The Survey for People Who Make Websites

I took it and so should you—The Survey For People Who Make Websites, 2009: http://aneventapart.com/survey2009/

Moving on from IE 6 in 2010. Google no longer supporting IE 6

I got another awesome letter from Google today I thought I should share with the world, because it means thing will be changing for the good in 2010.

Google has officially announced it will not be support IE 6 browsers on a few of their major services, such as Google Apps (letter below), YouTube and Gmail.

Dear Google Apps admin,

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ​as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience.  We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

I feel like this movement has been long awaiting the support of a giant such as Google to back it. Microsoft has not supported or even accepted any responsibility for the IE 6 browser quite some time and it is non-sense to continue to apply hacks and work-arounds to perfectly legitimate website code to support it.

However, as website developers and owners, I also believe we should make the initiative to instruct our visitors using IE 6 that they need to change their software before we just cut them off completely. Implementing User Agent detection and displaying messages to these users on every page they view might be a good start. Offering them their choice of downloading IE 8, Firefox 3.6, Safari 4 or Google Chrome 2 would also be a great way to encourage them to upgrade.

Hyperlink Protocols: Create Hyperlinks to Email, Instant Messengers, VOIP programs & Phone Numbers

It’s occurred to me that Hyperlinks are a part of every day life for pretty much everyone these days. Whether you use them in basic internet browsing, copying and pasting YouTube and Facebook links to your friends, or making websites, knowing how to create hyperlinks is an important thing to know!

Some people don’t realize there are a lot more kinds of hyperlinks than just ones that use the HTTP or HTTPS (HTTP with SSL encryption) protocols. Many of which are very useful to today’s socially-networked webmasters and internet gurus.

Here are some useful examples:

Email HyperLink:
Example Email Link

<a href="mailto:youremail@yourdomain.com?subject=Email+Subject">Example Email Link</a>

Phone Number HyperLink:
Example Phone Link

<a title="Call 503-555-1212" href="callto:5035551212">Example Phone Link</a>

Skype Call HyperLink:
Example Skype Call Hyperlink

<a title="Call YourScreenName on Skype" href="skype:yourscreenname?call">Example Skype Call Hyperlink</a>

Skype Chat HyperLink:
Example Skype Chat Hyperlink

<a title="Chat with YourScreenName on Skype" href="skype:yourscreenname?chat">Example Skype Chat Hyperlink</a>

Google Talk Instant Message HyperLink:
Example Google Talk IM Hyperlink

<a title="Instant Message YourScreenName" href="gtalk:chat?jid=yourscreenname">Example Google Talk IM Hyperlink</a>

Google Talk Call Hyperlink:
Example Google Talk Call Hyperlink

<a title="Call YourScreenName on Google Talk" href="gtalk:call?jid=yourscreenname">Example Google Talk Call Hyperlink</a>

MSN/Windows Live HyperLink:
Example MSN/Windows Live IM Hyperlink

<a title="Instant Message YourScreenName on MSN/Windows Live Messenger" href="msnim:chat?contact=yourscreenname">Example MSN/Windows Live IM Hyperlink</a>

Yahoo! Instant Messanger HyperLink:
Example Yahoo! Instant Messenger IM Hyperlink

<a title="Chat with YourScreenName on Yahoo! Instant Messenger" href="ymsgr:sendim?yourscreenname">Example Yahoo! Instant Messenger IM Hyperlink</a>

AOL Instant Messenger HyperLink:
Example AOL Instant Messenger IM Hyperlink

<a title="Chat with YourScreenName on AOL Instant Messenger" href="aim:goim?screenname=yourscreenname">Example AOL Instant Messenger IM Hyperlink</a>

I’ll update this post and add more useful examples as I think of them.

jQuery UI

jQuery UI provides abstractions for low-level interaction and animation, advanced effects and high-level, themeable widgets, built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library, that you can use to build highly interactive web applications.

jQuery UI is an open-source library of interface components – interactions, full-featured widgets, and animation effects — based on the stellar jQuery javascript library . Each component is built according to jQuery’s event-driven architecture (find something, manipulate it) and is themeable, making it easy for developers of any skill level to integrate and extend into their own code.

jQuery: The Write Less, Do More, Javascript Library

jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.

jQuery supports these browsers:

• Firefox 2.0+
• Internet Explorer 6+
• Safari 3+
• Opera 9+
• Chrome 1+

Any problem with them should be considered and reported as a bug in jQuery.

There are known problems with:

• Firefox 1.0.x
• Internet Explorer 1.0-5.x
• Safari 1.0-2.0.1
• Opera 1.0-8.x
• Konqueror

jQuery generally works with Konqueror and Firefox 1.0.x, but there may be some unexpected bugs since we do not test them as regularly as Firefox 2.0+, IE6+, Opera 9+ and Safari 3+.

A good compatibility test is available in the form of the jQuery Test Suite.

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