24ways not to impress people
This year’s edition of the web geek advent calendar 24ways has arrived and caused a bit of a stir on twitter. One of the reasons is the people behind 24ways thought to hell with bad browsers we are going to use CCS3 and rgba which only works in Firefox, Safari & Chrome. Unfortunately they did not think much of people using Opera, IE6, IE7 or who browse without javascript.
Well this might work well with all the cool kids who use cool browsers. But what about those stuck behind a corporate firewall with only the corporate browser to work with, people who use IE because it is convenient or people who don’t know better. What about progressive enhancement or graceful degradation and telling people why they should upgrade to a better browser. No this is sticking two fingers in their face and saying we don’t care about you.
So back luck if you are a budding web designer/developer still using IE7 and you head over to 24ways to learn, because you will be put off completely by the very ugly interface which is challenging to use. So instead head over to the Aussie advent calendar Web Mixed Grill which welcomes all browsers good, bad and in between.
PS. Ben you still qualify as cool kid using a cool browser, even if it is Opera.
Update December 2 2008: 24ways now looks much better in IE6 & IE7, by using conditional comments and a separate stylesheet to provide RGB colours. It would of been better in the original CSS to give the colours (background and text) a RGB value then a RGBA value, because browsers that don’t understand RGBA should ignore them completely (and IE6 behaves correctly) and it would looked better in Opera.
December 1st, 2008 at 2:42 pm
You can kinda understand wanting to thumb their noses at IE, but pretty poor form to ignore Opera too (yes, I’m another one of those who uses it on a regular basis — don’t know if you have anything to do with The Web Mixed Grill but the comments look a bit out of whack in Opera too).
December 1st, 2008 at 3:17 pm
John, thumbing their noses at IE is one thing, sticking their fingers up your nose if you use IE is another.
I do use Opera on a semi regular basis, Opera Mobile my browser of choice for my phone.
PS it looks like Matt fixed any problems with Opera and comments over at Web Mixed Grill
December 1st, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Actually that layout bug in the comments of mixed grill is a typo *blushes* fixing it now.
Although I am embarrassed to say I didn’t test it in Opera, but there really isn’t anything crazy in the layout, so it should just “work” (and it does :P)
Mind you, it doesn’t look particularly good in IE6 though :)
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:27 am
LOL :) Yeah yeah I’m the one who uses Opera.
The whole thing was a bit strange — I do think they could have saved themselves some grief by leading with a post explaining their build rationale/status (would also have given a clear feedback point, rather than spamming the first article).
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:54 am
Ben, I agree, a lead post explaining build logic, technique and status would of been good as well as clear feedback point. I would of like to point out how I would of done it. Give the colours (background and text) a RGB value then a RGBA value, because browsers that don’t understand RGBA should ignore them completely (and IE6 behaves correctly). But I will not spam an article not about it.
You are not the only Opera user to visit this blog. Opera counts for 3% of all visitors. And as previously stated I am a huge fan of Opera Mobile 9.5. So any crazy stuff, like a new design (coming sometime I promise) will work in Opera.
December 4th, 2008 at 8:00 am
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December 15th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I’m not feeling the Christmas love at 24ways.org…
I get that the “Woo, let’s all pile on 24ways.org” thing is well over a week old, but it’s only just now that I’ve sat down and thought about what it is precisely that gets up my nose about the.…..