Top innovation killers (for web developers)
Time for some ranting and finger-pointing. But are these problems not opportunities?
make sure your fancy webapp keeps working on IE6
Not sure how much of an innovation killer - but for sure the top cost causer in web development. Add up all hours you need to fiddle around with CSS and JS hacking - and send the bill to Microsoft. I'm certain it would be cheaper for Microsoft to pay the necessary work to remove the hurdles inside enterprises, so they can update to a recent browser - vs. paying all your IE6 hacking bills? Anybody did the math?
Yes - Internet Explorer 6 has still around 25% market share (that is as much as Firefox and Safari together!)
send SMS worldwide (to a decent price)
Beyond simplicity - the success of Twitter is thanks to the clever use of SMS to keep users involved. There is one problem with SMS - the cost for sending them to your international users. Twitter had to shut-down the service for Europe - in process to negotiate prices with the telcos. Aren't there businesses specialized in SMS gateways with wholesale prices for worldwide usage?
We would see a lot more websites using SMS as "remote command line" to keep users updated and involved.
building Webapps like we did Microsoft Access projects in 1997
Imagine you have a meeting with your client/product manager - while talking about the wireframes, functional design and change requests - you can just roughly do them and instantly see the result to iterate with feedback. Yes - I did that back in 1997 (with MS Access). It's hard to find people today that can do that using the web technology stack. Am I missing something? (True - I'm impressed by the Django admin-forms)
location awareness in mobile browsers
We will remember 2008 as the year where location awareness came to mobile phones (Assisted GPS, Loki and other techniques made it possible). But wait! I'm a web developer and I can't get the users location from the handset. Why is it again Google that gets the stuff done? Hello Nokia? Sony Ericsson? Apple?
Why would I want location? Because websites should be able to adapt to my current location. You don't get it? Buy yourself an iPhone and get a treat with location-based apps.
hear when people are swearing in front of your site
Wisdom of the crowds applied to your web site usability. You would be surprised how much insights you would win when you could listen to them. Simple trick: add a shout box into the footer. Keep track of page, browser, screen resolution, shout and start learning! Much more could be done here.. (Read more on how to catch in-front-of-website-swearing)
micro-billing never took off
Paypal helped a lot. But it's not efficient to transfer small amounts of money. I find it interesting to see how Amazon is handling it's Webservices pricing - a model for the future? But then again - it kind of works with "free".
The HTTP spec has a return code 402 - Payment Required. -> "This code is reserved for future use."
Update September 16th:
Comment on reddit: "Pretty shitty list."
Fair enough. Come up with your own list of guesses why for example:
make sure your fancy webapp keeps working on IE6
Not sure how much of an innovation killer - but for sure the top cost causer in web development. Add up all hours you need to fiddle around with CSS and JS hacking - and send the bill to Microsoft. I'm certain it would be cheaper for Microsoft to pay the necessary work to remove the hurdles inside enterprises, so they can update to a recent browser - vs. paying all your IE6 hacking bills? Anybody did the math?
Yes - Internet Explorer 6 has still around 25% market share (that is as much as Firefox and Safari together!)
send SMS worldwide (to a decent price)
Beyond simplicity - the success of Twitter is thanks to the clever use of SMS to keep users involved. There is one problem with SMS - the cost for sending them to your international users. Twitter had to shut-down the service for Europe - in process to negotiate prices with the telcos. Aren't there businesses specialized in SMS gateways with wholesale prices for worldwide usage?
We would see a lot more websites using SMS as "remote command line" to keep users updated and involved.
building Webapps like we did Microsoft Access projects in 1997
Imagine you have a meeting with your client/product manager - while talking about the wireframes, functional design and change requests - you can just roughly do them and instantly see the result to iterate with feedback. Yes - I did that back in 1997 (with MS Access). It's hard to find people today that can do that using the web technology stack. Am I missing something? (True - I'm impressed by the Django admin-forms)
location awareness in mobile browsers
We will remember 2008 as the year where location awareness came to mobile phones (Assisted GPS, Loki and other techniques made it possible). But wait! I'm a web developer and I can't get the users location from the handset. Why is it again Google that gets the stuff done? Hello Nokia? Sony Ericsson? Apple?
Why would I want location? Because websites should be able to adapt to my current location. You don't get it? Buy yourself an iPhone and get a treat with location-based apps.
hear when people are swearing in front of your site
Wisdom of the crowds applied to your web site usability. You would be surprised how much insights you would win when you could listen to them. Simple trick: add a shout box into the footer. Keep track of page, browser, screen resolution, shout and start learning! Much more could be done here.. (Read more on how to catch in-front-of-website-swearing)
micro-billing never took off
Paypal helped a lot. But it's not efficient to transfer small amounts of money. I find it interesting to see how Amazon is handling it's Webservices pricing - a model for the future? But then again - it kind of works with "free".
The HTTP spec has a return code 402 - Payment Required. -> "This code is reserved for future use."
Update September 16th:
Comment on reddit: "Pretty shitty list."
Fair enough. Come up with your own list of guesses why for example:
- your company has (still) not made its processes transparent to customers over the web (what has that to do with me as web developer? - go figure!)
- although you are a talented developer - creating a good web GUI has turned into specialist job (and generally takes too long to get done)
- you spend more time with software infrastructure than solving your real challenge
"Aren't there businesses specialized in SMS gateways with wholesale prices for worldwide usage"
There are some, the one I know about as being one of the major neutral gateways into the SMS world is clickatell, http://www.clickatell.com/
The main issue with SMS is that the sender has to pay the terminating network, and the terminating network decides on the price.
Posted by
Trix |
September 14, 2008 8:11 PM
I totally agree with all that. I find it really strange that we have come to accept those facts and work ourselves to find other solutions to go around those problems (hacks). Sadly it's easier to accept than to act/react.
Posted by
lejoe |
September 14, 2008 10:14 PM
Yeah, but what do I do now, when my project needs to be redesigned for IE8 use? (And I don't mean just using the MetaTag and show the site as it would be in IE7.)
I mean, when it should be remodeled for IE8 and should therefore work perfectly in FF and other browsers (that is what I am hoping, anyway). But I still need the whole Site to work on IE6 and IE7, as these Browsers are still in Use?
How shal I handle this? Any suggestions?
Posted by
Dawn |
September 15, 2008 9:43 AM
Innovation comes out of frustration, most of the time. There are no needs to innovate when everything works as expected.
About the “wisdom of crowd” applied to your website, the first rule of usability is: “Don't Listen to Users” (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010805.html)
To defend MSIE, the situation isn't going te be better. Back in 2000, there were MSIE and NN (and some webTV in the U.S.). Today we have 4 important rendering engines for desktop clients: Gecko (Firefox), Webkit (Safari, Chrome), Presto (Opera) and Trident (MSIE). (http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/gbs/) The mobile is going to be huge, it's already in Asia, and more or less, all those engines want to be on the mobile or already are with the iPhone, Opera mini, ... So, we have now 8 possibilities. You also have 3 main kind of surfers: you and I, web crawlers and disabled people (yes screenreaders, magnifier, …). 3x8 = 24. With all those possibilities, MSIE is only a small part of the hassle and for the 7 years here has been around, I think the workaround are wellknown. It shouldn't be a blocker. You to choose what is your aim. Having a target is somehow important and you have to choice to support or not MSIE 6, like to be nice to web crawlers or disabled people. Up to you.
AdWords, MochiMedia are the micro-billing, they are everywhere and tend to become invisible.
From my point of view, what kills the innovation is a general consensus that what exists now is good enough or that we cannot do anything to fix that. Small steps make the big trip. Or people telling you what is right and what is wrong. “Use Rails!”, “Use Django”, “Use jQuery”, “No, MooTools”, “You need to support the Google API, and oAuth”, “You need to scale”… that is killing innovation. You had an idea to solve and now have to go through tons of specs, documentation, example to be sure that you'll be able to scale well.
Just do the shit, do something you want to use, want your friends to use because it'll make their life better, easier. Once this is done and you still have some energy, maybe scaling or being nice to the web crawlers will matter.
I'll go back to my paper prototypes, because they scale well ;-)
Posted by
Yoan |
September 15, 2008 11:02 AM
Et pendant ce temps-là à Vera Cruz : http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/71hrz/top_innovation_killers_for_web_developers/
Posted by
Yoan |
September 15, 2008 11:20 PM
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