Simplicity Rules

First, let me say something that will shock people who knew me in high school: I love my Mac. With that out of the way, here’s one of the few things that really ticks me off about the current Mac OS:

Whenever I install the latest patches and security updates, I am greeted with this non-choice. I usually minimize the window, ignoring it all day until I feel like restarting… or shutting down.

It’s hard to believe that Apple is letting Microsoft beat them at any UI game, but here’s the much more user-friendly option from Windows XP:

There is some interesting Census data on households with computers, separated by state (via DTM). It also contains the percentage that have internet access. Nationwide, less than 62% of households have a computer, while almost 55% have internet access. This data is two years old, but still may surprise those of us who live our lives online.

Check out a more readable version, sorted by least households with a computer. Or, import it into your spreadsheet using this comma-delimited file.

As an aside, it would be interesting to see how many of those without a computer or internet access do have it available at work.

Life seems to move in themes. Today’s theme is rascally pennies and nickels, money I’d rather not track.

Over the last six months, I’ve been doing some moving around of my residence and office. Today I opened a final bill from my phone company, QWest. For four days of September, I was billed eleven cents in service fees. I looked up at my mailbox, where I’ve stored a refund from QWest from when I changed my office line. The check, by coincidence, was for eleven cents.

I turned the check over and signed it to the order of QWest. We’ll see how it goes. It cost me a stamp, but at least I didn’t have to write an eleven cent check.

For several years, I have been rounding up when I pay bills. If the electric bill is $42.81, I pay $43. Then I let them worry about crediting me nineteen cents. My original reason for doing this was to simplify my bank statement by only using whole dollar amounts… but it didn’t work.

My health insurance deducts automatically and always an amount that includes cents. I would gladly let them round up, like I do with electricity, but I don’t have that option when they extract the amount directly from my checking. When I use my debit card to buy a book from Amazon, I see the same problem. And though I make purchases often from Amazon, they don’t have a system to maintain my small credit from one purchase to another.

Bank of America has introduced a program called Keep The Change where they solve the debit example above. They round up on every debit purchase and deposit the remainder into your savings account.

If only they extended this to all transactions (including that pesky health insurance transfer), I’d be in. And I’m not even a BofA customer.

When I first started WifiPDX, I cobbled together some HTML. It’s been a year since then and definitely time for a new look. Among the things I wanted were the simple pleasures like a consistent navigation between pages and readable text.

I’m more than pleased with the results. The new site was designed by Elliot Swan.

Brian’s tale of the Web 2.0 conference reminds me of my trip to SXSW 2000, at the height of Web 1.0:

The thing that struck me the hardest about the first two days of Web2.0: the greed. The smell of money. The possibility of money. The imminence
of money. Gobs of it. Truckloads. More than you could ever count. Huge,
massive sums of money. The place was drenched in the presence of and
desire for money. All of it. Now. Sooner than now. Gimme.

Still in college, I remember feeling like if I had expressed interest, I could get a job along with that free shirt, just for knowing HTML.

I still bristle a bit about the term “Web 2.0.” The fact that they had a conference all about it last week is kind of strange, considering how nobody seems to agree on what exactly it is. That said, Kareem Mayan’s eighteen quotes from the Web 2.0 Conference provide lots of great nuggets about building a website in 2005.

A couple of my faves:

“eBay has 150M customers, in the nicest terms, that’s 150M people who have learned to trust strangers.” - eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, on how business can be an engine of positive social change

“[In 5-10 years, the value in media] will be in the companies who can grow audiences, not in those who control content.” - Vinod Khosla, former General Partner at Kleiner Perkins

Read them all

When it comes to the web, I was a curmudgeon in my early twenties. Among many firm beliefs, I was against requiring JavaScript. To do so seemed like a bad idea since its browser support was unpredictable and many people disabled it due to popups ¹. Most web folks agreed with me at the time, but a new, bigger crowd has gathered, creating a second approach to JavaScript.

The two approaches:

1. Never require JavaScript, because your site might break.
2. Only support select browsers with settings just so. Use otherwise at your own risk.

Both of these approaches are pretty single-minded. Google Maps sort of lent credence to the second approach, much like ESPN’s 2003 redesign fueled the modern CSS layout explosion.

However, I have been searching for a middle ground in my work with BestPlaces. For one, some of our partners fall into the group that does not want to require JavaScript. Secondly, providing technical support can be a nightmare:

• Users don’t know what JavaScript is.
• Users don’t know how to enable JavaScript (and there is an additional pain for the supporter in navigating the preferences of every browser type).
• Users don’t know that they disabled JavaScript (maybe nephew did it two years ago to stop popups).
• Most importantly, nobody likes being told that they are unsupportable and it looks unprofessional to pass the buck.

Since it was such a long-believed creed that JavaScript should not be required, we are pretty good at designing sites this way. It seems like even the most JavaScript-heavy apps, like Google Maps, could be designed first without JavaScript and then adding the bits that make it so much easier to use.

Ryan Campbell agrees that we can degrade gently and he even shows how to do it. I’m all for giving up my curmudgeonly past, but I don’t want to forget the lessons that got us here. Let’s be responsible, let’s stop the buck. JavaScript recommended, not JavaScript required.

1 - Flash tangent: With Flash popups on the rise, look out for increased use of Flash blockers unless someone (browsers? Macromedia?) creates a means of blocking Flash popups.

Every now and again there comes along a piece of software that I completely love. The common user experience is about combatting programmed logic in order to make an application do what you want. Begin a logical person, I’m pretty good at putting up with this. But for me to love software, it has to feel natural. And natural is how it feels with Firefox and me.

There are many things I dig, starting with the tabbed browser window, which I will never give up. But the feature that has me all a’flutter is Quick Searching, also called Smart Keywords.

Defining a word, searching the web, and looking up the stats on my favorite baseball player–or actor–has never been easier. Simplify your online life today and get Firefox.