Dear IE6 –

Since you came to being in the late summer of 2001, our relationship has been tenuous at best. Sure, you were better than IE5.5, but I soon found my mouse wandering to the more standards compliant ladies in the room – like Firefox, Safari, and Opera. It wasn’t that I wanted to not like you. We just had a hard time due to the fact that you never quite understood my position(ing) of things. From the double float margin bug, to you cutting off what I had to say arbitrarily, we just seemed to fight all the time.

And then came png. This new thing, which is so helpful to me and others who relate to you, which just caused you to pee your pants and act like it was a ghost really made things much harder on me and my design friends to create interesting designs.

Well, I have to tell you IE6: we’re through. I’ve been trying to gain the courage to tell you this for many months, but haven’t had the courage. However, with the recent announcements by YouTube and Basecamp that they’re dumping you too, I feel now is the time. I’m moving on to continue my fling with standards-based browsers, who in all of their wonder actually pay attention to my needs. They really get me, and go out of their way to try and understand the language I’m speaking.

Sure, we’ll still run into each other from time to time. I’m just not going to go out of my way to make things work out just for you. Sure, we’ll still have a “functional” relationship – but I’m not going to waste my time trying to make things pretty anymore. I don’t have the time nor the endurance to do it.

So, goodbye IE6. We’ll see you around (although hopefully less and less). Trust me when I say, it’s not me – IT’S YOU!

Cordially,

Josh

P.S. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is ready to say good riddance to IE6. If you’re ready, add your name to this letter by “signing” it in your comments.

I had the pleasure of working with Alice Sundstrom over the past few months to develop and deploy a site for her firm. As principle of Sundstrom Marketing Design, Alice wanted a site which featured her companies commitment to marketing communications for higher education. Sundstrom Marketing Design offers three central services for it’s clients: strategic planning, project management, and design services.

The largest section of the site is the portfolio section which features many pieces of work honored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Innovative, professional, clean and effective would be words I would use to describe many of the pieces in the portfolio section.

Specializing in marketing communication efforts for institutions of higher education, Sundstrom Marketing Design is very well positioned to help colleges and universities engage students, propects, and potential donors. Alice’s experience at the University of Oregon and her background in fine arts really makes her an excellent resource for many departments and university marketing offices seeking to solidify their brand and meet their marketing goals.

Today, I was browsing some of the fine sites included on the CSS Mania site and came across a design site, in which the owner states that the three “ingredients for a spectacular web site” are: (1) beautiful design, (2) rock solid markup, and (3) attention to the details. While I agree that all of these are important to the design process, I disagree with the author (and the design strategy) and contend that the most important ingredient for a spectacular web site is great content! As a designer, I am constantly running into the challenge of creating pieces that have more effectiveness than simply “looking pretty.” Message, tone, intention, target audience are all affected by the content (as content is often affected by all of these things as well).

No matter how much we, as designers, want to get paid for our skills, if there is no message or content, there really can’t be a website. The web, while evolving, is still a content-driven medium. I’ve recently been reading Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler’s excellent Web Design 2.0: Workflow that Works and it suggests a workflow that actually begins with content generation. While so unintuitive to the designer, I believe that Goto and Cotler are 100% correct in their placement of content at the beginning of the design process. Content mediates all that we do in the design process, and is the starting point, rather than ending point of our work as designers. Content drives traffic, be it on commerce sites or personal blogs. Blogs which don’t say anything (or anything new, as is the unfortunate case of this blog) could be beautifully designed, executed with technical perfection, and focus on every aesthetic detail, yet still end up with no visitors.

What I’ve found lately is that clients, and users, care more about content than they do about XHTML and CSS. I know that personally, I’ve become a web-standards activist with my clients, advocating the necessity for standards compliance (accessibility, portability, browser compatibility, et al). But I’ve also become a content activist with my clients, guiding them through the complexity of finding their voice, describing their product in ways that are meaningful, and developing a message that is focused on what their customers want and need to hear.