Why Upgrade Your Browser?
By: Diana
Date: May 05, 2008
Category: browsers, technology
In 2002, approximately 95% of web users surfed the Internet with Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 (IE 6). This was the height, and the end, of the Microsoft vs Netscape browser wars. Netscape no longer exists.
But in recent years, IE has been slowly losing market share, especially since Mozilla Firefox became a contender (though IE's use in Asia remains high). There are many reasons for the decline, but the most relevant is that IE 6, unlike the other modern browsers, requires designers and developers to apply many tweaks, hacks, and outright magic to end up with far less satisfying results for users. In other words, for both the user and the developer, IE 6 is frustrating and often antiquated. Until recently, we've had to "design down" to include IE 6 users. With far superior, free-to download browsers like Firefox, Opera and Safari (which is now available for Windows users) gaining popularity, IE is hardly the only game in town anymore.
In October of 2006, Microsoft released IE 7, which includes many necessary improvements. But it wasn't until October 2007 that Microsoft removed the restrictions that initially made the browser available *only* to users running Windows XP SP2 or higher. If you wanted to upgrade your browser, you had to upgrade your operating system, usually to Vista. This was good for Firefox, who began to attract the abandoned users and gain market share, which made developers happy too.
If you want to (or must because your work requires it) stay with a Microsoft browser upgrading to IE 7 is essential. Why? The web today -- the dynamic, interactive becoming-essential-to-daily-life experience called Web 2.0, requires it. I simply can not design or develop a web site that offers a rich user experience for IE 6. Problems with transparent PNGs, leaking memory, Ajax incompatibility, and design layout quirks abound. During my last web project I created two sites, a watered-down, less attractive and usable version for IE 6 users, and a version for everyone else. Within a year or two, I predict that many developers will no longer create sites that support legacy browsers such as IE 6.
Security issues also make upgrading essential. Firefox protects you from phishing (and therefore, identify theft) and spyware. Because the browser is constantly being tested, monitored, and upgraded, viruses are often stopped within days of release. After surfing, all your personal data, including browsing history, can be cleared with one click.
Less essential reasons, but still important from a satisfied-user perspective, are tabbed browsing, enhanced search features, customizable themes, a bazillion add-ons, in-browser spell checking, session restore, and live titles for bookmarks that are automatically updated.
Here is the CNET review of Firefox 2 with many good comparisons to IE 7. To download the latest versions, visit Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, Safari, or Opera.
Happy surfing!
What Are RSS Feeds?
By: Diana
Date: Jun 07, 2008
Category: technology
RSS feeds are a time-saving tool for finding fresh, timely content for your site. RSS, Real Simple Syndication, enables media outlets, big ones like ABC News and little ones like Homemade Baby Food Recipes, to "feed" regularly updated information to other web users.
With online aggregators, also called feed readers, like Google Reader or My Yahoo , you can search for feeds using key words like 'news' or 'recipes', select sections of many major newspapers or magazines, and create a personal library that can be accessed from any computer. Both aggregators are free with registration. Other popular readers are Bloglines, Newsgator, and Rojo. If you are a Google user, you can create a custom home page using RSS, with content from Word a Day to CNN Headlines.
Although most RSS content is offered for personal, non-commercial use only, you can link to the published information from your site in a blog post, newsletter, or links page, adding some relevant content of your own.
The technology behind RSS feeding seems complicated, but it is rather straightforward. You probably know that websites are only text files using "tags" within the text that give instructions about how the words or images should be displayed. Tags are put between two angle brackets, < to open and > to close. For example, h1 means the sentence is a big headline, p means the text is a paragraph, img means that a picture should be shown.
Browsers like Netscape and Safari translate the tags and display the pages according to their instructions. Using tags in this way is called "markup" and the collection of web design tags is called HTML, hypertext (nonlinear) markup language.
RSS feeds use Extensible Markup Language, XML. Rather than describe how the data should look, XML tags describe what the data is. Feed readers read XML similarly to the way browsers read HTML. Today, most browsers also have the ability to read XML and display it along with HTML.
Need help with RSS feeds? What to publish your own? Contact us.
What is a Blog?
By: Diana
Date: Apr 12, 2008
Category: content, technology
is short for Weblog, a website with specialized software running in the background. Websites are basically text files, like a simple Word document, with "tags" in the text. HTML (hypertext markup language) is the collection of tags. In olden times, web designers had to know all the tags and web pages were created from scratch using Notepad. Nowadays, software like Dreamweaver and FrontPage put all the tags in, no HTML skills needed, though geeks like me hate the software-added code (cumbersome if not often wrong) and still prefer coding the old fashion way. Browser software like Netscape and Safari read the tags and display the words and images accordingly. Images are displayed by tags that tell the browser to "place this image file right here." The text files, along with any images the tags refer to, are stored on a communal hard drive called a server.
Think of a server as a huge filing cabinet sitting out on a street corner in New York City. You open a drawer and put your webpage files in the filing cabinet. The URL, http://www.spithra.com, is the address of that file, "corner of Seventh and Tenth Street, third drawer down, ninety-fourth file from the front, look at the first piece of paper in the folder." To make a website a blog, specialized weblogging software has to be stored on the server just like the other website files. The software structures the page design, provides an interface that makes posting daily entries easy, and organizes the new information in a sensible, chronological way.
Blogs can be personal or commercial, read by friends, customers, or potential customers. They can inform, educate, entertain, sell . . . they often do all four. Would you like some help adding a blog, or writing content for your blog? Contact us.