Google Drops Support for IE6

January 30, 2010

Now if Microsoft would only do the same! It is beyond me why Microsoft will support Internet Explorer 6 until 2014. That’s just a ridiculous waste of time and energy that could be applied to the later browser versions, like IE7 and IE8.

Check out this article from the BBC about the SNAFU that IE6 caused Google. International intrigue, espionage, threats, big business — sounds like the making of a great movie!

It turns out that some key functionality of Google Docs and other bits of its software won’t work properly for users using IE6. If you haven’t upgraded to a later version of Internet Explorer yet, it’s time!

If you’re a developer or web site designer, check out ie6nomore.com for conditional statement that you can use to alert your IE6 site users that there are better browser alternatives.

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Site Rank Reporter Filename Important

January 29, 2010

If you’re taking care of more than one website, it might interest you to know how to easily follow keyword rankings for each site as listed by the top search engines.

Grab the SEOBook.com Toolbar which has a lot of other goodies to explore. Once installed, bring up the Search Engine Ranking Checker by clicking on the fireball.

Enter the domain and keyword combination that you’re interested in tracking and then hit ‘Start.’ If your site is in the top 200 listings for the given keyword phrase, its position or ranking will be listed. If not, just a dash will show.

Export the file for future use. Here, you should take a second to make a new folder and call it ‘rankings’ or whatever. Export the results that you want to keep as a csv file into the new folder.

Collect these rankings reports over a period of time, say weeks. Then you can check out the Site Rank Reporter Add-On for Firefox. Just point it to the folder containing the ranking report csv files.

TIP: Make sure the files are saved with filenames that fit the format MM-DD-YY.csv, where MM, DD and YY are the numbers representing the actual date of the rankings.

A file with the name 21-jan-10.csv wont’ work!

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IE Errors Attack Google

January 17, 2010

Interesting BBC post on the warning by the German government against using Microsoft Internet Explorer. IE versions 6, 7 and 8 are involved with most recent security flaws. These flaws permitted some wrong-doers to perpetrate no good and specifically attack Google and a couple dozen other large companies.

Complete security is a fairy land on the Internet. We all know there will always be people willing to get something for nothing, skirt the law, and outright steal from you. Protect yourself and your information.

Microsoft has begged users for years to use their flagship browser Internet Explorer with the highest security settings possible. Using IE with security set to ‘high’ will not allow scripts to run. Any sites that you use that personalize your visits in some way may not function correctly, but those can be added to a list of trusted sites.

Microsoft is kind enough to provide us with instructions for how to add a website to a security zone, but look how complicated it is:

1. Open Internet Explorer by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, and then clicking Internet Explorer.
2. Navigate to the website that you want to add to a specific security zone.
3. Click the Tools button, and then click Internet Options.
4. Click the Security tab, and then click a security zone (Local intranet, Trusted sites, or Restricted sites).
5. Click Sites.
6. If you clicked Local intranet in the previous step, click Advanced.
7. The website should be shown in the Add this website to the zone field. Click Add. If the site is not a secure site (HTTPS), clear the Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone check box.
8. Click Close, and then click OK (or click OK twice if you clicked Local intranet in step 4).

Gotta love that first step! It seems like Microsoft is stuck in the 1990s. Why not have a simple button on the browser toolbar to click off the sites that you really do want to visit and otherwise trust?

The best thing that you can do is download and run Firefox.

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