Why Am I Me?

Just headed over to StatCounter to check the latest browser stats.

As I write this IE6 has had an average of 13.7% market share for the past year *puts head in hands*, on the upside the market share in Europe went under 5% in Europe and under 6% for North America for May 2010.

I also read an article containing an interview with Ryan Gavin, head of the Internet Explorer business group, who is quoted as saying:

Part of my job is to get IE6 share down to zero as soon as possible

I hope he is VERY good at his job.

Update 4/6/2010: Really? IE9 100% Compatible with HTML5?

CSS3 Selectors

Just been reading this great article, CSS 3 Selectors Explained, over at the 456 Barrea Street website.

Been using CSS 3 on an in-house project I’m working on but very much with the future in mind. The article is actually from early 2006 which I think demonstrates how slowly things are moving on with CSS 3, it is still a working draft I know, and the popularity of Internet Explorer is hindering adoption too, but the selectors I’ve been using are really useful.

Interesting to note that, according to the Ars Technica website, the market share for IE dropped below 60% in April 2010, whilst Google Chrome is on the rise with a 6.73% market share which is already nearly as much as Safari (4.72%) and Opera (2.3%) combined. Firefox currently has a 24.59% share.

The support for more advanced CSS in Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera is pretty good but until IE6 and IE7 die a death I can’t see me using many of the new selectors.

Whilst we’re talking about browsers I was also interested to note that Mozilla, Opera and Google have announced a new collabarotive project entitled WebM to develop a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone.

I also discovered some useful CSS Help Sheets at gosqared.com.

Opera Mini on the iPhone

The Gradual Disappearance Of Flash Websites

Flash is a proprietary product that sits on top of the browser to extend functionality. While Flash may have provided missing functionality for some time, it brings little value to modern browsers. As more and more designers and developers realize the benefits of Web standards and start using some of the features of HTML5 and CSS3, we’ll see fewer Flash-driven websites.

(more…)

Google Logo

Modern browsers for modern applications

Friday, January 29, 2010 at 2:00 PM
The web has evolved in the last ten years, from simple text pages to rich, interactive applications including video and voice. Unfortunately, very old browsers cannot run many of these new features effectively. So to help ensure your business can use the latest, most advanced web apps, we encourage you to update your browsers as soon as possible…

Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites.

I’ve been watching with some interest how much market share Chrome has been gaining, this could be a tactic to gain a greater user base for the Google browser, although plenty of big players have already dropped support for Internet Explorer 6. Either way, I’ll be glad to see the back of IE6.

Daunt Books Website Screen Shot

It’s been a long time in the making, just over 3 years to be precise, but my latest design for Ehaus,  the Daunt Book website, has finally gone live. Some elements of the user interface are quite different to most bookshop websites and on the whole I think they work well.

They’ve also made a commendable effort to create their own bibliographic data for the books, largely the reason the site has taken so much time to develop.

There’s been a lot of furore about the Spotify app released for the Apple iPhone in the last week or so, but I’m more excited about the new Flickr app which I downloaded yesterday.

Being a bit of a vinyl junkie I seldom use the iPhone for music anyway, and I can’t realistically see me using Spotify away from my computer, the Flickr app, however, is definitely something I’ll use.

Screen shot from the app front page shows a picture of a toilet from my friend Vanbonko, thinking about music it reminded me of the cover to the Rolling Stones album Beggars Banquet.

Policy Press screen shot

My latest work for Ehaus, The Policy Press web site. We also made a WordPress blog for them.

Screenshot of the new Ehaus website design

Been working away on a new design for the Ehaus website over the last couple of months and am pleased it has now launched. Pretty happy with this one, and a definite improvement on the last design, some nice jQuery touches and I think it showcases what we do really well.

Browser Pain - IE Testing

Microsoft has released some new software that will be of interest to fellow web designers and developers out there, a programme called SuperPreview.

It’s a standalone application (in beta at the moment) that enables you to see how your websites will look across different versions of Internet Explorer without having to set up a Virtual Machine to run IE6, or another computer dedicated to running IE6.
(more…)

I didn’t even know that a new version of Safari was coming out, way below the radar on this one. Looks like they’ve pared it down a lá the Google Chrome browser, with some more classic Mac style visual interfaces for browsing history, favourites and tabs.

Safari Web Site

In other browser news: “Microsoft to Offer Competing Browsers in Windows?”

The latest European Commission ruling could force Microsoft to offer alternative web browsers within Windows so the computer giant avoids breaching EU competition rules. According to the Commission, Microsoft are exploiting their dominant position to constrain the web browser market.

I couldn’t agree more, they’ve already been made to unbundle their media player from the Operating System and I think this is a positive move for browser advancement.