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
Not web related, but if you’ve found this post on Google you’ll know how frustrating it is. On Mac versions of Open Office 3.0, bullet points are interpreted incorrectly from Word documents.
It’s actually a problem with the way bullets are encoded with Word, compounded by the way the Symbol font set works on mac. But, there’s a fix.
All you need to do is substitute the Symbol font set with OpenSymbol. To do so, follow these steps:
- Go to preferences
- OpenOffice.org > Fonts
- Check "Apply replacement table"
- In the left box, select Symbol, in the right box select OpenSymbol.
- Press the green tick, and select "Always"
- Save and you are done.
You can now open and save word document with bullets with ease.
We are big fans of Open Source software. Google Docs is great for collaboration and reading most types of document – but absolutely rubbish for creating documents to be printed. Open Office is great too, but niggles like this worry us. Still, at least this time around there’s a fix.
Ben
Posted in: Copywriting, Software
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
Google Chrome is awesome. If you spend a lot of time online, Chrome is the browser of choice. In fact, I guarantee you it will speed up your life.
Why?
Not only is it so much faster than FireFox, it has a fantastic little function built in – it checks your spelling as you type. As someone brought up, for a while at least, under fine educational program, my ability to spell hovers around mediocre at best. Normally this requires hoping for the best when speed matters, or copying into Word, spell checking and copying out again when accuracy counts.
Speed up your life and use Chrome. I know I have and I’ve not made a speling mestake sinse….
Ben
Posted in: Software
Testing to make sure websites work across different browsers is part of the job of making websites. A whole plethora of tiny bits and pieces work different in FireFox than they do in Internet Explorer. In a bid to test a website thoroughly, it’s important to review every website you work on in all the major browsers. This includes Safari.
My laptop is neither fast nor slow. It’s decidedly average. The only things that’s are truly superb on it are the 17" screen and the full sized keyboard with keypad. Apart from that, it’s just plain OK.
I look at a lot of websites. I rely on the tools I use to get me the websites I want to see as quickly as possible. Therefore I want my browser to:
- Be quick.
- Have useful tools.
- Be quick.
That’s it. I certainly don’t want my browser to:
- Entertain.
- Excite.
- Give me an "experience".
- Do anything else beginning with E.
Safari. A case study in how to give your consumer something they don’t want. My experience went something like this:
- I open Safari 4 for the first time.
- I wait
- I wait a bit longer (by now I am very impatient, although it has probably only been 10 seconds).
- The main window loads, but something isn’t right. My computer fans start racing as my CPU goes into over-drive.
- After about 20 seconds (nails are being bit, hair is being pulled), I get an animated splash screen "welcoming me". I resist the urge to curse.
- My screen freezes. I get the "fatal error" message (see pic below).
- I stop resisting the urge.
- I hit the "Don’t Send" button and wait.
- I’m still waiting, and yet my fan is still (as i write this) going haywire, and my CPU is still going at 100%. My computer is effectively locked-up.
- I have to open the Task Manager, go to Processes, and manually end "Safari.exe". For the non-tech savvy person, the only fix would be to restart the computer.
I am not happy. But alas. Once I’ve made myself a cup of tea, and uttered a prayer to the gods of the interweb, I will try again. I will try again, because I have to. Most people don’t have the need I do. Most people would give up, and never try it again (I envy them).
There is no excuse for an experience this bad. Not from Apple, one of the big players. Look at your website and ask yourself, are there elements to the interaction that are driving people away? Forms, logins, registration – these are some of the major pitfalls of some sites. Get feedback from colleagues, employees, friends, relatives – ask them to buy something from your online store, or find a certain bit of information. Do this testing, and do it now. No-one is immune to making terrible mistakes and creating a horrible user experience.
Apple have proven that particularly well with Safari 4.
Posted in: Programming, Usability
