It’s now been nearly 5 months since the official launch of IE8 (and just as long since I last posted a blog entry) and there has been some positive movement in the browser wars according to the PropertyPal.com usage statistics. This time last year IE6 users made up approximately 27% and now 12 months later that has dropped to 15%.
On the face of it that sounds great as it would seem I now have less IE6 users to worry about. Wrong … PropertyPal.com usage has shot up over the last 12 months and as a result IE6 usage on the website has actually gone up by 271% compared to this day 1 year ago. Now you wont hear me complaining too much about the traffic going up but the IE6 problem is a nasty side effect, it makes me think of the end of an action film where the good guy kills the bad guy only at the last moment for the bad guy to come round and reach for his gun. Hopefully though the good guy (lets call the good guy Google Chrome for now) will follow the script and stop him just before he pulls the trigger.
This website brings me hope, maybe they know something I don’t: http://isie6dead.com/
http://www.ripie6.com/
It’s the 20th March 2009 and yesterday Microsoft released the latest version of its web browser Internet Explorer 8. For website developers, when Microsoft releases a new web browser this can bring great joy but also great pain because often the new version fixes all the annoying problems with the old one but creates a whole new minefield that developers have to pick our way through. You see, Microsoft’s web browser is by far the most popular of all web browsers, roughly 80% of all internet users use Internet Explorer, however just because a new version is released it doesn’t mean that all of these millions of people immediately upgrade, in fact, very few of them do.
Microsoft last released an updated version of their browser in 2006 and after more than 2 years there are still roughly 30% of IE users on version 6. You might be wondering why this is a problem, well technology always moves forward and that is very true of the tools that web developers use to build websites. In the time since IE 6 was released the tools we use have improved drastically, but they can only be used if the majority of internet users have the capability to view a website when built with them. There are ways to build websites with the latest technology and still have them work with older browsers like IE6 but this requires a lot more work from the website developer. So when all of these millions of Internet Explorer users chose not up upgrade to version 7 in 2006 it gave the developer a massive headache.
Roll on two years and another new version of Internet Explorer, and situation could soon get much better or much worse. You see, Internet Explorer 8 is an improvement on version 7 and a massive improvement on version 6 but it doesn’t really matter if many people don’t upgrade. In fact if people don’t upgrade then it makes the situation much harder to manage than before because this time we have three versions of Internet Explorer rather than two to design for.
What worries web developers the most about all this is that the people that chose not to upgrade their web browser in 2006 for whatever reason, are also likely to decide not to again, so while the percentage of IE6 and IE7 users will go down and the percentage of IE8 users will go up, it will probably be several years before website developers can finally forget about having to design websites for the old dragon that is Internet Explorer 6.
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Posted 20 March 2009
† Andrew Murdoch §
Internet § Programing § Technology
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Tagged: css, ie6, ie7, ie8, Internet, internet explorer, microsoft, standards compliance, web browser, website development, xhtml
I decided to write this post after a year of trying to find a solution to connecting to my work Cisco VPN on my Windows Vista running the 64 bit version of the OS. I am a Firewall/VPN novice and after struggling to find a solution for so long I felt that anyone else out there struggling with the same problem should benefit.
We use an IPSec VPN on a Cisco firewall, and to connect to this on a client machine we must use the Cisco VPN client, unfortunately this client does not currently and never will run an a 64bit machine. Cisco have virtually ceased development of this software and haven’t updated it in 5 years, I am not going to go on a rant about that now because if you found this post it is probably because you want to find out how I got connected. I actually stumbled across this solution 6 months before I finally got it to work but didn’t realise how close I was at the time.
The solution is to use the NCP Secure Entry Client which will connect to a Cisco IPSec VPN and will also work on 64bit Windows. There are 30 day trials available of this software however it does cost money if you want to use it permanently (£95.20 for a single user license) but its definitely worth it. I would recommend you try the 30 trial first to make sure it will work for you.
These are the steps I followed to get it to work for me;
- Download and install the NCP Secure Entry Client
- Click on Configuration > Profiles > New Entry
- Select Link to a Corporate Network using IPSec and click next.
- Type in a name for your connection
- Select the method of connection, if its through your normal internet connection then select LAN (over IP)
- Type in the gateway IP address (i.e. the IP address of your firewall) but DO NOT check Extended Authorization XAUTH this is the mistake I was making 6 months before. Click next.
- Set Exchange Mode to Aggressive Mode and click next.
- Enter your Shared key into the two boxes. This may be referred to as your password which is what our hosting company was calling it which created a little confusion for me.
- In the drop down menu for Local Identity select Free string used to identify groups
- In the IKE ID text box enter your Group name which may also be referred to as your Username as it was by our hosting company. Click next.
- Under IP Address Assignment select IKE Config Mode, other settings may work for you, this worked for me. Click next.
- Finally, leave the settings on the last page the way they are and click Finish
- Now just try and connect with your new profile and it should work.
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Edit:
As people mentioned in the comments you can import the configuration from a Cisco VPN Client .pcf file which works first time for some people. However for me, the import was checking the ‘Extended Authorization XAUTH’ option which is what foiled me for so long so if the import didn’t work just make sure that option isn’t checked.
Me and beckie have just got ourselves a nice new Digital SLR, I have been interested in photography for some time and have owned a film SLR since I was about 14. However since I got a compact digital camera, I had completely stopped using the SLR all together. Reviewing my photos over the last few months though I had started becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of the photos and decided it was about time to get a Digital SLR.
I have longed for one for many years but they have always been so far out of my price range there was no way I would be able to get one. However, Canon have recently launched the 1000D which is much cheaper than its predecessors yet gives us all the features we would ever need. Its not up to a professional grade but still a hundred times better than any compact digital camera. Now having my hands on it has re-ignited my interest in photography and I have really started to enjoy having such a useful piece of kit. Going digital is nothing like my old film camera, unlike with film there is nothing stopping you take as many photos as you like and because you can review them instantly you learn so much more about how to use your camera and about the aspects that make a great photo.
Now me and beckie are planning days out and trips to go places where we can take photos which will get us out at about more which should be fun. But also we have started a photography project which was an idear I read about here. The idea is you take a photo every day for a whole year, it encourages you to use your camera, and keeps your creative juices flowing as you need to think of a new photo every day, but most of all it enables you to better learn how to use your camera.
I have started uploading the photos that we have been taking to my flickr account which can be found here:
Andrew Murdoch / Beckie Austin: Photo Journal
Well, the weekend in London at the Race of Champions wasn’t a total disaster but it was quite eventful. It all started out badly, we got on the train to London, only to sit there for 2 hours and only manage to travel 5 miles then the train was cancelled. We got back to the station and then found out all trains to london were cancelled. So we headed over to the coach station and managed to get some tickets on a coach to london, just in time because they sold out about half an hour after we got there. Eventually we made it to our hotel but a journey that should have taken 2 hours ended up taking 8 hours.
The Race of Champions was great, and was definitely worth the nightmare journey. My predictions for the wins were way off the mark, Team France was the first team to get knocked out and Team Germany was the eventual winner of the nations cup. Michael Schumacher didn’t even make it to the semi finals of the individual event and worse than that, he was knocked out by Carl Edwards who as a NASCAR driver has probably never even driven a car round a proper corner before. Apart from my bad predictions, everything else was excellent, even Lewis Hamilton didn’t dampen my enthusiasm. They didn’t do the race between him an Cris Hoy in the end, the track was far too slippery and was a bit to dangerous to take a bicycle round there apparently, you can see my photos from the event here.
Race of Champions photos.
There was more problems to come however, during the day Beckie had been developing a cough and looked like she had a cold coming on. Then after a brisk walk from wembely to the tube station, her asthma started giving her some trouble and she was looking very pale, we got on the train but on the journey she started feeling very unwell and once the train stopped we had to get an ambulance. Without going into all the details, she ended up on a drip in A&E. But it wasn’t anything too serious, she had a chest infection which has given her a very high temperature, and we eventually got out of there about 1am. (I have now caught the same chest infection off her, though its not bad enough for me to end up in A&E).
Me and Beckie are off to the Race of Champions this weekend, we are heading down to london on the train on saturday and staying in the Copthorn Tara hotel on Saturday and Sunday night. The driver lineup hasnt yet been filled but today ROC organisers announced the replacement for Team Australia’s Mark Webber who has a broken leg will be current British F3 champion Jamie Alguersuari. You may be thinking, that is a perculior name for an Australian, well it is and he isnt, though he will be in Team Australia he is actually Spanish.
Another addition to the lineup is Jason Plato who I am very happy about. Strangely though, rather than partnering him with David Coulthard who currenly doesnt have a team mate, he is in Team Jason Plato so there is now an extra place available in the lineup as his team mate. I am wondering though if he will probably end up partnering David Couthard, I have a feeling the reason for that is that ROC organisers are still trying to persuade Lewis Hamilton to compete and have brought JP in as a backup.
My prediction for the win is Michael Schumacher, he has probably had enough of coming second to Mattius Ekstrom and will be determined to win this year. And for the Nations Cup I will put my money on Team France, Sebastian Loeb and Yvan Muller is a very strong combination.
Photos will folow when I return …
Hi, my name is Andrew Murdoch (or Andy) if you prefer and this is my first post on my new website. I am a website and software developer living in Birmingham and I have owned www.andrewmurdoch.com (and andrewmurdoch.co.uk) for several years now and done absolutely nothing with them so I thought it was about time I got round to it.
In fact, given the thosands of Andrew Murdochs in the world I am quite priveledged to be the one that owns the .com so feel obliged to do something with it, and given that I am a website developer by proffession its probably about time i got myself a presence on the net.
The site might look a bit plane at the moment but I hope to brigten it up and a lick of paint and some more furnature over the next few weeks so come back soon to check out what I have done with the place. This site has been built using Wordpress as I am far to busy to build one from scratch and as anyone in my line of work can probably understand, when you have spent all day building websites, the last thing you want to do when you get home* is build more websites.
Regards
Andrew Murdoch (The one from Birmingham, UK)
* I actually don’t come home from work, because I work from home but the same principle applies.