danielbower.com

Over the last few weeks the lay person has seen the failings of IE6 discussed openly in the non tech press. The security holes that were to blame for the Google hack have led to discussion about it’s sluggish performance, incompatibility with the latest coding standards, and Microsoft’s slow update cycles.

For someone who works in the business, these gripes are common territory. I don’t think a week goes by that a member of my development team doesn’t complain about IE6, and I would say every month or so we break into discussion about why we still make all our sites compatible back to 6. Typically the arguments that we should stop supporting that particular browser stem from a completely understandable frustration. One of the guys once said something like: “there is nothing that you work with on a daily basis that slows you down, and causes you as many headaches as IE6 does for me” he’s right, and if there was such a headache, I’d probably work out a way round them. Annoyingly, there arguments have just been given some further weight by Google’s decision to stop supporting IE6 in some cases. I will however point out that this doesn’t include search, just docs and sites; when people visiting Google.com in IE6 are refused entry, then we’ll know the tides really have changed.

Moaning about IE6 within the development community can take a more sinister turn. Take for example the Tyler Thompson’s footer, this reeks of the kind of designer/developer elitism that really pisses me off. Okay, he may well be doing this for effect, he’s the creative director a SquareSpace so he probably knows how to play to his fans; but it demonstrates a good point. A lot of developers probably think that people using IE6 are stupid, fat and have shit laptops, and that’s a sentiment that I’d have eradicated if it were up to me.

The IE6 issue boils down to one thing, accessibility. People who are still using IE6 aren’t doing themselves any favours. They need to be educated about the problems associated with it and encouraged to try something different. However, that doesn’t mean vilify them and exclude them from use of the web.

I want to make websites that everyone can use. Better still I want to make websites that the likes of Tyler Thompson would be impressed by, and the likes of my Mum can still use with ease, irrespective of the browser she’s running.

One of my favourite weekly newsletters (aside from our own of course) is Read Write Web’s Weekly Wrapup, try saying that out loud. For those who don’t know, Read Write Web is a tech blog that covers new online applications. I like to think of it as TechCrunch’s smarter older brother, that has been usurped by it’s loud mouthed younger sibling.

For those of you who keep up with this kind of news, you’ll know that the sheer quantity of content produced over the past few years has made it hard to keep up. And this was where the weekly newsletter came in. All of the week’s top stories condensed into a readable newsletter that arrived in my inbox on Sunday in time to read before work the next day.

So what happened? Well, this week they shifted the format. You still get the weekly wrapup, but you also get another email every day. No notification, no opt out, no way to change the settings from what I can see, just 6 more emails that I didn’t ask for.  I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s spamming, but it’s certainly a step closer to it.

So here’s some tips from someone who’s newsletter now goes out to over 1 million people every week.

1. Realise that you now send two email products, not one. A weekly, and a daily wrapup.
2. Build, or get your Email Service Provider (ESP) to build a management system for you two emails. That way your users can choose which they’d like to receive.
3. Send out an email to your base and tell them you’ve launched a new daily email, and if they want it, they can opt in there. An apology would go down well too.
4. Promote the new email on the website. Ok, you’re not going to have the same number of emails pushed out each week as you are now, but at least you’ll be operating properly.

And, if someone with power does read this quick post, I’d recommend changing your from address back to Read Write Web, I almost junked it when it arrived this morning.

Last year all I committed myself to doing was quitting the gym, it still took me two months. This year I’m going to try and do a little more:

Drink less Caffeine. Run more. Cook more. Get more sleep. Spend less money on clothes. Spend more time with my girlfriend. Work harder. Build something outside of work. Make more of my time in London. Go out in South London. Buy more CDs. Read more books. Get into politics.

Friedkin said that “the audience is always five steps ahead of you” of course, he was refering to films. The opposite is true when it comes to websites.

Being a Birmingham City fan means going on a run of wins only matched by the likes of Man Utd, being 8th in the table and playing some of the best football in the clubs recent history. And still only getting five minutes of coverage on MOTD and getting insight such as “but yeah, from a Birmingham perspective it’s great,” from Alan Shearer and co.