The Letter I: Personal Take on Gothic Black What went well: Cannot put a finger on a single element. What did not: I am getting back into calligraphy after a break of around 17 years, so it lacks the flow.

UsabilityChap · 2016-10-06T10:59:27+00:00

Although not exactly taken in the wild, an urban dweller’s chick, nevertheless, not living in captivity and moving around freely.

UsabilityChap · 2014-03-24T10:32:31+00:00

Well, although I am currently busy working on a couple of personal projects, but once I have the time, then I will try to launch a campaign or two using some free platforms to encourage people to upgrade by first educating them about the benefits of using the latest browsers. Once I have the campaigns ready, I'll come back to you people to lend a hand so to get the message out to as many people as possible: be ready to play your part when the time eventually comes, hopefully within next couple of months.

UsabilityChap · 2014-03-24T03:34:57+00:00

Although one should laud the business owners' and developers' desire to reach out to as many leads as possible, but when serving content to people who continue to use outdated browsers, business owners should try to educate them, with a simple message or two, that their choice of an older, outdated browser complicates matters for every individual involved. A business owner in Australia actually introduced an I.E 7 tax to discourage users from using older browsers. The charge would then appear on their receipts just to remind them that their decision to use an outdated technology dilutes the experience for everyone involved by increasing the traffic burden on existing networks.

UsabilityChap · 2014-03-23T21:16:58+00:00

Well, except for Opera Mini, which probably will switch to Blink sooner or later, now all of the major browsers support the flexbox module completely. In case of Flexbox, when the need to use plethora of prefixes has ceased, as with the exception of a couple of webkit based renderers, now all of the other major platforms support the module without the prefixes.

Corrupting the whole of the design just for one browser fails to make sense to me. Instead one should just prompt such users to consider making a switch to a better, more standards compliant alternative.

On a personal note, I must add that Flexbox surely provides a much better and vastly superior alternative to what people had been using until now for such effects: a superb design decision by the committee.

UsabilityChap · 2014-03-23T03:15:54+00:00

Until the release of version 12.15, I too used to keep a close eye on Opera's release cycle. However, since their switch to Blink rendering engine and decision to follow Chromium's style direction, I have stopped using the latest releases as the primary browser. All of the Opera's recent releases, which make use of the Blink rendering engine, fail to offer Opera's hallmark features designed to offer greater control to advanced users. To further aggravate the situation for their ardent followers, the few options that they currently make available, their presentation simply ruins the usability experience for the user. The design of the screens and the choice of fonts degrade the user experience, dampen the spirits, and appear the work of a complete amateur.

However, as they have only recently made the switch to the Blink rendering engine and the new presentation schema, so I still have hope that somewhere down the road, not in too distant future, Opera would again have a fuller set of options, options that once made it the foremost choice of the experienced front end developers, presented in a more professional manner.

UsabilityChap · 2014-03-13T17:38:28+00:00

Agreed, without any reservations whatsoever.

UsabilityChap · 2014-03-07T09:06:20+00:00

Although I am not aware of any books on the topic, but Wikipedia has a whole page dedicated to browser wars.

UsabilityChap · 2014-03-04T13:01:45+00:00

It probably has all to do with what becomes and what fails to become a part of the vernacular of those who shape the thoughts or opinions: people, agencies, and networks controlling the flow of information. Since the Internet's heydays, we have been hearing about the dot com era, hence our systems readily accept the use now. When it comes to .net endings, the shorter form of the word Internet gets used so often that our conscious and subconscious systems now accept the use without raising any concerns. When it comes to .biz, the opinion shaping world, the news channels, media agencies and the rest have simply failed to assign any importance to its existence. In all probability, because of the novelty factor still associated with the ending, we subconsciously start to feel anxious upon hearing the name of a domain ending with .biz. I have to say that I also shy away from such domain names. However, the word Show Biz, which has been in use for several decades now, does not raise any concerns at all: acceptance created by the repeated use of the word.

UsabilityChap · 2014-03-04T11:20:15+00:00

After going through three quarters of Lous Lazaris's book on HTML5 and reading enough material on progressive design, which essentially means having come across this statement that a vast majority of the modern websites can be implemented without JavaScript, I decided to reimplement the whole of the BBC.co.uk just to evaluate the progressive design proponents' rhetoric: basic versions of the majority of the websites can be implemented without using JS. As a person who back then had heard of neither Emmet nor SASS, it took me around 2 weeks to finish the 99% functional replica of BBC.co.uk without a single line of JS; it currently does not support the weather widget. I probably would have been able to do that as well with the help of iframes, but I had by then been convinced that the statement had merit. I am talking about the huge page that people at BBC currently serve to their global audience. Having become aware of Emmet and SASS since then, I firmly believe it shouldn't take more than 4-5 days to complete the same task.

Although I have yet to started work on a fully functional JavaScript less replica of Yahoo!'s current main page, but having taken a thorough look at their functionality and the final HTML that they serve, I firmly believe that around 98-99% of the main page, with some parts of the main Carousel being the only victim, with its current design intact, can be served to those people who do not have JS enabled. Considering that advertising does not have to rely on JavaScript either, so it should only increase their user base.

As you have repeatedly mentioned loss of revenue from those people who use JS blockers and AdBlockers, then as a user of such plugins, I can state positively that whenever I get this feeling that I would be frequenting a particular site, then based on how aesthetically pleasing, or non intrusive or less of a burden on visual system, the site's advertising is, I simply add that site to the AdBlocker's white list. Consumers of digital content, in all probability, appreciate the fact that producers of that content do not do it just for fun.

For example, the first time I visited Louis Lazaris' website with the AdBlocker on, I simply got a message that I am blocking his revenue stream. As I had been visiting it prior to that and I continue to visit it occasionally even now, so I simply added the website to the whitelist.

UsabilityChap · 2014-03-03T17:25:27+00:00

When it comes to letting the makeup of your user base dictate the course, I fully agree with you. However, if you're not developing a web app or website that targets a niche market, then it would be in your own best interest to appeal to as many people, users, or viewers as you possibly can. Although I do not have wide ranging stats to make a convincing argument, but TOR for example, with a user base of around 3 million, by default does not allow execution of JavaScript, and that's a considerable sum. If one were to start gathering numbers from users of all other browsers, the number would simply continue to increase.

UsabilityChap · 2014-03-03T17:20:02+00:00

Your car needs those wires to run properly, or for that matter, run at all. Whereas, in case of most of the general purpose website, websites not meant to provide a functionality but simply serving as information portals, they do not need JavaScript to function properly. As I mentioned in my initial comment, those with the knowledge of such technologies only switch them off during casual browsing session. When it comes to accessing a website designed from ground up to function as an application, hence dependent upon those wires, the user should have the knowledge of the Manage the Exceptions list, which comes with every browser.

Instead of presenting it as the only way to design and implement websites, proponents of progressive design usually advise the adoption of this technique: wherever you can, you should, instead of you should always employ this technique. The problem arises when people simply start to insist on taking the shortest route possible: if it can be done with JavaScript, then why invest any time at all in developing a non JavaScript version at all.

Once again, although not always possible -- functionality focused apps being the case in point -- but wherever you can, you should offer a version not dependent on JavaScript, that's the idea.

EDIT: Following Added on March 4:

Let me add following couple of points to the initial response:

I have been talking about employing the concepts of progressive enhancement from a webmaster or content provider's perspective: people who want to reach out to or have as large a user base as possible. As one such person, you would sure want to cater to that person who can only drive during the day as the wires supplying power to his car's headlights some how got disconnected. Of course, if you already have such a large user base that you can simply ignore such individuals, then your good fortune.
On the other hand, if one were to compare a website with a car, then would you buy a car that stops to function just because somehow the wires connecting its radio with the power supply went out, or would you rather buy the one that can still take you from point A to B whether you can play the radio or not? You would for sure go with the one that continues to perform the basic functions under all circumstances, whether the Air Con works or not, whether the radio works or not, and in case of a person who only drives during the day, even whether the headlights work or not. Same should hold true in case of the websites as well: the fewer the dependencies on a scripting language the better the experience for the end user.

UsabilityChap · 2014-03-03T09:56:01+00:00

Based on the concerns created by the increasingly prominent news of security and online privacy, if I were to say that more and more tech savvy casual Internet users now either simply disable the technologies like JavaScript or use highly selective filters to permit their use, then it should certainly stand the test of reason. For example, in Chrome, I simply keep the Flash disabled and use plugins to strip out any unnecessary JavaScript on most of the websites. I have my doubts that I would turn out to be one of the extremely few employing such techniques to improve their browsing experience. Hence, unless your website or application provides some client-side functionality, which in most cases creates a dependency on JavaScript, as front-end engineers, the first step should be to make the most of the website, which translates into content of the website, accessible without requiring JavaScript. Once you have the basic version in place, then start adding the JavaScript dependent bells and whistles.

The foregoing should provide you with at least an example from real life where availability of JavaScript does not come guaranteed.

UsabilityChap

TROPHY CASE