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Blogs » Archive for June, 2008
Internet Explorer Extinct By 2013?
Microsoft should consider this a forewarning — if the trend of the past three years continues, not one person who visits sitepoint.com will be using Internet Explorer by 2013.
With all of the buzz about new Firefox this and Opera that, I thought I’d reacquaint myself with the browser-of-choice for visitors to SitePoint.
So I went back three years, to 2005, and worked forward, comparing the browser that our readers used over the years. The results were startling, so I thought I’d share (click the image below for a bigger version):
The above graph shows the percentage of IE users against other browsers. Using a simple linear equation, we can deduce that each day about 0.2% less people are using IE on SitePoint.
If this trend continues, then looking forward 1,797 days (or 4.9 years), IE usage will be down to zero!
Now, we’re talking three years of history, and millions and millions of visitors — visitors whose lives revolve around web browsers. And yes, Microsoft have in recent times re-invigorated their focus on developing their web browser. The trend, however, …
WebDU Day 1: AIR, Ajax, CS4 and a little bit of usability
Now well-established in it’s sixth year, WebDU in Sydney is the top Australian conference for Adobe-based technologies (primarily Flex and ColdFusion). The venue for 2008’s conference was the Sydney Convention Centre - a move away from Star City casino, where it has been held for the past four years, although not a move away from the convenient but highly tourist-centric Darling Harbour.
One of the long-standing WebDU traditions is the opening animations from long time partner and silver sponsor, design agency Nectarine. In fact, as delegates picked up their conference bags, worked out how to get onto the wireless and caught up with old faces, animations from previous years were running in the main auditorium, entertaining those waiting for the opening keynote from Adobe’s Principal Evangelist, Mike Downey - including classics like the super-heroes from 2005 (and of course, the lovable Sparky) and 2006’s Don’t Mention the Merger. Although the 2008 animation has not yet been posted, all the previous years’ can be found in Nectarine’s animation portfolio.
Keynote: Mike Downey and Greg Rewer, Adobe evangelists, on AIR, Flash Player 10, and Creative Suite CS4
After a …
Reddit’s Flawed CAPTCHA: Adding Insult To Injury
Usability is an inexact science, but I’m pretty sure there is at least one golden rule that is non-negotiable, and that’s this:
Never, ever, insult your users.
Unless your web site revolves around insults, and every error message consists of a purposefully engineered insult for humorous reasons, treating your users with disdain or disrespect is a huge no-no.
Earlier today I decided to sign up for reddit, the popular social bookmarking service. My experience has turned me right off the service. Here’s my rant:
1. The CAPTCHA
First, I clicked Submit Link, and was presented with an option to register.
I’m personally not a huge fan of CAPTCHAs, for many reasons (there are alternatives, but there’s no panacea), but I do empathise with why people put them in place. Unlike someone who has poor eyesight, I can usually read the letters, and it’s usually only once that I need to type them in, so we’ll let that slide for now. And at least the letters in reddit’s CAPTCHA are relatively easy to decipher compared with others that I’ve seen in use … right?
Wrong.
2. The Insult
Here’s what I was presented with after clicking the Create Account button:
Apparently those letters weren’t as …
In-browser Development Tools: Firebug Still King
At the start of this year, I sat down to write the “Errors and Debugging” chapter of Simply JavaScript. I cracked my fingers, dove into the landscape of JavaScript debugging tools, and emerged very disappointed several hours later. At the time, Firefox was the only browser with a JavaScript debugging tool worth writing about: Firebug.
Less than a year later, the landscape has changed dramatically. Every major browser has introduced new development tools that make it easier to diagnose problems with your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code right inside the browser in question. But can any of these tools stack up against the slick and effortlessly powerful tools provided by Firebug? Let’s take a look.
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer is notorious for coughing up mysterious rendering behavior and useless JavaScript error messages at every turn, and Microsoft is obviously making a concerted effort to improve not just the browser itself, but the tools available for developers to diagnose such issues.
The Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar for IE6 and IE7 is a useful tool for fiddling with page styles on the fly when you’re hunting for a work-around to the rendering issues in those browsers. Its features for diagnosing actual bugs in …
Free PDF Download: Firefox 3 Revealed!
Our newest book is now available in PDF format only—and it’s FREE!
It’s called Firefox 3 Revealed: What’s New, What’s Hot, & What’s Not. Here’s how it came about.
When I first discussed the idea with Fabio Cevasco of writing an article that described all of the new features in Firefox 3 and how to use them, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
Fabio had written for us only once before (an excellent introduction to CakePHP). Knowing that the final release of Firefox 3 was imminent, we wanted to try and publish his article as close as possible to the official release date.
When he submitted his 8,000+ word masterpiece last week, however, my initial thoughts were “That’s not an article—it’s an eBook!”
Consequently, the whole team here at SitePoint has spent the past few days working hard to get Fabio’s comprehensive guide to the new features in Firefox 3 professionally edited, formatted and available for download. And I’m proud to say that we pulled it off in time!
So here’s what I recommend you do.
- First, go download our new eBook (it’s free), Firefox 3 Revealed: What’s New, What’s Hot, & What’s Not. We think …
This week in Rails - 09/06 to 13/06
It seems that testing has been on the flavour of the week, which is apt really as I myself have been playing with RSpec a lot lately (Blog post forthcoming, once I finish up one of the projects that has been using said testing framework).
Simon Harris from My hovercraft is full of eels describes a simple way to break up you tests into DRY, manageable chunks: http://www.redhillconsulting.com.au/blogs/simon/archives/000429.html
Ben Mabey shows you how to use Macros in RSpec, using Shouda. Macros are as old as the hills, but can be really handy to organise many tasks simply: http://www.benmabey.com/2008/06/08/writing-macros-in-rspec/
Michael Ivey reminds us why we should use tests. Not only are they a nice support net, but they encourage us to write better code. It’s like extreme programming without the other programmer: http://gweezlebur.com/2008/6/13/tests-make-you-write-better-code
Outside of the testing arena, a new version of Capistrano — possibly the coolest tool for Ruby — has been released. If you haven’t had a play with Capistrano yet, go and install it and try it out.
And finally for this week, if you have ever been perplexed about whether pieces of code belong in the Model, View or Controller, Starjuice has an …
Four Days Left To Win A MacBook From 99designs!
Our friends over at 99designs are running a competition to win a MacBook, and there are only 4 days left:
Just a final reminder that we are giving away a free MacBook to one lucky designer who submits a winning design to 99designs.com before June 20th. Any design that is selected as a winner before that date is in the running. The more winners you have, the more chances you’ve got, so get designing quickly!
If you fancy yourself as a hot-shot designer, check out some of the current contests, and get your submission in.
Good luck all!
I love you Mr AMD Opteron Dual Core!
The critical importance of performance in generating traffic to your site is something that you learn very early in your online education. But as your site grows and things become more complicated its true value can often become clouded. So easily are you seduced by more fun and interesting considerations such as functionality, usability, aesthetics, and interface design.
But here’s one simple reason why you can never EVER forget why site performance is so important.
In the last few weeks we’ve upgraded our our blogs and moved our forum to the latest version of vBulletin. Very quickly our sys admin became concerned with the growing pressure on our servers. I’m no expert, but even I could see the dramatic shift in some of the utilization graphs I was shown…
The tipping point was Wednesday and we raised the priority of some longer term plans as well as implemented a quick upgrade to our server hardware (a couple of shiny new AMD Opteron Dual Core CPU’s.)
The effect was instantaneous and dramatic. Our response times were better than before the upgrades…
Result: The next day, bang, a 33% increase in our forum traffic!
So you can …
The Week in ColdFusion: 4 - 10 June: More details on Railo open source and just a little bit of controversy
Lots of news in open source this week! I sneaked in news last week of the Railo open source announcement. There’s been a lot of discussion and it seems that the move is seen, in general, as a very positive one.
- Gert Franz has posted an official announcement on the Railo blog, as well as some followup comments about standardisation of the CFML language, which seems to be an emerging theme (see Jim Priest’s comments on the topic)
- Ben Forta has posted a very positive open message to Gert and Railo
- Adam Lehman from Adobe is supportive of the move, stating that it has been done for “all the right reasons” (the comments on this post are also worth reading)
- Alan Williamson from the Open BlueDragon project has welcomed the news
- Kai Koenig, who was in Edinburgh the initial announcement at Scotch on the Rocks, has posted some more thoughts
There has also been some controversy. Vince Bonfanti posted an announcement for New Atlanta’s CFML to Java and CFML to .NET migration services, which referred to ColdFusion applications as “legacy”. Sean Corfield posted a scathing attack titled “New Atlanta calls you legacy”, a …
Opera 9.5 is a CSS Champion
Opera 9.5 is finally out after 2 years of development. Often the underdog browser of the big 4, Opera’s continuous dedication to web standards support has always been commendable. I’ve just been putting it through its paces on the SitePoint CSS Reference Live Demos, and it does extremely well. For instance it supports all the CSS3 selectors in our reference. Well done I say!
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