Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (or IE6 for short), was released in 2001. This is about halfway between the birth of the web, and the current day.

IE7 was released in 2006, and IE8 was released in 2009. Both newer versions contain numerous security, standards and performance upgrades. Microsoft made IE8 a critical update as of May 2009.

This means it has been over 3 years since Microsoft officially stopped all support for IE6. The userbase for IE6 is in decline and according to many reports is below 5%.

As web developers, we’ve had to support IE6 for years due to it’s large market share. Since this is finally down to a minority, and since it has been 3 years since Microsoft has stopped supporting their own product, Kintek too has decided to discontinue support for IE6 as part of our Cross-Browser-Compatibility testing. Other major websites such as Google, Youtube, and Facebook are all officially dropping support for IE6 in the very near future. All previous versions of IE are insecure and pose a security risk to users running them. We can not encourage the use of dangerous software online.

Obviously, we are still dedicated to the best for our client’s sites, and neglecting 10% of potential customers is often not a viable solution. If a client requires IE6 support we can offer it on a case by case basis. We typically offer two solutions for IE6 support.

1. This first option is free. We will redirect IE6 users to a page which explains their browser needs an additional plugin to view the website. This installs Google ChromeFrame. This is an Internet Explorer plugin, which allows some websites (which explicitly request it) to be rendered using Google Chrome’s engine. This installation page will be consistent with the style and layout of your existing website, and will be extremely user-friendly. The Google ChromeFrame installation usually only takes a few seconds (and one or two clicks), after which the website will display perfectly in IE6.

2. The second option, is we can spend time creating manual fixes and “hacks” to correct the site for viewing in IE6. This is charged at our standard hourly rate. It is important to note that even with these fixes, IE6 will remain unsafe and is sometimes simply incapable of delivering “modern” content - such as highly dynamic menus, animations, etc. We aim for a “functional” version of the site in IE6, but often a highly attractive version is simply not possible.

Due to the rapid decline of IE6 we do not recommend this second option as a cost effective solution. The new computer operating system Windows 7 to replace Windows Vista and XP launches at the end of October and comes bundled with IE8 which means hopefully it will only be a matter of months before IE6’s marketshare has reached a negligible amount. Most statistics websites show IE8 out ranks IE6 as a percentage so the tidal shift has already mostly occured.

To provide cost effective solutions to the majority of our clients we cannot support IE6 by default. Thanks for your understanding. We value your business, and are always happy to discuss.

How to take a Print Screen

On Windows
1 First press the “Print Screen” button located on the top right of your keyboard (pictured right). Make sure you have exactly what you are wanting to capture opened at the time. Note: For best aesthetical results, press the F11 button before doing step one when in a web browser. This will make the web brower appear in the “full screen” mode.
2 Open the Start bar and click on “All Programs”. Then navigate to the “Accessories” folder and click on the program called “Paint”. (pictured right)
3 Once in Paint, click “Edit” located at the top of the screen, and click “Paste”. This should paste the screen shot you took in step 1.
4 Now click File > Save As. Pick an appropriate place to save the file, like your Desktop. Now, pick a suitable file name, and finally make sure the “Save as type” has “JPEG” selected (!Important!). Please note, if you are planning to email the screen shot, picking anything other than JPEG could result in a large file and take a long time to send (and to receive at the other end!)	Click to Enlarge
5 Your screen shot is now ready to be attached to an email, uploaded online, posted on a form, or used in a variety of ways. Enjoy!
On a Mac Mac has a lot more functionally when taking a screen shot. There are ways to take a shot of only the window you are in, or manually select with the mouse what area you would like to take a shot of. But for this article I will show you the plainest, easier way to do this.
1 Simply hold down Command + Shift + Option + 8. This will take a full screenshot and save it to your desktop.
2 Your screen shot is now ready to be attached to an email, uploaded online, posted on a form, or used in a variety of ways.

Like any CSS Sushi Chef worth his Shio, you should be using a Reset CSS style sheet to bring all your browsers into line before you carve out your tasty styles.

However sometimes when debugging someone elses work which might not have a Reset CSS stylesheet, you might find yourself taking a few stabs in Firebug to see what could be the cause of their CSS woes.

This can be slow guess work looking through the DOM Tree finding the culprits, or you might be trying to find the problem in another browser such as IE-vil.

This little bookmarklet will inject the Yahoo Reset CSS into the page your on. Making any further guesses or adjustments you make less likely to be related to some default margin issues.

Drag this link into your bookmarks -> Yahoo Reset CSS Bookmarklet

javascript:(function (){
    document.body.innerHTML += '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.7.0/build/reset/reset-min.css">';
})();

SEO for your web pages

Pretty pictures and web pages full of flash may wow your website visitors, but you need to get them there first! It’s important to remember that if you want to search engines to send traffic to your website, content is always king. The old saying “a picture tells 1000 words” doesn’t apply the same way to search engine bots as it does to real life. A search engine would much rather 1000 words over a picture anyday.

If you want to rank well for a particular keyword combination in search engines, then the first step is to make sure your content contains these keywords. Ideally, each page of your website should  target a particular keyword combination.  Therefore it is important that  in it a certain amount of times (explained further down). This really helps search engines notice your website is targeting that word, as it wants to display the best results possible for the user.

In the past people used to put literally thousands of hidden words in the content for search engines to find. Nowadays your site can actually be black-listed for this, so the best way to try and have a nice website is to ensure you have good, relevant content. This is obviously a win-win for the search engine as well as the user.

The general consensus at the moment for good “Keyword Density” on each webpage is as follows:

• Minimum: 250 - 300 words
• 2 - 5% density of the targeted keyword (mention the keyword/s roughly 10 times)
• Is mentioned in the last words of the content

It must appear in quite a few other places like the webpage’s URL, H1 tag, Title Tag, etc.

apache htaccess online editor and creator

If your like me, then you probably do a lot of copying and pasting htaccess file codes from one project or site to another.
Apache server configuration directives don’t strike me as another command set I yearn to learn off by heart.

I found this fantastic .htaccess editor and creator tool the other day which does a good job of covering the main basic options.
Apache .htaccess Online Creator and Editor Tool
http://www.htaccesseditor.com/en.shtml

Thanks to whom ever sat down and wrote the thing, even the interface is nice and easy to use.

Enjoy.