I think a lot of us people that use this internet thing a lot, and make things that go on the internets take for granted how real people (yes, I don’t think we’re real) use the internet. We subscribe to feeds, often we publish a feed. I subscribe somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 feeds. I try to limit the number that I subscribe to in order to keep me on task and not waste my day away. The vast majority of the feeds I subscribe to I believe are relevant to my job. The exceptions are The Big Noob and Paste Magazine. I could probably even make the argument that The Big Noob is work related. Not too long ago I had three people ask me about RSS in the same week. That was when I realized that this RSS thing that I have been subscribing to via firefox since sometime in 2005 is still very new to a lot of people.

It’s pretty difficult to find a good solid number that represents the amount of people subscribing to feeds. What I have found probably puts the percentage of internet users somewhere in the 15%-25% neighborhood. I could be way off, but I think that sounds pretty accurate. Honestly, with more and more internet users coming online everyday, the percentage may actually be a little lower. I don’t think anyone truly knows.

So what is RSS?

RSS basically stands for Really Simple Syndication. Many websites, large (like CNN) and small (like this one) publish feeds. See that icon on the right, that’s a link to the feed. If you click on that icon, you’ll see a very bland page without much formatting. This is the feed. It’s actually really just an XML document, depending on your browser you may actually see the XML tags, doubtful though. Most modern browsers, firefox, safari, internet explorer 7 to name a few have built in feed readers, or aggregators. If you book mark this bland page you’ll have a dynamic bookmark, one that updates when the feed is updated. In Safari (and I think most browsers) you have something that tells you when there is a new article. Safari puts a number in parenthesis, which represents the number of articles that are new since you’ve viewed it last. This is pretty handy. There are programs that are made specifically for reading feeds. I’ve tried these but I always come back to Safari, most likely because its an application that I have open 90% of the time for work.

RSS feeds are pretty simple to subscribe to and they’re a great way to stay up to date on the stuff you enjoy reading. What works for me is using a folder on my bookmark bar called RSS, then I put all the bookmarks to feeds in that folder. When something new hits the number shows up in the bar near RSS, then I click there and I see all the bookmarks in the folder, the updated feeds have numbers next to the bookmark name. I move my mouse to the bookmark, click, then I’m at that bland page. Read the article, if you want to see more from the site you can click on the page title at the top, or the article title, then I’m whisked away to that site.

So there you go, RSS explained in a simple manner. My only caution is to be careful, because reading feeds can become an addiction. So go out and start subscribing to blogs, and news, and even Tweets (which is a whole different topic).

subscribe to my feed

Every design class I have ever taken tells you to design for your audience. This is pretty obvious, goes without saying I’m sure. So, without a doubt Microsoft Internet Explorer is the most popular browser. How popular? I pulled the stats for several of the websites that we’ve done at work and found that 83% of users use IE, 70% of those are using IE7, which is promising. Firefox has 10%, Safari has 6%. There were 7 Opera hits, and 2 Camino ones.

So, with 83% of the users on Windows, why am I not? It would make a little more sense to be designing and developing on the same platform that users are on. However, after being a long-time Windows user, I just can’t stand the experience on it. If I’m going to be at a computer for long hours of the day, I prefer to enjoy my time on the computer. You can pretty much do anything on one that you can do on the other. To me though, the Mac operating system is just so much more user friendly. The same reason I choose not to work in Linux I choose not to work in Windows. I want my OS to work for me, not the other way around.

When I’m making a website I check all my stuff regularly in Firefox or Safari. Usually Safari unless something isn’t working right - then I fire up Firefox with the web developer plugin which is a must if you make websites. I feel that these two browsers offer the best support for pure CSS. Once I’m happy with everything I’ll go back and do my conditional work for IE7 and IE6. I don’t wait for the end of the development to check these, but I only check these after certain milestones, like after the navigation is complete. I figure you should always start out with the right way before you start using hacks and conditionals. When I do check in IE I check in virtual machines via Parallels. I have two virtual machines set up, one that runs IE6, the other running IE7.

I don’t really have a problem with Microsoft, or Windows, I just have a more pleasurable experience on a Mac. The more you enjoy the process, the longer it takes to get burnt out.

subscribe to my feed

Melody emailed me a link to a brilliant blog that somehow managed to to hide from me. Reading many of the posts made me realize that I’m kind of a cliche. I realize that I’m a part of a sub culture that is quite humorous and even a bit ridiculous.

There are many items on the list that don’t really apply to me, but there are several that I think were written about me. Like t-shirts, I love clever t-shirts. I also like to threaten a move to Canada, especially if John McCain wins in November. I’m guilty on others as well. #53 - dogs, #61 bicycle, #42 sushi, #35 Daily Show/Colbert Report, #40 Apple products, #38 Arrested Development, #1 coffee, and I’m sure there are others.

So if you have some time, check out the list of stuff white people like, and don’t take yourself too seriously.

subscribe to my feed