The European Competition Commission have forced Microsoft to offer alternative web browsers with their operating systems, which will be available from March 2010 in Europe. This will obviously confuse some of the less techy users but it may also achieve something I think we all want – the accelerated demise of Internet Explorer 6!

The new Windows update once installed will give the user a choice of browsers, including Google Chrome, Opera , Safari and best of all Firefox. Those that simply think Internet Explorer is the web may find this confusing and ultimately will select the safe IE option – but hey, at least they upgraded. IE6 has caused us web designers a lot of trouble over the last few years and this force update may just make it truly possible for the first time to stop supporting it completely. The IE7 and 8 updates have helped reduce IE6’s domination but an active choice may just do enough to finally make this out-of-date browser insignificant enough to finally be ignored, ultimately this will educate the masses to the infinitely better options available.

With any luck this will be what most web designer have been waiting for, yes, it may take a while but it’s a massive step in the right direction.

I was contacted today by a colleague for whome I had recently designed a static banner, she requested that I animate it, when I asked why an advert with one simple message needed animating she told me that during a presentation to her superior she was reprimanded and told it should have been! – I was stunned that a senior member of our company should have such an uninformed view of online advertising, and worse still be preaching it to their staff!

As a fairly experienced designer of adverts from print to web I understand the balance between customer satisfaction and user response quite well, I also have equally successful examples of both static and animated artwork; unfortunately sales teams don’t have this wealth of experience and prefer something esthetically pleasing or dynamic to wow a client and make the sales pitch that much easier for themselves, while I sympathise with sales teams wanting to keep their task simple in difficult times I can’t help feeling that it’s ignorance that makes the pitch difficult, not the dynamics of the advert.

Let me explain why I feel ignorance is the issue – Banner advertising has been around for a number of years now and web users are more switched on than ever before, at the same time various web browsers along with off-the-shelf software make it relatively simple to block banner advertising, one click and a web site’s ads are gone which is not good news for companies that have a banner advertising website model!  This is where the ignorance of sales people and teams starts to become a real issue, their need to keep the sale simple will inevitably damage advertising effectiveness as users either stop visiting your site or just simply block your advertising content.

My ethos is ‘less is more’ – yep not the first time you have probably heard this, but as far as I can tell there are three clear types of banner advert -

1. The adverts with one clear message and minimal text
2. Adverts for brand awareness only and again minimal contact copy
3. Those with a few clear key messages. 

 For me the first would be static this is because the simple message is the important part of the advert, it needs to be on screen for as long as possible giving the message the best chance of being absorbed by the user, while the second is using general content with no clear call to action, this naturally could use subtle animation to draw the users eye without distracting them too much (colour blends and changes would work well), the third where content is an issue I would use interactive animation i.e. when a user rolls over the advert an extra element is presented. 

Using the correct advert type for the content you are presenting is key, but because of the fear some businesses have of the Internet coupled with a lack of understanding the industries most in need of these revenues may simply cut their own throats.  Many web design blogs and websites have adopted the static advert model and seem to be making money, maybe the media industry should pay attention to this!

To prove that this can be successful Fusion Ads delivery network deals in only static advertising and currently delivers over 20,000,000 page views per month to its design network – Seems this is working quite well and may just be worth keeping an eye on.

I think some animation is necessary and sometimes you simply cannot get around it but it certainly shouldn’t be the industry standard.  If you have to animate an advert to make the sell then the advert is probably not going to succeed!

Slowly advertising is going to change and banners will disappear, so adapt now it will make a huge difference to the future and life of all online services.

See related article – http://nasarik.com/is-it-too-late-to-save-the-web-from-over-the-top-advertising/

This is an unusual post for me, on-the-whole I like writing tutorials or web design posts but something recently has affected me on a personal level and I feel I need to vent my frustration.  Six years ago my wife and I lost a son and since then we have tended his plot with tasteful and appropriate items, each year changing the toys for something a child of his age would love, that was until the local council ordered this to stop!

I wouldn’t wish the loss of a child on my worst enemy, the pain I felt at the time was unbearable and to be honest still is, as time has moved on I have learned to hide it behind a thin vale of composure.  What has made this pain easier is knowing we can bring him with us in our lives, for birthdays and Christmas’ we take him a gift and a card, at Easter a small chocolate egg, we’ve even talked about leaving a beer or two for him on his eighteenth and as long as we are alive we would keep this tradition alive. 

Now after six years the local council have asked for this to stop as they can no longer get their mowers between the graves!  Sorry did I hear that right, the last time I looked they had started bunching the baby plots so close together we could no longer stand in front of our son’s plot, not without standing on the very ground he lay beneath or on another poor child’s resting place.  For the first few months of the warning we ignored it hoping that the Council would realise their decision was not only wrong but ridiculous, but no, they have stuck to their guns and now we are being told that all items will be removed and stored for collection, only allowing us to place items on the stones themselves.  As you can imagine this has caused great upset for my family and I as well as others who have their loved ones buried at Fleetwood Cemetery and who have kept the plots in a neat a tidy state, this in turn has forced those aggrieved with this decision to call a protest which I will be attending.

If Fleetwood Cemetary was full of unkempt graves with no passion for those who have gone then the Council would simply tend them, but because we obviously care so much for those we have lost, and show it, we are being penalised!  I have been visiting Fleetwood Cemetary for the full six years my boy has been there, all the baby graves have been kept beautifully ranging from plain grass with flowers to others similar to ours, so this decision by the council confuses me.  Are we not making their job easier rather than harder?

I will join the peaceful protest tomorrow to support all those who have lost, whether it will make any difference I don’t know, all I know is losing a child really brought home to me what the meaning of  life really is and the sometimes over-the-top passion and commitent for my five year old daughter is because of that realisation, so is it really too much for me to ask to leave those toys and eventually those beers for my son.

If you have lost and are being persecuted in this way please get in touch, maybe if we all shout together and loud enough local goverments will have to listen.