Why Wait Webs

Apple, developer of Mac OS X

Ok, it’s true. I am a big fan of Apple products. I do most of my work on a 24 inch iMac, and I find myself using my iPhone constantly throughout the day. I like these products because I’ve tried the alternatives, and I have found that for me, these are by far the best solutions. However, even though I’m a fan of Macs, I would never condone a website that doesn’t support PCs. I believe that right now, there is no reason why EVERYTHING computers can do shouldn’t be done cross-platform. That means OS X, and even Linux.

You see, applications and websites that are built from the ground up with these smaller platforms in mind don’t take any extra effort. Supporting an extra 12% or so of the market is easy to do, but yet so few developers do it. I came across an excellent article today about why game developers should support Mac OS X and Linux. But the concept extends beyond just game developers. Software developers of any kind, including website developers, should take heed to this information. Continue reading to see why.

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A lot of people put their email address on their website, either as plain text, or as a link to their email address which will open the user’s default email client with the “To:” field automatically filled out. And why shouldn’t they? That’s what email addresses are for, right? To give to people who want to contact you. While this worked great several years ago, one thing has made this a very bad idea on the web today:

Spam.

Spam ruins everything, doesn’t it? These days, many spammers employ robots that crawl the web, going from site to site looking for email addresses to put on their list. These spambots are so prevalent now that putting your email address on the web for all to see is like sending an email to all the spammers that says “please send me all your offers!” But what are we supposed to do? Here are a few solutions that will allow people to email you with a greatly decreased risk of being placed on everyone and their brother’s spam list.

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I would like to take this moment to personally congratulate Barack Obama on his recent victory in the 2008 presidential election. Regardless of your political stance, I think we can all agree that this is an extremely momentous occasion in U.S. history!

Additionally, as a designer, I have to admire the amazing things that Obama has done with his campaign. It is difficult to communicate all that they have done in such a short space. Suffice to say that the effective use of technology and 21st century tools shows remarkable design and vision.

So from Why Wait Webs, I offer a heartfelt congratulations on running the best campaign in history, and on overcoming tremendous odds to become the first person of African descent to assume the office of President of the United States of America!

One of my most popular services is my ability to work with Flash. I believe in Flash, and what it can do. But that’s not what this article is about. Just because I believe in and use something doesn’t mean it’s the end-all, be-all to web design and development! In fact, Flash has a TON of downsides that I think should be taken into consideration every time you’re thinking about using Flash on your website.

The logo for Adobe Flash CS4

For those of you who don’t know, Adobe Flash, formerly Macromedia Flash (and before that, “FutureSplash”), is a web plugin technology. Developers make animations, games, and other media using any of the Flash Authoring Environments (most notably Flash itself). The end-user downloads the plugin for their browser, and then views the content integrated or embedded into the page.

Flash has been around for quite a while now, and through the years it has been used for animation, games, all kinds of other interactive media, and even full-on websites or web applications. Rightly or wrongly, Flash has been adopted by both consumers and developers as the standard for all of these things. This is evidenced by the fact that today 99 out of 100 Internet-capable computers have Flash plugin installed (statistic provided by Adobe).

Both designers and business owners alike should seriously weigh their options when it comes to implementing Flash as part or all of their website.

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With this article, I am going to attempt to convince you to stop using Internet Explorer for web browsing on a day-to-day basis. I will start with a brief history of the Internet, just to get you familiarized with the subject if you aren’t already. Then I will move on to the 5 reasons you should switch away from the most popular web browser, Internet Explorer. After that, I will introduce you to my favorite alternatives to Internet Explorer and show you how easy it is to switch (you won’t lose all your favorites!). Well, let’s get going!

A Brief History

I will try to keep this as brief as I know how, since I could easily go into A LOT of detail about it! If you’re interested in reading more in-depth, you should definitely check out this great article: History of the Web Standards Project at WebStandards.org.

The two most popular web browsers at the beginning of the world wide web.

A web browser is what you use to view the world wide web. In the early days of the web, there were two vastly different web browsers duking it out for supremacy: Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator (logos pictured to the right). Each browser was developed completely independently of the other, and as such, the technologies were complex and wildly varying. Pages rarely, if ever, looked the same in both browsers, and as a result the web as a whole was made a less compatible, less accessible, and generally less fun place to be.

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