IE6 Users just don’t stick around

I recently had a version of the conversation that every web developer has with a client at some point.

“Feature X looks great on Melissa’s computer, but not on mine. Why is that?”

“Are you looking at the site in Internet Explorer 6 by any chance?”

“Uhm… I think so. Yeah, Internet Explorer 6.”

“…”

This post, however, is not going to be a rant about IE6, or any of version of IE for that matter. It’s about a usage statistic I noticed when I started to dig around in the analytics.

Normally I’d only ever look to see how many visitors view a site IE6 to justify some poorly executed visual element that slipped under the radar. “Yes, that .png image may not look great when it’s not transparent, but on the bright side, only 6% of your visitors have seen it since the site launched!”

When I compared the “time spent on site” variable for all versions on all browsers, visit for visit IE6 users spent the the least amount of time on the site, almost 50% less time than the average visit.

Why is this the case?

The Experience ?

The first conclusion to jump to would be that the site is so broken in IE6 that visitors can hardly bear to look at it. This could legitimately be the case, but in this instance, the only IE 6 related issue was a tiny logo graphic that was supposed have a transparent background showed as having a slightly beige background. Hardly significant enough to send a visitor packing.

The Circumstances ?

To be fair to a lot of IE6 users, they use the browser only because they have to. The large organization for which they work is tied to the browser for a number of reasons. One example might be where a company uses an intranet built on technology that is old enough to only be compatible with IE6, and upgrading the browser would necessitate a prohibitively expensive enterprise-level upward shift in technology.
We can assume, then, that a lot of IE6 visitors are browsing from their work desks, a situation that lends itself to not spending long periods of time browsing the web.

The Environment ?

I like to think that the concept of a “computing environment” is more literal than most people give it thought. Personally, I find it more enjoyable to work with spreadsheets in the “light and airy” Numbers for Mac, as opposed to the “dull and gray” Excel for Windows. If I’m going to spend a lot of time in an application, I want the user interface features to be almost transparent. I want my boxes to have rounded corners and the colors used in the design to not only be neutral and calming, but even inspiring!

Does the hard-edged stripped down grayness of IE6 have a significant impact on its users browsing habits? I think it might. The concept of the browser as an environment is certainly the driving force behind Firefox’s Personas, and Google Chrome’s Themes.

Until such time as I don’t have to worry about IE6 users, I’ll be doing my bit by installing IE6 Update on all of my sites. You, if you are in such a position, should do the same!

Evolution, not Revolution, from Apple

Help me out here. Were my expectations built to unreasonable heights by months of fevered specualtion? Or is it simply a let down that Jobs could have come out and said “We’ve done it. We’ve made the ipod touch 200% bigger and put an e-reader in there. Isn’t that cool?” I wasn’t counting, but I think he used the word ‘magical’ more than ‘cool’, but is magical really the right word?

Johnny Ive opens the official ipad marketing video at apple.com by suggesting that any device that exceedes our ability to understand how it works, enters into the realm of magic. This is Clarke’s Third Law,  “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. But can we really apply this law to a big ipod touch, considering that millions of people have been using similar devices for years? Most people don’t understand how a laptop works, so does that mean laptops are magical too?

While I firmly believe we live in a world that needs more wonder and less wonders, I’m still disappointed with this annoucment. I was quietly hoping we’d see the next stage in data input, instead, we got a keyboard on a glass screen.  With the release of the iphone I have come to expect ‘revolutionary’ from Apple, but with this “bigger and better” offering, I’m just going to have to settle for ‘evolutionary’.

Apple buys Lala. Tablet rumoristas gather momentum.

If you’ve not managed to catch it, for the past year every tech pundit this side of Ulan Bator has been predicting the emergence in 2010 of an “Apple Tablet”.  Think of an i-phone, but with a screen around the size of  the front of a hardback novel.

It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that Apple will simply release a “big iphone”. With their track record in the personal tech arena, whatever, if anything, they release is going to be a game changer. This won’t be Apple’s version of a netbook. It will be a device that changes the way we think about ultra-mobile computing.

My personal prediction is that if any company should be worried about this, it’s Amazon. I can already see the Steve Jobs keynote, he’s holding a device running a version of OS X, powerful enough to compete against most netbooks, the touch browsing in Safari is a dream, HD video content looks amazing, “and oh? what’s that? they’ve made it an e-reader too? And an ultra-readable magazine browser? Why would I buy a Kindle, when for a couple hundred bucks more I can have a device that makes a Kindle look like an Etch-a-Sketch?”

I can see him flicking, by sliding his finger across the screen, through the pages of a modified New York Times, complete with embedded video.  Apple devotees in the crowd will clap and cheer.

So what does Steve Jobs want with Lala? Well, whatever it is, we know it has to do with streaming media. The ability to access your itunes library from anywhere would negate the need to keep putting bigger drives in these smaller devices, and it would sure be a killer feature on, say, an ultra-mobile tablet device, with a beautiful glossy hi-def screen, and a glowing Apple logo on the back.

Pundits predict an announcement in either January or June 2010.

The Heroin of File Browsers – On Sale!

One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was to pay $85 Australian dollars for the Windows Explorer replacement Directory Opus from GP Software.  Seriously. I spend 50% of my time in my web browser, 25% in my file browser and the other 25% in the “other”.  That works out to 2 hours per day of “move this here”, “copy these there”, “how big is this?”, “what the hell is grr-1102.jpg?”

The problem is that Directory Opus is such a good file browser/ftp client/image resizer/de-duper/zip archiver/etc. that whenever I’m trying to do get anything done away from my main computer, I feel like I’m not really working and the “real productivity” will start when I get back to Directory Opus.

What is it?

It’s a replacement for Windows Explorer. If you’re asking “What’s Windows Explorer?” then you can probably give Directory Opus a miss, the same applies if Explorer meets all your file browsing needs. If, however, you move enough bits around to have thought “man, there must be a better way to so this”, then read on.

Key Features

Views

In addition to the standard Explorer style view, the dual panel views make it simple to move files between folders/drives/networked machines, and the “image view” and “filmstrip” make it easy to browse through large directories of images.

FTP

If you don’t use FTP then this is hardly a killer feature, but if you do, man, does this kill. Transferring files to a server is as simple as switching to dual panel mode, selecting a panel and assigning it to a FTP account of your chosing. That’s it. FTP drag and drop without leaving the file browser.

Many Others

Image Resize – Email from the file manager – Zip and Unzip files – Synchronize files between folders – Find and remove duplicates – Fully customize everything from folder actions to skins

Directory Opus is on sale until the end of the year. The fully-featured free trial is extendable to 60 days and is well worth the download if this sounds like something you might use.

Be careful though, once you start using this thing, it’s hard to get off. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

______________________________

Step Up Square Up

Taking credit card payments is still real pain for small businesses. For most of those who need to make a transaction off-site, away from the terminal (if they have one), the carbon copy card crunching machine is technologically closer to Gutenberg’s printing press than to what we’re capable of today. Added to this, the fees imposed for processing these transactions mean that I can’t pay with my card for my $2.15 medium Americano, because the coffee shop lady ends up losing money.

Then along came The Square. It’s a tiny device that plugs into any compatible device with a headphone jack, essentially turning that device into a credit card reader. Swipe the card, visually identify the purchaser, have them sign and, as they say, bada bing, you gots yo money.

It’s another step forward for the consumer experience. Sure, it’s still based on “card-with-magnetized-strip” technology (unlike the Japanese system of cellphone-based bluetooth payment), and there are no doubt some drawbacks (what if I want to take an impulse payment from someone who has to go set up an account?), but we’ve got a changing economy here folks. I wonder if the folks at www.squareup.com have started receiving the threatening calls from the banks yet?

______________________________

The Web-based operating system, by Google. Who else?

This makes a lot of sense. Don’t be one of the nay-sayers who shout “but I can’t possibly work with my 2000 row Excel document in a web app, it’s just too slow!” Well, yes, right now I agree, using web-based code editors right now is like pulling teeth. But this is now.

Give it 5 years. You hear that Microsoft? 5 years.

_______________________________

Delicious saves the day! (or something like that)

At 6.30am this morning I worked out that I had irreparably corrupted my system fonts, and aside from not being able to see any text on any site or document, I could not get the GIMP to work. The GIMP is an open-source photoshop and I use it all day every day.

After trawling the geek forums for a couple of hours, and trying to undo my doings, I decided I didn’t have much choice but to back up and reinstall the OS. This took most of the day and went as well as could be expected. I lost all the GIMP fonts and brushes I’d collected over time, I had to dig out all my license keys for purchased apps and, of course, I lost all my bookmarks in Firefox.

Or did I ???

I simply cannot understand why anyone who wants to keep track of things they find online and save them for later does not use Delicious. I hate to get all self-righteous about it, but if you think you don’t need it, or think that whatever system you use is better, then you just don’t get it. Gosh, the reasons it rocks are too many to tack onto the end of this post. I’ll simply have to make a Delicious post.

In a nutshell, because all of my bookmarks are stored in my online Delicious account, as well as on my computer, getting them all back was as simple as reinstalling the Delicious add-on. That’s it. Done. There they were. All 1263 of them. All tagged up and ready to browse, search, or just marvel at. Yay Delicious!

______________________________

Keep your wallet fat with the aptly named FatWallet.com

Before I pay for anything online these days, I have a look in the formus at Fat Wallet. It’s a great resource for discount coupon codes. I recently saved a few bucks on some stock photographs and reduced a web hosting fee by 25%.

Having used the site for a while, it’s clear that all the action is in the forums. If you see a coupon code during your online checkout procedure, take few minutes and think “Fat Wallet”.

______________________________

Twitter for Businesses – FAQ for noobs

My boss recently made the sage assertion “I really think we need to have a tweet blog thing”. Ah yes, the old tweet blog thing. I have a tweet blog thing myself.

The company now has a Twitter account and a steadily growing number of followers (we have a mailing list with ~11,000 names on it).

The article at the image link is yet another good Web Worker Daily article. A list of frequently asked questions for newbies to tweeting, from business point of view.

______________________________

Mashable solutions to the multiple Gmail account problem

I just hit the dozen mark on the Gmail account list. Here are a few ideas from Mashable, to help navigate the issue of having to sign in and out to check mail and access Google apps for different accounts.

______________________________