Know Your Browser

February 20, 2012

Recently, I’ve decided to take on the crusade of getting users still using Internet Explorer 6 through 8 to upgrade to the most current version, which, at the time of this writing, is IE9. Windows plans to launch Internet Explorer 10 sometime in the near future – the public beta has been out, in one for or another, since April 2011.

Internet Explorer 6 front page view.

What this means for users is – the front page of Goodarts dot Net has been outfit with code to detect which version of IE viewers are using, noting the release date of that version and directing them to upgrade to the newest version of Internet Explorer through a link to the Microsoft / IE9 website. My reasoning behind this is to educate users who may not know they can upgrade (at no cost) and that the version of IE they are using is several years outdated. An additional benefit of this is that I can direct clients to my page and have them tell me what version of IE they are using so I can better troubleshoot and styling issues they might have.

What this means for designers is, being very optimistic here; that we can soon limit the number of users accessing the internet using poorly coded browsers. For us, this means less frustration fixing styling issues for outdated browsers and more time focusing on the design and writing clean and valid code.

If this idea interests you, please contact me. The detection code I have is easy enough to add to your own website. The more people creating browser awareness, the more likelihood users will catch on.

The Benefits of Upgrading Your Browser

September 17, 2011

Any web designer knows the complete and utter frustration caused by Internet Explorer when designing a site that looks cross platform. However, this article is not to knock IE or to degrade anyone who uses IE. Internet Explorer is a very popular browser - 22.4% of people browsing the Internet used IE in August of 2011. The leaders the same month were Firefox (40.6%) and Google Chrome (30.3%) [w3schools.com], two very stable and reliable browsers.

The popularity of IE can be contributed to the fact that it comes pre-installed on any machine running Windows and that using another browser requires downloading and installing another program. For most users they don't know or can't tell the difference between browsers and quite frankly don't care.

The issue at hand is web standards. For the layperson this means that every browser on every computer is supposed to display a website exactly the same (with ever-so-slight variations). The browser leaders, Firefox and Chrome, have been doing this for version after version. IE has been around since 1995 and while standards weren't seriously enforced until about a half-decade ago, Internet Explorer didn't get it right until March of 2011 with their launch of IE9. Prior to IE9, web designers would need to rely on browser detection and create IE-specific style sheets for their sites to look even slightly similar on Internet Explorer as they did on other standards-compliant browsers.

Why is the still an issue you might ask? Sounds like old news so far, right? Wrong. The sad fact is that some people, some companies are still running IE6 - a browser that came out in August of 2001. Ten full years ago! IE7 launched in October of 2006, IE8 in March of 2009 [Wikipedia]. Built in to IE8 was a software updater that would notify the user when a new update was available, offering more reliability and more adherences to web standards. The problem is that users don't like pop-up notifications and/or close the window and plan to do it later, which becomes never. In addition, another sad fact is that anyone running Windows XP SP3 and below cannot install and run IE9 - IE9 is only supported by Windows Vista and higher.

So, here I beg. Please, right now, no matter what browser you are running - go to your browser preferences and check to see if you are running the newest browser and if not, upgrade. It is free and doesn't take that long, I promise. If you are an IT person, upgrade all of your Windows machines to Windows 7 and install IE9 and an auto-updater. IE10 was announced earlier this year with added CSS3 support. I'd prefer to use my time taking advantage of the amazing things CSS3 offers rather than fixing margins and spacing to accommodate IE7 and IE8. I have stopped supporting IE6 altogether. My rationale - if Microsoft doesn't, why should I?

How Social Media Has Changed How We Communicate

September 8, 2011

When I was young, my Grandmother taught me the value of writing letters. "You have to send mail to get mail", she said. Throughout college she would send me letters in pink envelopes written on pink paper thinking that the guys in my dorm would get a kick out of it, and they did. On a recent visit with my Grandmother she told me how "email has ruined communication". She went on to say how "no one sends letters anymore". I argued that email sped up communication - no more waiting by the mailbox, no more standing in line at the Post Office. I'm not going to convince my Grandmother, but then again, my argument is about 15 years old. What is the validity of email today?

Email has been around for a while. MIT has been doing it since the 1960's. I got my first email address as a sophomore in High School; something at AOL dot com. It wasn't until I got in to college that I really began to take advantage of email and still send and receive lots of emails on a daily basis today. It wasn't until last Fall semester (2010) when I was taking a globalization class and was grouped with some undergrads that I learned that "email was for old people". Gasp! Was I now officially old?

If emailing makes me old, fine. Maybe this is the way the Pony Express guys felt when the telegraph came about. My group partners asked me to send them Facebook messages about our project. Maybe I am old, but I think that education and social media don't mix. There may be a time and place for each separately, but I'm from the school of thought that you don't do your homework in front of the television, why would you do it in front of Farmville, Words With Friends or a slew of comments and photos?

With email on its deathbed and my undergrad group members requesting that I send a text message notifying them to check their email; how do we communicate now? 100% of the companies I work with use email and phone calls as the primary for of communication. But with more and more companies jumping on the social media bandwagon, will this method evolve to meet the needs of their entry-level employees? What happens when the Facebook bubble - and it is bound to like all of its past counterparts - bursts?

By the way, I still get pink letters form my Grandmother.