SubscribeWhile the vast majority of comments have welcomed the new theme we’ve adopted here, I have heard from a handful who are having problems with the theme or layout. Upon further investigation, I have uncovered most fall into one of these categories:
- Internet Explorer 6. You -must- upgrade your browser. Internet Explorer 6 is no longer supported and represents a serious security risk in today’s online world of browser exploits and malware. I wouldn’t feel safe using IE6 to do any secure tasks these days. Functionally, there are several features here which will not work with this browser properly. If you are using this browser, you will see a security warning at the top of your screen prompting you to update effective today. You don’t need to rely on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. In truth, the majority of our visitors here access this site using Firefox, Mac users prefer Safari (and there is a Windows version available as well). I use Firefox myself. It’s free and will import all of your bookmarks, so it’s painless. You’ll also enjoy a lot of the new features and faster browsing. The truth is, a lot of web pages are going to look strange using IE6, not just ours, and that will increasingly be the case as more and more sites drop support for this ancient browser version. At the very least, if you like Internet Explorer, upgrade to at least version 7. You’ll find it on the IE update page referenced above in the lower right corner.
- Screen Size. If you are running at less than 1024×768 screen resolution, things are probably looking mighty squished. I understand this, and the “busy-ness” it creates. I have been waiting for the theme author to release his next update which will fix some of this. In the meantime, I think the best choice for us will be to try switching to a two-column format. You’ll see the articles appearing in 66% of the space, with the right side column containing the featured articles, recent comments, and some other stuff. I have temporarily disabled some of the items that were in the center column to give people more white space. Tonight, we’ll try expanding the layout. However, as the vast majority of our visitors here arrive using a minimum of 1024×768 resolution, that will be the minimum resolution that I will be developing this site to work best with.
- Mobile Browsers & Netbooks: I am testing some plug-ins and add-ons to greatly improve options for those using these devices. Hang in there.
I also strongly urge people who want to participate in our comments to register for an account here so they aren’t bothered with having to enter their name and e-mail address each time they want to leave a comment. It literally takes seconds, because we don’t have a bloated sign-up procedure. Your temporary password will be e-mailed to you (and after that you can change it), so make sure you use a valid e-mail address.
Other stories of interest:
Hi Phil,
When I view this site using IE 6 I don’t see the warning you speak of. It’s possible that it’s being blocked somehow by my work firewall but that would be a surprise to me. The page claims to have errors loading so if they warning is some sort of Javascript message it may not even work in IE 6 (ironically).
Just FYI.
That is ironic. There are some office browsers still using IE6, but more and more of WordPress and other blogging platforms and themes are moving faster and faster away from IE6 support. The amount of effort web developers used to put into trying to make things compatible with IE6 has more or less ended since IE8 was released. It’s probably only a matter of months before a lot of IE6 holdouts are going to see some dramatic problems.
Phil, the old site appeared differently to me at work on IE 6.0. I just never thought much about it.
Microsoft ties the end of IE6’s life (and thus, when updates and support ends) to a weird mix of hard deadlines and/or a fixed time period (usually two years) after the last Service Pack release for Windows XP. So what that practically means is that if you can’t or won’t update to the latest Service Pack, then support from Microsoft for IE6 has already ended. And if you are running with the latest Service Pack, then support from Microsoft for IE6 ends in the first half of 2010.
I can imagine there are some people who simply can’t update to IE6 and who can’t download and use an alternative browser. For example, you might be an office worker saddled with an IT staff that combines a casual lack of concern over usability and security (IE6) with an irrational paranoia over other choices (Firefox, et al.). In that case, consider another job.
Hi John, fancy meeting you here.
I just expanded the size of the first column (where the articles go and where you are reading these words) by another third. I’ll look at restoring the page elements that Phil switched off from the center column, putting them in the third column later tonight.
I am at work and also use IE 6.0 because we’re not allowed to update due to imcompatibilities with software we use. The page looks perfectly fine to me, I do not notice any warnings at the top either.
Having read much about the IE 6 issue lately… sidebar…
Koolzero’s post is exactly the reason why they are so many PCs out there still running IE 6. And rather stupidly (or not), the vendors that originally wrote certain software that exists out there are unwilling to undergo the effort and expense to remove whatever is making their software be dependent on having IE 6, and only IE 6, installed.
Another argument is because of the uptake with Windows Vista – but I think the above is a far bigger factor.
Until all of those “we won’t spend the money to make it forward compatible” apps go away or are replaced by something else, sadly, IE 6 will be around for quite a while yet.
Personally, I think a compromise is to just say “not all features of this site may perform as expected with IE 6″, and leave it at that.
And, @John P. above, it really matters not one whit what MS’s EOL schedule is for IE 6, because if companies with large installed bases of it are stuck with it because of an either OTS or custom-written app that was poorly made dependent on IE 6, not everyone can “just upgrade” their browser, unfortunately.
Also, a personal take – I will never understand why MS decided to separate the refresh and stop buttons to the right hand side of the address bar. To this day, I think it’s one of dumbest interface decisions MS has made. I remember when I first started using IE 7 (I try to avoid it, frankly, much prefer Firefox), I kept reaching for the left side of the address bar – it was unnatural then, and it still is today. Dumb, dumb, dumb…
And maybe I’m missing something, but there doesn’t appear to be any way to change it (admittedly … could be wrong … and even if you can, the default setup of forward-back-refresh-stop makes little sense to me.)
I think that is potentially a “secret” reason why some folks would rather stay with IE 6′s _interface_, and I can’t say I blame ‘em really!
I have made another adjustment to the site’s horizontal menu bar to try and stop options from running into a second line. Also, is anyone at 1024×768 still getting a horizontal scroll bar along the bottom?
I can not subscribe. All I see is several pages of source code
I’m not sure what to tell you. I set up a virtual machine so that I could run IE6 and try to reproduce your problem report. It’s a “virgin” installation, direct from the original Windows XP Professional CD-ROM. I can see the “Register” link, and I was able to click it and register a new account. I thought you might have disabled Javascript, so I did that and found that although some of the features of the site no longer work (such as videos), everything else does.
If you have any IE6 plugins, proxies, anti-spyware, filtering firewalls, or anything else that puts itself between your network connection and your browser, please disable that and see if the problem persists.
After getting a good fanny whack yesterday from a certain site creator about my use of IE6 it has me thinking. I WILL NOT go to IE7 or 8 because I no longer trust Microsoft. Like Vista and WIN7 its not the programs as much as it is the hidden code they never tell you about. The program Firefox does not scare me as much as what it could do to other programs in my system. I think that is a natural thought also. I would never ask Phil or John to change the site for something I was very strictly told I need to change. But fear lingers. To bad BHS does not have a 2 hour class on the subject with much of that being user questions. Im sure a very well crafted letter they would allow it for free as it is a wave of the future. I see a few sites that are no longer happy with IE6 but for the moment they are few and a felling tells me after our economic recovery and programming companies have a few extra bucks it is going to change fast.
The issue isn’t that we “aren’t happy” with IE6. The issue is that IE6 is a browser that is now nearly eight years old and it predates modern web standards. Where I work, I was asked to develop a user interface that would work with IE6 and later. The sheer amount of time I spent trying to accommodate the endless quirks of IE6 was insane, leading to severe compromises in the final product. I spent many hours reading through sites like Quirksmode, carefully crafting code that would work across as many browsers as possible.
Stop the Cap is a volunteer site. Phil spends significant time researching and writing articles, and I spend a fair amount of time keeping the site running, secure, and meeting Phil’s requests. Neither Phil or I have anything in particular against IE6 or any other down-level browser, and in a perfect world, this site would work exactly the same (or at least degrade gracefully) on any browser on any platform. But the reality of the situation is that browser standards are in constant flux, and supporting everyone with a useful and compelling presentation means that supporting older browsers takes exponential time on our part.
I will continue to spend some effort into making this site work with down-level browsers and odd platforms. One of the machines we have is 800 pixels across, so I am very much aware of how badly the site looks and works there. I would also like to view Stop the Cap on my cell phone, but that currently is also painful. I’ll be addressing these and other minority browsers and platforms as time permits.
To John im clean except for the CA software TW provided. Ill turn it all off and try again. If that fails I will send a screen shot to phil as I dont think I have your email.
Thanks for looking John. It turned out to be the CA firewall. Ill see how it all works as CA is set up to allow no cookies and I may have to allow the site using a manual change of filters.
Just wanted to say to the stop the cap crew the format column changes were brilliant! Now the new information and issues are right in your face the moment you hit the site Easy to read and easy to find follow up information. The issue of caps is not going to go away anytime soon but a large active audience here is a killer to them and it needs to get bigger not just here in Rochester but the entire country as well. The people need to learn quickly that their internet bill will jump up to $150 plus if nothing is done.