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When Microsoft announced the IE6 Death Clock the world rejoiced, it was now time to move into the brave new world of the modern web browser. It was a glorious, wonderful day where the world joined hands in celebration and for just a few minutes there was peace across all nations! Well, not really, but I do remember that day… I was sitting at my desk, like always.

Anyway, 10 years after the release of the worst browser in interweb history, the announcement of its death made web designers and developers cheer with jubilant glee until they realized that IE7 and IE8 still existed. The dark cloud quickly slid back into place and rained on the dreams of designers everywhere, you could hear cries of designers all over the world…

“Ya mean I still have to make sure that my designs look the same in IE as they do in Chrome?”

“Are you telling me that I can’t use the new awesome technologies to make the web a better place?”

“Man, IE sucks, tell your Grandma to upgrade to a ‘real’ browser.”

The death announcement, as too late at it was, felt more like somebody punched you in the nose, then stomped on your foot so that you wouldn’t notice the pain in your face. It took 10 years before Microsoft and millions of people realized that the most notorious web browser was truly garbage and decide to abandon it.

Let’s not wait another 10 years before we all wake up again, lets wake up now and quit allowing these old, technologically outdated browsers hold our creative flow hostage.

Pull the Plug on Traditional Methods

So how do we as designers and developers prevent these awful browsers from handcuffing creativity? The answer is ‘Aggressive Persistence’ — my fancy pants term for designing exclusively for modern browsers.

Progressive enhancement and graceful degradation as two very popular approaches to web and application design. They are both truly the same thing, the difference is in which direction you look at it; start form the top and work down or build from the ground up. You’ll still meet in the same place.

Progressive enhancement teaches us to:

• Design for the browser mean or common denominator
• Add enhancements that won’t drastically alter the common presentation
• Make sure that the design is presented at its best according to each browsers’ specifications

Graceful degradation teaches us to:

• Design for the best browser experience
• Allow the design’s quality to gracefully degrade in older browsers
• Make sure that the design is presented at its best according to each browsers’ specifications

While both of these methods have been widely adopted and implemented and I have traditionally adopted graceful degradation, older browsers continue to stay alive because these methods cater to the every whim of older technologies — they are the life support for the aged browsers. But its time to sign the DNR and pull the plug.

What Really is Aggressive Persistence?

I like the name ‘aggressive persistence’ because to me it represents the driving, persistent rhythm and melodies of punk rock. It represents the break the rules, buck the establishment attitude of the punk rock movement. Aggressive persistence is the web equivalent of this ‘break the conventions’ attitude. It means that it is time to break the traditional methods and restrictions of web development by designing for the best experience possible… period.

The only true way to usher in new, more awesome web technologies and designs is to fully embrace them. Allowing older browsers to dictate the user experience based upon their limitations is a bad way to technologically progress. Web designers and developers should be free to create and dictate the experiences of their own works.

The principles of Aggressive Persistence are:

• Aggressively design for the best browser experience possible
• Persistently force browsers to conform to new design/development techniques
• Focus more heavily on the meaning of content, not presentation alone to convey the message
• And best of all, don’t worry about older browsers… just forget about them… see isn’t that better already

The simple fact is, it’s our job to improve and continually move the interwebs forward. We do the user a major disservice by not implementing the best technologies. By worrying about what our sites look and function like in older browsers we actually tie down the user and force feed them a homogenized product. That’s not necessarily a good user experience.

We can push the user to a better more advanced experience and allow them to discover the real power of the web, that’s truly a better experience. It’s like getting laid off from a mediocre job after eight years of service; you discover new talents and abilities that you can use to spark a new, more satisfying career path.

The Importance of Meaning

It’s way to easy to just use new technologies without knowing the meaning or the design purposes for them. When you start to design in a more aggressively persistent manner you’ll need to always make sure you are not using new technologies just because they are new. They must convey your purpose, like any good design.

This is the caveat to aggressive design, but it has nothing to do with making sure older browsers display your site correctly, it has more to do with conveying your meaning in the proper way and allowing your site’s goals to be met with out being consumed in new technology fluff. It is really easy to just pull tools out of your tool box and use them cause they are pretty or shiny. Creating meaning in design is a real balance of incorporating new techniques without polluting the designs message.

This is the new challenge of aggressive persistence. Instead of spending your time focused on how you site will look in old, crappy browsers, you’ll spend you time diving into the real meaning of your site so that the design goals don’t get over shadowed by fancy new methods and the trends that follow them.

Remember the “best viewed in…” Disclaimer

Back in the day when FireFox started to make its name as the first real modern web browser, it was all to often we saw messages like:

“This website best viewed in FireFox. Download it here.”

You may think that aggressive persistence is a call to bring back those lame messages. But not necessarily. Lack of design can sometimes be the greatest motivator of all. A broken design can push the user to find alternatives without explicitly telling them where to get it. This is another plus for semantic markup, it can conveys meaning very well and allow the user to understand the purpose of web site without all the bells and whistles of modern tech.

To play devil’s advocate, there is also another way to look at these messages. Didn’t these types of messages push the user to wake up and use better browsers? Now, I’m not saying we should bring back these lame disclaimers, but we need to understand that these messages did show users the power and beauty of a better browser.

Conclusion

Aggressive persistence is truly a call-to-action for all web designers and developers. It’s about two things; taking design power out of the hands of the browsers and putting it back in the hands of the creators, and creating the best user experience the web has to offer. By breaking the chains of older browsers we can use new developments in web technology to better the web as a whole. But the immediate benefits is that you’ll never have to worry about debugging your site in older garbage browsers… wahoo!