Tim Minor » browsers http://www.t75.org Web usability consultant Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:43:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Browsers, browsers everywhere… http://www.t75.org/2010/01/browsers-browsers-everywhere/ http://www.t75.org/2010/01/browsers-browsers-everywhere/#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:13:31 +0000 Tim http://www.t75.org/?p=124 Because Firefox 3.6 keeps crashing on the Guardian’s website (started happening all the time after Snow Leopard update but has often been a problem), I’ve now set Chrome to be my default browser, so that when I click on a link in Twitterific, Chrome launches not Firefox.

But because I can’t add plugins to the Beta version of Mac/Chrome yet, if I want to bookmark a link in Del.icio.us I have to copy and paste the link into Firefox to use the quick-add button.

Too many services? Information overload? Or should I just be content to wait for Google to sort out Chrome, Mozilla to fix Firefox or The Guardian to fix www.guardian.co.uk/ ? It’s not as if I’ve paid for any of the services mentioned.

UPDATE: To add insult to injury Firefox just crashed on me again – fortunately just after I clicked save. Phew! :)

]]> http://www.t75.org/2010/01/browsers-browsers-everywhere/feed/ 0 Graublau Sans Grabbed http://www.t75.org/2009/10/graublau-sans-grabbed/ http://www.t75.org/2009/10/graublau-sans-grabbed/#comments Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:02:27 +0000 Tim http://www.t75.org/?p=113 Learning something new keeps the mind active and that’s why working on the web can be so much fun. Just recently I’ve been pushing myself to learn jQuery – no longer shall I rely on the excellent javascript programmers I work with to take care of it for me – lazy boy!

I’ve also been catching up with all the new developments in browser font display that have been taking place recently. And what a lot of fun it is – easy too! If you are viewing this page in the latest version of any fairly modern browser (Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, Opera 10 etc.) you should be reading these words set in the excellent Graublau Sans by fonts.info. I’m not 100% sold on it for this blog yet but time will tell.
I’ve implemented this font change with the css declaration @font-face. For me, this seems to be the simplest, most standards-compliant way forward. Whilst there are other exciting projects in progress (Typekit and FontDeck to name but two), they aren’t free. So now, as well as the standard “img” and “css” folders at root, I now also have a brand new “font” folder! Joy! Simple things please simple minds I guess…?

Unfortunately @font-face does sometimes result in a not-so-nice “flash of unstyled text” (fout) but for personal sites I can live with this. Whether clients will be able to, well that’s a different matter…

For references and thanks:

]]> http://www.t75.org/2009/10/graublau-sans-grabbed/feed/ 0 Could the Global Economic Crisis finally mean the end of IE6? http://www.t75.org/2009/04/could-the-global-economic-crisis-finally-mean-the-end-of-ie6/ http://www.t75.org/2009/04/could-the-global-economic-crisis-finally-mean-the-end-of-ie6/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 02:10:24 +0000 Tim http://www.t75.org/?p=19 The reports of Internet Explorer 6’s death have been widely exaggerated. However, with clients tightening their financial belts and looking for costs to be cut, could ignoring IE6 save money and the sanity of thousands of web developers?

PartyAccount email imageJobs are being lost, house-prices are crashing, the end of the world is surely nigh? Of course, as gloomy as it looks at the moment, the economy will recover and the world will carry on. Wouldn’t it be great though, if during the crash, we could rid ourselves of a web-worker’s greatest headaches?

Internet Explorer 6 has had a long life, it’s now almost eight years old, and in its time was extremely popular. It’s still widely used and installed in hundreds of thousands of PCs around the world, at home and – more likely – in corporate workplaces, where restrictive IT policies mean it’ll be around for a while longer yet. But what if we were to usd the current economic climate to our (and our client’s) advantage and finally ditch the creaking browser?

Time saved is money saved

It’s been estimated that making websites look exactly the same in every browser has wasted around $10 billion USD and caused the premature greying of many thousands of web designers, developers, managers and site owners around the world.

OK, so this estimate might have been mine, made at the peak of another frustrating hour spent in front of that browser but it does waste time. Thanks to Jeremy Keith at clear:left, you can now calculate the amount of time you’re wasting on IE6 and you might find it enlightening to do so. Even if you don’t, make sure you read his article for a great discussion of supporting IE6 (or not).

However in these lean times, when clients come to you asking for the world by the end of the day, maybe one quiet suggestion we could all make is: let’s not support IE6.

Now don’t get me wrong, websites should be accessable by all browsers, now and in the future and for all people. But they don’t have to look identical. But don’t just take my word for it: http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/.

So go on – try it! Challenge your clients to drop “perfect-look” support for their CEO’s old browser and save them the money, your company the time and yourself the price of the Just for Men.

And if you do, make sure you let me know how it goes.

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