In an ideal world the client – as well as the Web Development firm – would have a lot of time and money to evaluate the usefulness of a CMS as well as which CMS to use. Unfortunately that is not how the world always works, and sometimes compromises have to be made.

To prepare you for a decision just such as this, here are a few reasons you might choose a CMS:

• If you intend to add content or pages fairly regularly or use the site as a blog
• If you want to include an “events” or “news” page that is updated frequently
• Will you have a poll? If so, the ability to add, remove or move content blocks is helpful.
• Search engines love CMS… when it is used to add new content consistently.
• If your site will be incorporating data from other sites via RSS or a Twitter feed.

If you are building a “brochure” site that is only a few pages and the content will vary rarely change, then you might be better off going with a static site. No need to design around a system when it is not needed.

It’s also true to say that not all CMS systems are equal. Some require you to install a database, files and do some configuration. Other systems do not and consequently are not as extendable. For a “brochure” site for example, one could use a CMS like CushyCMS that is free, simple to use and more importantly very easy to implement. Add a sprinkle of Cushy CSS classes here and there to denote your editable regions and you’re set.

A more robust CMS will allow you to do a whole lot more through the addition of plugins or modules that help to extend and customize the CMS to meet specific needs. You can add membership features, a shopping cart, photo galleries and the list goes on and on.

Examples include WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Expression Engine to name just a few. Recently I have heard quite a bit about Concrete5 and MODx.

If you would like a quick rundown of how to evaluate a CMS with a more expansive list of systems out there, please take a look at Joel Reyes’ article How to Evaluate What CMS to Use.

One of the most common Designer vs. Developer gripes is ’rounded’ corners… with or without a drop shadow/outer glow… plus a gradient… plus some opacity… plus some contradicting rollover effect… plus… etc. etc.  Sometimes this can be difficult to implement given where and how it’s used, along with how you decide to implement these features. By adding a little ‘style’ to the site, a designer may have inadvertently added a few hours to a project.

The difficulty or extra work isn’t what gets to most developers. Mostly, they would simply like the site to be more streamlined (rather than bulky). To implement rounded corners, drop shadows, outer glows, opacity and gradients – and to ensure that they are cross-browser and legacy-browser compatible – you need to use images. Those images will likely be PNGs. PNGs are not a ‘lossy’ image format like good old JPEGs, and therefore end up being quite a bit larger. With larger file sizes come longer load times for a web site.

With CSS3, web developers can let the rounded corner, opacity, drop shadow, gradient train keep on chugging with a full head of steam. Developers will no longer have to slice-up and combine a designer’s site mock up into sprites or make a myriad number of adjustments to the markup and style sheet to make dreams a reality. In the near future, the developer will be able to do all of this with CSS3! This will drastically cut down on development time and load times as bulky PNG files are no longer required to make these features happen.

Some of these features are technically only supported by certain browser developers at this time, but will hopefully be incorporated into all browsers in the future. This is a slight drawback. Yet some of these features, like CSS3 gradients, allow you to specify fallbacks so if the browser doesn’t support CSS3, it will use the image instead.

Now, I only touched on a very specific area where CSS3 can help the Designer-Developer relationship. There are also transitions, animations, resizing and so on that will become available to developers. These will ease the burden of client-side scripting, but that’s another article.

Unfortunately, not all browsers support CSS3 (yet), and most of the ones that do require a browser prefix to the CSS selector or a CSS selector that only a specific browser will recognize. Patience will be important, since we will be at the mercy of legacy browser versions for while yet. But the sun is beginning to rise. There’s nothing that says you can’t get a head start and slowly implement subtle CSS3 effects now. Once web browsers are ready for it, the sky will be the limit for designers and developers alike!

I have listed a few links below if you would like to learn more about CSS3.

A fun CSS3 sandbox: http://westciv.com/tools/

Mozilla CSS reference and extensions: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS_Reference/Mozilla_Extensions

A blog on all CSS3 developments: http://www.CSS3.info

Google showing off CSS3 and HTML5: http://studio.html5rocks.com/

Who’s still using it and why?

1. So if I’m telling you that IE6 is so bad, why are people still using it?  Mostly it’s because these users don’t have a choice.  Why don’t these users have a choice?  It’s the IT departments.  There are a lot of large companies in the world with a lot of employees that use the internet or the company’s intranet everyday to get their work done.A company’s intranet may have been built on IE6 and consequently, the IT department is afraid of it breaking. Sometimes these IT professionals even cite security concerns as a reason to stay with IE6.  However, it’s come to light recently that IE6 is significantly more vulnerable to attack than newer versions of Explorer (specifically, IE8). In fact, Microsoft – a company that supports old programs for a long, long time – recently asked users to stop using IE6 due to security concerns that would not be repaired.
2. A big reason for old browser support is operating systems.  If you have a PC that is running Windows 2000 or Windows 98, then you can’t upgrade your browser even if you want to. in the world of the internet, these operating systems have been left far behind, unfortunately.
3. Another reason is that some people don’t know that there’s a newer version or alternate choices available. If they are aware of the choices but still have IE6 they probably do not know how to upgrade to the newer version. They might also think IE6 is just dandy and since it does what they ask it to most of the time, why change? There are people who are still intimidated by the  internet and aren’t aware of innovations like keyboard shortcuts or tabbed browsing.  They just want to get on, get in and get out, and that’s as far as their computer experience, needs and desires take them.

In general most people at home no longer use IE6 unless they have a very old computer. Most of the IE6 stragglers are in a work environment.

So why drop support?

Upgrading has become a way of life on the internet. Whether it’s your browser or your a web app, they’re constantly improving to make life better and more secure for the user.  If you happen to have one of those nifty smart phones then you’re probably no stranger to getting almost weekly updates to some of your favorite apps.

I want to have the best experience I can get when surfing the web and you should too!  I’m not the only one that wants you to have a great experience online, all those companies delivering media along with social and organizational apps do to.

Google officially dropped support for IE6 in March of 2010. The sites and web apps that Google runs will still retain their main functionality but new features added after that date may or may not work. It’s not just Google that’s dropping support. Facebook – everyone’s favorite social app – supports IE6 but it does so by providing users a decidedly poor user experience. Not only that, Facebook straight out tells you why you’re getting such a crotchety experience and even provides you with links to more modern browsers.

Most of us web developers like to support web standards. I won’t get into too much detail on the subject, but if a browser does a good job of supporting web standards, then life is much easier for everyone involved.  You will have a site that loads and runs efficiently, is easy to maintain, is accessibility and is widely compatible.

To get a site to lay out correctly in IE6 usually requires a decent amount of effort.

• You need to apply a special filter for every PNG used.
• CSS issues are one of the main culprits here. From not supporting certain pseudo-classes or mis-interpreting how an attribute is supposed to be applied, the CSS flaws in IE6 require a mix of CSS/JavaScript to patch.
• Plus a minor batch of other rendering or layout- related issues that also require hacks to get the desired results.

As of June 2010, fewer than 10% of internet users were using IE6. Is it worth making all of these expensive accommodations for this small group of people hanging on to an outdated technology? Probably not.

It’s time to move on – and leave Internet Explorer 6 behind.