S.Y.S talk » web

Comic: The State of the Web, Summer 2011 [The Oatmeal]

Dedy Sofyan — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 18:50:32 +0000

Wait! There’s more…

You can view the rest of the comic using the link below:

Source: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/state_web_summer

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Social Web: express yourself online!

Dedy Sofyan — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 21:30:29 +0000

The Social Web? What’s that? Sounds funny eh?

Without further ado, okay, here’s the Wikipedia excerpt:

The Social Web is currently used to describe how people socialize or interact with each other throughout the World Wide Web. Such people are brought together through a variety of shared interests. There are different ways in which people want to socialize on the Web today. The first kind of socializing is typified by “people focus” websites such as Bebo, Facebook, and Myspace. Such sites promote the person as focus of social interaction. To do this a profile is constructed by each user. In many ways the profile is similar to a passport.
The second kind of socializing is typified by a sort of “hobby focus” websites. For example, if one is interested in photography and wants to share this with like-minded people, then there are photography websites such as Flickr, Kodak Gallery and Photobucket.
The Social Web may also be used to refer to two different, yet related concepts. The first is as a description of web 2.0 technologies that are focused on social interaction and community before anything else.

Some of you, actually most of you who have landed here in my blog, might have already familiarized yourself with those websites mentioned above and perhaps more: Youtube, Friendster, Gaia Online, Deviantart, Linkedin, Digg, Twitter, etc.

Your Home on the Web, Your Social Gathering Place

With the increasing popularity and adoption of mobile gadgets with internet connectivity, either through 3G or WiFi. These social networking sites are becoming a home and meeting place for people all around to find and communicate with friends, families, and even co-workers. They become a social gathering place online.

Facebook's Wall updates

You can update your status telling your friends, families about what you’re doing at this very moment. You can upload your photos of yesterday’s family outing, or older photo albums. Share your stories or stories, and let your friends or families join in and comment on them. These sites become a place for you to express yourself and tell the world about your presence.

Know the Limit!

But don’t forget… you have to know the limitation. You can’t just pour out all information about you on the web. You have to filter the information that you want to share. You have to be careful so that no one can misuse the info you share on these social networking sites to your own disadvantage. You have to be your own judge.

Be extra careful with your residential address, phone number, bank account number, credit card number. Also extra careful with the photos you upload publicly (especially those embarrassing ones of you or your families or friends). Trained professionals can extract information just by looking at these photos closely. If they can, so can criminals. We don’t want to attract those types, do we?

Expressing yourself on the social web is free and FUN… BUT… you have to stay alert and careful of the things you share. It’s just a word of caution.

Oh, don’t forget that your BOSS might be watching, too! :p

[UPDATE]

Articles for you to consider before sharing anything on the social network:

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Browser War for Market Share

Dedy Sofyan — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:10:51 +0000

The web-browser market has experienced a lot lately. Nearly a decade ago, the two dominant players of the time were Netscape Navigator (the reigning champ) and MS Internet Explorer (the contender). You might have witnessed the “Browser War” between Netscape and Internet Explorer (IE), which eventually won by IE.

Designer’s point of view
Personally, as a web designer, I have to constantly review these changes to cater to my target audience’s needs and visiting exper ience by designing websites that will “look and feel” similar when viewed using different browsers. Some call this “cross-browser / multi-browser compatibility”. You have to make sure that the site you designed will not break in that particular browser. One of the resource that you might want to go is the browser statistics, like: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

IE is losing grounds

From the statistics, you can see that Firefox is gaining market share consistently year by year. With the addition of Google Chrome in late 2008, the browser market share is once again a fiery battleground. IE has been losing its market share chunk-by-chunk to the competitors.

Why?

Perhaps, primarily because the competitors offer “innovative” additions to the browsing experience. Tabbed browsing made famous by Opera, even way back in the times of IE 5. Usable and customizable add-on / plug-ins for Firefox that extends the browser functionality to greater extends. Next comes “Google Chrome” with Google’s ambition to reinvent the web browsing experience.

Save the Developers

One additional reason why IE is losing its ground is perhaps most IE users are still stuck with IE 6. IE 6 has lots of limitations. A while ago, March 2008, a site called savethedevelopers.org offered a javascript popup for developers/designers to embed in their page, encouraging users to upgrade their outdated IE 6 to IE 7.

Somehow the site is now down and is redirected to Microsoft’s IE page instead. Interesting… Has Microsoft pulled some strings? For us, developers and designers, to maintain compatibility with IE 6 is a rather painful process. For example: IE 6 does not render transparent PNG “gracefully” so we have to include a PNG fix script. Certain IE-specific CSS hacks have to be applied to IE that normally are not required on other browsers.

Mobile Internet Browsing

Don’t forget that with recent advancements in mobile connectivity, more people are browsing the internet using their mobile gadgets. Opera Mobile is famous among Symbian-powered smartphones, including “smart-touchphones” with Opera Mobile for Symbian UIQ devices. iPhone users browse their favorite sites using the built-in Safari browser.

Now, us, designers and developers have more homework to do: to make sure that our design or code will not break on these gadgets, too.

Reference:

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