Recursive

Tag: Tech

  • IE7 Tip – Reload

    IE7 Tip - ReloadWhen IE7 was designed they took the peculiar decision to split the navigation buttons into three places (if you include the home button).

    If you find yourself up in the top left wanting to reload, just click the drop-down button and select the current page (will be highlighted and have a tick-mark on the left), as shown in the picture.

    Bizarrely and unfortunately, this only works if you’re not looking at the last page in your navigation history for this tab. This suggests that it’s only through poor programming logic that it works at all.

    [tags]IE,IE7,Microsoft,tip,tips,browser,flaw,bug[/tags]

  • Firefox Tip

    I discovered yesterday that [tag]bookmarks[/tag] in [tag]Firefox[/tag] can have no name.

    Seems pointless? Not if the sites have [tag]favicons[/tag]:

    Firefox Bookmark Favicons

    Space saving, so you can see more, hence fewer clicks.

    The above are jazzle.co.uk, The Sketchup Components Collection, bit-tech, ebay, amazon, radiotimes.com and the default icon (for a site with no [tag]favicon[/tag]), but you knew that of course since you recognise the sites’ icons.

  • Browser Wars (not much fighting)

    Having created the new Saints site, I have access to the visitor [tag]statistics[/tag].
    I was surprised to see that over the first 9 days (27,682 visits, 10.6GB) 92.2% were using [tag]Internet Explorer[/tag], and I was more surprised to see that ~57% of those were still using IE6.

    So more than half of all visitors are using IE6, the now very outdated [tag]browser[/tag], despite IE7 being a critical update.
    Do these people not have Automatic Updates on? Or are they all using pirated versions of XP?

    Sadly (imho), only 5.7% were using [tag]Firefox[/tag], and just 2% were using non-Windows Operating Systems.

    My SketchUp site, the SCC, has a very different browser profile: 50.12% use IE (63% v6, 36% v7) and 43% use Firefox.

  • Microsoft could save 45 million tons of CO2 emissions

    Microsoft could save 45 million tons of CO2 emissions with a few lines of computer code, need I say more?

    [tags]MS, Microsoft, CO2, emisssions, kyoto, abatement[/tags]

  • IE7’s Zoom Feature

    I am of the strong belief that IE7’s Zoom feature is significantly flawed.

    The problem is explained at boagworld.com.
    The worst result is the that on many sites it will force a horizontal scroll bar! A well known no-no.

    The other problem which doesn’t appear to be mentioned there is the fact that background images aren’t scaled, and this can result in illegible text if the colours aren’t defined – not always possible.

  • Ready for IE7?

    The majority of (legit) Windows users may get a shock over the next 24 hours or so as IE7 is rolled out.

    How soon until users stuck with [tag]IE6[/tag] start to get frustrated with ‘broken’ websites?
    Will it encourage them to get legit copies of Windows?
    Of course not, there are too many alternative browsers out there, notably [tag]Firefox[/tag] (my browser of choice).

    Have you seen any sites which break horribly in [tag]IE7[/tag]? Or any particularly good examples of new designs?

  • bbPress

    bbPress is a fantastic example of how the web should be made.

    While there are of course a few (minor) issues, bbPress is still a beta / pre-v1 product (0.72 ‘bix’ in fact), and ‘issues’ may actually be simple matters of preference.

    If I was to set up a forum I’d use bbPress. But what to talk about?

  • Blogosphere Could Change

    I genuinely believe that the oddly (and uncatchily) named Real Time Matrix and/or similar services could significantly affect [tag]online[/tag] publishing.

    While aggregation and [tag]blog-search[/tag] aren’t new, services like this could change the dynamics of the [tag]blogosphere[/tag] – the big guys might find themselves getting less traffic as the smaller sites get more attention, and hopefully there will be less of the echoing effect recently discussed.

    There could also be negative effects – the more underhanded [tag]blog[/tag]s could try and cheat the system, in much the same way as [tag]keyword spam[/tag]ming affected early search engines.
    What else could change? What else do we want/need?

  • RSS updates

    It has occured to me that [tag]RSS[/tag] (etc) readers should allow the user to [tag]refresh[/tag] the [tag]post content[/tag].

    This would mean that if the post is updated, which many often are, those edits would be visible from within the feed reader.

    Better: get the reader to check the posts and notify the user if the content has changed.

    Even better: allow the user to set a minimum-change threshold, so that if the edit made was for example simply correcting spelling they wouldn’t be notified. But if the update was adding new information then it could trigger.

    If anyone knows whether this has already been done, please lmk so I can be suitably ashamed for my complete lack of research.

    (Please accept my apologies for the rambling ‘style’ of this post)

  • Bounce Spam?

    I, like a lot of people, get a lot of [tag]spam[/tag] [tag]email[/tag]s.
    I get a lot of these via a catch-all, but I’m now turning that off. Should I bounce or just ignore those messages?

    I’d like to think that the spammers would be put off by emails bounced back to them, but think I have to accept that they probably won’t even get the bounces, so I’d just be creating a little more pointless internet traffic.

    Perhaps the ‘[tag]email tax[/tag]’ suggestions should be adapted to only make people pay for bounced emails?