Sometimes the best things in life start with a little mischief. That’s definitely the case with Bring Down IE6, a .net magazine microsite that I designed (using artwork from the wonderful people at ilovedust) and that launched on March 12.

Dan Oliver, the editor, was the culprit who lit the fuse. Knocking ideas around with me for features, he wondered if there was mileage in an article on the “growing trend to f—— IE”, meaning IE6, which even Facebook now hates. Being a web designer and also happening to know a lot of people who waste many hours dealing with IE6, I had a sneaking suspicion that, yes, this might just appeal to the mag’s readers.

The feature was duly commissioned, and I got to work, interviewing the likes of Jeff Zeldman and Bruce Lawson. I wrote the article, submitted it, and that was that. And then the mag hit the newsstands. Unusually, the article ended up online at the same time, rather than being delayed a few months, and there was one major addition: a badge.

Someone at .net had started a rallying cry, asking readers to download the ‘Bring Down IE6’ logo and link to the feature. But it didn’t seem loud enough. A spark went off in my head, and the microsite idea was born. It was then designed, built in suitably standards-compliant fashion, and IE6 was ignored bar an ‘upgrade’ notice that IE<7 users see. The finished site now sits at www.bringdownie6.com. Time will tell if it proves a success, but I’ve already seen the badge creeping out there and being attached to various designers’ blogs, which is heartening.

And despite the provocative and somewhat humorous tone of the site itself, the aim is deadly serious. It really is time for web designers to unite and finally get IE6 dealt with in some way. We need to move on, and together we will win.

The BBC reports that London mayor Boris Johnson is planning changes to the iconic road-crossing symbol. Once, both signs and usability were very similar in a huge range of countries, and in the UK you grow up learning that ‘a little green man’ means ‘walk’, and a red man means ‘walk only if you fancy getting run over’. (Of course, some countries have alternate crossing icons, including the USA, which unfortunately often favours using English—walk/don’t walk—in favour of language-independent icons.)

In recent years, I’ve noticed a surprising and disappointing trend towards diversity. When Fleet high street (Fleet being the town in Hampshire where I live) was revamped, so were the crossings. Rather than looking across the road at the ‘icons’ to see whether it is safe to cross, you now have to look towards the symbol on the same side of the road as you. I’m sure someone somewhere surmised that this was a more logical thing to do, but convention has long been otherwise, and I’ve watched people in my town—particularly young children—struggle with this upheaval.

In London, Johnson is planning on taking things further, replacing the standard icons with a countdown timer, primarily to hurry people across the road. However, with existing iconography so ingrained and clear, there’s a massive danger that pedestrians will have to revert to assumption when it comes to safely crossing. In general design, such as icons on websites, assumption is never a good thing and can hamper usability. But in road systems, it’s downright dangerous.