Notes from a wireframe world

Lets consign IE6 to the dustbin of history, let never have to think about that terrible product again!

It seams to be the whole of the design/developer communities manta at the momentum, but is it really the right one? Can we really forget about IE6 and more the point should we.

Everyone has there own list of reasons why IE6 is the spore of Satan and why we should forgo thinking about it at all, however no matter how hard we wish, there is still more than %20 of the people out there running IE6, think about this for a second, more than one in five visitors to your site is using a web browser most of us would rather we didn’t support.

Well I hear people cry, throes using IE6 need to be educated, told, that it’s a pile of and then they will start using a real browser like firefox or chrome or at least upgrade to IE7/8. However the sad fact is that most of throes people can’t. There not the kind of people who love the blink tag[1]. IE7 became a forced upgrade to windows, so either the IE6 users out there have, by choose refused to upgrade or something is stopping them doing so.

That something is IT management at large companies. No sysadmin worth there salt is going to let users upgrade any bit of software, let-alone something as non-critical as a web browser unless there is a very good reason to do so, and it has been throughly tested to ensure it doesn’t either create any more security holes and doesn’t brake something else, more critical, on the network.

So they are not going to upgrade there users to IE7 (let alone IE8 or firefox) until Microsoft stops supporting it, regardless of how many pop-up boxes you display on websites telling people to upgrade.

So we’re not going to get throes 20% of people to upgrade, so what shall we do? Just ignore them? Well doing so will lose your client 20% of there customers straight-a-way do you really want them coming to you 6 months after a project ends and asking you why all there corporate account suddenly left and went somewhere else?

So do we need to forget nice rounded corners etc? The answer is of course no. however your site should follow the principles of progressive enhancement (or Graceful Degradation, depending on which side your standing) and design your site so it looks good (not the same just good and usable) in less powerful browsers, be that IE6, the iPhone or a screen reader.

Is that really such a huge price to pay? Should we really be spending our time hating a bit of software we have no control over? or should we be spending our time making accessible attractive sites?

P.S. IE7’s just as bad as 6.

The problem of how to manage your content on your website has kept web masters up at night since the first time Tim-Bernard Lee set-up a web browser/server. Since the mid ninety’s however the most one of the most common methods has been to install a CMS (Content Management System).
As with many things on the internet, huge holy wars have erupted over which CMS is best, in reality of course different CMS’s have different uses, for example I use both Wordpress and Joomla on this site, Wordpress for this blog and Joomla for the main site.

That said however I think it’s still worth comparing three of the most popular CMS’s if nothing more to than to point out there weaknesses to there fan’s and there selling points to there critics.

To do this I’ll look at what I consider the three most important points you should consider when looking at two or more different CMS’s that will do the job you need them to do (which of course is the whole point of installing the dam things!), and just for fun score them against the three.

Drupal

• Learning curve

Drupal is a powerful bit of software, and with that power comes a steep learning curve, it’s admin interface can be confusing especially for new sysadmins, these problems are well known and should be fixed in version 7 however there is no current release date for version 7 3/10

• Community

Drupal lives or dies by it’s community, unlike the other CMS’s here very little of Drupal exists in the core software, most of it is installed via moduals written by third-party programmers. This has lead to Drupal having a huge highly engadged community, with over 450,000 people signed up at Drupal.org and over 2,000 developers, the last major Drupal conference held in Washington DC this year attracted over 1400 people. 10/10

• Security

Like all software Drupal suffers from the occasional security hole however Drupal’s security team fix these holes as they arise and release updates as and when. There is also a security mailing list and RSS feed to keep users informed. 6/10

Total Score 19/30
Joomla

• Learning curve

Joomla is fairly easy to get to grips with, unlike Drupal it’s admin backend is somewhat easy to understand. It does however take a few hours to get to grips with, things like the section/category/article hierarchy take a bit to understand. That said there are a huge number of on-line user guides that can speed the process up. 6/10

• Community

While not as large or as active as Drupal’s community Joomla does still have a very active community of developers and admins, who are very willing to help the new sysadmin or programmer find his or her feet. There is a large repository of extensions to Joomla which are updated regularly. 8/10

• Security

While as with Drupal there have been a number of security issues relating to Joomla, including on which last year left most of the sites using the then beta version 1.5 defaced. Joomla gets on top of them quickly. 6/10

Total Score 20/30

Wordpress

• Learning curve

Wordpress is different to the other CMS’s as it’s primary a bloging platform, however it’s learning curve is such that you can quickly become an expert on it, and so it have been used to a huge number of different functions. 10/10

• Community

Wordpress also, like Drupal and Joomla has an active community, and a growing number of extensions, however in my experance it’s not quite up to the level of the other two platforms, possibly because the platform it’s self is so easy to learn that people feel they don’t need to help others. 5/10

• Security

WordPress currently (as of April 2009) has 7 unpatched security, does any more need to be said? 1/10

Wordpress score 16/10

Do you disagree with my scoring? do you agree? please use the comment box below to let me know.