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Journal
YouTube’s finest design and advertising movies
If you have some time to spare (we don’t), then these are a great set of design and advertising clips found on YouTube by Creative Review.
The browser wars: part 57 or so
Yet another opening has occurred in the long running war of the browsers… admittedly a war not many people are that interested in anymore - instead ‘web standards’ won. But back to the war.
The most interesting news is that Google have announced a new web browser called Chrome. My favourite feature is that it has been launched via a gorgeous and quirky comic by Scott McCloud (creator of the fantastic Understanding Comics). As for persuading a significant number of regular people to actually use it, I feel it will be a hard sell. There are features that developers and geeks will appreciate (we do!), but it has been hard enough to persuade people they should move from Internet Explorer 6, which is dangerous, let alone to think about moving to yet another browser after they may have made the effort to move to Firefox or Internet Explorer 7. It is also (arguably) quite ugly, which won’t help. That said, many of the ideas behind it are very interesting from a developers point-of-view and it may well become a very interesting browser in the future.
The other news, less interesting or fun, but news that will probably have more impact on the world in a practical way, is that Internet Explorer 8 has reached the next stage of development. When it actually comes out is anyone’s guess, but it will probably be much more important to web developers in an everyday sense than Chrome will be - at least for the foreseeable future.
The design of the Olympics through the years
The Colourlovers website does a great overview and history of the brand design for the Olympics, from 1896 through to the ever controversial 2012 games. Via Daring Fireball.
We Want Tap: The Movie
We’ve been exceptionally busy recently, but amongst all the work, we managed to find time to help Provokateur out a bit with this little video for their We Want Tap campaign.
Designing for good
“For some, bringing environmental responsibility to the design table was all a bit earnest and joyless. The mooted idea that the iPod might not be the most ‘green’ of products, and therefore was hardly an exemplar of modern design, did not go down well. People do not buy something because they like the virtuous value system it embodies, said one designer; they buy it because it is stylish, of the moment, gives intense pleasure.” Patrick Butler in The Guardian on the nowadays unfashionable idea that design can be a force for doing good in society - not just about selling stuff.
Sexism and blogging
“Women get dismissed in ways that men don’t” - is there a ‘glass ceiling’ to be overcome for women bloggers? More at the New York Times on the BlogHer conference.
Basecamp to phase out support for Internet Explorer 6
37signals, a company that builds web-based applications, are to phase out support for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) for their products, including Basecamp (the project management tool we use extensively to run our various projects).
In many ways we support this move. IE6 came out in August 2001: that’s almost 7 years ago. While it was a real step forward at the time it has since seriously lagged behind other web browsers. It now is responsible for creating an inordinate amount of design and development problems for people who work with the web, as well as having a wide variety of security issues. It will be a great day when the web development world can finally move on. Unfortunately we believe it could easily be another 5 years before this might be possible — there are simply too many people using it.
The percentage of people using IE6 varies widely depending on the type of website and their audience, but looking at the statistics of websites we manage, it is approximately between 15% and 35%. Clearly a very significant proportion still use IE6, and one that can not be ignored. While websites do not need to look exactly the same in each and every browser, but they should not break or fail to work.
The move by 37signals has created various issues for us:
We do not want to overly concern our clients about what web browser they use. Most people neither know nor care about what browser they are using - and why should they? We would always encourage clients to upgrade their browsers to the most recent because of the security risks, but for medium to large organisations universally upgrading their browsers can be a very complex task.
The situation could also impact on our credibility: we have recommended Basecamp as a tool, and if suddenly some of our clients have problems using it, it would reflect poorly on us. Having the situation ‘taken out of our hands’ by 37signals puts us in an uncomfortable position.
Information for clients
We recommend that clients upgrade to the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari. If this is difficult due to the restrictions of IT departments, then glitches or problems with Basecamp will probably occur. Hopefully these should not cause significant or ‘fatal’ problems. Please contact us if you have any questions or experience any errors.
Global grinning: Acme Climate Action in the news
The Telegraph newspaper on Saturday had an article about the forthcoming Acme Climate Action book. We’re working with Provokateur on the accompanying website.
Poetry and spam
We get endless amounts of spam here at FoxLand, and we all hate it - but sometimes, rarely, we come across something so surreal and odd that it comes across as some artist’s bizarre project. In fact, there is now a whole movement in poetry inspired by spam, the unfortunately named ‘spoetry’.
Flash increases its visibility
One of our major issues with Adobe’s Flash, and one of the main reasons we use it sparingly and rarely recommend it to our clients, is that it struggles to be understood by Google and other search engines. This situation has now changed with an initiative by Adobe: they have released code that makes it easier for search engines to read Flash content. This goes some way of removing our concerns.
A key problem remains though: it is still extremely hard to create ‘deep links’ into the content. For example, if this journal post was instead text inside a Flash file, Google would not be able to link to it directly. Therefore even if the text was found, Google would send you to the ‘start’ of the Flash file, forcing the user to then hunt for it. This would be annoying not only for the user, but for us as well. The key way that Google ranks content is to measure the amount of links to it, but as websites can still not link directly to it, Flash remains problematic.
The web vs. newspapers
A good case study from Publishing 2.0 on how ‘old publishing’ concepts are still struggling with the new forms the web are forcing upon it.
Adobe’s Flash, user interface and the iPhone
A great article that discusses why Adobe’s Flash will struggle to happily coexist on Apple’s iPhone – and not for technical reasons. The key issue is that Flash does not use native controls (buttons, drop-down lists, etc.), but instead lets a designer reinvent them. In terms of usability this is a major problem on computers, but when it is transferred to the mobile world, it creates an even larger issue.
Looking for great people
Busy as ever, we’re again looking for new people to join us. Our advertisement is on the ever reliable 37 Signals Job Board. This is what we are looking for:
FoxLand is an emerging brand and user-centred design agency based in London. We are seeking an ambitious web designer to bolster our creative team.
You will have excellent design skills, be adept at CSS and XHTML (and comprehend Flash) and have a near obsession with current web and design trends. A knowledge of PHP/MySQL would be an advantage.
You must be happy to work as part of a team, be comfortable in front of clients and be willing to roll up your sleeves and help with everything.
In return we are offering an ideal environment for you to use and develop your skills and experience on a range of exciting and creative projects.
Please send your CV to iwantthatjob@fox-land.co.uk
Hugg, the enviro-Digg clone
Talking of Digg, take a look at this slightly clunky clone called Hugg, from Treehugger, the environmental issues blog.