The problem with browsers

Opera Unite, Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 8, Chrome, Safari 4. The recent spate of browsers that will “revolutionize the way people surf the internet” seems to be as prolific as the emergence of search engines (read: Bing, WolframAlfa, Cuil).

I didn’t even know half of these existed.

It certainly doesn’t help it with the common consumer either - a non-scientific poll of passersby showed less than 1 in 10 knew how to differentiate a browser from a search engine.

As a web developer, regardless of memory usage, speed, and whether or not it can act as a local web server, the underlying problem is compatibility. Internet Explorer and Firefox each grab a different share of the online market — the former are likely to be less tech/geek savvy than the latter, for example — and each have their ever so slight but nonetheless existing differences in rendering the same content. What with HTML5 arriving soon and brand new semantic markup on the horizon, cross-browser compatibility is likely to still be a big and unforgiving nightmare.

Consider for example that the Internet Explorer landscape now includes IE6, 7 and 8. IE6 is still widely used in applications that don’t change much (in industry and services, for example), while IE7 and IE8 are adopted as Windows sneaks by unsuspecting users with their Automatic Updates. Developing for IE6 and IE7 was hard enough, with the need for hacks and hidden stylesheets where proper markup would not do. With IE8, does it mean I need two virtual machines, if not more?

I can’t wait until the Adobe BrowserLab opens up.

Home Sweet American Culture

As I have had the opportunity of house hunting in the past few weeks in a few areas of Massachussetts, it gave me a few things to consider.

• Some homes are just too darned big, in my opinion, but clearly aren’t big enough for some.
• The American Dream, if there’s any remain of it in the present day, is largely centered around the home. The idea of maintaining a family, having a job, and establishing social status revolves around the home, and appears to be the overarching desire for everyone. If you are wealthy, you are expected to have a home that reflects that wealth. In a sense, it almost appears as though the home defines the family, whereas I have seen elsewhere in the world (particularly in Japan, where land and space is so scarce) where the family defines the home, and hence it is a home regardless of what sort of structure it is or what size it occupies.
• When it comes to homes, it seems one can hardly be satisfied with what one has. This is a blatant generalization and my personal opinion.

And since I didn’t know the difference between a Colonial style and a Victorian style home, here is my attempt to explain. Granted, both Victorian and Colonial architecture have finer subcategories, but for a rough guide, it’s a short summary.

The style that emerged during the Victorian era (1840 - 1900) in England often involves homes with a turret (a small tower), wood detailing and a wraparound veranda. Keep an eye out for finer woodwork detailing and frilly bits.

A typical New England Victorian construction. Photo by Daniel Jeffries

By comparison, a Colonial architecture style has a largely pan-European (German, Dutch, Spanish) influence and tend to be more squarish with large windows and fewer, if any, verandas. Colder New England weather necessitates multiple fireplaces, and windows may often have shutters. For the New England homes, there are often gables on the side and an entrance in the middle.

A classic Colonial home. Photo by Mary Lesh

Radio button UI

An online banking security prompt asks me whether or not the computer I’m using is a public computer or not:

Problem: Even though there is a lot of text associated with each radio button, I have to navigate to the button itself each time to select one or the other option (frustratingly, the site assumes that whenever I connect I want it to think I’m on a private computer, which is never always the case).

Resolution: use labels and ids, as follows:

Compare this to the rather less convenient

Identified problems: using a table structure with cells breaks the label’s power to associate the button with the text.

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