Internet Explorer 6 was launched on August 27, 2001.
Over nine years later and despite two major updates it lives on. Internet Explorer Six was never a very well built bit of software. It’s security is poor at best (some say the least secure software on the planet), it lacks support for modern web standards and increases development time. Nothing works on IE6. Well, it does – but only after hours of re-writing perfectly good, standards compliant code in just the right way to work on this lumbering dinosaur of a system.
Well, this will go on no more.
Google are officially dropping support for IE6 from the 1st March.
YouTube are officially dropping support for IE6 from 13th March.
And we are dropping support for IE6 now.
What this means
- Websites will work fine in IE6, but some advanced functionality will not.
- Some elements will not display correctly in IE6.
- Users visiting a website in IE6 will be notified that they are using an out of date browser, that some site functionality will be unavailable. They will be advised to upgrade.
Why everyone is dropping support for IE6
Websites have become more and more functional. There are so many visitor friendly things a site can do – auto-suggest words for your search term, show information relevant to your location, provide one-click shopping baskets, show video, audio, and allow users to do countless things. As technology becomes more advanced, making it work on obsolete browsers becomes increasingly difficult and time consuming. Spending every increasing parts of a budget getting a site to work on a dated system does not make good business sense – it increases development time with little benefit to our clients or the end user.
In any case, support for IE 5.5 ended many years ago – the only reason IE6 has lasted so long is that it’s the default browser for Windows XP – and we’re now two iterations further down the road (Vista and now Windows 7), it’s time to follow suit.
What if I still want support for IE6?
If you still want it, you can have it. All we are doing is removing support as a standard procedure. There are perfectly legitimate reasons why you would want a site to work in IE6, and these include:
- Sites where the demographic still largely uses IE6
- Intranet sites
- Sites targeting third world countries
If you feel you need it, make sure your developers continue to support it. As the major players phase out support, other companies will follow suit. If you need it, make sure you make it clear.
Posted in: Programming, Software
September17
By: Ben Kelly
I hate clutter on websites. There’s nothing worse than having a cluttered up website, or some stupid carousel menu system just because it "looks good". Give me some feng shui and zen any day.
Simple works. Simple means NO clutter. NO bells. NO whistles.
And yet. Judicious use of the occasional visual treat can be permitted. Especially if it’s focused on something that genuinely helps your user (and no, I don’t mean showing a clock – NO ONE needs YOUR website to tell THEM the time).
What I’m going to suggest is adding tool tips. Add them sparingly, but put them in. They help. People like them. And you might as well make them pretty whilst you are at it: 15 tool tips using jQuery
(n.b. These require some good programming skills to use. Sometimes it’s good to tackle things yourself. This is not one of those times. Get someone who knows what they are doing to implement them).
Ben
Posted in: Design, Programming
I rarely discover software that I really genuinely like. For every good bit of software, there are 9 that wind me up or do things in such a clunky way I wish I had never bothered. Ever now and then though, you find a gem. Something that’s so exciting your mouth drops with excitement and you go beyond generally enthusiasm into the world of oh-my-god-this-will-change-my-life-and-all-those-around-me-quick-call-the-wife-my-mother-the-kids-the-dog-the-old-man-down-the-road-this-is-epic.
Today was one of those days.
Auto Hot Key
If you are on a mac, stop reading. Seriously. Because this will destroy your love of all things reflective and shiny. This will make you want to go back to the dark days of being a PC user.
I can code, but I am not a brilliant coder. I’m remarkably average, and really quite slow. This is fine, because I don’t do much coding. Why do I bring this up? Because you have to do a tiny, and I mean tiny amount of coding to do this. Don’t worry though, and don’t be put off. It’s quick to learn, and they hold your hand the whole way through it.
And trust me, it’s worth it.
Do you ever find yourself frustrated and doing slow repetitive tasks? Or having to click half a dozen times through Windows Explorer to get to the folder your client’s files are stored in. What about writing out the same thing over and over again?
This software takes care of that. For example, rather than typing out "ben@alphawavemedia.co.uk" I now type "b@a" – and it instantly does the rest. What about a signature? I type "bbb" and it writes my e-mail signature out for me.
As well as that, I now type WIN+W to launch Dreamweaver, WIN+G to launch G-mail and WIN+A to open my Highrise HQ account (more on that later, it’s another epic tool).
WIN+X in Outlook – archives whichever e-mail I have selected. It was worth it for that one alone. Shortcut keys are the way forward. You will speed up your life dramatically if you give this a try.
Ben
Posted in: Programming
