What I find especially frustrating, though, is how Microsoft forces me to spend so much time pampering their software. Yes, I'm talking about Internet Explorer, the iconoclastic web browser that refuses to acknowledge web standards.

How much online productivity is lost trying to get websites to look and function properly on Internet Explorer?

That would be an interesting question to explore. Talk to just about any web designer, and they will tell you that, for every 100 hours they spend on design, 50-60 hours are dedicated to actual design, and the rest is devoted to creating xhtml and CSS hacks to get it to work on Internet Explorer.

This is just as true today.

It's getting to the point where we're thinking of adding IE6 compatibility as a separate line item on our proposals and agreements. After all, when you're spending 35-50% of your theming time just trying to get a cool new design to work on one rather archaic browser, it's no small matter.

It's a ≈40% tax on web theming.

How can we get out of this? Thanks to Microsoft market share and IT departments' resistance to upgrading, I fear we're not going to be able to say a final good-bye to IE6 anytime soon.

Sophia Locero points to the IE Death March and several other like minded efforts to build a collective movement to simply drop IE6 support, and asks:

So many parties are restless about the state of web browsing, and rather than wait for Microsoft to get its act together, they take it upon themselves to do something about it. It doesn’t really stop with the viral websites. Every few months or so you’ll find a blog post that details how the author has had it with IE (IE6 usually) and that he has resolved to drop support for the browser completely.

One must ask: are any of them making a significant difference in the market share of IE? Or IE6, specifically?

I don't think so. Here at pingVision, nearly every one of our clients requires IE6 compatibility for their web projects, and I don't think that's because they're unthinking or naive about browsers. The fact is that their audience -- and, quite often, their own organizations -- are locked into IE6 by their IT departments.

Will 37 Signals' dropping of IE6 support make a dent in their market? Perhaps not, since their audience is probably already heavily skewed towards Firefox anyway. But our B2B clients would likely see a huge drop-off in traffic if their sites did not support the IE6 that still permeates corporate desktops and workstations the world over.

Still, what we have here is a tax on productivity, and if Microsoft did one thing to help the online economy, it would simply EOL IE6 altogether. Right. Now.

Meanwhile, we'll consider adding the "Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 Tax" to our estimates as a line item for all clients to see.

We do so because, frankly, our business depends upon it. Our business model is all about designing and developing dynamic websites to help businesses, organizations, educational institutions, communities, individuals and governments to open up lines of communication, promote their wares, share their knowledge, exchange their views and engage in conversations. Anybody can have a website. Websites are valuable ... but only if they are accessible.<!--break-->

Net Neutrality is the fundamental basis upon which the internet, as we know it, operates:

When we log onto the Internet, we take lots of things for granted. We assume that we'll be able to access whatever Web site we want, whenever we want to go there. We assume that we can use any feature we like -- watching online video, listening to podcasts, searching, emailing, and instant messaging -- anytime we choose. We assume that we can attach devices like wireless routers, game controllers, or extra hard drives to make our online experience better.

What makes all these assumptions possible is "Network Neutrality," the guiding principle that ensures the Internet remains free and unrestricted. Net Neutrality prevents the companies that control the wires bringing you the Internet from discriminating against content based on its ownership or source. But that could all change.

The biggest cable and telephone companies would like to charge money for smooth access to Web sites, speed to run applications, and permission to plug in devices. These network giants believe they should be able to charge Web site operators, application providers, and device manufacturers for the right to use the network. Those who don't make a deal and pay up will experience discrimination: Their sites won't load as quickly, their applications and devices won't work as well. Without legal protection, consumers could find that a network operator has blocked the Web site of a competitor, or slowed it down so much that it's unusable....

...What does that mean? It means we could be heading toward a pay-per-view Internet where Web sites have fees. It means we may have to pay a network tax to run voice-over-the-Internet phones, use an advanced search engine, or chat via Instant Messenger. The next generation of magical new inventions will be shut out of the top-tier service level.

Such developments away from Net Neutrality would stifle the very creativity that makes the internet the interesting, exciting and informative communications medium it is today. Whether we want the internet to become like television, with a limited amount of "channels," with a limited variety of content, is not a question I'd like to have to confront. We've done alright with the internet like it is so far. It's not by any means perfect, but at least it's free (as in freedom).

For more information, SaveTheInternet links to this video that explains Net Neutrality:

Ask A Ninja offers a much more humorous take:

We'd really like to stay in business. We believe strongly in what we do. In developing websites using free open source software (Drupal), we feel we're helping to bring about a new vitality to the world of economics, communications, culture, politics and business. If our clients' websites are blocked or hindered by internet gatekeepers, then I don't think we'd be developing websites much longer. So yes, we support Net Neutrality ... for First Amendment reasons and for our own selfish business interests.

And we're not alone:

Customers don't want a 1/4-inch drill; they want a 1/4-inch hole.

So said Ted Levitt and his article, "Marketing Myopia," stands as a classic.

In my own experience at Hewlett-Packard Medical Electronics, our engineers were positively charmed by their inventions, but what the savvier marketing folks understood was that the patient's vital signs were not the central reason the equipment was purchased - although it was very important - but more to the point, the physicians and staff wanted a trend line.

We "hire" products to do jobs.

Some years ago there was the "CB craze." The Citizen's Band radios were all the rage, especially among truckers. Driving an 18-wheeler, alone, over miles of interstate can be a lonely life and the CB radio became an instant fixture. There was even a hit single about truckers called "Convoy" where the CB radio was a "star."

CB is still around, but the cellular phone has largely supplanted it. Today, a strong signal and the stored phone numbers of good friends are important, but it the days of the CB, people talked pretty much to strangers.

The CB radio of old was bedecked with knobs that could be twisted and turned and tuned. At the time a CB could be purchased for about $39.99 - and it could be tweaked for hours on end.

A group of bright engineers decided that all this was too much work and they came up with a one-button electronic CB radio. Simply press the button and the electronics would zoom, lock the signal, and voila!

It was listed at $200 and word has it that exactly 3 were ever sold. Perhaps it was bad marketing, poor distribution channels, or too high a price to pay.

However, I think that what happened was that the engineers had all the fun and took the fun away from the guys on the long haul who filled the miles of road twisting, tweaking, and tuning the knobs.

1. Do not purchase a new domain unless you have to. Due to Google's aging delay for all new domains (see this forum thread), your best bet is to use an existing domain/website if at all possible. If you're redesigning or starting from scratch and you have to use a brand-new domain for some reason, you can expect to wait a good 9-12 months before your site will show up in Google for any keyword phrases that are important to you.

While I feel that advising against obtaining a new domain is perhaps not the greatest idea in the long term -- it's always best, I feel, to own your own online real estate -- it's good to remember that, in the early going, your new website is not going to skyrocket right to the top of Google search results.

That's not to say that SEO isn't important -- in fact, it's essential if you want your site to get stumble-upon traffic from people who are looking for what you're selling or talking about. But what this does mean is that your early focus should be on building your audience one at a time.

As I write this post, pingVision still does not come up on very many Google searches. We launched the site early this year, but due to client work we neglected site upkeep for too long. Even now, I kick myself for not blogging here more often.

Just a few days ago, I launched a personal blog where I'll be writing more about design, Drupal themes, CSS, interactive media, DVD authoring and so on, and I'm pretty much resigned to it's being pretty much invisible to Googlers and Yahooligans searching on those topics for the next year or so, at least. That hasn't prevented me from adding a dynamic Google sitemap and keywords module. But I know that this is more like planting a tree than planting a garden.

What can change that dynamic is getting noticed by others. That means reading others, and posting comments. I'm not a big fan of link-exchange proposals -- it just smacks of artificiality to me. But if you write about others, linking to their posts, they will notice you, and come looking. And all it takes is a prominent link to you, posted by one single person who happens to have a lot of traffic, to change your site's traffic by an order of magnitude, or more. (See Wikipedia: Slashdot effect.)

In other words, while all the SEO sites out there have very sage advice, don't let it totally dominate how you think about your website. Especially when your site's out there somewhere in the long tail, it's essential to remember that your visitors are people, not metrics. And the more of yourself you put into your blogging, the better people can get a sense of who you are, which is the point of blogging in the first place.