I participate in an online community of web designers in the Baltimore/Washington area. A recent post discussed how one employee of a local company couldn’t access her employer’s new web site from her Mac (the same Mac the employer provided for work purposes). When she approached the site’s designer, she was essentially told “good luck with your problem.” This is wrong on so many levels, and I thought it was worth a mention here.

The “web designer” in this case (I use that term lightly, given his clear refusal to follow basic standards-based design) obviously is not very experienced. If he were, he would know that in this day and age it is not difficult to create a site that works on both Mac and Windows platforms (Mac IE aside). If this were 5 years ago, I might cut him some slack and say maybe he needed to take advantage of some Windows IE-only technologies for the bulk of his site’s audience. But in 2007, I am of the opinion that those old Windows IE-only technologies have largely fallen by the wayside in favor of platform-independent/browser-independent (standards-based) technologies. In other words, it’s not that hard to make a site work on both platforms! Geesh!

For all those PC users, I will concede that the percentage of Mac users is 10% of the market at best. However, that does not let this designer (or any others) off the hook from creating cross-platform functional web sites, unless you are sure your audience contains no Mac users (i.e., you’re creating a private site for a group of PC only users)… otherwise it’s pretty lazy to ignore this typically very vocal and very loyal (albeit small) portion of the audience.

Those of us who’ve been in this industry for some time likely remember the dot-com-crash from a few years back. I suppose everyone remembers it, but those of us who were directly impacted definitely have *stronger* memories (or should I call those nightmares?).

During the glory days, I was first an employee of the largest web development firm in the company, and then a freelancer living high off the fact that everyone seemed willing to pay top dollar for a basic web site. I remember my first job as a freelancer - it was for a software company just outside of Boston. The amount of money they paid me for a simple marketing site would buy that same company a CMS and lots of fancy back-end stuff today. Ahh… the good old days…

But wait - did I mention the web is back? I’m once again freelancing (after two stints at full-time positions) and am finding (especially recently) that web firms are busier than they have been in five years. I’ve been consulting for a few advertising agencies in the Baltimore area, and each has told me they have seen steady growth in their web services over the past few years. In fact, this year has seen huge growth for a few — causing them to need people like me (which is certainly not a bad thing).

So I’m left wondering - is the web (or rather web development) here to stay now? I think so. The types of projects I’m seeing are not the crazy high-budget fancy-graphics sites of the late 90s. Instead, these are well-thought-out, productivity-boosting, customer-satisfying sites that are being integrated into the daily lives of the people using them. And if that’s true, then the future looks a bit brighter than it has in recent years for folks like me.

P.S. This is why I haven’t posted in a while - I have actually been BUSY!!!

Jakob Nielsen’s latest alertbox article discusses the “participation inequality” that undoubtedly fuels most online communities. Although this concept has been studied on the web for many years, I’m sure it’s also found in offline communities… which is why I added “no big surprise” to the title of this post.

When I became pregnant with my first child eight years ago, I joined an online community for moms-to-be with due dates in the same month as mine. I posted to the site almost daily, and fed off the comments and advice provided by my virtual friends. I eventually became involved in the maintenance of the community, once people found out what I did “for a living.” In doing so, I first realized how true participation inequality is. We had over 100 members, but less than a quarter posted at least once a week. Why? I think the answer is pretty simple — some members had stronger support systems offline, to help with the impending birth, while others (myself included) lived away from family and were the first among our offline friends to get pregnant. We sought a support system online because we couldn’t find one offline in our physical communities.

I think most online communities are the same — those who are most involved tend to lack that type of support/friendship offline. For example, I am a freelancer who works mostly from home. So which community am I most active in right now online? One that brings together others with similar work situations. I no longer am active in an online mom’s group, because I’ve built up a strong offline support group through my daughters’ friends’ families, our church, and so on.

Anyway, I realize at this point I am rambling, but that is the point of a personal blog, right?

I recently read about some designers who adhere to Occam’s Razor as a key principle by which they develop web sites. You can click the link to see a definition in Wikipedia, but essentially it refers to the “law of succinctness.”

In web development, this means if there are two possible ways to solve a problem, the lesser complicated solution always wins.

Hmmm… I’m not sure I completely agree. Don’t get me wrong–I don’t advocate needlessly complicating projects. However, I do subscribe to another theory that may contradict Occam’s razor from time to time. Call it “Wendy’s Usability Check” if you like, but it goes something like this: Nine times out of 10, something that makes the designer’s life easier ends up making the user’s life more difficult.

I’m not even sure where I first heard that phrase, but it was enough years ago to become a part of virtually every project I encounter. My point is this… if Occam’s razor tells me to select the least complicated method of developing a site, that should mean I’ve selected the method of site development to ultimately make the user’s life less complicated (regardless of whether it affects mine). What do you think?

I recently returned from spending several weeks living in a small cabin in Maine. We were visiting my husband’s family, who run a summer camp there. The camp is at the end of a two-mile dirt road and surrounding by water on three sides. This makes for a beautiful spot to vacation, but a terrible spot to receive reliable Internet access. While the camp has had wireless Internet access for the past few years, the provider went belly up and no one has yet filled that void. The provider continues to maintain the wireless signal for himself (so he can have wireless Internet access at his home, near the camp), but it’s an on-again-off-again type of signal at best. While I was there, I couldn’t even download a song in iTunes, let alone surf to my heart’s content.

OK, let me get to my point… in recent years we’ve seen a huge increase in the number of broadband Internet users. This has led a large majority of web designers to basically ignore the dial-up users. Yes, ignore. OK, so we haven’t created 2MB home pages, but we have gradually let our file sizes increase. Come on, I’m admitting it… you can too!

Using that very intermittent (at best) connection was a good chance to see how dial-up users feel. I even have a few family members who still use dial-up, not because they want to, but because they live in rural parts of the country not yet served by any other connection type. (Don’t even get me started on satellite - it’s way to expensive for the average home user.)

So now I’m designing with fresh eyes, or rather the eyes I had many years ago before I found DSL. I certainly am not designing primarily for dial-up users, but I am at least looking again to make sure my sites aren’t unbearable for them.