Design for Firefox first, Internet Explorer second

Posted on November 30, 2005 by Richard K Miller

Today good got better because Mozilla released a new version of its browser — Firefox 1.5. The new version does automatic updates, allows you to rearrange tabs by dragging and dropping, and has better support for Mac OS X. It also supports the latest web standards like CSS2, CSS3, and SVG. (For an example of SVG, if you have a Facebook account, download Firefox 1.5 and click Visualize My Friends. You’ll see an impressive diagram of how you and your friends are connected.)

Also today, MarketingSherpa has an excellent article on redesigning web sites for Firefox. In fact, Sherpa recommends designing websites first for Firefox, then for Internet Explorer. The reasons for designing a website for Firefox are several. Firefox has been downloaded 100 million times in the past year and its usage has grown to 11% world wide, 14% in the U.S., and as high as 35% on tech savvy or cutting edge sites.

But making websites Firefox-friendly isn’t just about catering to a new, growing market segment. It’s about using web standards — the openly published standards for creating websites — which Firefox handles very well and Internet Explorer so-so. In the past it hasn’t mattered that IE has mediocre support for web standards because of its monopoly position — web designers coded to that mediocrity — but that is changing. Sherpa lists 6 benefits of using web standards, which is a side effect of creating web sites for Firefox:

Increased search engine optimization
Proper content presentation
Decreased development and maintenance costs
Lower bandwidth usage
Faster download times
Web viewing beyond the computer (your site on wireless devices & RSS)

Source: Why You Should Consider Budgeting a Site Redesign for Firefox Now (Yes Firefox)

Increased accessibility for disabled users is another benefit of web standards that wasn’t emphasized.

I’m glad to see support for a great product, especially an underdog, but I’m even more in favor of doing the right thing for the web.

Gas prices over the last 30 months

Posted on November 25, 2005 by Richard K Miller

On Monday my motorcycle turned 30 months old. (It was a big day for both of us.) About the time I got it, I put together a little WML app that would let me record my mileage. Each time I buy gas I open up my phone and record how much gas I bought, how much it cost, and my current odometer reading. I don’t quite know why I started doing it, probably just for fun, but now I have 30 months of historical data which is sort of interesting to look at.

Here is a graph of gas prices over the last 30 months. It’s not scientific:

Most of these prices come from Provo, UT, but there were trips to Las Vegas and Logan and everywhere in between.
Prices are for premium gasoline — usually 91 octane.
The dates on the x-axis are not constant; there are more data points when I ride more during the warm months, and fewer points during the cold months.
The green area marks $1.00/gallon and is just to make the graph more colorful.

Premium gas was cheapest on July 21, 2003 at $1.64/gallon. It was most expensive during September of this year when it reached $3.06/gallon. The average is $2.19/gallon.

Ingredients: One web app (WML, PHP, and MySQL), Actual Technologies ODBC Driver for getting the data into Excel X, then a copy-and-paste into Pages for graphing.

Google in Brazil

Posted on November 17, 2005 by Richard K Miller

On January 31 of this year, I wrote to Google to ask why there was no Brazilian version of Google News. You see, Google News aggregates all the major news sources, so it’s an easy and powerful way to see what’s happening in the news. I wanted to keep up with the country where I had been a Mormon missionary and keep my language skills current. There were Chinese and Spanish and French versions of Google News, but no Portuguese version.

Today Google announced that they now offer Google News in Portguese. (They also have a separate Portugal page.) I don’t yet see an RSS feed or email alerts for this, but at least I’ll have a way to find out what’s going on in Brazil at a glance when I want to.

During the summer, Google acquired a Brazilian technology company called Akwan based in Belo Horizonte, the city where I spent most of my time as a missionary. That office became the Centro de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento do Google na América Latina (Google’s Center for Research and Development in Latin America) and they’re the ones that have been working on the Brazilian version of Google News. Parabéns to the Belo Horizonte office!

P.S. Google can translate.

Seth Godin on optimism

Posted on November 16, 2005 by Richard K Miller

A great post from Seth Godin:

Today’s Globe & Mail reports that over the last 12 years, the number of armed conflicts in the world has gone down by 40% and the number of extremely deadly conflicts (more than 1,000 battle-related deaths) is down by more than 80%.

[But] bad news anywhere in the world shows up in your browser in seconds. Second, there are people making a full time living by scaring us. And lastly, it’s human nature. Vivid images have more impact on us than cold statistics. If I had accompanied this post with a picture of someone in a gutter, the 80% decrease in serious wars over a decade would quickly be forgotten.

Optimism is hard. But it’s usually worth it.

Source: Seth’s Blog: Peace of mind

Paul Allen gives keynote at BYU e-business day

Posted on November 11, 2005 by Richard K Miller

A few notes from Paul Allen’s keynote lecture at the BYU Marriott School’s e-business day:

Brent Barlow’s talk on marriage [mp3] includes a quote by poet Robert Browning that says the “best is yet to be.” That should be our attitude in life; it’s an attitude that helps us be happy. We can’t be happy by thinking the best has already passed. (Paul Allen said Brent Barlow’s talk is also the best talk he’s heard on strengthening one’s marriage.)

Several inventions have come from or been made popular in Utah. Paul Ahlstrom, who started vSpring Capital, talks about technology in Utah in a recent podcast.

Advances in technology mean we can “approach omniscience” — we can learn almost anything we want (e.g. Wikipedia), and we can connect to and communicate with almost anyone in the world (e.g. Skype, Linkedin).

Ten things you can do to learn more and connect more:

Take notes always
Store everything you learn in a personal knowledge base (e.g. Folio, Gobinder)
Start a blog
Google Alerts
Linkedin
Read Love is the Killer App — “the book that changed my life the most in business”
Use time wisely: audible.com, ldsaudio.com
Volunteer with the More Good Foundation
Become an “e-mail missionary” — email people you love more often
Be a spokesman for BYU and the Church (Carrie Jenkins) — how many people have heard you speak about or read something you wrote about BYU or the Church?