Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

Woohoo! This is fantastic news.

Over in interactiveLand here at Capstrat, we've been anxiously awaiting a much-needed shower and shave by our favorite web browser. Tuesday (June 17) is the day - Firefox 3 will be released for public consumption.

For the casual and power web crawler, here are some of the anticipated features to expect:

Interface, management features  

More UI features

A yummy Del.icio.us bookmarking add-on

For the web ninja, here's a little more info on some things under the hood guaranteed to improve that angry Internet Extorter hump in your back:

Memory

Firebug (gmail issue fixed!)

 

Microsoft is feeling the heat in the browser arena. Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is in development and they are planning to robustly support RSS, CSS 2 and Javascript. No way?! IE 8 might almost be as good as Firefox 2!

After putting the last nail in Netscape's coffin in 2001, Microsoft rested on its laurels and enjoyed the spoils of the browser war. Since then Firefox has taken a quarter of the browser market by winning people over with it's standards support, tight security and an easy add-on framework. After waiting five years, Microsoft finally released Internet Explorer 7. But their loss of market share is driving them to immediately jump into full development of Internet Explorer 8.

But regardless of motive, this is fantastic news. It seems that browser competition is once again driving innovation in the browser business. It really speaks to the maturity of the open source movement that Mozilla is spurring Microsoft to once again take browser innovation seriously.

Read more about IE 8 here.

No matter how you try to balance it, this equation is bad news.

And if it's happened to you, most likely it is now happening to you every day. And if you're like me, it's really, really starting to work your nerves.*

A good while ago I saw the big red banner and heeded the warning from Google to disable firebug for gmail. In all the smoke and confusion after Google's gmail upgrade I can't remember if I saw a performance spike of any persuasion. But I do remember that shortly thereafter Firefox started to bail out on me every time I browsed away from my gmail. I can open a new tab and move on from there without a hitch. The problem seems to arise with any navigation away from gmail to anywhere else. I've killed every plugin I have save firebug, to no effect. They just will not play nice.

So why don't I just check my gmail in Safari, you ask? Hmmm. Good point.

But no! if you've cared enough to pore over dry, dusty fields of dead-end forum threads for what seems like eons in the browser/plugin paradigm, then you know that this is just not an acceptable solution. In fact, it's no solution at all - it's a farce!

Of COURSE I'm checking my gmail in safari now. But I don't feel good about it. I'm a problem solver by trade. By genetic make-up, even. This just doesn't sit well with me. Yet the intertron offers nothing. I'm willing to go with the open-new-tab-and-close-gmail-tab option, which is also merely a sidestep. I just want to know the cause, and I want to see a solution.

I hesitate to even bring this up, because I know I'll just be called a hater. The reason I fell in love with firebug in the first place was because it offered me x-ray vision, with which to peer inside the jacked-up mess that is CSS support for Internet Explorer. Of course, now I am a power user and find it difficult to remember how I was even remotely competent at my [web dev] job without it. Give firebug lite a try - I'm going to throw it on my red-headed stepchild IE 6 machine as soon as I get back to work tomorrow. 

Beyond that, I don't really see a solution for the moment. If you've googled any number of the same keywords I have, you have no doubt traveled down some of the same dead-end roads. To maybe ease your burden a bit, here are a few of the highlights:

this google groups thread offered a hodge-podge of solutions that fell short  

http://groups.google.com/group/firebug/web/faq-about-firebug

http://groups.google.it/group/Gmail-Problem-solving/msg/b45d82b372db8585  

Now, don't get me wrong. It's frustrating, sure. But I want you to know, Google, that I'm not mad at you. And I'm not going anywhere. And Firefox, you know I'm on your side. You're my browser Obama. We - and by we I mean you two - are just going to have to work it out. It's no good, living with all these windows open. I pose the question to the rest of the class:

Who's problem is it? Gmail? Firefox? Firebug? ...Ajax??

Finger-pointing and wild speculation abound, but I can't find a clear answer anywhere. Insights and links are welcome... 

 

 

*Really.

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.