However it’s important to ensure web applications can still run Ok in IE6 because it still owns significant market share. The actual percentage market share is difficult to determine, but the following statistics from the W3Schools site had 39.8% of visitors running IE6 in February 2007.
Given that it is mostly technical folk visiting W3Schools.com this percentage is probably on the low side, given that technical users are more likely using IE7 or alternative browsers such as Firefox. The statistics for January and February 2007 below.
Given that IE6 is still out there it’s important to still test your web application for this browser. The simplest way to do is run IE6 standalone – nothing to install just run the executable!
I have read of solutions where you can install IE6 and IE7 together but then there were comments about install issues. Or, you can run a Virtual PC image that has IE6 installed – which is a fair amount of effort and Virtual PC is resource hungry. The simplest solution I’ve found so far is here, and you can download the IE6 standalone version from here.
February 2007
IE7 -16.4%
IE6 – 39.8%
IE5 – 2.5%
Firefox – 31.2%
Mozilla – 1.4%
Safari – 1.7%
Opera -1.5%
January 2007
IE7 – 13.3%
IE6 – 42.3%
IE5 – 3.0%
Firefox – 31.0%
Mozilla – 1.5%
Safari – 1.7%
Opera – 1.5%
Jurassic Valley
The biology, ecology and paleontology of big software companies
“Welcome to Jurassic Valley!”
John Wayland stands unsteadily in the Jeep, smiling broadly, and sweeps his arm across the landscape with a grand gesture. We stare, astonished.
Before us, hundreds of mid-sized companies run, each hawking and trumpeting the benefits of their products. By instinct, they form into packs, running together, announcing alliances in unison, only to break apart and reform into other groups. It is chaos. Wonderful, exciting and invigorating chaos.
Posted in Technical on 11/28/2006 12:52 pm by scotty
I have had intermittent screen alignment problems with my phone (an i-mate K-Jam).
For no apparent reason, the screen alignment settings are changed – meaning I need to fumble with the keyboard to navigate, or use the stylus and try and guess the alignment offset – and get increasingly frustrated in the process. Resetting the alignment was even more frustrating – there seemed to be a problem with the top right had side of the screen, tapping on the target would not set the alignment.
This is a common problem, and one solution is suggested here.
Thought I’d let you know of a easy way to fix your screen allignment problems in just 10 seconds.
My Vario 2 was fine for around 6 weeks before it started going out of allignment. It got progressively worse and recently it would need redoing 10 – 15 times a day.
So, how did i fix it. Simple, with a business card. Here’s how. Take the business card (preferably a thin one with sharp corners. Insert it under the edge of the screen and run it along all four edges. As you do this you’ll feel the bond of the gasket breaking. Thats it. I did this 5 days ago and have had no issues since.
Posted in Technical on 11/25/2006 11:47 am by scotty
It’s not surprise that some organisations are considered arrogant and out of touch. Case in point in this error message that is displayed in a business web application I use (the bold and red colour is not my emphasis)-
Please Note: Internet Explorer 7 is not yet compatible with [Product Name]. Please do not update your web browser until further notice.
Based on this response, the following should happen -
Everyone who updated to IE7 should contact the organisation to apologise for running the gun, and immediately uninstall IE7.
This organisation should have gone to the top – contacted Microsoft to order them to put the IE7 updates on hold, and better yet deploy an automatic uninstall script to all who have installed IE7 – until their product is compatible with IE7.
A more appropriate message could have been (and in green because it’s a soothing colour ) –
Please Note: Internet Explorer 7 is not yet compatible with [Product Name]. We apologise for any inconvenience. If you would like to receive instant notification when [Product Name] is available for Internet Explorer 7 please click here*.
(* Click here would take the user to a page to enter an email address – in order to receive an email notification. It’s not an expensive effort – wouldn’t be more than a day’s programming effort to design, develop, test and deploy – and an hour at the most to send the emails when the IE7 compatibility work is done.)
Internet Explorer 7 is part of the standard Windows Update – so it’s inevitable that there is going to be widespread adoption. You would think they should have been testing their application with Internet Explorer 7 earlier (the first beta was released in July 2005).
PS Before I can be accused of breathtaking hypocrisy – yes we have already tested Shelter Buddy and Invoice Place using IE7
Posted in Technical on 11/12/2006 12:43 pm by scotty
I was having (major) grief installing Dada mail, but when trying to access the CGI program (i.e. http://SERVERNAME/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi) a 500 server was reported, and ‘Premature end of script headers:’ was reported in the Apache server_error file.
I had carefully followed the excellent and detailed installation instructions, and downloaded the source file directly on the server using wget.
It turns out the problem was because the file and group ownership was set to root (I have a dedicated server).
To fix this I changed the file and group ownership of the /cgi-bin/dada and /cgi-bin/dada/DADA folders and /cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi file to the cpanel user.
So if the ‘Premature end of script headers:’ error is reported when installing Dada mail, and you have followed the installation instructions to a tee, file and group ownership could be the cause of a 500 error.
Posted in Technical on 08/18/2006 12:28 pm by scotty
This was just posted to our Shelter Buddy developers mailing list, contains some useful and free utilities for Windows XP-
“I just found a Windows Power Toy that lets you right-click a folder in explorer to open a command prompt in that folder. Handy.
There’s a bunch of other cool stuff too:
Color Control Panel Applet
SyncToy
RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer
ClearType Tuner
HTML Slide Show Wizard
Open Command Window Here
Alt-Tab Replacement
Tweak UI
Power Calculator
Image Resizer
CD Slide Show Generator
Virtual Desktop Manager
Webcam Timershot”
