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A lot have, yes. Most of the bigger sites have, yes. But it's not a majority.
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I beg to differ. The fact that the biggest sites out there have adopted these standards means a huge chunk of the web is moving forwards. Remember that those bigger sites account for huge swathes of traffic, not to mention how their competitors will surely make the same moves, if they haven’t already.
And every day more sites are being revamped with support for new tech, and most new sites being created have that support built in. It’s telling when web developer sites like Smashing Mag are talking all the time about how to leverage HTML5 and other modern standards.
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Like I said, the stuff for videos has been pretty well supported, but the interface stuff hasn't. Try accessing the more experimental sites in Chrome, Firefox and IE and see how differently they handle the code.
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Every time browsers update they add more support. Webkit browsers are in the lead currently because they’ve historically had faster and more frequent update cycles, but we can already see that changing. The latest Firefox has added further support (such that the Beercamp sites I linked to now display identically), IE10 has added further support, and Chrome is basically the developer’s choice when it comes to support (don’t know how many times I’ve seen tech demos marked with “best viewed in a Webkit browser”).
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Because you're paraphrasing the sort of thing that Steve Jobs used to say and he was full of shit on that topic. Apple's philosophy is 'You must do things our way because we're smarter than you and we know how you should be doing it'. Google's philosophy is to give everyone a usable, convenient interface, but then to give the power users a Settings button so they can change things to their liking.
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Apple’s philosophy has made them the darling of tech reviewers, tech awards and consumers. They excel at coming up with simple, intuitive interfaces which people get, and I don’t think the Android ecosystem offers that in the same respect.
Yeah Steve Jobs was never the most charming guy on the block but to dismiss him and Apple as full of shit is to ignore exactly how well-received their efforts have been.
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I'm not sure, but I think you may be talking about how every manufacturer develops their own skin for Android. First of all, they're not as different as you think. Secondly, who cares? For the two years that I had my old phone, everything was internally consistent. For the first week I had my new phone, it took me a while to get used to it, then everything was internally consistent. Variations between manufacturers or handsets are irrelevant.
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It’s not just about internal consistency though, is it? I’m talking about ecosystems.
Android excels at giving users choice, but that gets taken to ridiculous extremes. Every damn phone has a different handset design with vastly different specs (which often manifests in sluggish, irritating low-end phones); every manufacturer sees fit to ship their phone with their own custom UI; and a staggering amount are either running outdated versions of the operating system or won’t receive OS updates at all.
One of the most confusing things in the world is having to use someone else’s phone. Everyone has different apps, different home screen layouts, different customisations, different operating systems, different interfaces. That confusion is minimized if there are similarities – for example, if your friend uses the same OS as you you’ll be more immediately familiar. But Android’s ecosystem is so rife fragmentation that this is not even a guarantee.
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But in case you were talking about giving options for apps; that's a ridiculous point. Just like what I was saying before about basic users and power users; the fact that you can choose a different app if you like doesn't complicate matters. My mum has an Android phone and she couldn't care less that there are ten other browsers out there. But I do, and I installed several of them on my phone at once, compared them and kept the ones I want. This is about giving people choice, not forcing choice down their throats.
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No, I wasn’t talking about apps, although I do think that having a set of user interface guidelines like Apple does can greatly improve an ecosystem’s user-friendliness.
Well I hadn’t heard about that, will be interesting to see where the case goes now. Let’s not forget, though, that the case didn’t just cover that one patent – other software patents, hardware patents and trade dress were also involved.
