With the recent loss of Steve Jobs I felt I needed to write a little something to mark his passing; but with the eulogy that the Internet has become since his death I felt my words would simply be lost, or just not mean enough. A few days have passed and I felt now was a good time…

The thing is, that Steve, whether you liked him or not, had an attitude towards design, technology and life that changed the way the human race interact, communicate and learn with the devices around them. He was able to remove the technical boundaries from his mind and lead the creation of things that became extensions of ourselves, to make the way we create easier no matter what these creations needed to be; and that is why I think there has been such a reaction to his death.

Steve Jobs just knew what we wanted and gave his passion and eventually his whole life to make those needs a reality. Yes, there have been many visionaries before him, Bill Gates for instance has dominated the computer market with the Windows OS for nearly two decades, yet I don’t feel any empathy towards the man who created a system designed for those who had to have at least a basic knowledge of computers, and that is where Jobs differed.

Every piece of technology Apple has released in the last decade has not been made for geeks, they have been made for everyone! That is the genius of Apple and more accurately Steve himself, no matter who you are, what your knowledge, you should be able to use it, just like everyone can use a book or a pen.

And that is how I feel about Steve’s legacy, writing this on my iPad2, checking the responses to this on my iPhone and teaching my daughter how to use technology an her iMac – Thanks Steve

Just  a quick post to mention the new iPad app ‘The Daily’ has been launched this week by News Corp;  with its reasonably cheap price and two weeks free offer Murdoch is looking to secure one million subscribers to make the project viable. However, the day after it was launched  the premium content offered by ‘The Daily’ was out there for free!

A programmer named Andy Biao spent a remarkably short amount of time creating a simple website displaying the newly indexed content for the app. According to Biao, a friend had noticed the content was visible to search engines and so decided to create the site; he feels that these are public articles and should be available freely on the web.

I think that this truly demonstrates that no matter how well large corporations try to control, funnel and sell their online wares there will always be somebody smarter trying to keep it open and free.  I personally am a great believer in a free world wide web, in a time of increasing red tape and bureaucracy this is potentially the last place where we can still be able to express our opinions and read about the world for free.

Interestingly the site is still live two days since its launch, let’s hope this is a win for the free web.  You can visit Andy Biao’s great work here

A number of web designers have decided to stop supporting some browsers and particularly Internet Explorer (IE6 to be precise), but as IE6 becomes the native browser for a number of smart phones is it right to dismiss what still can be a large and relevant section of your audience.

I have been designing pages for a number of years now and have experienced my fair share of Internet Explorer 6 nightmare moments, however, this has never stopped me supporting this browser along with others.  During the past three years I have tried to support the main browsers, IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari, a decision simply based on the analytics available to me which have shown that IE in all its versions is the most popular followed closely by Firefox then Safari and Chrome, so it puzzles me why some designers and companies have decided to stop support for IE6!

My job as senior web-designer is measured on a number of factors, these are unique users, page impressions and visit duration; all these are affected by how accessible the website is.  Accessability at its essence is making a site easy to use for all users, people are coming to your site with varied skills and technology,  from many geographical locations and cultures so we as web designers have a duty to make our sites for all these people.  It seems however, that an ever growing number of designers want to ‘Kill IE6′ to somehow make the Internet a better place but punishing the ill-informed seems to be a very negative way to do so.

IE6 until recently was the most popular browser, this is  simply because it was the standard install with Windows XP and for many users of PC’s IE6 is just a window to the Internet nothing more; other users of IE6 don’t have a choice, the technology infrastructure in some companies is old leaving their employees no other option but to use this old browser, finally certain smart phones are using a web browser based on IE6 which we can only assume will become more popular over the coming months and years.  With all this in-mind how can anybody seriously think about not supporting what is going to be part of the web for the immediate future at least, I understand that it makes the overall design process more difficult but who said web design was ever going to be easy!

I became a designer to creating designs for all to enjoy, so not supporting at least the main browsers goes against all I am trying to do.  So to help make things less painful with cross browser testing here are a couple of  links to services I have used and would recommend.

Browser Shots is a comprehensive online testing solution (external link)

IEtester – great for ironing out quirks between IE versions (external link)

Don’t forget, as designers or even users of the Internet with knowledge we shouldn’t damage peoples experience, we should educate and advise to help make things better for all!