One of the things I like about WordPress is its malleability. The recent article From Weblog to CMS with WordPress by John McCreesh covers how to transform an out-of-the-box blog into a simple content management system.
As an independent publisher, if you are interested in setting up something that’s not a blog, but a bit more involved than a small web site, I’d investigate WordPress as a serious option. I know I am.
Web developers and designers have been dealing with the shortcomings of Internet Explorer 5+ for Windows for the last few years. Working around problems like the box model, double float margins, and so on have caused too many a designer migraine.
The promise of the numerous CSS enhancements in Internet Explorer 7 should put to the rest (most of) all hacks and workarounds.
With the WinIE7, the question arises: “When will Internet Explorer 7 get here?” Sure, we have the conference promoting the browser with the necessary promotional material, but when will others outside our industry start using the IE7? When will this new browser become something web developers will absolutely need to worry about when crafting their site designs?
Depending on whom you ask (and when you asked), the release of Internet Explorer 7 will be arriving along with Windows Vista in January 2007. (Well, that’s the last I read about the launch date anyway.)
So, is January 2007 the date and time web developers need to make sure everything is ready to go for WinIE7?
While web developers will be the first to adopt the browser (if they haven’t already started tweaking with the beta release), a browser doesn’t simply come out of beta on Day 1 and start massaging the pulsating temples of weary web developers. It takes time for market penetration.
So, the questions is, “when will your users start using Internet Explorer 7?”
One way of estimating when to care about Microsoft’s new browser is to find more about the adoption rate of the current Internet Explorer over its predecessor. In other words, how long did it take for IE6 to make a difference over IE5? (For the purpose of this article, I’m combining IE5.5 with IE5.)
According to Wikipedia, Internet Explorer came out in August 27, 2001. Yes, you read that right. It’s been five years between major browser versions, if IE7 launches this year.
Now knowing the launch date of the browser, I needed some site statistics around the same time that IE6 launched.
Since I haven’t been running my own site in a consistent fashion–one year it’s a blog, one year it’s a static page, then the next year it’s a static page, now it’s a blog in need of a redesign–I couldn’t use my own site statistics.
I came across a couple of sites that publish an archive of their browser statistics. If you have been a web developer for some time, I’m sure you’ve come across their material as well.
The first site I came across was W3C Schools. They thankfully have set their statics in a nice table making it easy for me to skim for the information I was looking for.
Their browser stats shows that in 2002, IE6 support went from 30% to over 50% in the span of eleven months. At the same time, IE5 went from over 50% to less than 30% in usage. However, their statistics start after the launch of IE6. So, while interesting to note, the data is not much help to answer the question.
The next site I looked at was Engineering WorkStations from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
| Time | WinIE5(%) | WinIE6(%) | WinIE5 %Drop | WinIE6 %Rise |
| Aug-01 | 90.6 | 0 |
na |
Na |
| Sep-01 | 85.1 | 9.5 | ‑5.5 | 9.5 |
| Oct-01 | 80.4 | 14.8 | ‑4.7 | 5.3 |
| Nov-01 | 76 | 19.4 | ‑4.4 | 4.6 |
| Dec-01 | 71.3 | 24.6 | ‑4.7 | 5.2 |
| Jan-02 | 66.8 | 29.4 | ‑4.5 | 4.8 |
| Feb-02 | 62.2 | 34.6 | ‑4.6 | 5.2 |
| Mar-02 | 59.2 | 37.8 | ‑3 | 3.2 |
| Apr-02 | 55.3 | 42.1 | ‑3.9 | 4.3 |
| May-02 | 52.8 | 44.8 | ‑2.5 | 2.7 |
| Jun-02 | 49.8 | 47.9 | ‑3 | 3.1 |
| Jul-02 | 49.3 | 48.8 | ‑0.5 | 0.9 |
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| Sep-02 | 43.6 | 55.1 | ‑3.2 | 3.5 |
| Oct-02 | 41.2 | 57.6 | ‑2.4 | 2.5 |
| Nov-02 | 39.3 | 59.7 | ‑1.9 | 2.1 |
What’s interesting to me is how fast Internet Explorer 6 became on the radar for EWS. This could be for a lot of reasons we’re not privy to, but if I did have to guess as to the cause of the early adoption rate, I would wager it’s that the researchers at an engineering school are more inclined to update their machines than most of corporate America.
So, if we are to care about making our sites suitable for IE7, we have one month after the launch of IE7 to get the sites tested and prepared before not doing anything becomes a serious problem. Also, it will mean we will have to support the IE6 for at least a year after IE7’s release.
But even with the strong adoption, it still took a year for Internet Explorer 6 to become the dominant browser. (If you are Microsoft, you didn’t care because you own both IE5 and 6.)
These statistics give a biased result. Like the W3C Schools, this EWS source probably serves a technical savvy audience. And they work great for EWS. Since they are their statistics, they can make predictions and plans based off them without fear they are off. For the rest of us, that’s not the case.
To get hard date for your own site, you will check the log files to determine what browsers are being used. Make the determination of when you should start preparing for Internet Explorer 7.
So, if you have a site that’s been around since August 2001. Take a look through your own log files and discover the adoption rate of IE6 over IE5.
Once you find out the answers, please post them in the comments to let myself and other people know too.
In July, I’ll be at WebVisions 2006 in Oregon. WebVisions explores the future of design, content creation, user experience and business strategy to uncover the trends and agents of change. My talk will cover CSS and what Internet Explorer 7 for Windows means for web developers:
On March 13th at Austin, the CSS Problem Solving panel presented CSS insight and solutions based on feedback and questions from the survey panel people like you answered months before the SXSW Interactive conference.
Over 250 people filled out the survey with a third of them admitting to having problems with CSS. Out of the numerous problems developers face in regards to CSS, only two kinds of problems were the most troubling. Those problems were Browser Compatibility and Page Layouts and/or Columns issues.
Based on these kinds of issues as well as picking some of the specific CSS problems people submitted, our panel attempted to cover some of the basics–to help people reduce common errors in CSS development–as well as pick some of the more intriguing CSS problems.
The first to deliver the CSS goods was Tiffany B. Brown…
Advanced CSS users as well as Beginners can trip on the basics. Tiffany B. Brown covered a primer of CSS development for those in the audience that might use CSS, but don’t fully appreciate the parameters in which browsers render a CSS-enabled page design.
Tiffany’s presentation on key concepts Tiffany included Inheritance, Specificity, Cascade. After the refresher, Tiffany covered how to set up CSS hacks intelligently.
Ethan Marcotte delivered one of the most visually stunning presentations on CSS I’ve ever seen on one of the more controversial topics: designing by absolute positioning content or designing with floats. Ethan looked into both design approaches… as well as a third, middle-ground approach: why not use both?
As I noted in the survey summary, one of the main problems people have with CSS is creating cross-browser layouts. Charles Wyke-Smith covered various layout methods that are available for use as well as each’s pros and cons.
Dave Shea wrapped up the presentation by covering three interesting CSS topics based off submitted questions.
To learn more, check out Dave’s solutions.
While problem solving, Dave touched on a couple of other issues related to CSS-enabled design. One of those items Dave touched on was the Windows IE7 beta release. Dave’s formalized his thoughts after his recent trip to Microsoft’s Mix 06 conference in Las Vegas, where Microsoft released a new preview release of IE7 for Windows.
Then hook yourself up with the video montage of the panel. Available in multiple formats for your discriminating Broadband tastes.
Putting together a panel takes a lot of time for preparation and study. I thank the presenters for their time and commitment for putting together another great panel on CSS. Thanks, Tiffany, Ethan, Charles and Dave!
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I applaud the developments of the movie industry to allow the downloading of movies through a new venture called Movielink.
The mere existence of this initiative doesn’t help their arguments made during the 2006 Oscars: nothing replaces the magic of going to the movies and that downloading movies therefore is like reading a graphic novel of a classic book.
But at least the movie studios realize that argument isn’t going to work on people paying through the nose for high-speed Internet connection. Also, the masses are going to go after what they want, even if Widescreen is better than Fullscreen.
Welcome to the future, Movie Industry. Sort of.
While you are actually acknowledging the desires of your customers by creating this service, you’re not quite there as evidenced by this warning message I received when I tried to use the site (emphasis is mine):
Sorry, but as of May 2, 2005, Movielink no longer supports Windows 98 and ME operating systems. Movielink also does not support Mac or Linux.
In order to enjoy the Movielink service, you must use Windows 2000 or XP, which support certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies.
I’ll grant the movie industry some slack in acknowledging that most people are using a flavor of Microsoft OS including, I don’t know, say, movie studio bosses. However, movie studios are denying so many people by relying on technology that’s OS-specific. Open up the system in order it works with other systems. Why? It means more customers.
If the only hurdles are the cost of software and servers, think about how much money was spent on Waterworld. Spare your customers another mega-motion picture failure and, instead, recreate your business model. In the end that would truly be great movie magic.
People work to get paid. That’s pretty straightforward, right?
People talk about how much money they make in terms of time. It’s mostly in units of years and hours. For years, it’s something like 40k, 20k, 100k, etc. For hourly, there’s $10 an hour or $7.25 an hour.
So, one day I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to calculate people’s salaries based on seconds not years or hours. Just doing the same thing everyone does, but using a unit of time that people really don’t operate in for the most part. (Sure, you may say, “wait a second” but it’s really longer than a second.)
And that’s when I thought, if I’m stretching the concept of how much you make per a second, I would need some other symbol to help represent that unit of time. It would be okay to create a JavaScript-powered clock that would display how much a second of work time means to you, but who would seriously check that out? It’s a clock.
So, I needed to something that took place in a second of time, but was somewhat universal in nature. Something that everyone did or could easily understand… Bingo!
That’s when I came across the idea of using farts.
Farts can last a second or even longer. In fact, I would say farting is a great social equalizer. Everyone does it. (Except you. I would never say or think you would ever fart.)
But then I thought, hey, you know celebrities make an awful lot of money. And so do politicians. Why not showcase how much they make per second by way of fart noises? It would be such an absurd, almost surreal thing to see!
I threw together some quick Photoshop mockups and tried to learn some Flash to pull it off. Thus Fart Bucks was born.
Some time ago I stopped working on Fart Bucks, but I always felt it could have been so much more than what it is. I even made a list.
The following is the list of items I felt could make the project better:
If you feel like you want to add to Fart Bucks, please do. Feel free to download and modify. I’ve placed the contents of Fart Bucks I’ve made under a Creative Commons license.
