Does Microsoft really have that many people fooled into thinking Silverlight is cross-browser? Everything I’ve read depicts Silverlight 2 as being cross-platform and cross-browser. According to the system requirements page, Safari (and therefore Google Chrome, which doesn’t even display the requirements chart and has a black placeholder on the home page) is not supported on Windows and the chart doesn’t even list Opera. Additionally, Linux is not even mentioned on the requirements page. So I guess cross-browser/cross-platform in Microsoft’s eyes means it only works on IE and Firefox while Opera and Linux won’t be listed in hopes people will forget there are any more OSes and browsers to choose from. Terrific!
According to Microsoft’s FAQ on Silverlight:
Which platforms and browsers will Silverlight 2 support?
Silverlight will support all major browsers on both Mac OS X, Linux and on Windows. Particular care is being taken to account for differences in platform and browser capabilities to ensure a consistent experience including experiences on Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer.
Apparently Safari and Opera aren’t “major” browsers and Linux isn’t an OS if you ask Microsoft. The Silverlight forum even had a post back in February discussing the plans to support Linux and Opera. Worse yet, Opera Watch had a post back in May of 2007 mentioning they were confident Silverlight would support Opera. Little did they know that a year and a half later Microsoft wouldn’t even mention their browser on the Silverlight requirements page.
Why do I care so much about this? Because I have a tough time considering a career working with technologies from a company that doesn’t understand the world doesn’t run on Windows and IE alone. I want to ensure any web application I develop is compliant with the most current web standards and will run on any browser in any OS. I get the feeling more and more each day that this will always be a struggle while in the Microsoft camp. Given the approval rating of Vista, and Microsoft in general, these days I think it’s fair to say that there will be an increasing number of non-Windows machines in homes and businesses in the future. The last thing I want to do is pigeonhole myself into developing solutions that don’t play nice with anything but Windows.
Let this serve as an example of why people love the Adblock Plus add-on for Firefox and why Google Chrome needs similar functionality NOW. I understand developers rely on ads for additional income but I cringed when I saw the amount of ads that were displayed on this single page.
I would be happy to browse pages without an add-on to block ads if they were less in your face and didn’t disrupt my concentration as I was attempting to read the actual content on the page. I would really like to know if there is a substantial benefit to having that many additional, large ads on a page as opposed to having a less annoying sidebar of ads. Of course, reading the site in a news reader provides a much better reading experience since the ads aren’t included in the feed.
Sure, there are startups that come and go, but there are also startups that become extemely successful. Meebo is one of those companies that provide a fantastic service that just makes life easier and, judging by this video, is about to make things even better for communicating in real-time over the web.
Website navigation comes in all varieties, but I had to do a double-take when I came across the menu on the St. John the Baptist Parish Sales and Use Tax Office site. It doesn’t really appeal to me, but maybe it’s designed to wow the accounting crowd.
I don’t claim to be a Windows or Web design expert, but I believe there is some common sense that should be used when developing applications for Windows and the web. While I was reading what’s new in OnTime V8.1 I couldn’t help but notice the screen shots of the alert schedule dialogs.
First, it’s interesting to see how the web dialog tries to mimic the Windows dialog. Overall it looks similar, but there are quite a few inconsistencies that almost seem lazy or rushed to me. For instance, some controls have their labels above while some are to the side. This is made worse because not only are they inconsistent on each form but also between the Windows and web dialogs. I also don’t understand why the series of check boxes for the days needs to be included in a list box. Why would the check boxes on the web be scrolling? The number of days in a week is fixed and should all be visible in my opinion.
These are only a few examples with these two simple dialogs. However, I feel developers need to take pride in what they do regardless of whether a team of designers is present. I recognize not every developer is a designer, but I believe all developers should utilize common sense when building applications.
I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on the ASP.NET MVC Framework, specifically blog posts dealing with the most recent preview release 3. When I come across a post that looks relevant, I immediately look for the post date to determine roughly how relevant the article will be to the current release. My eyes always focus on the title of the story to find the date posted, however I’m noticing many blogs display the post date at the end of the post. I’ve always been a fan of the post date appearing at the top of a blog post, however I’ve only recently become frustrated when it’s not. I just don’t understand why any author would want to force it’s readers to scroll to the end of the post to determine when it was written. News sites don’t do this, so why would blogs? I’ve also noticed I’m not the only one who feels this way.
I wonder if Google is a little upset that Plaxo was scooped up by Comcast. I don’t think I’ve ever seen these Pulse emails get flagged as spam, so I thought it was a little unusual when I spotted this message sitting in my Spam folder today.
Microsoft Research’s new site, WorldWide Telescope, clearly demonstrates two of my technology pet peeves…Flash and desktop software. Even with modern broadband connections, any site that displays a “Loading…” image followed by a percentage is one that immediately makes me reach for the Close button. Are users really that interested in flashy graphics when they visit a page? I just don’t understand why Flash has become so popular when it seems to be one of the worst performing technologies and makes sites less than accessible to people with disabilities. (see previous Coke posts)
Once you get past the glitz of the site and navigate to the software download page, you’ll understand why desktop software is headed down a road to failure. Should users really be forced to think about the steps necessary to download a piece of software? If my Mom were to be interested in running WorldWide Telescope, I am fairly certain she’d get to the download page, take one look at the laundry list of steps necessary to get the thing running, rant for a minute about how much she hates computers, then close the browser. For those who still like their desktop software and can’t be bothered with modern web applications like those from Google or Zoho, developers should at least make them friendly enough to be a one-click show. I know, some people like to customize the install, but for the folks who just want to run the software at least make the install quick and painless.
Looks like Apple isn’t the only one who can poke fun at it’s competitors. As ridiculously cool as the X300 is, I still can’t justify spending over $3,000 for a laptop.
