You may look at the above screenshot and see a pretty messed up looking site. You might think “wow, that sure isn’t up to the standard of the NorthTemple crew.” But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
The screenshot is beautiful because it is the start of a new era for us. Look closely at which browser that is. That message is for users of IE6.
For the past year or so we have had the luxury of dropping IE6 for internal projects as our oganization finally made IE7 available. Yes, until December 2008 we were in one of those organizations that everybody hates, that perpetuated the evil that is IE6. We had many off the shelf systems that wouldn’t work with the newer browsers and so were kind of stuck.
But since that glorious day, you can well imagine how much pain, suffering, blood, sweat and tears not having to worry about IE6 has saved us (not to mention tithing dollars).
As of the soft launch of the Youth website pictured above, we are starting to phase out support for IE6 on our public sites as well. That beautiful screenshot above shows the message and site that IE6 users will see.
Alignment is messed up, transparent png files are not transparent, and several other things are broken. But truth be told, I can still navigate around the site and I can still read the content.
I wasn’t involved on this project or the decisions on how it was handled. But I like how they didn’t totally kill the site for IE6. Users get a much less pleasant experience, but they can still get to the content if they choose.
I’m glad that we are starting down the path to help make the internet a better place. I like that Chrome and Firefox are listed above IE7 as replacement browsers. I love that we are joining others in dropping support for IE6.
Have user skills improved on the web? “Even though users are remarkably good at repeated tasks on their favorite sites, they’re stumped by the smallest usability problems when they visit new sites for the first time.” Jakob Nielsen’s recent study suggest that usability guidelines remain constant.
“In our opinion, disability rights groups, legislators and standards bodies place too much emphasis on adherence to the WCAG cookbook and not enough on creating sites that are accessible in practice. As a result, most businesses are incentivised to just “check the accessibility boxes” rather than to ensure that their sites are actually accessible to real-life disabled users.”Etre elaborating on Aaron’s cookbook post
Fun cartoon from A List Apart article on design frameworks by Jeff Croft
(art by Kevin Cornell)
But… I wonder if the illustration makes the same point as the article. The fun in snowman-making is in the whole process—creation from scratch! Who wants to put together a snowman kit? Illustration nitpicks aside, good article on how design frameworks, libraries, and best practices can make your design life easier. We’re making slow but steady progress in this direction here at the Church, including an adaptation of Yahoo grids for many web apps.