Sure, we all have faults, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from them. Like Jim Wideman likes to say, “I never make the same mistake twice, there’s enough different ones I can make every time!”
Sometimes, it takes awhile for a mistake to become a mistake. When the internet was still in it’s infancy, not a lot of people had an email address. The phone book was still pretty popular, and usually, the easiest way to get more information on a particular company was to call them. As a result, there weren’t a lot of contact forms on websites. A simple mailto: link would suffice. As another supporting factor, not too long after email got popular, so did spam. Junk emails flooded our inboxes to the extent that we quit seeing email as a huge step forward in communication and began to see it as a necessary evil.
Thankfully, that’s changed. New steps taken by Google and others in their email services have put spam in it’s place for the most part and made it fun to have email again.
And still, the mailto: link hangs on. It’s everywhere.
Why? It’s outdated and inefficient. When you click on the “contact us” link of some site that is coded with a mailto: link it will open up that user’s local email. Or at least, it will try to. For those of you like me–who keep their email on the internet–it may not respond at all or may even freeze up your browser.
Now you, the business-owner who owns that domain name–what sort of impression do you think you just made on that potential client/customer?
Many of you might think this is just a rant against substandard code and my personal experience on certain websites, but underneath it all lies the single principle that we all need to remember.
Harvey MacKay had an interesting way of showing ties at the mens suit store he worked at: He picked the three that would look the best with that suit and let the customer pick from the three.
Keep it simple, folks. Make every decision as easy as possible for them and their decision to hire or buy from you will be just as easy.
There’s a story of a company that makes lawn mowers. Good, sturdy, reliable lawn mowers at affordable prices. They became so popular that the nation’s largest retailer noticed them and offered to carry them - effectively extending the company’s potential audience to unprecedented numbers. The retailer then became convinced that it could sell the mowers even cheaper if the company would buy cheaper parts. The lawn mower company chose to remove their mowers from the retailer and drop the retailer altogether. Their large potential customer base was now gone, and doom seemed inevitable.
Sadly enough, I don’t know how that story ends. I didn’t tell it to leave you dangling with suspense either, but instead to tell you how much I believe in that story and how much I respect what those guys did. Why? They lost their customer base. They may have lost millions. But they gained the respect of me and others, I’m sure. How? Because they chose to have a commitment to excellence. Executing with excellence should be one of your biggest priorities, no matter what you do. Here’s how:
If you screw up, handle it gracefully. You know how the back of your car insurance card tells you never to admit fault in an automobile accident? Doesn’t work in the business world, buddy. If you know you goofed, so do they. Handle it in a humble way and you may be able to salvage it, all because you were willing to admit you were wrong and did what you could to fix it.
Evaluate and revise broken processes. I know an airline that saved hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by simply removing a single olive from their salads. Who noticed? The one who made the decision, that’s who. They saw an area that could help the company that wouldn’t hurt the customers. Evaluate every process you have and make sure it’s the most efficient and effective way of doing it. Never, ever do things just because “that’s the way we’ve always done things”. If you think that way, you’ll never grow. Remember: If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always had.
Reward loyalty and faithfulness. You might be providing a service, but the customers, clients and staff that stick with you are the ones you’re indebted to. Be sure to let them know how invaluable they are to you. One of the best ways? A simple hand-written note.
Both WebDesignerWall and CSSGlobe both posted today a really neat trick for making CSS-only text gradients (albeit, not semantic…but it’s not a perfect world). The same-day posting was just an odd coincidence, but this will be a very handy little code.
Just when we thought the end of the browser wars was in sight with IE 8 passing the ACID test; we’re probably going to end up in a different kind of browser war. It’s going to be worse than this browser war. (Read more…)
Great job by Harry Roberts to find the least valid site ever (or atleast that he’s found so far).
The CSS Text Wrapper is a really great tool for easily creating the complex CSS needed to make professional looking image wrapping. It’s something I’ve messed with a lot in the past and this will definitely make my job easier.
2 that is…
To frontend developers IE is the bane of our existence. It takes one street smart designer to overcome the lack of compliance to web standards. The next release of IE 8 will overcome those obstacles. IE 8 developers announced that IE 8 passed the Acid2 test implemented by the Web Standards Project.
Acid2 was implemented by the Web Standards Project as a test to help vendors building browsers test their compliancy to web standards. It was written by Ian Hickson in 2005. Previously there was the Box Acid Test which Acid2 replaced.
Acid2 tests the following web standards:
- Alpha transparency on PNG images
- The object element
- Absolute, relative and fixed positioning using CSS
- The CSS box model
- CSS tables
- CSS margins
- CSS generated content
- CSS parsing
- Paint order
- CSS line heights
- Hovering effects
Many of the browser vendors have worked hard at passing the Acid2 test. And while it seemed as though Microsoft was ignoring web standards, it’s official Internet Explorer 8 does pass the Acid2 test. They even released a video of it as seen here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=367207
In the world of web design this is great news. I don’t know how many times IE has made me bang my head against the keyboard. Of course the key to this success will be the adoption rate from users. It’s still a step in the right direction.
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