The Downtempo Blog

I have been party to so many discussion about the pains of supporting IE6 that last year I wrote a detailed blog post about the subject, "So Why Shouldn’t I Support IE6?"

In that post, I made the case that supporting IE6 creates a very real, one time ROI by unlocking your website for 15% of the market.  On the downside, the return on that investment is declining over time, as IE6 bleeds market share, month after month.  To make matters worse, for a startup, there is an opportunity cost for that work.  Your resources would be better served to be refining your existing product to achieve better long term growth.

Clearly, as both a web developer and a businessman, I am not an IE6 fan.

So I was tickled to open up my inbox earlier this week and find this delightful letter from Google Apps:

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Good riddance, IE6!

339No Comments.http%3A%2F%2Fwww.downtempo.net%2Fblog%2Fproduct%2Fgoogle-apps-drops-support-for-ie6%2FGoogle+Apps+Drops+Support+for+IE62010-02-04+20%3A34%3A30Marshall+Younthttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.downtempo.net%2Fblog%2Fcompany%2Fgoogle-apps-drops-support-for-ie6%2F

I made the big switch to OSX about a year ago, and for the most part have never looked back.  Apple makes damn fine hardware, the best desktop operating system known to man, and the lack of a need for antivirus software means everyday tasks (especially IO bound tasks) can be much, much faster.

But there have been a couple of apps that were sorely missed.  Most notably Google Chrome (previously noted here), Visual Studio, and Windows Live Writer.

Now, thanks to the magic of VMWare Fusion’s Unity feature, I have these running in OSX.

Why do I love Windows Live Writer so much?  Clearly it’s not for the closed source software model, or the virtualization performance hit. 

Nay, I’m in it for those scrumptious HotKeys.

As a developer, I take my craft seriously.  I hate touching the mouse.  I type faster than I can think (yes, that gets me in to trouble sometimes).  And hands, once trained in the art of a few simple key combinations, are hundreds of times faster than reaching over to wriggle that clicky laser mouse.

Windows Live Writer has keyboard shortcuts for everything that you need as a blogger:

• Ctrl-K creates a link
• Ctrl-L inserts a picture
• Crtl-B for bold, Crtl-U for underline, and other familiar formatting combinations
• Ctrl-Shift-C to categorize your post
• and Ctrl-Shift-P to publish when you are done

When I jumped to the Mac platform I did a  lot of research and decided to spend $30 on MarsEdit, which is IMO the best blogging software available for the Mac.  Big mistake.  Inserting images in MarsEdit is an extremely painful experience.  You basically have to do any image manipulation outside the app.

Live Writer on the other hand, includes killer features like pixel perfect resizing, crop, and rotate.

And best of all, it’s FREE (well, free if you don’t count the $80 paid for VMWare Fusion or the XP license, but those are not single use tools).

3341 Commenthttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.downtempo.net%2Fblog%2Fproduct%2Fback-in-the-saddle-with-windows-live-writer-on-osx%2FWindows+Live+Writer+on+Mac2010-01-30+16%3A21%3A59Marshall+Younthttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.downtempo.net%2Fblog%2Fproduct%2Fback-in-the-saddle-with-windows-live-writer-on-osx%2F

A little surprise love from Google Maps arrived in the Downtempo HQ mailbox the other day. Like your favorite pizza joint and nightlife hotspots, our office has been flagged as a Google Maps “favorite place”: “between July 1 and September 30, Google users found your Downtempo LLC business 14 times, and requested driving directions or other information about your busines 1110 times.”

(As awesome as we are, we haven’t had 1,110 visitors in the past 3 months, so I can only assume that this is due to our name being a popular search term.) Anyways, for our clients and collaborators, our barcode is now posted in the office, so feel free to bookmark us with your cameraphone the next time you drop on by.

289No Comments.http%3A%2F%2Fwww.downtempo.net%2Fblog%2Fmarketing%2Fevidently-were-big-on-google-maps%2FEvidently+We+Are+Big+on+Google+Maps2010-01-09+04%3A22%3A49Andy+Volkhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.downtempo.net%2Fblog%2F%3Fp%3D289

Something that we believe passionately about at Downtempo is having a great product experience from beginning-to-end. In the quest for great code, sometimes product design and interaction can fall by the wayside, and things like identity design are sometimes dismissed as mere window dressing. We couldn’t disagree more — while code is the foundation of software products, it’s the holistic product  experience that has to engage the user on all levels, and identity designs from great design shops (such as our friends and collaborators at cinstudio) are a key part of setting the tone of that experience.

When I was reading over the blog Own Your Mind today, I stumbled across a blog post describing the lockpick business cards that a few different hackers had designed for them, which spawned a rich discussion on Flickr. (The original design for the cards were done by Jenni Mattson in an identity design project for Melvin. Definitely check out her other identity design projects on her site.)

The business cards speak for themselves — clean design, utilitarian, and they actually do break apart into a set of fully functional lockpicks. Great work, Jenni.

311No Comments.http%3A%2F%2Fwww.downtempo.net%2Fblog%2Fdesign%2Fthe-joy-of-great-identity-design%2FThe+Joy+of+Great+Identity+Design2010-01-04+09%3A39%3A34Andy+Volkhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.downtempo.net%2Fblog%2F%3Fp%3D311

I was checking out Andrew & Dunham’s Damn Fine Tea site after seeing their advertising on Daring Fireball (I love John Gruber’s RSS feed revival of old-time-radio-style product endorsement advertising), and was impressed by their mini e-commerce site.

In particular, I felt like their individual product page does a great job of getting me to want to put the tea in my cart because it has:

1.) clear messaging, price, purchase action/button (all in 1 line!)
2.) the product looks cool and somehow worth $22 (even though i’m a coffee drinker… go figure.)
3.) delightful prose gives a strong pitch, and the limited edition numbers encourage a fast purchase decision.

The supporting pages on the site, while fairly minimal, are clean and clear. The result? A complete, targeted e-commerce offering for their product, complete with an option to order the related art print for an extra 5 bucks. (and dive into the A&D blog to see the other promotional strategies they’ve employed to raise awareness of their tea)

Not bad for what is sounds like pretty good tea (according to the Tea Pages review — i’m not a serious tea drinker, so I wouldn’t know great tea if you put it in front of me) in a fancy tin. Of  course, they’re also selling style and dreams and vibe, it just happens to come in tea leaf form.

A great example of small-batch web product marketing delivered.

3085 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.downtempo.net%2Fblog%2Fdesign%2Fandrews-dunham-damn-fine-marketing%2FAndrews+%26+Dunham%3A+Damn+Fine+Marketing2009-12-23+04%3A11%3A16Andy+Volkhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.downtempo.net%2Fblog%2F%3Fp%3D308