Archive for January 2010

The joys of IE6 Last updated:20 March 2010

IE6 logo Find myself in an interesting situation at the moment – enforced usage of IE6 at work. Good reasons for this of course, one application used in this organisation will only work with IE6. Quite a common situation.

What’s interesting is what doesn’t work in IE6 – including two websites for web design agencies I was looking at last week. One of these actually said that their site didn’t work in IE6 and told me to upgrade my browser (I can’t), and the other one just broke (badly) in IE6. Another different site I viewed on the same day used transparent pngs, which aren’t natively supported by IE6. Update: Found another two web design agencies whose pages break in IE6 this week – and these were New Media Age Top 100 agencies as well.

Although I use IE6 at home, I use it exclusively for testing websites I’ve built to make sure they’re OK, so don’t normally come across so many issues.

Personally, at the moment, much as I’d like to ignore IE6, I don’t think it’s acceptable to do so. Excluding people using IE6 from using your website is equivalent to saying, in UK terms, that it’s unavailable in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Or, in US terms, unavailable to most of the people in California.

Blackberrys, naval signalling and thinking for yourself Last updated:20 March 2010

Scott of the Antarctic - David Crane I’m reading this book about Scott’s expeditions to the Antarctic at the moment.

A bit of background information about the Royal Navy particularly interested me. It talks about communication between naval vessels in action. In Nelson’s time in the early 1800s it was very difficult, with the result that each captain had to rely on his own judgement and initiative. By the mid to late 1800s, however, improvements in naval signalling meant that captains relied far more heavily on orders from superior officers, with the result that initiative and individual thought was largely stifled, and the quality of naval leadership suffered badly as a result.

It struck me that there are parallels with today’s “always in touch” culture via mobile phones, emails, Blackberrys and the like, all of which discourage people from using their initiative and making a decision, because there’s always someone else to refer the decision upwards.

Maybe one day a week should be declared “trust your own judgement” day…