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Comment: Re:Maybe (Score 1) 642

by scarlac (#42103841) Attached to: Hello, I'm a Mac. And I'm a $248 Win8 PC.

What's the point of this article, and why the comparison with Apple?

The answer is quite simply: (as linked in the summary) Title being: "In Mac vs. PC Battle, Microsoft Winning in Value Perception" which pretty much sums up the comparison to Apple.

TFA basically claims that Microsoft is winning ground in the popularity contest which makes the price tag seem more appealing.

I personally don't agree, as many others point out in here, (the majority of) people look at the price tag first and don't understand the difference from Windows 7 to 8. They just need something that works, and all they know is that others buy PCs.

Comment: Relevance (Score 1) 98

by scarlac (#30234566) Attached to: Google's Reach Hits Your Tivo

(...) Does this mean fewer commercials for viewers? Not likely, but one can hope.

Quite possibly not. It would mean more relevant commercials and less annoying flashing and screaming ads. Before Google entered, advertising on the internet with mere text was unheard of. By using very relevant ads both viewers/users and companies benefit. The issue with todays TV ads is that they are highly irrelevant. It's up to the company to make sure the ad gets displayed at the right time of day. Perhaps Google could improve upon this, so some of us can be freed of vacuum cleaner ads, unless they are robots.

Comment: Reality check (Score 2, Informative) 378

by scarlac (#28718511) Attached to: Typography On the Web Gets Different
From the Slashdot post:
> (...) latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera - recognize a CSS rule known as @font-face

From the linked page viewed in IE7:
> "This demo appears as intended only in Firefox 3.5"

The demo page shows the issue so clearly: You forgot IE. IE8 still doesn't have font-face support for TTF which is possibly the only format people will like to use.

I work with CSS most of my day but I doubt that I will have the pleasure of setting up sites with custom fonts for several years to come with the release cycles and popularity of IE as we have it today. For now we can be happy that IE8 can actually pass the acid2 test.


Comment: IE6 support already dropped (Score 1) 531

by scarlac (#28186383) Attached to: Internet Explorer 6 Will Not Die
Actually our company recently dropped IE6 support unless specifically asked for.

The reason?
All statistics from monitored sites and campaigns are showing roughly a 1% drop per month of IE6 and we are currently raging from 12% to 18% (with a single one at 23%). Most users seem to be upgrading to IE7 which is fine. The general Firefox share is consistently larger than the IE6 share which only makes sense if you are comparing "the lowest common denominator"... which we are.

How do we deal with our clients?
We advice them. If the client specifically asks for IE6 we will explain the budget implications (which is the truth of IE6). Actually we've had several clients who are positive of the way we handle it since they can suddenly ask for much more without being told "well, it won't perform/look good/work in ie6". We've had no complaints yet and the current trend tells us there is no need to worry.

According to my experience I find reason to doubt the conclusion that IE6 will not die. It may sound optimistic but I project that IE6 will be irrelevant to most developers within 12 months.


Comment: Re:Funny or an idiot? (Score 1) 586

by scarlac (#27575993) Attached to: What Do You Call People Who "Do HTML"?

Spot on, Simon.

In fact, I had a short talk with a collegue today about this. Never hire someone on the basis that they "do HTML" - you don't know what you're getting. If you want a Frontend developer (the term that we use for CSS+HTML+JS) you should search for the in-depth experience with CSS.

Agreed on HTML is not developed, it's just written. However, the amount of work a true frontend developer uses on setting up a semi-complex design usually requires programming skills, which is why a good frontend developer usually has some sort backend experience.
Even if it's just PHP.

It takes a lot of skill to work with IE76 without loosing your mind. Skilled /frontend developers/ are hard to come by. I know a couple of companies who are looking for skilled people in this area but many of them can't find people that are good enough.
