A few weeks back, along with many others in the development community, I wrote in response to Microsoft’s announcement that IE8 would implement version targeting, a means of back-dating a site so that it doesn’t break with new releases of the browser.

While my views expressed in Version Targeting: Defaulting to the Past to Spite the Future? were primarily favorable of the new technique, I expressed my concerns with Microsoft’s decision that IE8 and all other browsers to come would default to rendering as if it were the previous release of the browser if the meta tag, which looks like this:

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=x;FF=x;OtherUA=x” />

was omitted, rather than in the current up to date standards mode. Perhaps the pressure of the masses in the standards community, Microsoft has caved and agreed that the default rendering engine of IE8 will now favor standards compliance rather than giving precedence to the fear of breakage. To quote their March 3rd press release:

Microsoft Corp. is now configuring the settings in Internet Explorer 8, the upcoming version of its browser, to render content — by default — using methods that give top priority to Web standards interoperability.

While their official position is that they have reoriented their company focus away from proprietary winner-take-all competitiveness and toward interoperability, a lot of us (those not so trusting), posit that they most likely just couldn’t stand up to the pressure coming from those aligned with the web standards movement.

Honestly, it doesn’t really matter what contributed most to their decision. Either way you look at it, progressive support for standards is a good thing. In the end, with IE8 now in public beta, it seems the IE team is finally looking forward like the rest of us, instead of shoving their proverbial heads up their own asses. Standards will be supported by default.

The topic of version targeting has been all the rage the last 2 days, following Aaron Gustafson’s article for A List Apart and Eric Meyer’s companion piece. IE8 has not only passed the Acid2 test, but in this release it will be taking a new direction on version control, allowing us developers to, rather than rely on the DOCTYPE declaration to attempt to keep our sites in rendered intact, asign a meta element with the browser versions for which the site was coded and tested against. This meta element would look like this:

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=8″ />

Of course, in theory, if all browsers adopt version targeting, you would be able to enter content=”IE=8, ff=2.1, saf=3.0;” so all browsers would perform as though it was the day you coded it.

The logic Microsoft uses to explain their reasoning for going this route in IE8’s development makes perfect sense:

We realized that “Don’t Break the Web” should really be translated to “Don’t change what developers expect IE to do for current pages that are already deployed.”

The benefit, of course, is that if you code and test in IE6, you state this in the meta element or HTTP header, and the browser “pretends” to be IE6 and renders the site accordingly, behaving as the back version of the rendering engine would have. Great. So your code is locked in time, and no matter how many versions of a browser come after, your site will not break. It’ll look the same forever.

However, if you omit the meta http-equivalent, the browser just acts as the backdated version - so IE 8 will act like 7 and render the page using the IE7 rendering engine instead of defaulting to the current standards mode. Read the rest of this entry »

“If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse” -Henry Ford

Every time a mass exodus of my friends and contacts head for the next new social web application, I end up submitting to the email invites to join in too, and jumping on the band wagon. And why? So I can find myself in my current predicament: with innumerable dormant web app accounts and redundant profiles? Like everyone else, I don’t want another account to manage, but the fear of losing touch as everyone you know migrates through the social web drives me to keep on migrating too. Driven by a false sense of manifest destiny and the promise of a faster, bigger better social experience, we move as a mob, and the list of accounts grows longer.

By now most of us agree that we don’t need a bigger, better social experience. Faster horses are not the answer. We need a means to maintain the stable of horses we’ve already acquired. We need a web app to manage our web apps.

Web Applications to Manage Web Applications? Sheesh.

There is a social web app for every aspect of your life, and they are all separated into their own carefully branded interface seated on their own domain. Throw in the typical 2-5 email accounts, an RSS reader, calendar software, project management apps and a dozen other function-specific applications that make our lives easier, and it’s no wonder no one feels like they can stay afloat and manage their personal or professional time well anymore. Who has time to check them all?

If I could only find a web application that does it all: manages social networking accounts, bookmarks, rss feeds, email, project tasks, notes, and business accounting, I would be in heaven (it would be a lame heaven, albeit a calm and stress-free one). At the very least, I wouldn’t feel like these “faster horses” were effectively drawing and quartering me.

Laying it all Out together: Feed Me Seymore

Bringing every account to one table is a tough task, but there are several web apps that are trying to deliver the universal feed: a full buffet of all your accounts into one place. I’ve found that none work particularly well, and all lack important functionality that would deem their site useful.

From what I’ve come across in my quest for the best social site aggregator come life manager, there are about 6 contenders out there: Plaxo Pulse, FriendFeed, ProfileLinker, Fuser, Spokeo, and MyLifeBrand. While all have some ability to pull things together for you, none of them have it right yet.

So far, Plaxo Pulse is probably the most comprehensive of them all, but it still has a lot lacking. Many of its features just don’t work. It’s got more bugs than Windows Vista and as far as I can tell, it only manages your stuff. It doesn’t really do the job on the social connection end of things unless all of your friends sign up and connect their account to yours. You’ve got to do the leg work by inviting everyone you know, and honestly I just don’t have the time to commit to that endeavor for only a moderate payoff toward my goal of total consolidation.

However, in this article, Plaxo and the Universal News Feed, Lawrence Coburn has some good thoughts on how Plaxo could potentially be useful:

If you combine Plaxo’s efforts with Google’s supposed efforts to free up a portable social graph, suddenly Plaxo Pulse gets even more interesting. If Plaxo (or Plaxo members) can easily import their friend, family, and business connections, suddenly all of those stand alone Plaxo data points could be woven together, creating awesome, web wide, open distribution channels for web activity and content of all kinds.

It would be nice if you could manage all of the social networks together in one interface that can spit out feeds on recent activity, deliver your mail, comments, messages, etc. Couple that with unlimited sortability, a Google-quality email interface, the calendar features of iCal and the project management features of Basecamp and I’ll be smitten….or at least have my sanity again.

That said, I won’t hold my breath.

As of late, I can’t seem to get away from music. I’m not talking about just on my iPod and at bars I go to. Literally most of my time this fall has been related to music culture in some way, both at work and at play. Not that I mind this at all.

As Kadoink, a mobile-to-web technology company and a long standing client, I’ve had my hands full designing widget skins for some of the bands they’ve made deals with - Death Cab For Cutie, Postal Service - and more requests continue to come in. The idea is these widgets are simple to embed on any social networking page, or personal website, and allow other users to follow you and your announcements via group text messaging, group calling, music calling, etc.

In the post work day world, I have also found myself indulging in more audio-centric endeavors, and getting back into the music scene at large. Read the rest of this entry »

Accessibility for the web has become a hot topic these days as Target, Inc. finds themselves in the throws of a California court case for their lack of accessibility of Target.com. While Target’s site has undergone a lot of updates to become more accessible to handicapped users since the last time they were in court, on Oct. 14th a judge found that their efforts to date are just not enough. So how much is enough? Well, regardless of disability, a user should be able to navigate the site regardless of disability and reach their “target” objective - in the case of Target, that’s usually buying something (or emailing customer service, checking order statuses, etc.). Read the rest of this entry »