Hot Koehl

I was quoted in an article over at IT Expert Voice that pooled advice from hardened IT Veterans on the process of rolling out a new OS in a business environment. There’s plenty of great advice on the actual act of a rollout — test-test-test, schedule for downtime, etc. — but obviously the timing of the article coincides with the recent release of Windows 7, and is directed at IT folks considering an upgrade.

To that extent, I urge all you IT pros to ignore everything else in the article (wink) and follow my advice, which is to wait.

Find more details in the article.

While my MS complaints are (rightly) focused on their desktop apps, I knew Microsoft would end up in this series at some point. However, even I was surprised at how quickly it happened. These guys can’t help but do stupid things in pursuit of copycatting their competitors. Here’s a screenshot several steps deep into the Windows Live registration…

Yes, that page is requesting a credit card number. No, Live does not have a monthly subscription fee. As the page states, they simply want to ensure you’re an adult.

As any savvy ecommerce retailer can tell you, the most challenging part of the online sale is the checkout. It’s easy to throw virtual items in a virtual shopping cart, but you have to commit when it comes time to pay. So site owners try all kinds of things to minimize the hurdle and get them through the messy part as quickly and effortlessly as possible, lest they change their mind. Meanwhile, Microsoft is taking this same large mental hurdle and trying to turn it into a speed bump. I can’t think of a faster way to send potential new users running for the hills.

Don’t get me wrong, using a credit card challenge as identification is perfectly fine when there’s a darn good reason for it; using it to ask “are you an adult” before opening a free messaging account is not one of them. Why is a kid with a Live account a problem? Are the risks greater than other such messaging services, or the Net at large? I suspect that the Live team is simply trying to avoid the legal hassles, but haven’t AIM, Google Chat, Yahoo IM, and their own MSN operated just fine for years without an age challenge? I think the answer is an obvious “no” to all of the above.

Were it me, I’d take my chances facing legal nonsense and give kids a greater level of access than adults. Children and young adults most rapidly adopt and embrace new technologies. IM, P2P, txt’ing, Facebook…all of these tools owe most of their success to users who, by and large, do not have credit card numbers. To willing cut them out of the deal is to quite literally cut your chances of success by more than half.

While working on the file manager section of the Fwd:Vault website, I decided to do a quick check on cross-browser compatibility. The following screenshots are of the same page using the same HTML layout, CSS definitions, etc…

[Show as slideshow]

At this point in my career, I don’t think words can express how much I utterly loathe Microsoft’s IE team (and Microsoft in general) for their completely overt dismissal of browser standards. But that won’t stop me from trying, so listen up, you morons.

Building a website is an incredibly complex task, and that complexity increases almost daily. Today, all my sites include code written in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, and PHP (or ASP, JSP, etc). Nuance aside, that’s five languages! All intermingled to accomplish one goal: put a page in front of a user.

On top of that, I have to worry about abstract concepts like SEO, caching, file sizes/load times, traffic stats, usability, server uptime, SSL, data integrity, backups, security…I could keep going. I have enough to do without having to worry about your browser — I check the others, I only worry about your browser — mucking up my display or breaking my Javascript. Less time spent dealing with browser compatibility issues equals more time building a better browsing experience, which is good for everyone, even you.

Furthermore, I don’t like the notion of “pushing” a user toward or away from any given browser. As a web developer and webmaster, I am in the business of delivering my site content. Having to urge people to choose a better browser is a distraction at best, lost traffic at worst. From the perspective of my users, it’s better to just handle the problems quietly in the background. I think this same mindset is why you don’t see overwhelming support (yet) for movements like WeDontSupportIE.com.

However, as my example above starkly displays, there are now four solid mainstream alternatives out there, and plenty of smaller options as well. That says nothing about the inroads of Mac and Linux into the OS market. How much longer do you think “IE inertia” will carry?

In short, when it comes to HTML/CSS interpretation and display, IE should be in lock step with competitors. If you do that, you can essentially remove web developers from the browser debate, which is big for you because you’re not winning any popularity contests with us. Differentiate yourself from the competition by creating a better user experience, and let the end user decide.

Of course I’m not holding my breath, so one of these buttons my end up on Fwd:Vault before launch

I haven’t decided yet…

Update:

Xenocode has decided to eschew usability in favor of…well nothing really. In order to use the browser sandboxes now, you must “initialize” them from the site, which amounts to downloading the files you need in order to execute the sandbox.

You can circumvent this genius decision by downloading the browser of choice, then open Windows Explorer and browse to C:\Documents and Settings\[USERNAME]\Local Settings\Application Data\Xenocode\Start\Cache. There you will find folders for each browser (e.g. ie6, ie7, ie8…), and if you drill down a few folders more, you’ll find an executable. Copy that to your desktop, and you can load the browser on demand whenever you want. There’s a whole post with details and insights. Bad, Xenocode, bad!

Finally. That’s all I have to say.

A company called Xenocode has taken all the major browsers and packaged them into contained executables, which you can download and run from your desktop. That’s no big deal, per se, since you can just install them.

BUT, they have self-contained packages for IE 6, 7, and 8. And they work. Beautifully.

If you’re like me, you’ve tired (and hated) the ridiculously complex solutions to circumvent Microsoft’s genius decision to ingrain IE into the Windows operating system. If you’re also like me, you’ll jump up and down when you download and run the IE6 sandbox in two steps. Okay, I didn’t jump, just bounced in my chair a bit, but still…

It appears to be Windows-only, but every designer should have access to a Windows box for obligatory IE testing fixing. Now go test, and be satisfied.

From a recent post in the Signal vs. Noise blog…

(1) Windows 7 Explorer vs. (2) Dance Dance Revolution.

I’ve never seen an illustration, written or visual, that flawlessly encompasses everything wrong with Vista. Awesome.

The author references the Windows 7 beta, but the interface is identical to Vista as far as I can tell. Any parallels to Vista are probably the last thing Micro$oft needs, let’s hope they deliver some more bang to go along with their DDR-inspired flash this time around.