Browser Undead: ways to survive ie6

Every web designer out there pretty much loathes Internet Explorer.  The latest iteration made some encouraging leaps forward in terms of accepting a universal standard or three.  The world has changed so much since the 90’s and we all know of and love our freedom of choice when it comes to browser selection.  Microsoft’s stubborn insistence on ignoring standards for years has resulted in double the workload for developers.  Testing sites across a variety of browsers and correcting the inevitable bugs takes a lot of time, which results in lower profits for designers like me.

So ie8 is ok; ie7 is tolerable…but ie6?  It’s a nightmare; the freak child of design indifference coupled with bizarre proprietary features. [aside: Who out there loves, or truly understands the idea behind ie's filters, anyway?]   I recently had a rude awakening when a client sent me a screen-grab of a site I had thoroughly tested in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, ie7, ie8 and ie8 compatibility mode.  I had the bizarre idea this year that with the release of ie8, we could lay the eight year old ie6 to rest.  I dropped support in my coding for the browser.  I also forgot to mention this in my contract.

Here’s the thing:  We’re designers (I’m making assumptions since you’re reading this).  We love the web…a lot.  In high school, they called us nerds and didn’t understand us at all.  Now, they call us “the web guy” and don’t understand us at all.  Other human beings think more about the rest of the world, rather than thinking about computers 24/7.  Amazing but true.  The other terrible truth is that around 15% of the population still uses the 6.  So while you and I downloaded the latest and greatest the day it came out, there are a lot of people out there (read that as “clients and their customers”) are firing up eight year old browsers to read their email.  So as i stared down the ugly screen-grab of my beautiful site ripped to shreds by the rotting zombie horde of ie6 browser bugs that I thought dead, I realized one thing:  I’m going to need some bigger guns.

As a designer I have two main problems with ie6: lack of support for .png images and CSS layouts that are inconsistent with all the other browsers on the planet.  In terms of understanding the bugs, I mentioned some good resources in this post. My favorite remains sitepoint.com.  Understanding bugs is not our purpose here, though.  Our purpose is finding guns…big guns.  For web developers software = guns, and I found some good stuff in my latest search.  The other good news?  I only use free stuff.

In terms of solving the positioning issue, Microsoft has created a slick tool called Super Preview that’s available for download here.  It lets you simultaneously compare a url in different versions of ie.  Thank you!  It’s stable and helps you see problems very quickly.  Half the problem is finding the bugs, and this tool does a pretty good job.  One issue I had is that it doesn’t seem to represent ie filters (specifically alpha) which is pretty crippling if you’re dealing with fixing .png’s.  Another piece of software that shows a lot of promise, and handles both the positioning and the .png issue,  is IE Tester, available for download here.  It’s currently an alpha release, and has the inherent instability related to alphas BUT it does a solid job, and has a lot of features that Super Preview lacks.  Make sure you run the program as an adminitrator (right-click > run as administrator) otherwise it’ll crash if it encounters Flash or a CSS filter (our main reason for using this rather than Super Preview).  Here’s hoping for a stable beta soon.  So now we see our bugs, and armed with sitepoint, we crush ‘em.  On to .png’s!

.Png image files are awesome for a lot of reasons.  One of their most awesome capabilities is the inclusion of alpha channels, which allow a varying degree of transparency.  As a designer, transparency is priceless.  It lets you make things shiny, or draw drop-shadows with ease.  You want this.  You need this.  ie6 says you can’t have it.  I say, thank you Angus Turnbull for writing a nice little script, aptly named the IE png fix.  His site and the instructions included in the download explain it well.  Another option that comes with a great explanation, is this entry on 24 Ways.

That should put your ie woes to rest in no time, which hopefully means you get some rest too.

The Cloud is Not a Binary Choice

Cloud computing has gotten huge attention over the past couple of years and opened up a whole new way to do business, collaborate, and even game.  This shift has large hardware and software corporations panicking as the potential to stream processing intensive applications to cheap consumer hardware such as netbooks becomes viable.  The hype surrounding cloud-based technology is overwhelming.  While its implications do change the way we’ll approach computing forever, I do not believe that the Cloud presents an “either/or” situation.  The future is a blending of the best aspects of the Cloud and the Personal Computer, and when the hype blows over we’ll realize we’re all the better for it.

Here’s what’s strange to me: The Cloud is older than the PC.  Before Apple and Microsoft set out to put computers in all of our homes there were terminals and mainframes.  Before it was cost-effective (or  possible) to put a computer in a small box on your desk, the only people who had the resources to pay for and maintain room-sized computers were big companies like IBM, or large organizations like the military and universities.  Users accessed these giant computers via a terminal, which boils down to a monitor, modem, and keyboard.  Questions were posed to the remote computers, and the answers were transmitted back to the user.  When it became cheaper and more efficient to achieve these same tasks locally on desktop machines, users migrated to that model.   The way I see it, our demand for computation has shifted back to where our needs exceed our ability to afford them locally.  The Cloud still requires physical hardware somewhere on the planet.  Google and Amazon are the new IBM of yesteryear.  As soon as cloud-hype subsides, and hardware prices come down, people will migrate back to local computers ( powerful PC’s or their future equivalent).

The Clouds also has flaws in other regards when compared to local computing.  These have been discussed at length elsewhere, but they can be summarized as concerns regarding security, access, and reliability.  The security concern is obvious:  If someone else is hosting your sensitive data on their server they have the only true control over that data.  Furthermore, should they choose to utilize a 3rd party’s server space to host your data, you won’t even know who has your information.  The company you’re contracted with might not even know where exactly your records reside.  The cloud is, by nature, nebulous.  Knowing exactly where your stuff is, and how it’s protected, is of great value.  Should the cost of local hardware decrease, I believe the trend for anyone dealing with sensitive data will lean towards local solutions.

Access is largely a temporary concern.  At the moment, using the cloud can be frustrating because wireless service is not omnipresent.  Technology is capable of overcoming this weakness, and will do so in the next few years.  Customers have demanded it, and companies have responded.  3G is only the beginning.

There is the secondary issue of the reliability of Cloud based services.  It doesn’t matter if you’re connected to the internet if Google Apps is down and you can’t access the critical content you need immediately.  There are basic functions that are migrating to the cloud that, quite frankly, are weakened in translation.

I’ve been focusing on weaknesses of the Cloud, because often, all I hear is positive hype.   I’m actually a huge fan of utilizing the Cloud, and do so daily.  My concern is that we’re throwing tasks to remote servers whether the task benefits or not.  The strength of collaboration offered by Cloud based services is undeniable.  I do business with clients on the other side of the country and it feels identical to dealing with local clients.  This is phenomenal, powerful, and efficient.  Equally powerful is the scalable nature of Cloud-based resources.  A small-start up  can purchase servers on an as-needed basis.  This reduces the upfront costs and better serves the end-user.   It’s aspects such as these that mean the cloud is here to stay, and make it a good thing for all of us.  I simply believe that there are tasks that will always be better suited to local platforms, and people’s desire for individual freedom and control of their own resources will lead them back to Personal Computing.  The Cloud won’t kill the PC, merely empower it further.