I have as much dispute with IE6 as the next guy - there's no denying that it's holding us back and we'd be better off without it - and I fully support non-disruptive evangelism efforts that encourage IE6 users to upgrade to a modern and more secure browser. It's in their best interest after all.

But the notion that IE6 support should be discontinued, or that its users should be blocked, is dangerously misguided and missing the point. IE6 isn't your problem, and you shouldn't even maintain a list of supported browsers in the first place. If you think I'm talking to you, continue reading.

Via Inclusive Web Design For the Future (by Steven Champeon & Nick Finck):

The goal of Web design is not merely to dazzle, but to deliver information to the widest audience possible. Compromise is possible and desirable, but such compromise should not come at the expense of the user, but rather in terms of the native capabilities of the user's choice of device.

As someone that designs and develops online, one of my primary responsibilities is to deliver an accessible user experience. To my users, and not their choice of access. Their media device, operating system, browser, screen resolution or viewport - there's no denying that these factors should be considered when planning a new project, but they shouldn't ever be treated as constraints that place limitations on the interface or experience. They are merely variables that come together in any number of ways for any number of users. And although you can trend and analyse them today, they will undoubtedly change tomorrow, and next week, and month, and year... you get the picture.

If you think IE6 is today's problem, how will you deal with IE7, Firefox 2, Safari 3 or similar browser generations a year from now when they fail at rendering your standards-compliant CSS3? Cry foul like a stuck record from a bygone era and demand that your users upgrade once again to meet your standards? No, I didn't think so.

Then what's the alternative?

So glad you asked - progressive enhancement of course!

Before you point fingers, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not exactly a PE poster boy candidate. Using this site as a quick example - I built it with best intentions just under a year ago, and despite saying then that I'd adopted a PE strategy, there are so many things that I'd do differently today. But in my defence, that's the very nature of designing for the web: a continuous cycle of learning, adapting and growing.

So PE isn't new to me, but adopting it's methodologies into my workflow has taken longer than I'd like, only because it demands changing a system that I've spent a long time refining, and these changes demand free time that I generally don't have. But with every new project, I take another step closer towards PE utopia. I'd say I'm currently bordering on a solid progressive enhancement strategy, while some thinking around the defunct graceful degradation approach still remains.

See Understanding Progressive Enhancement by Aaron Gustafson for an overview of the subtle differences between the two concepts.

Both graceful degradation and progressive enhancement consider how well a site works in a variety of browsers on a variety of devices. The key is where they place their focus and how this affects workflow.

Although I don't appreciate the sweetness offered by the M&M anology, the article does a good job of introducing the two important follow-ups: Progressive Enhancement with CSS and Progressive Enhancement with JavaScript. Definitive reading!

Ultimately, you will need to take the basic principles and adapt them as best you can into your workflow, all within context of course (if you exclusively develop intranets for IE6 then don't bother). For example, the biggest changes that I've made include:

• Adopting a JavaScript library - together with behavioural separation, jQuery provides me with powerful, unobtrusive and accessible methods for manipulating style and content. I swear by it, but I'm careful to not rely on it.
• Resetting my CSS: see Eric Meyer's Reset Reloaded (and Again) as a starting point, or A Killer Collection of Global CSS Reset Styles if you have the time.
• Sizing my layouts and typography using ems - How to Size Text in CSS (by Richard Rutter) is invaluable.
• Using conditional comments to target IE6 and IE7-specific CSS for style compatibility. Familiarise yourself with IE's hasLayout too - adding one simple rule to your conditional CSS will save you a lot of trouble and time.
• DD_belatedPNG - Medicine for your IE6/PNG headache! - the holy grail of PNG support in IE6
• Being comfortable with the idea that despite the above points, my interface designs are secondary to the content that they deliver. They will never render consistently for all users - but then, they won't know the difference anyway.

And there you have it! No more reason to blame IE6 for your laziness or reluctance to adapt. If you're not convinced, have your say in a comment. I'd also love to hear if and how you're using PE in your own work, or any experiences worth sharing.

More reading:

• Pragmatic progressive enhancement  - why you should bother with it (by Christian Heilmann)
• Creating gracefully degrading javascript and enabling progressive enhancement (via Mark Story)
• Progressive enhancement in action (via Nvision)

Side-note: The DStv website: What's with that pointless <title> cruft? What's with the weird layout issues in Firefox? Ugh Ugh.

So anyway, I plan to get outdoors as soon as the wind stops pumping. Then again, my kite needs a good dusting. I posted some casual B&W photos from yesterday. They're converted from raw sepia TIFFs, which I've never experimented with much before. The sharpness of the photos really suprise me.

Two comments concerning the subject of daily feedback I'm receiving via my contact form:

(a) I have no current affiliation with YDE. I realise that if you google for Young Designers Emporium, my portfolio page appears second. This doesn't mean you should e-mail me for advice on how to become one of their designers, if you can't follow the help on their own site.

Side-note: the YDE website doesn't have a <title>, so Google apparently uses the Meta Description tag in it's listing, which confoundingly reads: "Truworths is one of South Africa's leading fashion retailers, with a range of brands...". Smarty pants!

(b) I receive a number of questions from students and fellow designers/developers, which have got me thinking about compiling a kind-of manifesto based on my experiences in the field. It will be an ongoing and practical effort, from which I hope to learn more myself.

Three weeks ago I wrote about number/pattern recognition in the time. Substituting 12:34 for 11:11 has definately worked: I've seen 11:11 twice in the past day alone, first in my comment on Sponky Travels (Justine & Mark's travelog), and then again just moments ago in an IM conversation. Interesting stuff.

Lastly, I have a quick question which was also a mozillaZine Poll (view results) a while back:
What kind of home/start page do you have set in your browser?
You know, when you open your browser, what's the first site you see, if any? Please leave a comment to let me know, thanks.

UPDATE [09/02]: Jason of 37signals.com has asked the same question. Cool, 83 comments... althought it would be more useful to survey general public too and not just us technophiles.

"Wired News is reporting that Mozilla downloads have surged following advice from the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) to avoid Internet Explorer for security reasons. Download numbers approximately doubled in the days following the US-CERT recommendation, which was made in the form of an update to an earlier vulnerability note and comments to the press."

UPDATE: Mozilla Gains on IE - Study shows Microsoft has lost a percentage of market share to open source browser.

Time to Dump Internet Explorer - SecurityFocus
Why You Should Dump Internet Explorer - Lockergnome
Three reasons to switch web browsers today - Joel on Software
Why You Should Switch to Firefox - Ben Goodger
UPDATE: How Mozilla's Firefox trumps Internet Explorer - MSN Slate Magazine
Internet Explorer Is Just Too Risky - BusinessWeek Online
4 New "Extremely Critical" IE Vulnerabilities - Slashdot

Then there are the Internet Explorer security alerts issued almost weekly, warning of new vulnerabilities in even patched versions of IE - most recently: Internet Explorer carved up by zero-day hole:

"Two new vulnerabilities have been discovered in Internet Explorer which allow a complete bypass of security and provide system access to a computer, including the installation of files on someone's hard disk without their knowledge, through a single click.

Worse, the holes have been discovered from analysis of an existing link on the Internet and a fully functional demonstration of the exploit have been produced and been shown to affect even fully patched versions of Explorer."

The latest version of Firefox is a mere 4.7mb download. Despite it's increased adoption rate it should still be considered a technology preview, and one can only anticipate that the release of version 1.0 expected in September will deliver a huge impact. My advice to you is this: read the articles listed above and come to your own conclusions. Then download Firefox.

UPDATE: Pop-up program reads keystrokes, steals passwords (in IE) and New Internet Explorer Malware Captures Passwords Ahead Of SSL - related to online banking websites

Copy the link or the link title of the article from their site (eg. Posh takes on US music scene) and then Google it. If it's not the first News result, chances are that it should appear further down but near the top. Voila!
Or there's always BugMeNot.

Seen in a forum somewhere:

"Hi, I am am archaic anarchist who is devided between my Buddist fundamentalism and my neoanamist (?) beliefs. I support anyone who does not support anyone."

When the cursor is left in either of these input areas and then I switch to a different application to confirm whatever I was typing (a long URL most often), then when I switch back the cursor focus returns to where I was typing but the text is automatically selected and I have to either click somewhere or press the correct key to continue typing - otherwise the existing text is removed.

The Mozilla Foundation announced yesterday the immediate availability of a new preview release of its next generation web browser: Mozilla Firefox - previously Firebird, previously Phoenix. You can also read more on the rebranding process (which I think is looking excellent) by the artists involved: Steve Garrity, Jon Hicks and Daniel Burka.

Mozilla Firefox 0.8 represents the bleeding edge of Internet technology and raises the bar for ease of use, performance, robustness and standards compliance. Less than 3 minutes to download over a broadband connection, Firefox can be yours in no time at all. Firefox starts up and runs much faster than Mozilla because of its significantly optimized code...

I'm going to love the new AutoDownload feature - Automatically download files to your Desktop or another location without windows popping up asking you where to save, etc. It also includes a new installer for Windows users - previously you had to manually extract the zip to a system folder.

And if that doesn't convince you to give it a try: Reasons to switch to the Mozilla Firefox browser.

Also released: Thunderbird 0.5, the e-mail and newsgroup client for 2004 and beyond.

UPDATE: The button at the top of this post is a PNG with alpha transparency, which does not render correctly in - you guessed it - Internet Explorer. Microsoft have had almost 8 years to fully implement the PNG specification yet haven't. How sad. Then again, it's taken them 6 months to release a patch for the most vulnerable security hole ever discovered in Windows.

UPDATE: 13 Reasons To Use Firefox Over IE

I am hwevoer gald to see taht Lribety Gorup's wstbiee now wroks in non-IE bwreorss too, atefr mcuh rantnig in the psat. I deidced to sned tehm smoe stie fdecbaek, olny to dcivoser taht hiinttg the "Smbiut" buottn on the cnocatt from did aotulebsly nnihtog. La la la........

Very little bugs me more than the ignorant misapplication of technology, especially when a large content provider with a recently-acquired global audience is concerned. Don't think I wouldn't have picked up on the fact that M-Net's new M-Net On Demand offering, an Internet Broadband service, has several flaws that render it completely unacceptable to someone such as myself.

A brief introduction: Currently live and available commercially in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, South Africans living abroad (me, for example) are now able to choose from 80 hours of viewing material, at a cost of R112 for 10 hours each month. One catch: provided they have...*sirens and flashing lights*... the required web browser - the de facto browser - the discontinued browser - Internet Explorer. And Windows. And Media Player. And Macromedia Flash Player.

It would be naive to claim that a service such as this wouldn't really be possible without the latest technology - but streaming content is a well established broadcasting medium, so there's no excuse for lack of similar services from which to gain some technical insight.

But let's take a step back for a second. It's been recently widely speculated that the removal of IE as a free, downloadable software application could have a profound effect on the Web and the development of Web standards. Read that as a good thing.

So what does all of this mean? I've always liked comparing the cross-browser compatibility of websites and web-based applications to something we all do daily; watching television. All television sets, however physically different they appear, still receive exactly the same picture. Why should the web be different? Well, it shouldn't - but it is. Different browsers interpret the presentation layer of the same content differently. As web developers we've learnt over the years to accept this fatal drawback as just another limitation to work around. Removing IE along with it's list of proprietary standards is in my mind a big step forward in providing a much richer web experience.

Not wanting to sound like a stuck record, but if M-Net had considered employing even the slightest hint of forward thinking, they would have realised the multiple benefits of developing their new subscription-based service to support existing AND future browser applications 5 years from now. There's no debate - other browsers do everything Internet Explorer does, and much more - much better. This would open their service up to a wider audience for years to come.

But M-Net's problems don't start and end with browser software. Microsoft's Windows OS is another requirement. Linux and Macintosh users, whatever small percentage of web users they make up - this is insignificant - don't even receive the choice to use Internet Explorer if they wanted to: it was discontinued for UNIX almost a year ago and was dropped for Mac over a year ago. These users will have to spend in excess of R3000 to switch to the required Windows platform, and then they'd still need to download the other requirements. Taking into account that M-Net On Demand's target market have established satellite networks to choose from, why would they subscribe to a computer monitor-based service such as this one?

M-Net might not even be the ones to carry the blame - they appear to have partnered with Entriq Inc., who enable "content and broadband service providers to protect, track, sell and syndicate online media in an efficient and secure manner". Entriq are an independent subsidiary of Naspers (a multi-national media company located in South Africa) who I've picked apart here before. (A quick visit to their site redirects to an IP address - 196.2.157.131 - how professional of them.) A demo at Entriq's own website also spews out the same 'Browser Not Supported' page. The noticeable different between their and M-Net's site however is that M-Net have chosen to restrict the entire site to meet their requirements, locking out anyone who doesn't have the correct software installations from even finding out whey they're denied access in the first place.

All that said, experience has shown that contacting M-Net directly about these issues will prove pointless - I e-mailed them about their online newsletter unsubscribe "option" months ago, and am still awaiting a reply. That, and you're required to use Internet Explorer just to send a basic contact e-mail.

And I'm sure I'll live quite comfortably without Die Kasper Rasper Show. Maybe I'm just being cynical, but in all honesty their target market is only expats - students and young professionals living with a visa won't bother - and if you're missing South African broadcasting that much then you shouldn't have emigrated in the first place.

In January 1998, Netscape made an announcement that their browser would thereafter be free, and also that the development of the browser would move to an open-source process. The Mozilla project begins.

Two weeks ago, Netscape 7.1 was released.

And today, Netscape is dead.

AOL has cut or will cut the remaining team working on Mozilla in a mass firing and are dismantling what was left of Netscape (they've even pulled the logos off the buildings). Some will remain working on Mozilla during the transition, and will move to other jobs within AOL.

Say hello to The Mozilla Foundation - a new non-profit organization that will serve as the home for mozilla.org.

To help launch the new organization, America Online has pledged $2 million in cash to the Mozilla Foundation over the next two years. AOL will also contribute additional resources through equipment, domain names and trademarks, and related intellectual property, as well as providing some transitional assistance for key personnel as they move into the new organization.

Read the full press release at mozilla.org, dressed up with a brand new look.