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In Internet terms I’m old. I used the first real web browser, NCSA’s Mosaic, back in the early 1990’s. Mosaic was quickly eclipsed by Netscape and Internet Explorer.  And that was it for a long time. Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Kind of like Coke and Pepsi. The big two. After that it’s all a blur as the market gradually changed to include Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, and a handful of lesser known browsers. Today, the leaders of the browser wars are IE, Firefox and Chrome. IMO Opera is a good browser but doesn’t have the traction that the other browsers do. Safari is also decent, but if it weren’t bundled with Macs and iOS devices it probably wouldn’t have as high a market share as it does (I know, the same could be said for Microsoft bundling IE with Windows).

Anyway, within the past couple of weeks we’ve seen the release of IE9, Firefox 4, and Chrome 10; the latest and greatest in the web browser arena or se we’re being told. They have more bells and whistles and are more standards compliant than ever before. Here’s my problem. I don’t think we’re any better off today than we were back in the 1990’s. Why is that you ask? Well, I’m happy to tell you. Continue Reading »

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More and more I’m seeing the use of fixed positioning in websites to the point of it becoming a distraction. Let me give you two examples. First, the New York Times. Unfortunately I can’t give you a link because this example involved an ad, and the ads on the Times’ pages are dynamic. But what I saw today involved a large ad in the right sidebar of an article that at first glance looked normal. Then I began reading the story and like a normal person I had to scroll down the page to continue. As I did, the ad scrolled up the page with the text until the top of the ad bumped up against the top of my browser’s viewport, at which point it stopped and decided to hang around. Wtf? I scrolled up and down to make sure something wasn’t wrong and low and behold, the positioning of the ad went from relative to fixed based on whether the ad was going to be scrolled above the viewport or not. It felt a bit like walking down the street, seeing a homeless guy, passing him only to have him get up and start walking next to you until you get to the end of the block. Walk backwards and he still follows.
My other two examples are pretty much the same annoying example of positioning, but here they act exactly like frames. Both the new Twitter layout and the God awful new Gawker network layout (gizmodo, lifehacker, etc.) use a fixed positioned element on the right side of the page. This fixed element is essentially the equivalent of the old frame layouts we saw back in the 1990′s. The content on the left will follow your scroll bar while the content on the right is stuck in place. What’s especially annoying in the Gawker network of sites is that this fixed sidebar takes up valuable screen real estate that would normally be available to content. Collapsing it would be great; unfortunately it’s not an option. I’m sure there are plenty of other examples of this but these were just a recent few that caught my eye. My question is why? Why are Designers doing this? Shitty ad placement aside, let me decide whether I want a fixed sidebar. For you ads I’ll just stick with AdBlock.

The Google toolbar is pretty much the only toolbar I add to my browser.  I’ve used it since it came out but recently I noticed two annoying changes. First, the theme changed and now all my toolbar icons look like they were designed by third graders. With the new pastel colors and soft rounded look the icons feel like something you’d see on Playskool toys. Second, my weather button has been deprecated. This used to be an easy way of getting the current conditions and a three day forecast. WTF?

Mind. Blown.

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