While checking my Twitter feed I came across a post from Smashing Magazine that said ‘DuckDuckGo: a nice new search engine, useful for programmers and designers’, so I checked it out, ran a few searches and was pleasantly surprised with the results, it was that good I may consider making it my search engine of choice.

Before I go on I would just like to talk a little about Google which may just clarify why I am considering moving away.  Google has been the search front runner for such along time it seemed unlikely any other service could mount an effective challenge, even with Wolfram Alpha and Bing hitting the scene Google just kept on going.  Recently however, Bing started to take a bigger share of the search market and weirdly Google instead of leading the way changed its search results page to feel more like Bing’s; combine this with the increasing advertising that haunts Google could they just be starting to lose their way?

DuckDuckGo (strange name I know!) offers a more streamlined search facility meaning more appropriate results,  so to test the theory I ran a few simple searches both in Google and DuckDuckGo; in most cases it beat Google on appropriacy giving me only useful links and more importantly no advertising.  As a web designer trying to find those useful little code snippets or tutorials can be a chore but since I have been trialing DuckDuckGo things have felt just a little more direct. So far the only draw-back I can see is speed, sometimes DuckDuckGo lacks the immediacy of Google when clicking through to an appropraite result.

I don’t think Google is under threat yet, I have fallen for the false promises of other search engines before and always go back to the comfort of Google; yet I do feel it is time for something new and maybe DuckDuckGo is it?

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.

Clunky and badly designed animation has flooded the web for as long as I can remember.  In the early days this phenomenon belonged to the animated gif files blinking furiously at you in an erratic attempt to attract your attention, while in comparison today’s web is littered with a mixture of gif, javascript and now flash animation. So this has made me wonder, is this animation simply a crude distraction that is degrading our web experience and masking the quality beneath, or is this what our aspiration for the web should be?

I am going to try as hard as I can to not be biased here but I have some pretty major issues with Flash!  Firstly it is not truly accessable to users, for those who have problems with their sight Flash offers a poor experience giving screen readers no chance to express the content whether it be pictures or text. Secondly, Google have made steps forward with the indexing of Flash content, but no matter how well Google can manage this the content will always be sub-standard compared to well written HTML, and this only means that Google can index Flash other search engines have not made these advances, so Flash immediately is at a disadvantage as a web tool.

‘So Flash can’t be indexed big deal, it brings a more complete experience’ – This is the kind of response I hear when a flash developer defends their favourite tool.  Well, it’s not as simple as that, just because things can animate doesn’t mean that they should, when I visit a web site I want the easy to find content that I came for not a series of unnecessary animations flicking from picture to picture with pointless un-indexable messages in between! Nor do I want the pages or content to be randomly redrawn or to be erratically presented, just give me what I wanted that is why I am here, and why I have given your site a chance!  This is where I feel Flash has moved away from the accessible web of now and the future, the web is where we can express, entertain, share and learn, putting blocks in-front of this creates a lesser experience not a better one.  Maybe Flash should stay in its newly discovered home of television where more and more animators are using Flash to create amazing cartoons and animations for the visual world and to be honest it feels more accurately placed there.

See why I was worried about being biased! – So I will try and redress the balance – Flash is an amazing piece of animation software, in my time I have seen some amazingly executed Flash websites and rich application, these helped make the web a more visual experience during the time before quality design started to take hold.   The sad thing is that I believe Flash is being left behind as the drive to be at the top of a Google search takes hold; Flash cannot be indexed in this same way and the industry doesn’t seem in-a-rush to change that.  As Flash becomes an integral part of the visual media market maybe it will find its true place in the future of TV interactivity?

Overall, the lack of accessibility has always been an issue for me.  Not only has the web accepted flash for the building of websites but a large number of sites have adopted flash banner advertising as a way to generate cash, this is not only annoying but demonstrates a complete lack of understanding for how the web should be. 

In an ideal world we should strive for well designed, accessible websites which contain advertising that complements the web product cleanly and professionally instead of being a distracting add-on.  I hope the industry can move in the right direction, however Flash may simply be too popular!