Posts by Neil Walker

It has now been over nine years since Microsoft released Internet Explorer 6, which has never been fully compliant with the standards set out by the CSS Working Group, a part of W3C. Since this time, we have learned a lot about the web and because of IE6 we know now what to account for.

Thanks to the progress made, new browsers started to be more and more advanced, capable of displaying CSS2.1 code properly and these apps were far more usable than IE itself.

As soon as W3C announced the first drafts of the CSS3 standards, competition distanced itself from Microsoft by applying these drafts and allowing their users to view richer content and designers can harness the power of new tools.

This is where the “progressive enhancement” term was born. It is the way we code that leaves the full functionality and ultimate accessibility for older browsers with the base layout, while complimenting modern browsers by applying some advanced styling that is unavailable for Internet Explorer (any version).

Nice shadows, rounded corners and a lot of advanced features like font embedding are enriching the experience for users who browse the web using anything other than IE. This is a way to drag users away from the old browsers which are not capable of handling any advanced styling.

Clients expect to see the website the same way in every single browser, while it is impossible without using hacks and basically forcing the old browsers, like IE6 to do these things with JavaScript and using bugs and quirks as a way round serious issues with compatibility.

Recent researches proves that the end-user does not care about slight differences between the browsers as long as he/she has an intuitive interface and allows them to perform all the necessary tasks they want to do.

The progressive enhancement approach is a way to get rid of old and unwanted browsers and technologies while allowing designers and end-users to embrace the pure goodness that CSS3 and HTML5 have brought us.

Matthew Morek
Web Designer

Throughout the evolution of the internet and internet marketing, we have all noticed how big an impact these have had on our lives. The customer became the main reason to push designers and developers to making online shopping bigger, better and – what is most important – safer.

In order to achieve all these milestones we have to research the market, get to know web-users’ preferences and find their niche. What could help us encourage Google to point potential customers towards our website?

Images are a very important part of the web. Ten years ago we use to have limited bandwidths and the quality of development work was really poor due to the technological problems and no competition between the internet browsers and so images were really just a part of the “luxury” goods. Now, images are everywhere, they hit us hard from any website with nice anti-aliased edges, impressive styling and beautiful colours.

By taking care of our design and providing customers with really usable websites, you can do much more than increase your revenues – you can let the world know that you do care about how the web looks. Get your designer to work and let him spruce up your shop with a nice promotional banner, a stunning-looking header or buttons.

In the long term, customers do look at your design because if you don’t take care of the way your website looks, this will impact on the way in which your customer views your business.

Matthew Morek
Web Designer