animations, Flashy graphics, spinning graphs and windows popping in your face is sort of like a sign saying, "Stay away". (100% agree)

7) Welcome To Our Site "image placeholder" - Here's a great idea for the budding web site and application developer. There's this technology that makes it possible to display information to visitors and users. It's called Text! And unlike images and animations used where text would work just as well, text will always show up.

8) What's Your Color Scheme? - Whoa, trippy man. I love the way the orange text looks on that purple background. Dude, that financial firm is just going to love this site design. Or probably not. Unless you're designing for a jam band or some other client that likes wild colors, stick to color matchings that are pleasing to everyone. (Obviously they didn't see the custom colours that I used on the TtG Brokers site ;-) )

9) Directionless Navigation - Wow, this site looks like it has lots of great content and products. But where is everything? Can't find related content? Where's that thing I saw the other day? I'm lost! Users of your web site shouldn't need a trail guide. Make navigation clean, simple and easy to find. (All computer users are very aware of hierarchical navigation [Windows Explorer] and also an address bar 'bread crumb', so play to their strengths!)

10) Can We Table This For Now? - Aren't tables great! They provide so much flexibility when laying out web content. And it looks so nice, at one specific resolution on one specific browser. At other resolutions, yuck! When using tables make good use of percentages and make sure the design looks good on all users screens.

11) Sloppy with Text - Wilcom too my grate neww web apliccatiun. Im a perfessinal web dervelper! The greatest coding skills won't help if your web content is full of misspellings and poor grammar. (Being dyslexic, I have no cammant!)

12) Click Here for Click Here - This is such a nice web application that you've built. It will really help our business deploy content to the web. And look it automatically creates links that say things like "Click Here", "More" and "Continue Reading." Now how do we change those to something more descriptive? We can't? Don't call us, we'll call you. (Use your Tool Tip and Alt tags!!!)

13) Putting up a Velvet Rope - This is such as cool web site, can I come in? Oh, you only let in people from the IE click? Us Safari geeks aren't welcome? And I was going to spend so much money. Don't you know that browser-specific web sites and applications are like so five years ago?

14) This is a Web Site, Right? - Now this is what I call a content rich site. Look at the useful information here. Let me click here, wait, this is a PDF document, and this is a Word document. I thought this was a web site, you know, something I could view in a web browser. (What is the point of providing a content managed Web site when half the content the user wants to view is hidden away in PDF and Word files?  I bet 90% or more of content in Word and PDF that are available on the internet would be easy to provide on a Web page and if it was users would read it more!)

15) Over-crowding - You know, when people say that something is like finding a needle in a haystack, they don't mean that in a good way. On the web, too many links and other components can make it hard for a visitor to find the content that they want.

Thursday, September 20, 2007 1:06:53 PM UTC  #    Comments [0]   Browser Compliance | Content Management | debug | Development | General | Internet | Web Hosting  | 
# Friday, May 11, 2007

I thought that I'd bring to your attention a couple of great Internet Explorer toolbars/extensions that I use.

Just released is the official release of the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar (IEDevToolbar).  It has just come out of beta, and available for download here.  If you do any development on Internet Explorer or want to 'dissect' Web sites then this is the tool for you.  I really love the ability to change the client code (HTML, CSS, etc.) dynamically!

The second tool that I use for Internet Explorer is the IE7Pro toolbar.  I've blogged about it before here, and it has been vastly updated and improved since then.  Despite it's name, this also works on IE6, so if you are still on the old browser, give it a go.  You can download the updated toolbar here.

Friday, May 11, 2007 10:14:47 AM UTC  #    Comments [0]   Browser Compliance | debug | Development | Internet | Web Surfing  | 
# Thursday, May 03, 2007

Way back in the mists of time, when I first had access to the internet, I remember the excitement I had at installing Netscape 0.9.  A lot has changed in the worlds of the Internet browser since then.  I used to be an avid Netscape fan, but they soon shrivelled up and more or less died away to be replaced by Microsoft's Internet Explorer.  I must admit that I never really used Internet Explorer until version 5, and since then I have always used Internet Explorer as my main browser of choice.  I have never really got into FireFox much, other than for accessibility and cross browser testing that I do a lot of.  I just want a browser that displays web pages!

Only since FireFox has taken a chunk out of Microsoft's dominance of the browser market has the giant Microsoft finally got off their backsides and made some improvements.  The market is once again competitive, and I feel that this can only be a good thing.  We saw that when IE vanquished Netscape to the great browserhalla, that browser progress and innovation slowed and died away.  Microsoft were basically 'begging' to have someone come into the market and challenge them.  Better that than an 'anti-competition lawsuit'! :-)

As such I've not joined the browser 'wars', but I really, really do hate these 'browser bashers' who rubbish one browser over the other.  Oh grow up!  Each to their own.  The only reason why FireFox has made inroads to the browser market is in the home, where as in the business is is very solidly IE.  This is the environment I live and work in, so I'll stick with Internet Explorer thank you.

Enough ranting for now...

I was interested to read today that at the Mix'07 conference in Las Vegas (Microsoft's annual event for Web Developers and Designers), that there was some 'hint's as to what to expect from Internet Explorer 8 (IE8).  These hints can be found on the Internet Explorer Blog. The hints touted that the main improvements were to be for RSS, CSS and AJAX support.

I have really started to get into my RSS feeds, and you can subscribe to mine here.  As far as I am concerned the only improvements I'd like to see is improvements in speed, everything else I am happy with.

I do a lot of development around CSS, and I really do hope that Microsoft implement strict compliance to the latest standards for CSS.  The current non-compliance by Internet Explorer is a real nightmare for developers, and I can say that from experience that you have to really work at and 'bash' your CSS to get it to look the same just in two different versions of Internet Explorer!  That just isn't playing ball.

I'm only just starting to get into AJAX really, so I cant really comment about any improvements that are needed here.

It is also speculated that IE8 will also have support for what is known as microformats.  These microformats are small embedded tags in HTML that can be interpreted in various ways by software, such as calendar events or contact information.  Microformats are scheduled to be added to the next version of FireFox, so it is likely that IE8 will also have these, just to keep up.

The last thing that is hinted at being done in IE8, is more provisioning for user interface customisation.  As I have previously stated, I want a browser that does what it says on the tin...it serves me Web pages!  So, to me customisation is not something that I want, nor need.  How about putting the extra effort into improving the speed, reliability and what about reducing the size of the install (bloat ware).

I'm a user of a Windows powered mobile phone, which has Pocket Internet Explorer installed, which I use to surf the web with, whilst on the move.  I find this functionality invaluable, and it has made a dramatic impact/change to my life over the last couple of years.  Anyway, what I want to see for IE8 is a Windows Mobile version that properly supports everything that it's big brother desktop version provides.  I would dearly love to have full RSS, CSS, and AJAX support in the pocket version, along with Flash, JavaScript, iFrames, etc.

What do you think?

Thursday, May 03, 2007 2:00:59 PM UTC  #    Comments [0]   Browser Compliance | Internet | Web Surfing  | 
# Tuesday, April 24, 2007

A lot of my current job is making sure that all the Web sites I create are AA accessibility compliant, and also cross browser compliant.  As many people who need to do this will already know, to test on many different browsers is difficult at best.  You can't have more than one version of Internet Explorer installed at the same time, for a start.  In my efforts to try and at least do a better job in my development of browser compatible Web sites I came accross Browsershots.org.

Test your web design in different browsers

Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007 8:06:14 AM UTC  #    Comments [0]   Development | Internet | Web Surfing | Browser Compliance  | 
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