LSW-WebDesign

The earliest references you will find to the “Browser Wars” was
the battle for supremacy between Internet Explorer (IE) and Netscape Navigator
(NN). Netscape was a good browser back then and most agree better than IE for
a while. IE has always had the “Home Field Advantage” by coming
included with the Windows Operating System (OS). Being the first browser most
people experience it is seen by them as the best and they see little reason
to switch. Netscape made roads to changing this and became popular until a
new version of IE was released with better support of at that time current
design tools. Netscape then fell off the market and IE claimed victory.

As time has gone on, IE has been slow to upgrade and dogged by security problems.
Other browsers have tried to make a dent, some using the IE engine and just
fixing security holes and adding a few perks. Others tried it in the back waters
in the lesser used operating systems with some success. Opera claimed to be
the fastest browser, but was forever doomed without big bucks behind them to
allow them to create a free browser. Then one day the Mozilla Project that
was behind Netscape Navigator went solo with the Mozilla suite which was very
successful and became the power behind Netscape 6 as well as a popular browser
in it’s own right. Back in the shadows, a small simple browser was growing,
no email, chat or other fluff. It went through many names before entering the
field as Firefox, “the
little browser that could.”

With the believed victory of IE, the browser wars simply entered what one
could call a “Cold War.” The battle cry of this war one could say
became “Standards
Compatibility.” The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed a set of
standards for languages like HTML, XHTML and CSS so that all browsers react
the same to the code. Mozilla / Netscape, Opera, Firefox and those for other
systems joined in the movement to different levels but all pledged to support
standards. All but Microsoft with IE, even though Microsoft is a long term
member of the W3C, they kept doing their own thing secure in their overwhelming
market supremacy IE6 came and did not change much but tools. It still ignored
standards to the most part.

But one day this little upstart named Firefox hit the market and the vibrations
were felt world wide. Millions of people jumped from IE to firefox and IE felt
the sting. Suddenly Microsoft was interested in Standards and the newly developed
IE7 was rushed through development andthe release plans were shoved forward
and changed. No longer was IE7 only a release for the newly renamed next generation
operating system Vista (formerly known as Longhorn), not planned as a stand
alone browser upgrade foranyone with XP and older systems. Suddenly chosen
testers were delivered witha IE7 beta version for XP. Now IE7 may be available
for XP users (not confirmed yet other than test purposes yet though). IE7 now
gets talked up as greatly improving standards support.

Warping occurs..

Now as mentioned, the first “Browser War” (BW I) can be defined
as IE vs. NN.

The second or “Cold War” (BW II) was more like IE poor standards
compliance vs. standard compliant browsers (Netscape/Mozilla, Opera, firefox
and co.) This war is still raging. Go to any web design forum and you will
witness the war as it has spread to web design. It is being waged in forums
and blogs across the net as standards advocates like myself argue that if we
do not use standards, IE will never change. While the other side tends to argue
that with a 80% market share, we should design for IE and anything else is
not logical. As long as the leading browser does not support standards, standards
(as good as they may be for us and the user) are dead. So where we teach the
use of CSS positioning the others preach the continued use of tables as CSS
is poorly supported in IE. (There is a compromise called Hybrid, using very
limit tables and CSS positioning)

Now we get to the part where Rod Serling greets us. Warping begins to twist
our perceived reality.We begin to sense the beginning of a new war, “Browser
War III” (BW III). Let me explain…

Again the browser wars are usually defined as IE against someone. Most recently
IE vs. the Standards Movement. But here lies the problem, IE7 will be standards
compliant as far as we can tell at this time before the public Beta release.

So what happens now? We have hoards of developers who have chosen not to use
standards, to continue to design web sites for a faulty old browser based on
the argument that it is and has always been the majority browser. That is
what is used, so that is what we will design for. So what happens when IE6
vs. Standards compliant browsers becomes IE6 vs. IE7 and the standards movement?

You can see the problem now can’t you? All those designing for IE6 will awake
to discover that their majority based web sites do not work in the new IE7.
They will have to scramble to re-build sites standards compliant as they should
have from the beginning. IE7 market share will go up and the IE6 share will
go down with equal speed.

But in a warped world strange things happen and as I like to describe it,
the dead walk. IE6 will loose it’s status and begin to die but thanks to Microsoft
it will become a Zombie, dead but refusing to go to the grave. Still doing
things like it did before and eating web sites. The evil behind this monster
will once again be Microsoft. IE7 will only be available for Vista and maybe XP.
All the rest of the world still holding on to Win 95, Win 98, Win ME & Win
2000 will keep using IE6 long after it should be buried. So for years to come
we will still be haunted by it’s poor support and unable to totally ignore
it.

Majority advocates in a civil war…

So that is what it looks like will happen. We standards advocates (smart enough
not to use hacks) will rejoice that our sites look about as good in IE7 as
in Firefox having used Firefox as the test base, then when the celebration
is over go back to cursing IE6 until it one day disappears. Those advocates
using hacks will wake up with a hangover and cursing. Those who’s whole world
revolved around designing for a faulty browser just because of a temporary
majority status, well I do not want to be in your shoes. You will be in a civil
war, IE will no longer work as a argumentfor not using standards. IE market
share will be split between the new growing standards compliant IE7 and the
old faulty shrinking IE6. Which IE will you choose to support?

Time will tell which question was really the better:

• Is it logical to design for a minority browser or standards not supported by the majority?
• Is it logical to design for a faulty browser that will one day loose it’s majority or be replaced?

IE7 is far from perfect. It greatly improves rendering of CSS and standards…
but they have chosen not to improve support for things like the XML Mime type
and other problems still making the life hard of designers trying to use XHTML
standards and some others. But it should be a great improvement all the same.

[This article is not meant as a historical document. It is written vaguely
just to make a point. The actual timeline between some events mentioned may
not be entirely accurate as it has little to do with the idea put forth. LSW]

UPDATE: To my embarassment it seems IE7 Public Beta 2 has been released already, during a time period I was offline shortly. You can download it from Microsoft. It is also worth noting that the following can be found there as well, Guess it is now official that IE7 will be available for XP SP2 users.

Evaluation of Internet Explorer 7 should start now, but the software should not be used on production systems in mission-critical environments. Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview will only run on Windows® XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) systems, but will ultimately be available for Windows Vista, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and Windows Server 2003.

In a recent thread a reader asked what they are and someone explained and typed out a example.

So what is it really? Think of Hansel and Grettel leaving bread crumbs to help them track their movements.

Breadcrumb navigation is the same. It helps you track your position in the navigation scheme.

Example for a school would be: Home > Classes > 1982 > 7b. This would be Home page lead to Classes lead to the year and in the case of a German school that usually has more than one class, class 7b. If what I want is to here I see I can back track to 1982 and chose a different class, or backtrack to 1983 and check class 7b.

So the Bread crumb is a trail that allows you to backtrack logically to higher instances, so if your navigation has different sub levels under different menu items, it can be a useful tool to offer the user.

Problems:

It is really not tested or standard yet. Many visual surfers do not notice it or know what to do with it.

Visually impaired people seem to be in two groups, Those who do not understand what it is and those who do and can use it, but some who know what it is find it hard to deal with still. So the final call on whether it is useful in accessibility or a hindrance is not out yet, seems close to equal right now.

Also the choice of separators should be considered. Most often seen is > which acts as a visual arrow in the direction. But this symbol has a semantic meaning, “Greater than”. So a screenreader would usually read “Home greater than classes greater than 1982 greater than 7b”.

Some argue that even that makes some sense as each level is less important that the previous.

Other opinions are a colon (:) is better and suggests a menu while still others choose to use the “|” key which visually compares to the line separators often used.

But fact is > when considered wrong by some is so widespread that many visually impaired are used to it even though it may not be the best choice, it has become a form of default set by visual people but now do to it’s widespread use accepted by the visually impaired.

At this time their is no right or wrong answer, just opinions. I myself have not totally decided yet as to which I will use as standard, but currently tend towards “|”.

In the last year I have been active in a number of big web design oriented forums. My views on web design are known if you know me, this has led to me crossing sabers with many followers of old-school web design. If they do not like what I say they dance over to LSW and attack my design. No problem there, the design of a web site is based on personal taste and I get more compliments then complaints. But the fact is, the Nr. 1 accusation LSW gets is “The web site is to simplistic” or “Retro 90’s”. Is that a bad thing?

I personally like simple web sites. I am a busy man, I want to come to a web site, get the info I want and move on. I do not go to look at pretty pictures. What a site looks like does not decide if I return, the content does. Are my web sites simplistic? Yes, and I am proud of it.

So what is modern design if simplistic is old school? Modern web design seems to be when the web site is terribly complicated. People often point to the type of web sites like M$N or news agencies. People point to things like PHPNuke and Mambo CMS. This is what people want and this shows “professional design”. Course of you check these sites for accessibility, standards, validation etc. they will likely fall through the floor.

So modern web designs would seem to be what I consider “Jurassic Web Design“:

• 3 Million links per page. Now fine, BBC, CNN and the likes with really lots of categories and subcategories and news and entertainment and archives and …and … and …, these pages really must be like this. But the average private web site? Small business? Middle business? We do not need every page on the site linked to the home page, that is what the sitemap is for. Do you need to send people away from your site by linking to dozens of affiliates and such things on your home page?
• Do you really need to offer a web search? People who go to your site want info from your site, so a site search is good. But just about every browser now has a built in search. Most searchers go to the search engines home page as well. So unless you search filed offers to search your site… does it really offer something that the user needs? Why advertise Google for free?
• Boxes, now this is popular isn’t it? Lots of boxes holding lots of those 3 million links. Yes it is neat and tidy, but it takes us back to are those links needed? Would a logical step system of categories and subcategories not be better than a cluster of subcategories all on the home page?
• Clutter, this is really what it comes down too. Modern web design calls for lots of clutter on a page, no white space, no free room. Stuff as much info down our necks as you possibly can in as small an area as you possibly can, give us those boxes …
• Just drop logic and plaster junk all over the home page. Offer us stock prices even if your site has nothing to do with stocks or we own none. Give me breaking news when you site is about beer can collecting. Tell me the weather in your part of Canada even though I live in Germany and do not care. Tell me what time it is in Japan. How many days till new year 2007? Tell me what number visitor I am to your site since 1 B.C. as if I care.
• Awards, newbies love awards. I should know I used to paste them on my home page too, got the idea from my host at that time who I thought knew what he was doing because he had a “Golden Web Award”. Now maybe you have some awards you still think are worth something (I will go into awards in another rant one day). Do you have sport awards or awards that your dog won or your children? Do you plaster these awards on your front door? Or are they in a “Awards room” or “Awards corner” of a room? Well then pace them on a awards page of your site and anyone interested can look at them, do not paste them on the door of your site anymore than you would the door of your house.
• Badges, these are about the same as awards, but by this I mean more the Validation badges and such. Validation is easy to muck up, especially when you update pages. Fly a validation badge on a non-validating page looks bad. You page may validate now but what if you change or add something, you have to re-validate If your page allows for comments by the readers …forget validation unless you go through and can edit and correct all the mistakes people make in their comments. Most users do not even know what HTML 4.01 is or why it should validate. Those with disabilities will know right away if your site is Section 508 compliant or not, the rest do not even know what it is or even care.

That is just a few of what modern web design would seem to be in the minds of those who think my site is bad because it is retro 90’s as they say. These same people will tell others to remember KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid), yet their web sites are far from simple.

I for one live a complicated life in a complicated major city in Europe ..and you know what I long for? The simple life in a small town where you really know your neighbors. Bikers long for simple bikes like the old Harley and Indians. Simple cars like a 1956 Mustang are considered classic well bit cars against today’s cars that will not start if the computer is shot. A old VW Beetle you can change the head lights by hand, today’s cars you have to go to a mechanic. Today’s fighter jets can not be flown effectively without a computer to run them. How much of your life is lost if your HD crashes on you, but simple paper note books do not crash.

So often these days you hear people saying life is to complicated, people still seem to earn for and respect the simple life. So why should simplistic be bad in web design? Maybe it is time web design goes back to the simple life. Offer new visitors a few lines/paragraphs of text to explain what your site is and then give them a logical navigation to find their way to what they want. Save your awards for a awards page. Who needs badges? You know the site validates and any professionals will see if the code is good or not and the average visitor does not care. Show a few new article summaries, but leave the full article to it’s own page. Frees space in not the enemy, it gives the eyes a place to relax and helps limit stress.

Web design like art tends to reflect the times. If our lives are so complicated … maybe the internet in it’s complexity should strive to offer us a haven of simplicity.

As the saying goes - Perfection is not finding something new to add, it is finding nothing else to take away.

---

June 2007 - Going through my mass of bookmarks I have stumbled on one that I offer here as well, Michael Meadhra discusses the need for simplicity in web design in his ”Reduce visual clutter to improve usability.”