Actually, since list-style blog posts on design trends and other pretty things have been popular for a few years now, I’m sure the backlash has been happening for a while.

Now, it does make sense to organize your a complex article into easily digestible chunks, especially in a not exactly 100% comfortable to read environment such as the Web. It’s good to keep tabs on great new typefaces and graphics in your arsenal.

However, list articles have gained a bad reputation for other reasons because quality is put on the backburner. And there are a number parties responsible:

1. The marketers: It’s easy to thank SEO for this phenomenon. A significant portion of internet marketing involves social media, and high-traffic sites like Digg just love the list format. It’s killer linkbait.
2. The readers: The problem is lists don’t always contain what people need to truly learn. A lot of these people don’t know any better, and the explosion of lists distracts them from laying the foundations first.
3. The internet: Why? There are great lists out there; people will need to separate the wheat from the chaff. But maybe, it’s the very nature of the Web that mutates the need to find the good stuff into the need to find as much stuff as possible or the quickest, easiest solution to a problem.

But it’s still all talk, all noise. How about some real action? Thankfully, over at Binary Bonsai, Michael Heilemann has taken it upon himself to drop Flash for the whole month of February as a response to this tweeted challenge:

All those who think no flash on ipad is A-OK please uninstall flash from your current browser, use that for a month then get back to me.

Installing a Flash blocker isn’t really a groundbreaking exercise and is tamer than uninstalling Flash completely, but now is the best time to figure out how dependent we are on it.

So can you survive sans Flash? I won’t go out of my way to defend it nor suffer from withdrawal without it, but the status of HTML5 video alone seems troubling enough.

More importantly, most discussions cover only the question of replacing Flash video, not other applications like games. That would be an even tougher nut to crack, even with the dawn of purely Javascript-based games.

What do people get out of doing it, though? Is Twitter really that much of a game-changer that you can now break the conventions of quoting people in articles on websites? Is it really that big of a deal to debate on how you should add tweets to articles—which is so obviously linkbait?

Are tweet pages designed so much prettier than your default blockquote designs that you feel compelled to use them instead (that’s definitely an “unsuccessful designer trend” isn’t it)? Though, consider the construction: large text, a clear indication of who said the tweet, and a fuzzy timestamp. Maybe that’s what blockquotes should aspire to be?

Are tweets such special data forms that you need specialized plugins and scripts like WP Quote, Twickie, QuoteURL to display them? Or do those exist to up one’s geek cred and feed the third-party Twitter apps machine?

Still, those aren’t as bad as web apps like tweetshots. Want to share a tweet on Tumblr? Use the Quote post type. WordPress is getting custom post types in its next major release too. But publishing platform or no publishing platform, that’s what the HTML tag <blockquote> is for.

Let me channel Steve Ballmer and say: Blockquotes, blockquotes, blockquotes, blockquotes, blockquotes. They’re not that hard to use, certainly not more than taking a screenshot and uploading it.

I understand why on some occasions using images instead of text and other data formats is preferred. They’re usually more portable when passed around in email, forums, social networks, and other communication platforms. More people know how to deal with images than URLs too. But for the purpose of quoting tweeple on websites, I see no excuse for displaying text as images.

I’ll spell it out for you in <strong> and <em>: display text as text, not as images, damn it!

Sure, screencapping tweets may not be as grave a sin as using tables for layouts, but back when that was the dominant method of creating websites, it was a pragmatic choice to make do with the technology available. The choice to use images for text is illogical today. It is confusing behavior that is inexplicably linked to Twitter’s success.

In celebration of the iPad retail launch, Apple has created a gallery of iPad-ready websites that are said to embrace “the latest web standards—including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript”. That is, no Flash. You can even add your site to the gallery (scroll to the bottom).

Is Apple really opening up?

Let’s get the snark out of the way: a gallery, really? How novel. Right now there’s a vertical list (no Cover Flow?) of 20 top-tier websites. Will Apple really painstakingly update this list and add every possible HTML5/CSS3/JS-ready site submitted?

It’s a rare thing for Apple to lead a user-generated campaign like this but its best intentions are a thin veil over their real agenda—eliminating the competition and expanding further in the multimedia business. Does it really care about anything other than the big fish? What are the odds that the most humble of websites will even get into the gallery? Apple markets its products by partnering with the largest corporations that fit into its plans; I can’t imagine caring for the little guy in all of this.

This isn’t even in the same league as the iTunes app store—whose contents number in the hundreds of thousands—but could easily apply the profit-based and biased policies anyway. Not what I would call open or little guy friendly.

Is Apple a true web standards crusader?

Speaking of the app store: you can also develop specifically for the iPhone/iPod/iPad family using the SDK, but those apps don’t work in other devices. The mobile web is booming because of both the “web standards way” and the “mobile app” way, but how are device-specific apps any better than Flash apps (which happen to be cross-platform outside of Apple’s products)? Flipping off Flash when HTML5 and CSS3 aren’t ready isn’t a very responsible thing to do.

If Apple really wants to promote web standards, it should be doing a lot more with its resources to convert and educate people. The gallery is one thing, this documentation is another good step, but where are the resources for developing in HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript? Partnerships with web standards groups like WaSP? Zeldman or one of the Super Friends speaking at the keynote?

If Apple really wants to promote web standards, see how it practically equates HTML5 with Flash-free media and nothing more. No oohs and ahs over CSS3′s text shadows and rounded corners or HTML5′s geolocation and <canvas>. This is the perfect opportunity to introduce the mainstream crowd to the wonders of these new technologies, yet all it’s pushing is anti-Flash propaganda.

One more thing…

Dear Apple, you’ve done a lot of groundbreaking things, but if you’re going to use web standards as a selling point for your most adjective-ridden product ever, you can do a hell of a lot better than an an anti-Flash gallery.

The Apple iPad has polarized the tech industry in the past week. I’m amused by this development, not in the context of product innovation or what it could mean for web design and development, but for the culture of tech opinions.

There’s the half that believes the iPad is not the revolutionary new step in computing people having been waiting for, and then there’s the other half that thinks those critics are not the iPad’s target market. Considering how Steve Jobs began with his keynote about the iPhone is now dominating the mobile phone industry over veterans Nokia and Samsung, it certainly takes a lot to accept that the iPad might not enjoy the same fate. This short and sweet (which is rare) post by Jeff Lamarche puts things in perspective:

I’m sure somebody has told you all this before, but let me point it out again: it’s not always about you. Products can be successful even if they aren’t right for you.

[...] I’m a techie, but I don’t need to be able to program on every electronic device I own. I don’t hate my dishwasher because I can’t get to the command line. I don’t hate my DVD player because it runs a proprietary operating system. Sheesh.

But my beef with this is: hardly ever does that argument surface when not so popular, not so geek-worthy products surface. From what I’ve seen in tech culture, it’s so much easier to reject, even hate a product than even entertain the notion that it could succeed. In general, in a certain demographic, in a certain geographic region.

At times the word easier gets replaced by cooler. It’s cooler to hate stuff; that’s what techies are supposed do.

See how all the Apple or tech pundits are squeezing out the possibilities where the iPad could work wonders. Will it kill e-book readers? Will it revitalize the newspaper industry? Will it shake up processes in education, art, medicine, and business? Which function was it born to do?—as though it hasn’t been discovered only because Steve Jobs didn’t whisper the answer in their ears.

Is it because of passion for the brand? I would think other products may not deserve the same passion, but they do deserve a fair chance. Don’t hate a product just because it isn’t right for you.

Perhaps now there’s half of a crowd deciding people shouldn’t be so quick to judge, the tradition could change. Or it could not, because Apple is the exception to the rule.

You won’t win through frivolous activities such as retweeting, posting a comment, or Facebookery. You’ll win by actually using Authentic Jobs in a way that benefits you. Use the site to set yourself up to find a job or land some freelance work anytime between now and December 4, and you’re automatically entered to win.

The contest makes its participants discover the product it’s promoting. Sure, retweeting and refacebooking to win prizes does spread the buzz, but if you’re confident enough in what you’ve built, it will do the talking. And so will its satisfied customers on Twitter and Facebook.

Plus, it helps to have fabulous prizes at stake.

Does your insanely brilliant product have to shun the marketing machines of Twitter and Facebook? Of course not. But you can always be a little more creative with your promotions, can’t you?

Just about the time it’s become almost trivial to create rounded corners, Facebook suddenly decides to go back to its originally boxy, “razor cut” look. In the announcement, the Facebook design team reveals its priority:

Since we introduced rounded corners to Facebook, their consistent use has been spotty at best. The corner radii vary, and it sometimes feels arbitrary which corners are rounded and which are not. Additionally, they add an extra layer of complexity to the code (note: IE, please add support for border-radius).

As part of the effort to simplify our visual style, the design team recently decided to go back to our square corner roots. In doing so, we hope to champion cleanliness and the razor cut look that Facebook is known for.

That’s choosing consistency over the popular choice to go with rounded corners just because it’s a recommended design pattern. Not everybody would have the guts to do that.

Heck, it takes guts for Facebook to keep tweaking its interface, because at each turn it’s spurned so many protesting groups that keeping track of which one is against which feature becomes futile. For all we know, new groups protesting this rollback will surface yet again.

But Facebook always knows what it wants, it seems, and always sticks to its guns. Given the current design trends—from “Web 2.0″ gradients, candy colors, large fonts, and rounded corners, to Apple-inspired interfaces, to the highly detailed grunge and Victorian textures—would you, as a hypothetical head of the Facebook design team, have come up with something like its current look? Or would you have changed it? Save for the already-gone rounded corners, people wouldn’t have pegged this site for a spawn of the Web 2.0 era. It didn’t feel the need to look like one. Its features already spoke volumes.

Let’s talk feature redesign. The most controversial one so far, which put the status updates on the homepage, has also redesigned the social networking design pattern as a whole. It’s not just a copycat of the Twitter or FriendFeed (which it just acquired) interface, but emergence of the Real Time Web had a lot to do with it.

Back in the glory days of MySpace and Friendster, Facebook had a chance to copy its ability to ultra-customize profiles with custom CSS and background images. And there was a time when FB’s apps messed up profiles that things almost looked as horrible as any MySpace or Friendster page, but Facebook once again swept in and prioritized consistency. Over total freedom.

Facebook always seems to be choosing the unpopular, unconventional path, but it’s now the most popular social network on the planet, and the 3rd most popular site in the world second only to Google and Yahoo! They must be doing something right.

Twitter definitely upped its game as its new homepage rolled out today (viewable only if you’re logged out). Now its greatest strengths are featured front and center: real-time search and trends. A wise upgrade no doubt, but there’s something off about the design.

On any other website I wouldn’t have been bothered by this. A fair amount of blue, green, gradients, rounded corners, and overall sleekness reminiscent of a certain OS: these are all “acceptable” characteristics of good web design these days. The problem is, this is not what Twitter is about.

To me, Twitter is warm, organic, friendly—all because of the homepage (and the Fail Whale, of course). Sure, it used stock illustrations instead of commissioning original ones, but they were distinct enough. None of the cliche sunbursts and clouds, or the decidedly safer shades of blue.

And just as Twitter exploded in popularity, so did its branding. There’s an official Twitter bird, but whenever I see any other illustrated bird—hawk, owl, or any other kind—I think of Twitter. Heck, when I see that almost distinct light shade of blue (forget Tiffany & Co.!) or a rounded typeface, I think of Twitter. And while LOLcats have cemented their meme-dom for a while now, it’s really Twitter that shot them to stardom when they were used as error messages on the site.

Sure, all these inside jokes, cutesy mascots, and pastel hues may seem immature to some, and maybe the higher-ups thought it was time to get Twitter a personality makeover. What did they replace it with, exactly? tweaked Web 2.0 slash Apple design elements? Try again.

The old design elements fit Twitter’s image of sheer simplicity, of 140-character answers to the question “what are you doing?”. And today, with the homepage redesign, that image has started to slip away.

This Digg Blog post, Much Ado About IE6, sheds a good amount of light into that. Those who use IE6 to access Digg were also invited to answer a short, three-question survey that would hopefully reveal why they’re still using the outdated browser.

The results are thus: (a) More respondents used IE6 at work: a whopping 90% compared to 56% at home. (b) When asked why they don’t use another browser, majority say they can’t: either they don’t have sufficient computer access or workplace rights to do so, or the computer they’re using can’t handle modern browsers.

Granted, Digg is not a mainstream source of statistics. The amount of IE6 visitors are only at 10%, and more importantly, this social voting/bookmarking site has a strong geek slant. We can still learn from this unofficial study. As Mark Trammell concludes in the blog post:

Giving them a message saying, “Hey! Upgrade!” in this case is not only pointless; it’s sadistic.

How about we stop focusing on those who refuse to upgrade and try to help those who are simply unable to? All the campaign sites against IE6 don’t amount to much until they figure that out.

Just like the future of web typography means teaming up with the big-name font foundries to come up with a real solution to font embedding on web pages, eliminating IE6 would require reaching out to big businesses and convincing them to do large-scale upgrades in the workplace. On the Web, that’s already begun: we have the likes of Google and Facebook urging people to upgrade as they are dropping support for IE6.

But for non-technology companies, who’s going to reach out to them? Microsoft? W3C? WaSP? Assuming we found someone who will do the dirty deed, can they be convinced to drop a significant chunk of their market? Assuming the dirty doers manage that, can that significant chunk of their market be also convinced to stop accessing their sites using IE6, when in all probability they can’t? Should they be ignored?

The vicious cycle continues. (So much for freedom.)

RSS is a technology; it should be completely invisible to the average user. When it isn’t, you get stuff like Oprah redefining RSS as “Ready for Some Stories”. We should no sooner have RSS icons than we have HTTP icons.

The question I come to is: How necessary is it to display an RSS icon on a website? I’ve never really thought about it in depth before. After all, so many blogs and websites do it. It seems natural. And with the pros leaning that direction, what other example do we have to follow?

Practically the source of classy, relevant web tips and practice on the web, A List Apart features a link to their RSS feed in their main menu.

Easily the #1 model for thousands of bloggers, ProBlogger has a link to subscribe to their content displayed prominently above the fold.

The Feed Reader (no, the human kind)

At first glance, it seems there are two type of readers when it comes to RSS:

1. Those who use it, and therefore don’t really need the icons and
2. Those who don’t use RSS and don’t really care that there’s an icon on the page.

Granted, there are gray areas on the spectrum. There are those who use feeds but need to be reminded of their availability (though I don’t know why), as well as those who don’t use feeds but will after enough visual training.

Honestly, the whole issue makes me think of those Valid CSS and Valid XHTML buttons that I used to see every once and a while. I always think those are silly and unnecessary. Now I’m beginning to see feed icons in the same light.

Standard Technology and Non-standard Visuals

I recognize that an RSS icon standard does exist, to an extent, but there is still a lot of creative liberty taken across the web. As Atwood alludes to in his quote above, at some point this showing off of different versions of the icon becomes just that—showboating. How necessary is it?

Everyone does it—heck, I do it—so I can’t really talk. But at one point that was the case with table elements. So what excuses do we really have? And, more importantly, how long before this fad fades out, just like the rest have?