If you have read as many web design books as I have you find that they fall into basically two categories:
Well Internet Explorer 8 is out of Beta and has finally been released. It didn’t meet the IE8 in 2008 proclamation that some where betting on. But no matter at least it is here, better late than never, eh.
Yes it’s faster meaner, clean and generally a better browser than IE7. There is lots of fancy stuff I can’t use from a design view as other browsers don’t support it, but innovation is still good. As a User Experience designer, it’s a nicer browser to work with. It lines up and supports most of the standards, mind you I do suspect it was written to pass Acid 2 specifically and not o be complaint with all of the upcoming W3C guidelines.
I was having a discussion the other day with some fellow web designer friends on the skills that you required to be stay in this field long term.
Sure we all agreed you need to at least have the core design skills, understanding of layout, colour theory, typography and the usual tricks of the trade. The platform that you used to deliver your designs was immaterial, be that Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks or the like it didn’t really matter, the end result was what was important. That’s a given.
For the last few months I have noted on average across my clients sites that IE6 has now slipped to below 40%. Okay this is just a magical number. But for me it has great significance. This is the tipping point for an aging browser on the decline. At this point it goes from the pixel perfect section on the browser compliance matrix to the section major resemblance. This is the grey zone between perfection and the old fall back graceful degradation.
Gary Barber
I'm an independent User Experience Designer. I design and enhance complete web user experiences (websites), usable web interfaces, build web architectures, prototypes, conduct usability & accessibility tests or audits.
I just make your websites better than they are.
Want to find out more about me.
Need a specialist or an extra pair of hands...
Hire MeThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
