![\"A](\"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/i/posts/2015-02-26/atom-lg.jpg\")
Before I get into this, let me start with this preface: I am not a legal expert by any means. I never even watched Law & Order. That said, I am keenly interested in the law and how it relates to bias and discrimination, particularly if that intersects with technology, especially the web.
Which brings me to the subject at hand: 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. I tweeted about this case, which is currently before the Supreme Court of the United States, the other day, but felt like I owed it a lengthier—and perhaps more enduring—discussion. So here goes…
","summary":"Before I get into this, let me start with this preface: I am not a legal expert by any means. I never even watched Law & Order. That said, I am keenly interested in the law and how it relates to bias and discrimination, particularly if that intersects with technology, especially the web.
Which brings me to the subject at hand: 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. I tweeted about this case, which is currently before the Supreme Court of the United States, the other day, but felt like I owed it a lengthier—and perhaps more enduring—discussion. So here goes…
","content_html":"Before I get into this, let me start with this preface: I am not a legal expert by any means. I never even watched Law & Order. That said, I am keenly interested in the law and how it relates to bias and discrimination, particularly if that intersects with technology, especially the web.
\nWhich brings me to the subject at hand: 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. I tweeted about this case, which is currently before the Supreme Court of the United States, the other day, but felt like I owed it a lengthier—and perhaps more enduring—discussion. So here goes…
\nLorie Smith, a web designer operating as 303 Creative LLC, is interested in getting into the wedding announcement website game. She does not believe same-sex couples should be able to marry, so she wanted to put a notice on her website to that effect, stating that she would not create wedding announcements for same-sex weddings. This violates Colorado’s anti-discrimination law (some of you may recall it from Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission) which prevents public businesses from discriminating against gay people, who are a “protected class” in legal speak.
\nSmith contests that her web design work is her “expression” as an “artist” and that the First Amendment protects her right to that expression. What a lot of the coverage fails to include, however, is
\nIn other words, this case is not based on fact, but rather on hypotheticals. Additionally, there has been no injury on either side, just the potential for one. Anyway, if you’re interested in learning more about the case, you can check out the following:
\nIn particular, I highly recommend listening to Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson’s and Sonia Sotomayor’s contributions during oral arguments as they really cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of the case and its implications.
\nThis is something I talked about way back in my 2013 talk “Designing With Empathy”: Design is not art. Art is self-expression and serves the artist; design serves someone else (typically the client or their audience). If you don’t work in the industry, however, this distinction isn’t always clear. To quote Jeff Veen:
\n\n\nI’ve been amazed at how often those outside the discipline of design assume that what designers do is decoration. Good design is problem solving.
\n
Design is not the creation of pretty pictures and decoration. Design serves a purpose. In fact, the term “design” originated in Medieval Latin as designare which meant “to mark out” (hence the related term designate). To design is “to devise for a specific function or end.” To practice “web design” is to use the tools of graphic design to achieve the purpose of the project.
\nIn the context 303 Creative LLC seeks to operate, the purpose of each project would be to announce and provide the details about a wedding. 303 Creative LLC seeks to provide these services in exchange for money, at the behest of a client. It is not artistic expression any way you slice it.
\nIf you’ve run any sort of service business, you’ve likely come across clients and projects you had to turn away. Sometimes you don’t have the bandwidth to take on the project. Other times you may not be interested in the kind of work it entails. Still others, you might not have the right expertise to do the project justice. And sometimes you just get a sense that the potential client is not someone you’d work well with (perhaps based on the tone of their inquiry). Regardless of the reason, however, you can gently explain to them that you cannot do the project for them and either leave it at that or recommend someone who might be able to help them.
\nIn the case of 303 Creative LLC, Smith could have easily used this approach to turn away same-sex couples without making it a thing. She could even have a form email prepared for this very purpose! And unless several couples approached her at roughly the same time and got wildly different responses with respect to her ability to create them a wedding website—which, to reiterate, is not a service she currently offers—no one would be any the wiser when it came to her belief that same-sex marriage doesn’t (or shouldn’t) exist.
\nBut no, that’s not the route that Ms. Smith and 303 Creative LLC seeks to go. Instead, she would like to be able to express her “firmly held religious belief” that same-sex marriages should not happen and to put a notice on her website explicitly saying she refuses to create a website for a same-sex wedding. She wants to put her bigotry on full display and she doesn’t think she should suffer any legal consequences for doing so.
\nOver on Mastodon, I was asked to clarify whether the law allows you to refuse to work for a particular individual or corporation. For example, could a web designer refuse to do work for Chick-fil-a on account of their anti-LGBTQIA+ positions (a stance which I think they’ve reversed, but I don’t eat there so I’m not sure). A similar question was asked in Oral Arguments, framed as a speech writer’s ability to refuse to write a speech for a political candidate they disagree with. Public accommodations law, which is what is being considered in this case, would not require you to work on any project for anyone as long as the reason you are refusing your service is not on account of their membership in a protected class.
\nCorporations are not a protected class. Neither are politicians. Same-sex couples are protected from discrimination under both the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
\nIf the conservative majority on the Court decides to ignore all of the facts in this case an rule in favor of 303 Creative LLC, that decision will open the floodgates for discrimination against people based on their protected status by anyone who claims to have a religious objection to treating that person respectfully.
\nFor example, people with disabilities are a protected class under the Americans with Disabilities Act. If this ruling goes in 303 Creative LLC’s favor, a business owner could claim eugenics as a “firmly held religious view” and refuse to provide accommodations for them. From the web side of things, that could mean they could intentionally make their site inaccessible to people who use screen readers. In the physical world, it could mean they could make entry to their business impossible for anyone using a wheelchair.
\nIt might take a little time, but we’d likely end up in another “Jim Crow”-like era where restaurants are once again free to adorn their windows with “Whites Only” signs. Where the grocery store hangs a “Christians Only” sign on its door. Where the local bank proudly announces that only “Heterosexual Evangelical Christian Women” can apply for an open teller position. Where only women under 25 can date Leonardo DiCaprio… wait.
\nInstead of embracing our differences as a complement to one another and for the betterment of our society, condoning this would further drive us apart and foster a world of exclusion. People could use their religion to mask their bigotry and claim exemption from having to provide equal access to people based on their disabilities, gender (or gender expression), sexual orientation, racial characteristics, religion, age, or any other protected category. That’s not a world I want to live in nor is it a future I want for my kid.
\nIf it comes to pass, I suppose the one silver lining is that we’ll learn what companies deserve our business, but that hardly outweighs the potential harms for people who need access to food, clothing, shelter, information, and other necessities for existence both online and off that are supposed to be guaranteed by anti-discrimination laws.
\nIt’s all in the Supreme Court’s hands at this point, but I am more than a little concerned with what this could mean for the future here in the United States.
\n","social_text":"A longer essay on 303 Creative v. Elenis and why it should not be before the court in the first place as well as the potential it has to undermine other public accommodations laws.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/303-creative-llc-v-elenis-is-incredibly-problematic/","tags":["accessibility","business","design","industry","society"],"image":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/i/posts/2022-12-13/hero.jpg","date_published":"2022-12-13T21:03:25Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/crossing-a-border/","title":"✍🏻 Crossing a Border","excerpt":"If you travel abroad for work, you may have some concerns about border crossings, based on recent news coverage. I know I do. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve been researching quite a bit and asking for opinions and recommendations. Below is a summary of the advice I’ve been given. I’m providing it here in case it might be of use to you.
","summary":"If you travel abroad for work, you may have some concerns about border crossings, based on recent news coverage. I know I do. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve been researching quite a bit and asking for opinions and recommendations. Below is a summary of the advice I’ve been given. I’m providing it here in case it might be of use to you.
","content_html":"If you travel abroad for work, you may have some concerns about border crossings, based on recent news coverage. I know I do. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve been researching quite a bit and asking for opinions and recommendations. Below is a summary of the advice I’ve been given. I’m providing it here in case it might be of use to you.
\nFull disclosure: I have been held at a border before. I was entering Canada to lead a training for a client and did not have the necessary visa. My passport was taken and I was escorted to a holding area. It was terrifying, but ultimately ended up okay—I paid for the visa and entered Canada without any further incident. I realized, once I had a few minutes to gather myself, that I was moved to the holding area to enable the border officers to expedite processing of the other passengers. It was triage, nothing personal against me. Once I realized that, my nerves calmed down a bit. Still… it’s not something I’d like to repeat. I realize some of you reading this may have had much worse experiences at a border. Being a white male, I know I’m far less likely to be searched, questioned, etc. I’m sharing my story not to diminish any experience you have had, but merely to provide a little background about my experience in relation to this topic.
\nThe information below outlines the rights of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under federal law. It applies whether you are a U.S. citizen or not. Other countries may vary, but I suspect most exercise similar rights.
\nRegardless of your thoughts on how the U.S. or other countries handle things at the border, the law is the law. If you are seeking to cross a border (even your own), you’re subject to that law. I am not saying this because I agree with everything we in the U.S. or other nations do, but I sincerely believe you will do more good advocating for changes to border policy with the politicians who write the laws than with the Officer whose lane you happened to find yourself in.
\nOne additional note: Most border protection agencies do have comment forms you can use to provide feedback about your experience. Regardless of whether you are permitted entry to the country, you should file a report if you feel you have been mistreated by an Officer. Similarly, if you had a particularly helpful and courteous Officer, consider using the same form to praise their behavior or attitude; that’s probably not the kind of feedback they get often and would likely be much appreciated.
\nMany thanks to Rachel Nabors, who had a terrible experience at the UK border a while back, for providing some excellent feedback on this piece. Her insights were invaluable and her tips regarding the travel wallet and notebook & crayon were fantastic!
\nMake sure your travel wallet doesn’t have a long strap or, if it does, make sure it’s detachable. Some Officers might view the strap as a potential weapon and use it as an excuse to relieve you of your wallet too. ↩︎
\nLike many, I’m disappointed that gender—or ethnicity, etc., etc., etc.—should even have to play a role when it comes to selecting awesome speakers, but the reality is that the dais at most tech-related events and conferences is still occupied (largely) by white men. That needs to change. We’ve been very intentional with our programming of Code & Creativity, but it wasn’t like it was hard to find an incredible speaker lineup that also happened to be pretty diverse.
","summary":"Like many, I’m disappointed that gender—or ethnicity, etc., etc., etc.—should even have to play a role when it comes to selecting awesome speakers, but the reality is that the dais at most tech-related events and conferences is still occupied (largely) by white men. That needs to change. We’ve been very intentional with our programming of Code & Creativity, but it wasn’t like it was hard to find an incredible speaker lineup that also happened to be pretty diverse.
","content_html":"Like many, I’m disappointed that gender—or ethnicity, etc., etc., etc.—should even have to play a role when it comes to selecting awesome speakers, but the reality is that the dais at most tech-related events and conferences is still occupied (largely) by white men. That needs to change. We’ve been very intentional with our programming of Code & Creativity, but it wasn’t like it was hard to find an incredible speaker lineup that also happened to be pretty diverse.
\nI applaud The Next Web for their recent list of “100+ tech & business women speakers you need at your next event”, but I’ve got a few more to add from the interactive/UX/web world. In no particular order:
\nI also highly recommend Molly Holzschlag. She’s currently on medical leave, but she is a-mazing. When she’s ready to get back in the saddle, she’ll bring a wealth of knowledge to your event from her decades of working in technology.
\nI’ve seen everyone on this list deliver incredible talks on technology, the Web, business, or all three; in some cases, I’ve even had the great privilege of co-presenting with them. I’m sure there are other’s I’ve forgotten on this dreary Chattanooga morning, so I will continue adding to this list over time. All would be fantastic additions to any tech event.
\nIf you’re looking for an even more exhaustive list of incredible speakers, you should check out the Articulate Network on Lanyrd.
\n","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/excellent-speakers-for-your-next-tech-event/","tags":["industry","business"],"date_published":"2015-10-28T13:28:09Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/speaking-engagements/your-brand-is-not-a-logo/","title":"📢 Your Brand is Not a Logo","summary":"A brief presentation on what it means to consider your brand holistically.
","content_html":"A brief presentation on what it means to consider your brand holistically.
\n","social_text":"A brief presentation on what it means to consider your brand holistically.","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/speaking-engagements/your-brand-is-not-a-logo/","tags":["business","design"],"image":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/undefined","date_published":"2015-06-03T08:09:00Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/apple-business-and-standards/","title":"✍🏻 Apple, Business, and Standards","excerpt":"At Tuesday night’s Code & Creativity, digital governance expert Lisa Welchman equated digital projects to an atom. Content, IA, project management, networking, graphic design, application development, performance, and other concerns are flying this way and that like electrons—a swirling mass of energy and velocity. What holds this chaos together and keeps the electrons from flying off in all directions is the magnetic pull of protons in the nucleus of the atom.
","summary":"At Tuesday night’s Code & Creativity, digital governance expert Lisa Welchman equated digital projects to an atom. Content, IA, project management, networking, graphic design, application development, performance, and other concerns are flying this way and that like electrons—a swirling mass of energy and velocity. What holds this chaos together and keeps the electrons from flying off in all directions is the magnetic pull of protons in the nucleus of the atom.
","content_html":"At Tuesday night’s Code & Creativity, digital governance expert Lisa Welchman equated digital projects to an atom. Content, IA, project management, networking, graphic design, application development, performance, and other concerns are flying this way and that like electrons—a swirling mass of energy and velocity. What holds this chaos together and keeps the electrons from flying off in all directions is the magnetic pull of protons in the nucleus of the atom.
\n
In Lisa’s analogy, the protons of a digital project are Web standards and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). She believes that without these key ingredients, projects will often career out of control. Her reasoning? We all need to know how we should be doing things in order to work together well (Web standards) and we need to know what our expectations are for the project to be successful (KPI).
\nThis really resonated with me. Mainly, it resonated because I am a Web standards guy, but I also believe in the importance of standards across the board. I think projects need copywriting standards, design standards, performance standards, coding standards, and many other kinds of standards as well. Standards hold a project together. For real.
\nThat’s why Web standards are so important.
\nWithout standards, the Web was an unruly mass of spaghetti code. I started working on the Web in 1996. I know, I lived it.
\nWe used to deliver separate browser-specific JavaScript and CSS files to different User Agents. Our HTML code had to be 3-4 times as hefty to support all of the various ways browsers had decided to implement the same features. It was horrible and made building anything remotely interesting a truly painful endeavor.
\nThen browser makers got together to codify HTML into a generally agreed-upon set of elements and attributes that would allow authors like me to write pages that would Just Work™. That work extended into CSS, and so on, and so forth. I can’t thank them enough for doing that.
\nTuesday also saw the W3C officially make Pointer Events a recommendation. I’d always liked the idea of Pointer Events because it abstracts the traditional concept of a click into a generic interaction that could be triggered by a mouse, a finger, a pen, an eye movement, or any other interaction method we come up with in the future. Sure, I work for Microsoft now—they proposed this idea—but that isn’t the reason I like the concept. I like it because it doesn’t tie us down to a single way of interacting with Web content that necessitates the creation of new specs when new interaction methods are invented. It’s future friendly and embraces the “continuum of experience” I evangelize incessantly.
\nWhen Pointer Events were first proposed, there was a lot of support behind them. Obviously Microsoft was on board, but Mozilla was too. And Google was all about Pointer Events for a while and was already using them when they did an abrupt about-face and decided they were ripping them out of Blink in favor of overhauling Touch Events (which Apple supports and which Pointer Events were intended to supersede).
\nAnd so now we have a recommendation from the W3C that browsers implement Pointer Events. Developers want them and it seems Apple doesn’t. And because Apple doesn’t want them, Google doesn’t want them now either. To quote Rick Byers (of Google) in a Pointer Events meeting in late 2014:
\n\n\nNo argument that PE is more elegant. If we had a path to universal input that all supported, we would be great with that, but not all browsers will support PE. If we had Apple on board with PE, we’d still be on board too. The equation has shifted for us.
\n
So, effectively, Apple is holding the Web back. Tim Kadlec wrote a great piece discussing the core issue at play here:
\n\n\nLet’s set any opinions about Pointer Events aside. Frankly, I need to do a lot more digging here before I have any sort of strong opinion in one direction or another. There is a bigger issue here. We have a recurring situation where all vendors (save for Apple) show interest in standard, but because Apple does not express that same interest, the standard gets waylaid.
\n
![\"Yin](\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Yin_yang.svg/200px-Yin_yang.svg.png\")
This whole thing has caused quite a kerfuffle in the Web community. Obviously, some people are demonizing Apple (and, by proxy, Google) for holding us back. Others are quick to excuse Apple because of their history of pushing the Web forward (see CSS transitions, animations, etc.).1 Personally, I don’t think anything is ever truly black and white. Every company does some good things and some bad things. To channel Lisa Welshman again, it’s like yin and yang: The light has a little bit of the dark in it, and the dark has a little bit of the light in it.
\nGenerally, I’ve found that Apple tends to do what is best for Apple, without considering how it affects designers, developers, or the Open Web. On this issue however, I just haven’t figured out their angle yet.
\nSome of their past decisions have offered a clear view into their motivations. Take offline for instance. Apple supports the Application Cache API (as most modern browsers do), but there’s a catch: You can’t store audio files in the cache. That makes it nearly impossible to build a decent game in HTML because you won’t get sound effects if you aren’t connected to the Web. But for Apple it makes perfect sense: They sell games in the App Store.
\nTheir motivations behind other decisions are more murky, however. For example, Safari implements the HTML5 Form Validation API, which means it knows if a field is valid or invalid. The catch? It won’t halt the submission of an invalid form. Every other modern browser acts as you’d expect.2 I don’t get it. I used to think/hope they just had not figured out how they wanted to handle notifying the user of the error, but it’s been like this for about 5 years.
\nI’ll let Tim jump in again here:
\n\n\nApple has a very, very strong influence over what standards get adopted and what standards do not. Partly it’s market share, partly it’s developer bias (see, for example, how other vendors eventually felt forced to start supporting the
\nwebkitprefix due to vendor prefix abuse).
\n\nApple simply does not play well with other vendors when it comes to standardization. The same sort of things we once criticized Microsoft for doing long ago, we give Apple a pass on today. They’re very content to play in their own little sandbox all too often.
\n
He’s channeling a bit of Remy Sharp there (circa 2012):
\n\n\nWhen are we, as a web development community, going to stop giving Apple a free fucking pass?
\n
\n\nThey’re consistently lacking in the open discussion in to improving the gateway to the web: the browser. Sure, they landed an impressive mobile browsing experience back when the iPhone launched and it’s a great device, but there’s some serious questioning about whether they’re purposely cock-blocking web development and purposely hindering our advancement as a web industry.
\n
\n\nWebGL is in mobile Safari, yet only available if accessed via a WebView object, not the real Safari (which is a WebView anyway…). It was recently discovered that they moved all web data storage (Web Storage, Appcache, etc) in a temporary data store meaning that it can be wiped at any time without warning.
\n
\n\nEven the mighty PPK who tells entire browser vendors “fuck you”, doesn’t call Apple out, allowing them to slither on.
\n
\n\nWhy is it we continue to allow Apple to get away with it? And can this ever change?
\n
As Tim points out, Apple certainly isn’t the only company that plays games when it comes to standards:
\n\n\nThe other vendors aren’t exactly perfect either. The Microsoft folks, no doubt reeling from all the negativity aimed at them over the years, have more than once been content to let everyone else duke it out over a standard, only getting involved late when a consensus has been reached. The Blink folks, despite being the best positioned to take a stand, have been happy to play the “Apple won’t do it so I guess we won’t either” card on multiple occasions.
\n
But he’s also quick to highlight the disappointing reality about Apple with respect to the other browser vendors:
\n\n\nIt’s easy to reach the Mozilla, Google and Microsoft folks to discuss their thoughts on these emerging standards. That’s a much harder thing to do with the Apple crew.
\n
Apple is very much a black box and their processes are incredibly opaque. Now I’m no hater, I use their products daily.3, but I am also not an apologist. I think relationships are improved with honesty and openness. I honestly wish Apple’s processes—at least when it comes to the Web—were more open.4 Heck, they often don’t even show up to meetings at the W3C. If we knew what they were thinking or why they were doing things, we could at least understand where they were coming from rather than having to speculate about their motivations. Whether we agree or not is irrelevant.
\nRegardless, we are where we are and I can’t help but wonder one thing: If we stop giving Apple a free pass and continue marching forward without them, will they eventually be forced to scramble to catch up like Microsoft did when IE6 sat on the shelf for so long? I don’t know what the answer is, but I sincerely hope they come around and begin to treat the Web with the respect it deserves before that happens.
\nWhen browsers refuse to implement Web standards, we all lose. And we take one step closer to the swirling pit of chaos and spaghetti code we thought we’d put behind us.
\nAll of which were (in true Apple style) developed in secret and then bestowed upon the world in a grand spectacle. ↩︎
\nOk, Opera Mini doesn’t, but Opera Mini is also a different sort of browser. It is a proxy browser and the proxy handles all of the back and forth between the browser and the website’s origin server(s). ↩︎
\nI am composing this post on a Mac… provided by Microsoft. Yes, you read that correctly. ↩︎
\nI have felt the same way about Microsoft for years because I knew the great work they were doing behind the curtains. Part of the reason I joined them earlier this month was because they have been opening up and I want to encourage and nurture that. ↩︎
\n\tWhen you’ve been evangelizing progressive enhancement for as long as we have, you invariably come across skeptics. Take this comment on Tim Kadlec’s recent (and well-argued) post about designing experiences that work without JavaScript:
\t\tThis is all fine and dandy, but not very real world. A cost-benefit analysis has to happen — what does that next user/visitor cost, and more importantly earn you? This idealistic approach would leave most broke if they had to consider “every user” when building a site. That’s why clothes come in small, medium, large, and extra large. Most of us have to buy them that way because not everyone can afford a tailor made suit, much less an entire wardrobe. Your approach only works for those who can see the return.
","summary":"\tWhen you’ve been evangelizing progressive enhancement for as long as we have, you invariably come across skeptics. Take this comment on Tim Kadlec’s recent (and well-argued) post about designing experiences that work without JavaScript:
\t\tThis is all fine and dandy, but not very real world. A cost-benefit analysis has to happen — what does that next user/visitor cost, and more importantly earn you? This idealistic approach would leave most broke if they had to consider “every user” when building a site. That’s why clothes come in small, medium, large, and extra large. Most of us have to buy them that way because not everyone can afford a tailor made suit, much less an entire wardrobe. Your approach only works for those who can see the return.
","content_html":"\n\tWhen you’ve been evangelizing progressive enhancement for as long as we have, you invariably come across skeptics. Take this comment on Tim Kadlec’s recent (and well-argued) post about designing experiences that work without JavaScript:
\n\n\n\n\t\tThis is all fine and dandy, but not very real world. A cost-benefit analysis has to happen — what does that next user/visitor cost, and more importantly earn you? This idealistic approach would leave most broke if they had to consider “every user” when building a site. That’s why clothes come in small, medium, large, and extra large. Most of us have to buy them that way because not everyone can afford a tailor made suit, much less an entire wardrobe. Your approach only works for those who can see the return.
\n\n\tTim’s response was dead-on:
\n\n\n\n\t\tI think that’s where the difference between “support” and “optimization” comes into play. I’m certainly not saying to go out and buy every device under the sun, test on them, make sure things look and behave the same. You don’t necessarily have to optimize for all these different devices and scenarios (that’s where the cost-benefit analysis has to come in), but it’s often not very time consuming to at least support them on some level.
\n\n\t\tProgressive enhancement can get you a long way towards accomplishing that goal. Sometimes it’s as simple as doing something like “cutting the mustard” to exclude older devices and browsers that might choke on advanced JS from having to try and deal with that. The experience isn’t the same, but if you’ve used progressive enhancement to make sure the markup is solid and not reliant on the JavaScript, it’s at least something that is usable for them.
\n\n\tI’ve had similar conversations innumerable times in person, on conference calls, in blog comments, and (of course) on Twitter. Sometimes I can win the skeptics over with a well-reasoned philosophical argument, but often I need to start filling in numbers.
\n\n\tEach project is different, so I’m often reluctant to say “progressive enhancement costs X.” It’s also part-and-parcel of everything we do here at Easy, so it’s damned near impossible to say what a project would cost without progressive enhancement. That said, we’ve been doing this long enough to have a few stories worth sharing. Here are two anecdotes from real projects we’ve worked on.
\n\n\tBacking Off From the Bleeding Edge
\n\n\tSome time ago we built a Chrome app for WikiHow. As a Chrome app and a show-piece for the new app store, our client wanted it to have fancy CSS3 animations & transitions, web fonts, a WebDB “back-end”, offline support, and lots of other HTML5-y bells and whistles. And, as our target was a single browser, we relented when asked to go the single-page app route. The app was built to degrade gracefully (it blocked non-WebKit browsers), but it was not progressively enhanced.
\n\n\tSkip ahead about a year and our client returned to add support for Firefox and IE9+. Oh boy.
\n\n\tHaving built the site purely for WebKit, it was a bit of the challenge. In addition to implementation differences with the experimental CSS features, we also had to deal with the DOM and JavaScript API variance among the browsers. But the single biggest issue we ran into was the lack of WebDB support in Firefox and IE. You see, in the intervening year, WebDB had been abandoned at the W3C because of pushback (primarily from Mozilla and Microsoft). It was not available in either Firefox or IE, nor would it ever be. And indexedDB, its replacement, had yet to be implemented in any production browser. So we ended up writing a wrapper on top of localStorage that looked a lot like SQL, which allowed us to avoid re-writing the bulk of the app. Coincidentally, it also made the app a lot faster.
\n\n\tThe total cost of the new compatibility project was around 40% of the original budget required to build the app the first time around. Without access to an alternate timeline I can’t be certain, but my experience tells me it would have added less than 40% to the original project had we been given the leeway to build it using progressive enhancement. And the end result would have been even better because it would have been able to function without JavaScript.
\n\n\tBased on other conversations I’ve had with folks, the 40% number seems pretty accurate; possibly even a bit low. I remember a conversation I had six or seven years ago about Google Maps. When the team originally built Maps—in all of its Ajax-y glory—they didn’t make it very accessible and it required JavaScript. According to the source (who I have long forgotten), it took them almost twice as long to retrofit Maps than it would have taken had they built it following progressive enhancement from the ground up. As it’s purely anecdotal, you should take that with a grain of salt, but it’s food for thought.
\n\n\tSwitching gears, let me share a success story around building things the right way.
\n\n\tSmart Code, Dumb Phones
\n\n\tIn early 2012 we began working with a client who was struggling with the security of their mobile apps. They had numerous native apps that all followed the common convention of using a web service to authenticate users. They are a very security-concious organization and this setup was creating a bottleneck in deploying new security features. In order to roll out any new authentication method, error state, etc. they had to go through an excrutiatingly long, painful, multi-step process:
\n\n
\n- \n\t\tImplement the new security feature,
\n- \n\t\tExpose it via the web service,
\n- \n\t\tUpdate each app to use the new web service (which might include UI changes, etc.),
\n- \n\t\tSubmit each app for approval, and finally
\n- \n\t\tHope their users downloaded the new version of the app.
\n\n\tThey brought us in to re-imagine the authentication flow as a web-based process that would launch inside of each app and handle letting the app know if and when the user had successfully logged in. This approach meant they could roll out new security features immediately because the apps and the authentication flow would be very loosely coupled. It would be a huge win for everyone involved.
\n\n\tDespite the fact that the project was aimed at handling authentication for mobile apps on a few particular platforms, we built the screens following progressive enhancement. The layouts were responsive from tiny screens all the way up to large ones and we implemented HTML5 and JavaScript in completely unobtrusive ways in order to take advantage of cool new things like form validation while still keeping the file sizes small and ensuring the pages would function in the absence or either technology.
\n\n\tA few months after completing the project, our client came back to us with interest in rolling out the authentication flow to their m-dot users. They gave us a list of nearly 1400 unique User Agent strings that had been used on the login screen over a two-day period and asked if we could handle it. We parsed the list (with the help of a little script I cooked up) and were able to put together a more manageable list of aggregate devices and device types to use in our testing. It was something like 25 devices that would cover roughly 97% of the spectrum. We were comfortable assuming that fixing issues in 97% of the devices listed would likely also cover the other 3%, but were prepared to fix any additional issues if they cropped up.
\n\n\tOur budget for this project was about 33% of the budget of the original project.
\n\n\tMuch to our surprise, when all was said and done, we came in at roughly half of that budget in terms of actual hours spent and we completed the project in about half the time we expected. It was awesome for us because we saved our client money, which made us look good. It was awesome for our client too, because they were able to save serious money on a project (which rarely happens in the corporate world, at least in my experience).
\n\n\tIt’s worth noting that this accomplishment had nothing to do with our bug-squashing prowess or our speed… progressive enhancement just works. We were dealing with some heinous old browsers too—think Blackberry 4 and OpenWave—and they really didn’t present much of a challenge. So, for a very modest sum, we were able to quickly roll out additional support for over 1000 devices (and probably thousands more that didn’t make the list) and that created a huge opportunity for our client to attract and retain new customers.
\n\n\tLessons Learned
\n\n\tWe’ve been practicing the art of progressive enhancement for a long time. It’s deeply-ingrained in our process and part of who we are as a company. That often makes it difficult for us to put hard numbers against the cost of not doing progressive enhancement and the financial savings of doing things the way we almost always do. Hopefully, these two small case studies help illuminate things a bit for those who may still be a bit skeptical.
\n\n\tDo you have any case studies or anecdotes you can share? We’d love to hear them.
\n","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/the-true-cost-of-progressive-enhancement/","tags":["progressive enhancement","business"],"date_published":"2013-08-01T12:35:00Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/appearances/podcasts/2012-02-02-how-to-find-the-right-web-services-people/","title":"🎧 How to find the Right Web Services People","content_html":"I joined the Small Business Roundtable to talk about hiring a web design firm.
\n","url":"http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sbr/2012/02/02/how-to-find-the-right-web-services-people","tags":["web design","business","web standards"],"date_published":"2012-02-02T00:00:00Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/google-measure-map/","title":"✍🏻 Google Measure Map?!?","summary":"Just when you though all the good purchases were going to Yahoo! , Google ups the ante by picking up Measure Map , the wonderful blog stats analytics tool from my friends at Adaptive Path . Measure Map is what web analytics should be…
","content_html":"Just when you though all the good purchases were going to Yahoo!, Google ups the ante by picking up Measure Map, the wonderful blog stats analytics tool from my friends at Adaptive Path. Measure Map is what web analytics should be all about—it is so simple and so addictive, no wonder Google had to have it.
\n","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/google-measure-map/","tags":["business","blogging"],"date_published":"2006-02-14T17:57:44Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/consumer-choice-and-fair-use/","title":"✍🏻 Consumer Choice and Fair Use","excerpt":"In a recent issue of Game Informer, I read an interesting news piece on the upcoming PS3, but its significance goes far beyond that system and even the world of video games. In fact, it applies to all digital media.
","summary":"In a recent issue of Game Informer, I read an interesting news piece on the upcoming PS3, but its significance goes far beyond that system and even the world of video games. In fact, it applies to all digital media.
","content_html":"In a recent issue of Game Informer, I read an interesting news piece on the upcoming PS3, but its significance goes far beyond that system and even the world of video games. In fact, it applies to all digital media.
\nIt seems SCE Australia recently lost a court case involving the use of mod chips to play foreign titles. Current video game systems (and indeed the DVD movie industry) use region encoding to keep certain movies and games out of certain areas, but the court ruled region encoding was “an articficial trade barrier that restricted consumers’ choice.” The ruling impacts only those Aussie gamers who wish to play worldwide games and the descision was obviously made in observance of Australia’s copyright laws, but why did it take a court ruling to make it so? It seems like a no-brainer to me.
\nOf course, mod-ing does still void your warranty, but once that’s up, what skin is it off the video game industry’s teeth if you play a foreign game? They still get paid. It’s not like you’re stealing from anyone. The same should go for movies. Why should I not be able to buy a copy of Delicatessen on DVD simply because I live in the US? I bought a copy on Laser Disk back in the day and the DVD is available in Europe. Granted, I’ve got the damn PAL/NTSC thing to worry about, but really, why do we need region encoding? There’s no such thing for CDs and it works out great for everyone. We can listen to music from anywhere and there is very big money in it for record shops that stock import CDs (at least in the US, most imports run upwards of $30 for a full-length CD). Why shouldn’t the same go for movies and video games?
\nAlright, so I’ve probably beaten that horse to death now. On to the second interesting little factoid in the article… the one that really scares me: Sony has apparently developed a technology which could be used to stop an individual from playing used games. The technology, developed by PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi, would encrypt an authentication code on the disk, making it playable only on the first system it is played on. There’s no word on whether this technology will be employed in the PS3, but the sheer fact that something like this has been developed is absurd.
\nAn argument against this technology could probably be made on the grounds of Fair Use here in the US. After all, if you own two of the same video game systems (Perhaps your parents are divorced and you have an XBox at each parent’s house or you’re really lazy and have one upstairs and one downstairs. I don’t know, work with me here…), why should you not be able to play the game you paid $50 for on both? Based on the Australian ruling and its focus on consumer choice, I imagine the Aussies would probably kill it as well, but did anyone stop to think of the repercussions such a technology would have?
\nSuch technology has the power to kill the video game rental industry as well as friendly borrowing, both of which I am sure trigger a good portion of new video game sales to begin with. So not only would it crush the aftermarket (used video game sales which, one assumes, is the target), but it runs the risk of killing the market as well. Then there’s the environmental impact. Think about it: millions of games (and their packaging) rendered useless once they’re done being played. That’s as good an idea as those disposable DVDs Disney came up with. And, of course, not everyone can afford to plunk down $40-50 for a brand new game, so it would likely cut the available market considerably. Do people even think about this shit?
\nOK, perhaps I’m being just a tad alarmist here. Surely a mod would be available within weeks if not days to disable such “protection,” but I just wish people would think about the consequences of their creations before building them at all.
\n","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/consumer-choice-and-fair-use/","tags":["business","security","society"],"date_published":"2006-01-16T18:09:51Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/daves-work-draws-a-crowd/","title":"✍🏻 Dave’s Work Draws a Crowd","excerpt":"I just saw a copy of the latest issue of DMNews and Dave’s hard work garnered the Wadsworth Atheneum a feature story and Cronin and Company some major kudos. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
An online campaign initiated by the 161-year-old museum and developed by Glastonbury, CT, ad agency Cronin and Company Inc. doubled visits to the site at www.wadsworthatheneum.org. Components included a SurrealPainter Web tool, banner ads and the seeding of blogs.
","summary":"I just saw a copy of the latest issue of DMNews and Dave’s hard work garnered the Wadsworth Atheneum a feature story and Cronin and Company some major kudos. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
An online campaign initiated by the 161-year-old museum and developed by Glastonbury, CT, ad agency Cronin and Company Inc. doubled visits to the site at www.wadsworthatheneum.org. Components included a SurrealPainter Web tool, banner ads and the seeding of blogs.
","content_html":"I just saw a copy of the latest issue of DMNews and Dave’s hard work garnered the Wadsworth Atheneum a feature story and Cronin and Company some major kudos. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
\n\n\nAn online campaign initiated by the 161-year-old museum and developed by Glastonbury, CT, ad agency Cronin and Company Inc. doubled visits to the site at www.wadsworthatheneum.org. Components included a SurrealPainter Web tool, banner ads and the seeding of blogs.
\nCentral to the campaign is the tool at www.wadsworthatheneum.org/painter. Visitors through Dec. 18 can choose from various colorful backgrounds and objects, then flip, copy, layer or scale them. Once completed, the online artwork can be titled, printed, published and e-mailed to family and friends.
\nBe sure to make your own surrealist painting, while you still can.
\n","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/daves-work-draws-a-crowd/","tags":["web design","user experience","business"],"date_published":"2005-11-29T20:59:42Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/savvy-marketers-take-note/","title":"✍🏻 Savvy Marketers Take Note","excerpt":"One of the web’s preeminent marketing websites, MarketingSherpa, has just published an article which may start a web standards stampede. The focus is Firefox, but the underlying message is standards, standards and more standards:
Your more savvy Web designers are likely all agog over Firefox, because its support of Web Standards makes it easier to design and maintain effective Web pages. …
","summary":"One of the web’s preeminent marketing websites, MarketingSherpa, has just published an article which may start a web standards stampede. The focus is Firefox, but the underlying message is standards, standards and more standards:
Your more savvy Web designers are likely all agog over Firefox, because its support of Web Standards makes it easier to design and maintain effective Web pages. …
","content_html":"One of the web’s preeminent marketing websites, MarketingSherpa, has just published an article which may start a web standards stampede. The focus is Firefox, but the underlying message is standards, standards and more standards:
\n\n\nYour more savvy Web designers are likely all agog over Firefox, because its support of Web Standards makes it easier to design and maintain effective Web pages. …
\nFor marketers, these standards are so darn important because they affect the bottom line: your budget. In fact, The Web Standards Project … estimates that before today’s growing lack of support for standards, the “fractured browser market” was adding at least 25% to the cost of developing Web sites. And that’s just one tiny piece of the revenue picture.
\n“Housing construction, electrical wiring, automobile design, all these benefit from design standards,” says Scott McDaniel, MarketingSherpa’s own Internet Director. “Web site construction is maturing in much the same way.”
\nThe author, Heidi Anderson, even tallies her “6 Business Benefits of ‘Web Standards-based’ design”:
\n\n
\n- Increased search engine optimization
\n- Proper content presentation, including shopping carts and “contact us” forms
\n- Decreased development and maintenance costs
\n- Lower bandwidth usage
\n- Faster download times
\n- Web viewing beyond the computer (your site on wireless devices & RSS)
\nIt’s nice to see marketers taking note of all we can do for them. Now roll up your shirt sleeves and get to work.
\n","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/savvy-marketers-take-note/","tags":["web standards","business","web development"],"date_published":"2005-11-29T18:14:07Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/oracle-opens-up/","title":"✍🏻 Oracle opens up","excerpt":"In hopes of stemming the massive explosion of open source database use, Oracle is preparing an “express” version of it’s Oracle Database 10g line: Oracle Database XE. Like many things on the web right now, it’s currently in beta, with a full release planned for late this year.
","summary":"In hopes of stemming the massive explosion of open source database use, Oracle is preparing an “express” version of it’s Oracle Database 10g line: Oracle Database XE. Like many things on the web right now, it’s currently in beta, with a full release planned for late this year.
","content_html":"In hopes of stemming the massive explosion of open source database use, Oracle is preparing an “express” version of it’s Oracle Database 10g line: Oracle Database XE. Like many things on the web right now, it’s currently in beta, with a full release planned for late this year.
\nCourting the open source set is an interesting move for Oracle. PHP developers are the obvious target right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the focus shifted to Rails developers in the near future.
\nHere’s a breakdown of some of the features/limitations:
\n\n
\n- available for Windows or Linux
\n- stores up to 4GB of data
\n- will only use one processor (crippled to keep their Enterprise clients no doubt)
\n- will only use up to 1GB of RAM (ditto)
\n- upgradeable to other Oracle Database 10g editions (of course)
\nI haven’t downloaded it to play yet, but there seems to be some fairly detailed instructions on both install and integration on the PHP end.
\n","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/oracle-opens-up/","tags":["open source","software development","business"],"date_published":"2005-11-03T15:25:17Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/in-2030-google-became-self-aware/","title":"✍🏻 In 2030 Google became self-aware…","excerpt":"Some interesting news on the Google front: there’s been sightings of a new Google universe which looks more than a little scary, especially in light of the mockumentary-with-a-stright-face known as EPIC 2014.
","summary":"Some interesting news on the Google front: there’s been sightings of a new Google universe which looks more than a little scary, especially in light of the mockumentary-with-a-stright-face known as EPIC 2014.
","content_html":"Some interesting news on the Google front: there’s been sightings of a new Google universe which looks more than a little scary, especially in light of the mockumentary-with-a-stright-face known as EPIC 2014.
\nWhat are they planning? If its present growth and expansion continues, will Google be subject to anti-trust legislation or will it claim it isn’t because it is simply aggregating content?
\nThe only thing I know for sure is that Google-rage is going to grow.
\n","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/in-2030-google-became-self-aware/","tags":["business","the future","society"],"date_published":"2005-10-26T20:02:27Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/cash-and-prizes/","title":"✍🏻 Cash and prizes","excerpt":"With all of the travelling I was doing last week, I forgot to mention that some of the sites Dave & I have worked at Cronin and Company on took home WebAwards from the Web Marketing Association. We took home two “Outstanding Website” awards (think silver) for our sites for Middlesex Hospital and the Drink-Drive-Lose Ad Challenge. I was perticularly stoked as I was the designer of both sites and single-handedly built the Ad Challenge site which had a lot of complex application-level code behind it. We also took home a “Standard of Excellence” award (think bronze) for the site we built for Garelick Farms’ Over the Moon Milk product launch. I’m not a big fan of that site’s design (not because it wasn’t mine), but I love the game Dave built.
","summary":"With all of the travelling I was doing last week, I forgot to mention that some of the sites Dave & I have worked at Cronin and Company on took home WebAwards from the Web Marketing Association. We took home two “Outstanding Website” awards (think silver) for our sites for Middlesex Hospital and the Drink-Drive-Lose Ad Challenge. I was perticularly stoked as I was the designer of both sites and single-handedly built the Ad Challenge site which had a lot of complex application-level code behind it. We also took home a “Standard of Excellence” award (think bronze) for the site we built for Garelick Farms’ Over the Moon Milk product launch. I’m not a big fan of that site’s design (not because it wasn’t mine), but I love the game Dave built.
","content_html":"With all of the travelling I was doing last week, I forgot to mention that some of the sites Dave & I have worked at Cronin and Company on took home WebAwards from the Web Marketing Association. We took home two “Outstanding Website” awards (think silver) for our sites for Middlesex Hospital and the Drink-Drive-Lose Ad Challenge. I was perticularly stoked as I was the designer of both sites and single-handedly built the Ad Challenge site which had a lot of complex application-level code behind it. We also took home a “Standard of Excellence” award (think bronze) for the site we built for Garelick Farms’ Over the Moon Milk product launch. I’m not a big fan of that site’s design (not because it wasn’t mine), but I love the game Dave built.
\nI was also a judge of the WebAwards (as I have been for the last few years and, no, I did not judge any sites I was involved with) and I have to say I was very pleased to see more sites moving to web standards. Out of the 15 or so I judged in the initial round, there were at least two or three that were well on their way to being exemplary in the standards world (compared to 0 only two years ago). Like most marketing-related awards, Flash always seems to trump standards, but it seems like developers are starting to cue into the standards trend more and more every year.
\nThis year I also had the privilege of judging the Best of Show. I was pulling for Project Rebirth but National Geographic ended up taking home the top prize for Inside the Mafia which was also in my top 3 picks.
\nAll in all, this years WebAwards were pretty good to us (and a step up from the two “Standard of Excellence” awards we pulled last year for Ride4Ever and Bertucci’s Restaurants). I look forward to next year’s competition as well as the one at SXSW, where we hope to go from finalist to winner this year.
\n","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/cash-and-prizes/","tags":["web design","web standards","business"],"date_published":"2005-09-23T12:16:53Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/why-intel/","title":"✍🏻 Why Intel?","excerpt":"I’ve been doing a little research lately into new laptops and I am finally starting to understand a little more about processors, etc., so I am dumbfounded to hear that Apple is dumping IBM’s PowerPC chips for Intel’s Pentium line. From my experience, Intel chips a) run really hot and b) suffer from a severe processing bottleneck (3.2 Gigahertz with a 533 Megahertz Front-Side Bus? WTF?). It seems to me that it would have made more sense for Apple to go with AMD, they’ve got incredibly powerful chips which I understand do not suffer from these problems. Maybe there’s something I’m missing, after all, I’m not a chip guy (or a Hollywood mogul).
","summary":"I’ve been doing a little research lately into new laptops and I am finally starting to understand a little more about processors, etc., so I am dumbfounded to hear that Apple is dumping IBM’s PowerPC chips for Intel’s Pentium line. From my experience, Intel chips a) run really hot and b) suffer from a severe processing bottleneck (3.2 Gigahertz with a 533 Megahertz Front-Side Bus? WTF?). It seems to me that it would have made more sense for Apple to go with AMD, they’ve got incredibly powerful chips which I understand do not suffer from these problems. Maybe there’s something I’m missing, after all, I’m not a chip guy (or a Hollywood mogul).
","content_html":"I’ve been doing a little research lately into new laptops and I am finally starting to understand a little more about processors, etc., so I am dumbfounded to hear that Apple is dumping IBM’s PowerPC chips for Intel’s Pentium line. From my experience, Intel chips a) run really hot and b) suffer from a severe processing bottleneck (3.2 Gigahertz with a 533 Megahertz Front-Side Bus? WTF?). It seems to me that it would have made more sense for Apple to go with AMD, they’ve got incredibly powerful chips which I understand do not suffer from these problems. Maybe there’s something I’m missing, after all, I’m not a chip guy (or a Hollywood mogul).
\nEnough about the switch, I wanted to share some humor. I love this exchange on Slashdot in reaction to the news:
\n\n\nDispel any remaining doubts; we are now living in the evil mirror universe.
\n\n\nI’ll believe that when the Red Sox win the World Series!
\n\n\nYeah, right — that’s about as likely as finding out who Deep Throat is.
\nYou can read the whole trail if you like.
\n","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/why-intel/","tags":["industry","business"],"date_published":"2005-06-06T21:19:40Z"},{"id":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/i-wanna-be-a-big-player/","title":"✍🏻 I wanna be a big player","summary":"I opened the latest issue of Baseline to find a giant 2-page spread for 1&1 (a hosting company), touting their “ Dynamic Content Catalog ” and it’s ability to give you “website content like the big players.” Basically, they are offering…
","content_html":"I opened the latest issue of Baseline to find a giant 2-page spread for 1&1 (a hosting company), touting their “Dynamic Content Catalog” and it’s ability to give you “website content like the big players.” Basically, they are offering to syndicate content (news, sports, games, etc.) onto your site, so you no longer have to worry about keeping your site fresh or interesting.
\nI feel like this is an attempt to reintroduce the idea that every site needs to be a portal (why that concept is still floating about I’ll never know). I also see this as as flying in the face of one of the most important business objectives: establishing a brand, voice, etc. through copywriting. If all you have to offer your clients is data with no distillation, why bother?
\n","url":"https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/i-wanna-be-a-big-player/","tags":["business","web design"],"date_published":"2005-05-28T23:04:03Z"}]}