Educating the user
By Nick FassolasI firmly believe that one of my jobs is to try to “educate” users, in things that web designers take for granted, for instance: a good web designer knows that IE6 is an out dated browser, full of bugs and flaws. That’s the reason why most web designers choose to develop and design websites for modern browsers.
Users don’t know about these problems, they don’t understand CSS conflicts or other cross browser incompatibilities and even if they know or have heard about them… they just don’t care!
So what is there for a web designer to do?
Seriously now…education people, education. That’s what makes us better in all matters, why should it be any different in this case.
A couple of years ago when I decided to redesign my website I didn’t want to make it easy on ie6 users, I decided to get them involved and help them realize that, everything gets better, evolves into something new, it’s safer, more trustworthy and more functional, uses better technology and is faster than the one before, examples of that progress you can find anywhere and in anything! (Cars, computers, mobile phones, toys, sound systems etc).
For some one that visits my site with a modern browser (you know who you are) everything will look fine (unless green is not a color you like). On the other hand is some one visits my site with ie6 he will see it in black and white! (Like viewing an old television) No transparency, no colors or any other effects.
Why did you do such a thing? You might ask.
My answer is simple and it’s the truth, because it’s time for ie6 users to move into the 21st century.
I could have used a script of some sort, but doing that would be against my personal ethics, preventing the user to see things completely is like turning someone blind against his own will (and I’m not here to torture people), changing the colors and making it look slightly…grey, is my way of trying to educate the user.
Of course using a code to prevent ie6 from interpreting the html code that makes the site visible is something that could be done, but only as an extreme measure taken against Microsoft’s Browserosaurus! (Info: Internet Explorer 6 has been with us since August 27, 2001)
Hopefully in a couple of years (sooner I hope), by helping users see that things change in the world wide web, by showing them the way to a better browsing experience and informing them in a way that does not offend them, we might see a browser statistic that does not include an ie6 25% market share in it!
PS: And also save web designers a lot of time…we have kids too you know.
Labels: browsers, education, web design, web standards
posted by Nick Fassolas @ Friday, October 03, 2008 | Permanent link here
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