Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

Most communications professionals - even those who practice their craft online - will tend to shy away from the geeky technical detail stuff. That's a good thing. Even a Web developer like me is well advised not to lose the plot - to stay focused on the communication challenge rather than the technical challenge.

Every so often, though, things happen that we all need to stop and pay attention to, even though it seems like just propeller-head geekiness. Now's one of those times.

Yesterday, I started writing an article in which I intended to proclaim that we're no longer in that period where nerds and tech bloggers were speculating over a possible upcoming browser war. We're now, I intended to announce, smack in the middle of a new full-fledged Browser War.

I realize that I can't even say "Web browser" and count on folks knowing what I mean. But newer, stronger Web browsers are out now, the prevalence of Internet Explorer 6 is waning fast, and that is big. It's really expensive, time-consuming and creatively limiting to dial back to the 2001-era lowest common denominator IE6 represents. As we finally start cutting the IE6 boat-anchor loose, you'll be able to offer your clients more, and it will cost less. (Or you'd better be able to, anyway).

Then this morning, I saw this: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

Over at TechCrunch, one of the most popular tech blogs, the headline is less subtle: Google Drops A Nuclear Bomb On Microsoft

The idea is that you'd use this Google operating system instead of Microsoft Windows, and you'd do your computing primarily in your Web browser (Google Chrome, naturally). As browsers get better (remember, IE6 is dying out), the trend toward through-the-browser applications like Google's GMail, SalesForce and Google Apps will accelerate. In short, your Web browser is your desktop, and the Web is your computing platform.

I have to admit I'm still processing the implications of an open sourced, Google-built-and-branded computer operating system, but no matter whether this particular effort on Google's part is successful or not, the browser war question is pretty much settled.

It's on, y'all.

 

Last week on their Internet Explorer blog, Microsoft celebrated the first anniversary of Internet Explorer 7's release by putting out a post touting IE 7's rapid uptake and tightened security.

Predictably, when this hit the blogwaves some experts jumped in to question a few rather dubious claims in the post. But the real news happened a few screens down in the comments section, where a deluge of scorn and frustration was heaped on the Internet Explorer team by the general public - the regular people who use and build the Web.

Microsoft is widely regarded as being pretty good at advertising and marketing it's products, but they've occasionally been conspicuously unable to perceive irony in their messages. Microsoft proclaimed they were fighting for their "Freedom to Innovate" in response to the U.S. Department of Justice's anti-trust action a few years back... action launched of course because Microsoft's monopolistic practices were squishing innovation . But it's one thing to ignore what your customers are asking for, then brazenly lead your marketing with, "We Heard You". It's quite another to bring that kind of thinking over to your corporate blog where unhappy customers are free to call you out.

Why were users upset? Well, consider that in the time since IE 7 was released...

Firefox went 2.0, and released beta versions of 3.0. Scores of extensions - a la carte features Firefox users add in to customize their browsing experience - have been improved or newly released this year.

 

Safari released 3.0 Beta, including a new version for Windows that feels lighter, faster and smarter than IE 7.

 

The strangely overlooked Flock released a 1.0 version. While IE 7 finally adds the same level of RSS support other browsers have had for years, Flock gets social media right, and is a glimpse of what IE might look like three versions from now.

 

Opera has committed support for next-generation technologies like HTML 5, SVG and future versions of JavaScript, while IE is still struggling to fix buggy, incomplete support for decade-old standards.

 

...And for the people who either want to or have to use IE, watching Microsoft let a year go by with no new improvements highlights lessons un-learned - not something to celebrate.

A special variety of animosity came from Web designers and developers who can't ignore IE because of it's broad market share, but are growing weary making Web pages for 2008 that have to work in browsers from 2001 (IE 6), and are frustrated with lack of progress in IE 7. Microsoft realizes it needs these people - what could MS have been thinking when they provided the time, place and catalyst to turn them into an angry mob? They might as well have handed out the pitchforks and torches!

You can learn from your customers with your corporate blog. When it's time for a mea culpa, your corporate blog might not be a bad place to put it out there (hint, hint). Your corporate blog can be a very powerful weapon in your communications arsenal, but as with any weapon, it's never a good idea to point it at your own foot.

 

5. Security is for wusses. Only dumb people ever fall for those phishing tricks, anyway, right? Sure, viruses, spambots and adware slow your computer down a little, but all that "security" stuff in Internet Explorer 7 slows things down too. Where's the upside for you?

4. RSS is a fad that will soon pass. You don't know what RSS is, and you don't care to learn. Internet Explorer 7 comes with RSS built in, and there's no way to remove this "feature". If there's one thing you absolutely can't stand, it's unwanted software you can't uninstall!

3. New features are too confusing. Tabbed browsing? How could that possibly be useful to anyone? Why would you want multiple tabs when you can have multiple windows?

2. Don't mess with success. If IE7, Firefox, Safari and Opera, with all their better features, better rendering and better security are so great, how come over 50% of us still use IE6? 

1. Nostalgia. IE6 hails from 2001, a pre-9/11 world where things just made more sense. The US Justice Dept. had just given Microsoft a get-out-of-antitrust-court-free card. Windows XP was released that September - no one had ever heard of Mac OS X or iPod. President Bush's approval rating was all the way up in the 40's. N'Sync were still together. Ah, 2001... Good times.

Coming soon: You can take my '73 Ford Pinto when you pry it from my cold dead hands... 

 

A promising development for the future of the web has been in the works for the past five years. An increasing number of users have switched to web browsers like Firefox, Opera, and Safari [wikipedia], helping to usher in the era of modern, standards-compliant websites. These browsers are heroes for the web development community, as they provide excellent support for W3C web standards (why does this matter). However, Microsoft's Internet Explorer is still the most commonly used web browser throughout the world, accounting for slightly more than eighty percent of the browser market right now [wikipedia]. For those of us working in web development, this fact presents a daily hurdle, as Internet Explorer's support for modern web standards has traditionally been lacking. Developers write web page code that works with standards-compliant browsers and then they painstakingly write fixes or "hacks" for the code (in a bizarre and contrived fashion) to get the pages working in IE. This process can discourage a developer from being creative with his or her usage of existing web standards, but - there is hope on the horizon. With Microsoft's release of Internet Explorer 7 in October 2006, the challenge of creating standards-compliant websites has begun to diminish. IE7 fixes many of the Internet Explorer quirks that have plagued developers since the widespread adoption of HTML and CSS, and it now supports some features that have long been available in competing browsers.

Throughout 2007, more users will be upgrading their web browsers to Internet Explorer 7 or switching to alternative browsers. As a direct consequence, web designers, developers, and authors will further shift toward the uniform usage of web standards. So what does this imply? How about a rich user experience regardless of the way the Internet is accessed. It won't matter whether you're visiting a site on your office desktop, your mobile phone, or your next-generation refrigerator - you'll have full access to a site's content and features. How about accessibility for all. Users with disabilities will not be hindered from using any part of a site. And how about lower development, maintenance, and hosting costs. Websites designed with modern standards are much easier to maintain, modify, and extend than those created with the design methodologies popularized in the late nineties. Such sites also use less bandwidth, because modern pages are composed of smaller files than their ancestors.

At Capstrat, we're committed to keeping up with the web. We're ready for the next generation of web browsers, and we are prepared to utilize these changing technologies to their maximum potential. Whether you have an aging site that could use a facelift or you need a new site built from the ground up, our designers, developers, and communications experts will help your business or organization achieve the future-ready web presence that you need to succeed in this digital age.