Google

Google is one of the first web companies that reinvented the web as we know it. It essentially paved the way for what we call the Web 2.0 era because it was the better search engine that would leave Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista, Lycos, Ask, and the rest behind.

True to its name, Google just keeps on getting bigger. It took on e-mail (Gmail), advertising (AdSense and AdWords), office suites (Docs, Spreadsheets, Sites), multimedia (YouTube, Picasa), navigation (Earth, Sky, Moon, Maps, Street View), and even web browsing (Chrome). And even if the thought of Google looking into what we’re looking at and what we’re talking about is really scary, life with the help of the big G is just easier.

A List Apart

In the same vein, A List Apart has been the definitive resource “for people who make websites”. What started out as a mailing list evolved into a treasure trove of elegant web design articles that cultivated the love for the craft like no other. Design, standards, accessibility, optimization, business—this magazine covers it all.

It’s written the pages of web design history as well, from banishing <table>-based layouts to inventing CSS techniques (Sliding Doors of CSS, Holy Grail, Suckerfish Dropdowns, Sprites, Faux Columns, Mountaintop Corners) we never could have come up with. Websites today are efficient, meaningful, and beautiful because of ALA.

Related reading:

• Usability & accessibility means no user is left out
• Google indexes Flash: beta product, still not good for SEO
• Opera teaches good web design with its Web Standards Curriculum
• Campaigns to kill the web browser that just won’t die: Internet Explorer 6
• Web Standards Project will draft a web design curriculum framework

So many people admire Andy Rutledge and his insightful articles at Design View; but that seems to have changed overnight with his latest offering, USA.gov Redux.

It’s a thoughtful look into the redesign of the USA.gov website, but what has got people irked—primarily in 140 characters or less—is the deliberate sprinkling of provocative political views against Barack Obama and his brand of “Change”, from start to finish. It’s present even in the final mockup.

I’m not sure if the article was written in all seriousness, or hilarity, or satire, which makes me hesitant in even asking, was Andy right to mix design and politics in such a sour tone? We certainly have seen it work well in a hopeful context.

But we can’t try to pretend that design is pure and free from any sort of intent—whether at the hands of a designer manipulating the vision of his client into what he deems fit, or a designer who sees eye to eye with his client one-hundred percent. It seems the latter is impossible, but the former should not be laced with malicious agenda.

Related reading:

• Signature look or diverse portfolio?
• Wisdump redesign concept, part 3
• Wisdump redesign concept, part 2
• Wisdump Redesign: Public Beta
• Wisdump Redesign: I’ve Decided, Finally!

I’ve written about emerging gallery-style websites like image bookmarking and information design. Here’s yet another trend: niche web design inspiration galleries. Here are examples of those classifications:

• One-page: FullSingle
• Light on dark: LightOnDark
• Minimalist: minimalsites
• Liquid layouts: No Resolution
• Specific CMS: WeLoveWP, welovetxp.com, Joomlabased, Movable Love
• Specific look: CSS Nature
• Specific website genre: ChurchBeauty
• Specific group of designers: CSS Princess, CSS Design Yorkshire, CeeEsEs, CSS Blue

Most of these sites aren’t really new, except that enterprising webmasters are coming up with new categories more often—seemingly every week!

Do we really need new sites for all these categories? I would say yes. Despite the presence of categories and tags, custom search engines powered by Google, gallery aggregators like Most Inspired, you can never have an excessive supply of inspiration.

Plus, visual search using mere keywords is still ineffective. Usually because there isn’t enough care given into describing images. You can never really tell how many tags you can add to properly describe the look and feel of a website.

In fact, since websites are basically interfaces and not just 2-dimensional designs slapped onscreen, showcases and galleries should also focus on their interactive elements. That’s probably where pattern galleries like Pattern Tap comes in.

Related reading:

• Web trend alert: image bookmarking sites
• Ten years of creating a better web: Google and A List Apart
• Opera teaches good web design with its Web Standards Curriculum
• Google indexes Flash: beta product, still not good for SEO
• Design is about constraints

When will the next version of HTML be ready? Apparently, we have 4859 days to go before HTML5 reaches the “Proposed Recommendation” status. That’s 13 years, according to Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 specification.

It’s been 10 years since HTML4 came out. And it will take a total of 19 years for HTML5 to come to fruition. Here’s staggering journey HTML5 has gone and will go through:

• First W3C Working Draft in October 2007.
• Last Call Working Draft in October 2009.
• Call for contributions for the test suite in 2011.
• Candidate Recommendation in 2012.
• First draft of test suite in 2012.
• Second draft of test suite in 2015.
• Final version of test suite in 2019.
• Reissued Last Call Working Draft in 2020.
• Proposed Recommendation in 2022.

So what do we do about this excruciating piece of information? Jeff Croft says we should just go back to work. And ignore HTML5 until we absolute don’t have to.

If and when HTML 5 becomes something that can help me serve my clients and the users of their websites, then I will absolutely learn all there is to know about it and incorporate it into my arsenal. Until then, I don’t see the point.

It’s only a bit disappointing since the knowledge of the beautiful things one can achieve with HTML5 has been coming and going for the past few years now. But the thing is, as Kroc Camen said, “HTML5 is doable in the here and now”—his site is excellent proof of that. Except, of course, it will take extra work for it to work properly as not even the standards-compliant browsers support it. Which brings us back to Jeff Croft’s point.

Related reading:

• Mozilla forces Internet Explorer into standards compliance with plugins
• Usability & accessibility means no user is left out
• Ten years of creating a better web: Google and A List Apart
• Opera teaches good web design with its Web Standards Curriculum
• Google indexes Flash: beta product, still not good for SEO

Umbrella Today, which is a beautifully crafted site (CSS parallax effect!) that tells you whether or not you should bring an umbrella outside, does not work for me. See, it asks for a zip code—presumably limited to the United States only. But I don’t live there.

Now, I know, there are countless websites that exclude a certain demographic in every imaginable way, not just by geography. After all, on the Internet you’re free to do anything you want. But if you don’t like how something is working (or isn’t working), you’re free to blog about it as well.

Go local, be successful, then branch out

To all the developers out there: going local is a good strategy, but if you can help it, try to make your nifty little web app more accessible than just for your neighborhood.

And I’m not just talking about the one-person startups but also the bigger fish in the pond. I wonder how long it will take for Google Maps to completely and accurately cover the planet. (I don’t know if we should be excited when it does, either, but that’s a different story.)

True usability and accessibility

When we mention the term usability in terms of web development, we look at how comfortable users are in using and interacting with the interfaces that are created. Closely associated with usability is accessibility, which champions the idea of never leaving any differently-abled user out.

Doesn’t true usability and accessibility cover my dilemma with Umbrella Today, since I’m left out of its target userbase?

I do hope the makers of Umbrella Today and other people like them stop discriminating by zip code and start reaching out to other parts of the world.

Again, this is if they can help it. Because if there’s one medium that can make it possible, it should be the Web.

Related reading:

• Ten years of creating a better web: Google and A List Apart
• Google indexes Flash: beta product, still not good for SEO
• Campaigns to kill the web browser that just won’t die: Internet Explorer 6
• Where Is The Google Web Browser?
• Google Chrome: time to reinvent the web browser

Philipp Lensen of Google Blogoscope shares a comic about Google’s open source web browser called Chrome. TechCrunch has posted leaked screenshots too. I suggest you read all those links as they explain very nicely the many, many features Google Chrome has, then try it out for yourself.

With all the revolutionary new features planned for this web browser, do the rest of the factions of the more-than-a-decade-long Browser Wars stand a chance? Let me run through several points that may or may not convince you that the ‘Wars are over:

Reworking web browser concepts

“Chrome”. Google Chrome is so named because the developers wanted to weed out all the unnecessary interface elements that get in the way of an optimal user experience. Google is pretty good at this—see Gmail.

Omnibox. I’ve complained about this before. We have too many blank bars in our browsers, why not stick to just one? Combining the ambitiousness of Firefox 3’s “AwesomeBar”, search keyword shortcuts, and Google’s mighty search engine, users might not need any other button in the toolbar.

Independent tabs and sandboxing. Chrome runs tabs as separate processes to isolate any unruly behavior, whether it’s a memory leak or malicious code.

Using Google’s assets

Webpage testing. Google will use its large—an understatement—collection of crawled websites to test if their browser is working properly on them. It will prioritize by popularity to be efficient in testing the millions, billions, and trillions of pages, of course.

Search and anti-phishing. I’ve mentioned the Omnibox. Google will incorporate its search into the singular browser bar to make finding websites a breeze. (I think AwesomeBar sounds better though.) And since Google is a pretty good keeper of blacklisted sites, Chrome also detects when a website is potentially harmful.

Google Gears. Another obvious move. Google Gears was created to make web browsing more responsive and efficient by linking together the online and offline, so it’s mandatory for Chrome to incorporate this feature.

Inspired by the best of other worlds

WebKit. WebKit is possibly the fastest and smartest browser rendering engine out there. It powers Safari and several Mac OS X applications, as well as Google Android and now Google Chrome.

Privacy Mode. Microsoft is set to introduce a history-free, cookie-free browsing feature in Internet Explorer 8 called InPrivate (though everyone else calls it “porn mode”). Now Google follows suit with “incognito browsing”.

Better JavaScript performance. Mozilla recently announced it was able to dramatically improve JavaScript loading by up to 37.5 times, a feature coming to Firefox 3.1. (Another comparable feature to Firefox is the previously-mentioned Omnibox.)

Speed Dial. Opera has sported this feature since version 9.2.

On to the questions…

Why? My answer? Because they can. Google’s answer? Watch it here. Google is the epitome of a Web 2.0 company, having revolutionized search, then e-mail, then every other activity that can be done online. It rehashed old elements of the Internet, and doing so on a browser feels like a natural extension of their work.

Does Google Chrome comply with Web Standards? Since Chrome is going to run on WebKit, can we trust that we won’t have to debug for yet another browser? Unfortunately, it failed the ACID3 test (which, on the other hand, Safari passed in version 3.2.1).

Will Google end its “search bar relationship” with Firefox and other browsers? Now that Google has its own browser, does it still need to push for the search bar feature in browsers like Firefox, IE, and Safari? Probably not. But most users will still use Google—the search engine—one way or the other. And if you’ve watched the video linked above, Sergey Brin says the general goal is to get people to use “alternative” browsers such as Firefox. (Of course, assuming that Firefox and Chrome remain minor players in the game.)

Is this a milestone in web browser history? Put another way, is this the best thing since tabbed browsing? I can’t really answer a resounding yes. Web browsers must pay attention to detail and reduce bloat—it’s a difficult balance. Google Chrome is a lean browser that contains only a few notable features. We’ll have to wait for a few more releases to see where they’re going with this.

Do you trust Google to browse in its browser? Between a proof-of-concept security flaw discovered hours after the browser’s release and a questionable (but recently modified) license agreement, are you confident in using yet another Google product? This is perhaps the biggest question of all.

Related reading:

• Mozilla forces Internet Explorer into standards compliance with plugins
• Campaigns to kill the web browser that just won’t die: Internet Explorer 6
• Opera teaches good web design with its Web Standards Curriculum
• Really Good Ideas from April Fools’ Pranks on the Web
• Google indexes Flash: beta product, still not good for SEO

Today, August 27th, marks the day Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) first came out. It’s a seven year-old browser. This little factoid is part of a battle cry by M. David Auayan to stop developing websites for IE6 by March 2009. Enter the IE Death March.

Internet Explorer 6 will be SEVEN years old on August 27th. It came out a few weeks before the Twin Towers fell. It came out before the Nintendo GameCube. It came out before the first iPod.

It’s time to put a deadline on dropping IE6, and I say that time is now, and the deadline should be soon… say like, March 2009. That’s roughly a little more than 6 months. Feel free to join me. If your company is dropping support for IE6, let me know and I’ll gladly post it up.

There have been tons of initiatives to finally ditch one of the most loathed software on the planet. You may have noticed some of these around the Internet:

• Google let webmasters make money by promoting Firefox. (AdSense Referrals is now retired as of August 2008.)
• Explorer Destroyer provided more aggressive methods of notifying users that they should get a better browser. (Site is now down.)
• Stop IE6 takes a similar approach and invites users to add a script that warns or blocks users from using a site. (Site is still up.)
• End 6! also provides you with a nagging script.
• WordPress proudly displays a Browse Happy link on its homepage, as the WaSP has turned it over to them.
• SaveTheDevelopers.org presents another sympathetic angle to how much IE6 has damaged the moral of web developers.

So many parties are restless about the state of web browsing, and rather than wait for Microsoft to get its act together, they take it upon themselves to do something about it. It doesn’t really stop with the viral websites. Every few months or so you’ll find a blog post that details how the author has had it with IE (IE6 usually) and that he has resolved to drop support for the browser completely.

One must ask: are any of them making a significant difference in the market share of IE? Or IE6, specifically?

According to statistics from several prominent web counters, Internet Explorer is still the dominant browser at around 76%. Although it’s slowly going down by a few percent every few months, that’s still a high number. Even on sites that advocate web standards like W3Schools show that around half of the site visitors are on IE, a quarter on IE6.

The biggest agent of change was probably Google, since it actually paid people to download Firefox. But now that’s gone, will the ball keep rolling? Is it time to look at other, more drastic strategies the way Mozilla did recently?

It seems we’re all feeling a little desperate these days. After all, it’s been seven years.

Related reading:

• Mozilla forces Internet Explorer into standards compliance with plugins
• Google Chrome: time to reinvent the web browser
• Opera teaches good web design with its Web Standards Curriculum
• Google indexes Flash: beta product, still not good for SEO
• Usability & accessibility means no user is left out

In an interesting development regarding web standards and the browser wars, Ars Technica reports that Mozilla is taking Internet Explorer’s problematic webpage rendering into its own hands starting with a plugin for HTML5’s canvas element.

IE’s shortcomings won’t hold back the Internet for much longer, however, because Mozilla plans to drag IE into the next generation of open web technologies without Microsoft’s help. One of the first steps towards achieving this goal is a new experimental plugin that adapts Mozilla’s implementation of the HTML5 Canvas element so that it can be used in Internet Explorer.

Vladimir Vukićević says it’s “a very direct way of getting 2D (and soon 3D) graphics into web pages, and removes many of the barriers between developers and graphics rendering.” Here’s a screenshot of how it works:

HTML5 Canvas on IE, by Vladimir Vukićević

Mozilla doesn’t stop there, though. It plans bring its “next-generation JavaScript engine directly into Microsoft’s web browser” through a project called ScreamingMonkey. The plugin strategy will also be employed here.

Mixed reactions

Reactions from the crowd range from amusement to confusion to outrage. On the one hand, this move from the makers of the record-making Firefox browser is commendable. It shows that in the midst of IE’s dominating market share and FF’s sheer drive to beat it, Mozilla still wants the Web to work, one way or the other. Even if it means having to “drag IE” itself. Indeed:

Is it a sad or happy day for Microsoft, when their competitors get bored with beating them, and instead try to improve the Microsoft products to make them competitive - for free?

And what does Microsoft have to say about this? Isn’t this an insult wrapped inside a well-meaning gesture since it is coming from a competitor? Anything that gets Microsoft’s attention to hurry things up in the web standards compliance department is okay by me.

Try Adobe

But it’s not just about the browser vendors but the users themselves. How many of them will take the time to install this not-so-popular plugin? Do they care enough to see the advantages? Ars Technica thus wonders if Adobe could have been the better messenger, since Flash is ultimately indispensable these days:

This is purely speculation, but If Adobe decided to ship Screaming Monkey and the Canvas functionality as part of the next major iteration of the Flash plugin, it would rapidly accelerate adoption and get it onto lots of computers.

Cross-browser nirvana? Not quite

News of this plugin suggests that it’s taking a so much effort to make IE play nice that even competing browsers have to step in. And we’re only talking about the HTML5 canvas element here, a far less common feature, or should we say issue, than things like the double-margin bug or pixel font sizes.

Related reading:

• Google Chrome: time to reinvent the web browser
• Campaigns to kill the web browser that just won’t die: Internet Explorer 6
• Opera teaches good web design with its Web Standards Curriculum
• Mozilla Labs wants your ideas for the future of web browsing
• Google indexes Flash: beta product, still not good for SEO

Words are enough to give one the impression that the talks were brilliant. Let me quote some passages based on the blog posts at Adactio:

Understanding Web Design by Jeffrey Zeldman:

You should not be designing just to make other designers jealous. It happens a lot in design but it happens in development too (I’m looking at you, Ajax). Good design is invisible. It’s about the character of the content, not the character of the designer. Let’s get away from showing off get to empathetic web design. It means user-centred design but by abandoning that label we can side-step the religious wars between UCD and agile.

The Lessons of CSS Frameworks by Eric Meyer:

If you’re going to use a framework, it should be yours; one that you’ve created. You can look at existing frameworks for ideas and hack at it. But the professionals in this room are not well served by picking up a framework and using it as-is.

Storytelling by Design Jason Santa Maria:

Design for the web has chiefly been driven forward by technology rather than message. Maybe it’s time to go back and start asking what are the stories we are trying to tell. The form of design should be driven by the story.

Web Application Hierarchy by Luke W.:

We make sense of the world in terms of relationships. We don’t know when we smell because we’re used to the smell, but other people notice because our smell stands out. It’s much the same with sight. We can associate or disassociate things using contrast, distance and size. We can use contrast in visual weight to guide the eye and create a flow.

Shepherding Passionate Users by Heather Champ:

When the universe gives you lemons, make lemonade. When there was unannounced downtime on Flickr, they turned it into a colouring contest: print out these circles, colour them in and the winner will get a prize. Over 2000 submissions were uploaded. The level of creativity was startling. Every one participated ended up getting an extra three months on their account.

The Framework Age by Liz Danzico:

User-centred design and participatory design are great ways of involving the users in the design process but that’s still different to actual use. It’s time for a new way of working: designing for improvisation (but remember that no one single process will ever be successful).

Implementing Design: Bulletproof A-Z by Dan Cederholm:

Rounded corners are usually a pain in the ass. But you can do them today with namespaced webkit- and moz- border-radius declarations. … What about other browsers? Well, they don’t get rounded corners but so what? Rounded corners just degrade gracefully to rectangles.

This roundup actually covers only day one, so be sure to subscribe to Adactio for the next round of talks for day two.

Related reading:

• Where Is The Google Web Browser?
• Web Standards Project will draft a web design curriculum framework
• Usability & accessibility means no user is left out
• Ten years of creating a better web: Google and A List Apart
• Opera teaches good web design with its Web Standards Curriculum

This will include recommendations on course dependencies, learning competencies, readings, tools, and other resources that will help bring web standards to the classrooms. It’s called a framework, rather than a rigid curriculum itself, to keep it an ever-growing reference for teaching of web standards.

Why is it called a framework? Given the velocity at which Web technology unravels, we recognize that required skill sets can change rapidly, and that the best way to keep this material useful is for the education community to enrich it with their expertise and experiences. In this way, the WaSP Curriculum Framework will be a “living curriculum” that we hope would be a knowledge base of required skills.

The results of the 2007 curriculum survey give us a good idea of what classroom-based web standards education looks like. Below is a graph that shows what the survey respondents believe are the necessary topics taught in such classes.

WaSP Curriculum Survey Results Chart 3

I’m glad that things are picking up speed particularly in this area. As I have mentioned in my post about Opera WSC, it’s important that aspiring web professionals learn these concepts from the very beginning. And to do this, educational institutions must make sure they are teaching standards-based web design and not, say, tables-based HTML. (Gasp!)

Related reading:

• Opera teaches good web design with its Web Standards Curriculum
• Ten years of creating a better web: Google and A List Apart
• Google indexes Flash: beta product, still not good for SEO
• Campaigns to kill the web browser that just won’t die: Internet Explorer 6
• Usability & accessibility means no user is left out