Microsoft has today announced that from January 2012, Internet Explorer updates will automatically be downloaded and installed in the background whilst retaining all of your custom settings like addons and search providers.
The new feature will work for those who have automatic updates enabled on their machine and this means for anybody using Windows XP you will be jumped up to version 8, whilst if you are on Vista or Windows 7 you will be pushed to IE9 whether you like it or not. This is definitely a good thing for Microsoft as it means that the death of IE6 just moves that little bit closer.
In the past I have criticised Google and Mozilla for pushing out these updates on the stealth as it means that developers are constantly having to make changes - especially when they both at the moment are doing a new release every eight weeks. In terms of security, this is most definitely a good thing for the Internet as a whole. I myself as of earlier this year completely dropped support for Internet Explorer 6 as it was simply becoming too difficult to maintain.
Ie6countdown.com has the world usage for IE6 pegged at 8.3% as of today, with certain countries faring better than others. For example, the UK has 1.8% and the US has 1.0% - fairly impressive, however China is massively behind here at a massive 27.9%. I can only put this down to counterfeit software but whatever happens, the Internet will go on with and without it.
As a final note to those of you out there still using IE6, please, please, please update!
Showing posts with label Internet Explorer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet Explorer. Show all posts
Monday, 19 December 2011
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
Internet Explorer 9 Security: Top of the Tests
In what you could say is a surprising twist of reputation, NSS Labs have revealed what they think is the most secure of all browsers for malware and malicious websites, and yes you've guessed it by now, Internet Explorer. One of the many articles can be found over at ZDNet.
Anybody who knows the previous chequered history of Internet Explorer will know that Microsoft have been highly criticised for its vulnerabilities and many patches that have given it such a poor reputation. To be fair to Microsoft, they have been fighting back hard as of late. Internet Explorer 9 is much more enjoyable to use, and it has a much cleaner and compact appearance. I'm not a fan of any browser in particular being honest. The main reason that I stick with IE is because that's where my users are. Yes, I have to make sure that my code works properly in all browsers but first it needs to absolutely work here.
The article above goes on to mention that even with the built in application reputation technology disabled, IE9 still managed a URL blocking score of 89.5 percent and an overtime protection rating of 96 percent. In the same NSS Labs tests, Firefox 4 and Safari 5 both scored 7.6 percent for filtering malware, with Chrome 12 faring slightly better at 13.2 percent. The total blocking rate for IE9 is now at an impressive 99.2 percent.
I really hope that Microsoft carry on doing well with IE, not because I have any preference toward them, but because they really are making some excellent products at the moment. The days of IE6 are almost well and truly behind them.
One last thing which is just a quick thanks to those who have been reading my blog as of late. If anybody wouldn't mind clicking through on my sponsored links it would be really much appreciated.
Anybody who knows the previous chequered history of Internet Explorer will know that Microsoft have been highly criticised for its vulnerabilities and many patches that have given it such a poor reputation. To be fair to Microsoft, they have been fighting back hard as of late. Internet Explorer 9 is much more enjoyable to use, and it has a much cleaner and compact appearance. I'm not a fan of any browser in particular being honest. The main reason that I stick with IE is because that's where my users are. Yes, I have to make sure that my code works properly in all browsers but first it needs to absolutely work here.
The article above goes on to mention that even with the built in application reputation technology disabled, IE9 still managed a URL blocking score of 89.5 percent and an overtime protection rating of 96 percent. In the same NSS Labs tests, Firefox 4 and Safari 5 both scored 7.6 percent for filtering malware, with Chrome 12 faring slightly better at 13.2 percent. The total blocking rate for IE9 is now at an impressive 99.2 percent.
I really hope that Microsoft carry on doing well with IE, not because I have any preference toward them, but because they really are making some excellent products at the moment. The days of IE6 are almost well and truly behind them.
One last thing which is just a quick thanks to those who have been reading my blog as of late. If anybody wouldn't mind clicking through on my sponsored links it would be really much appreciated.
Tuesday, 26 July 2011
Speed up Your Website - Top Tips
Speeding up your site can often be the key to an enjoyable web browsing experience. There is nothing more frustrating than waiting for your page elements to load. This is really one of my pet hates.
What can you do about it? The elements that basically slow your pages down are as follows:
Your JavaScript and CSS can be easily compressed by removing much of the unnecessary whitespace within your code. What I personally do, is keep a copy of the uncompressed original and when I want to make a change, I do so to that document and then compress it, making another new smaller file. A great site that will compress your JavaScript for you is jcompress.com. Simply paste your code into a text box and it will spit your compressed code back out.
Images can also be combined into CSS sprites, which is essentially one image that can be used to style multiple elements from with your stylesheet. For example, on my site I have one image that serves as a background for all of my h3 headings, main div headings and for the footer of my site. This then only counts as just one http request, therefore massively decreasing the loading time for my site. Have a quick Google around for this as there are many good sites that will give you some great examples.
Ok, so now you are left with a few things to do. You are wondering how to make those big images smaller without having to sacrifice either the quality or the actual size of the image. You've got several options. One of them is to fiddle with the image format. Personally, I prefer PNGs or JPGs for my images as they keep most of the quality. Removing colours from the image is one way to also reduce your size. Ok, now that you've done that, I bet that you are still wondering why your image size is large. Next, have a go at using Smush.it which is a little tool available from the Yahoo Developer Network. The tool will compress your images for you, removing extra details such as the Meta information which really isn't important for your site. Smush.it claims that it is a "lossless" tool, which means that it optimises the images without changing their visual quality. Once the process has finished, the tool reports how many bytes that it has saved you, along with a zipped your shiny new smaller file.
Lastly, poor or invalid HTML markup is also a performance killer. If you validate your code according to the HTML spec that you outline in your header, your site will load much more smoothly and quickly as your browser won't be trying to make assumptions as to what your code really should be doing.
Don't panic now. There are a few tools out there that can help you. I personally develop for Internet Explorer as that is where the market is. I then test in other browsers such as Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari, and more importantly no longer for IE6. But, when I'm in the process of quality testing and validation, I use Firefox along with the Firebug, Web Developer, HTML Validator and the YSlow plugins. For me, these are the best tools available for you to test your site. I advise anybody who is even vaguely interested in performance to check these out. YSlow and Web Developer are both brilliant tools as you can fully inspect your markup, and YSlow will even grade your site based on your components.
As you can see from the image above, there are several options available to you in YSlow (also a Yahoo Developer Network tool). Using the components tab, you can see every element in your site. One minor point to note, Firebug needs to be installed to use YSlow.
Good luck!
What can you do about it? The elements that basically slow your pages down are as follows:
- Http requests within your page, i.e. loading an image;
- Poor or invalid HTML markup;
- Large images sizes;
- Too many images;
- Lots of DNS lookups;
- Uncompressed JavaScript and CSS;
Your JavaScript and CSS can be easily compressed by removing much of the unnecessary whitespace within your code. What I personally do, is keep a copy of the uncompressed original and when I want to make a change, I do so to that document and then compress it, making another new smaller file. A great site that will compress your JavaScript for you is jcompress.com. Simply paste your code into a text box and it will spit your compressed code back out.
Images can also be combined into CSS sprites, which is essentially one image that can be used to style multiple elements from with your stylesheet. For example, on my site I have one image that serves as a background for all of my h3 headings, main div headings and for the footer of my site. This then only counts as just one http request, therefore massively decreasing the loading time for my site. Have a quick Google around for this as there are many good sites that will give you some great examples.
Ok, so now you are left with a few things to do. You are wondering how to make those big images smaller without having to sacrifice either the quality or the actual size of the image. You've got several options. One of them is to fiddle with the image format. Personally, I prefer PNGs or JPGs for my images as they keep most of the quality. Removing colours from the image is one way to also reduce your size. Ok, now that you've done that, I bet that you are still wondering why your image size is large. Next, have a go at using Smush.it which is a little tool available from the Yahoo Developer Network. The tool will compress your images for you, removing extra details such as the Meta information which really isn't important for your site. Smush.it claims that it is a "lossless" tool, which means that it optimises the images without changing their visual quality. Once the process has finished, the tool reports how many bytes that it has saved you, along with a zipped your shiny new smaller file.
Lastly, poor or invalid HTML markup is also a performance killer. If you validate your code according to the HTML spec that you outline in your header, your site will load much more smoothly and quickly as your browser won't be trying to make assumptions as to what your code really should be doing.
Don't panic now. There are a few tools out there that can help you. I personally develop for Internet Explorer as that is where the market is. I then test in other browsers such as Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari, and more importantly no longer for IE6. But, when I'm in the process of quality testing and validation, I use Firefox along with the Firebug, Web Developer, HTML Validator and the YSlow plugins. For me, these are the best tools available for you to test your site. I advise anybody who is even vaguely interested in performance to check these out. YSlow and Web Developer are both brilliant tools as you can fully inspect your markup, and YSlow will even grade your site based on your components.
Good luck!
Saturday, 4 June 2011
Internet Explorer 6 Given Another Kicking
Sorry that it has been a while since my last blog posting, I've had very little time of late to do as much of my own development on soulfire.co.uk as I would have liked under normal circumstances.
Anyway, to my point. I woke up this morning and had a look through Google sci/tech news and came across a bunch of articles relating to the fact that Google have now finally dropped support for IE6, as I predicted that they would in my last blog entry. To be honest, it had to happen at some point anyway, but I really didn't think that Google would have done it so soon.
Great news though, as this may just be the tipping point where the estimated 11% according to Microsoft who still have IE6 can actually move on. My web stats put the figure at a far higher 20%. But well done Google! I bet all of the Microsoft sites still support it at the moment though! At work, I am currently in the site redesign process and I won't be giving it a second thought. In fact, I have my own Windows XP virtual machine that I use for testing sites with IE6 which I can now delete and have peace of mind.
The BBC have a fairly good article about Google dropping support and isn't a bad read.
What I do think is a little more dangerous is that there will be a loss of functionality for those who still use IE7, Firefox 3.5 and Safari 3. This could actually work against them, but hey they probably think that they are doing the right thing. The announcement by Google was made on their own blog.
This is all to push HTML 5, which will hopefully be the new standard in the not so distant future. So there you are, it is officially the start of the end!
Anyway, to my point. I woke up this morning and had a look through Google sci/tech news and came across a bunch of articles relating to the fact that Google have now finally dropped support for IE6, as I predicted that they would in my last blog entry. To be honest, it had to happen at some point anyway, but I really didn't think that Google would have done it so soon.
Great news though, as this may just be the tipping point where the estimated 11% according to Microsoft who still have IE6 can actually move on. My web stats put the figure at a far higher 20%. But well done Google! I bet all of the Microsoft sites still support it at the moment though! At work, I am currently in the site redesign process and I won't be giving it a second thought. In fact, I have my own Windows XP virtual machine that I use for testing sites with IE6 which I can now delete and have peace of mind.
The BBC have a fairly good article about Google dropping support and isn't a bad read.
What I do think is a little more dangerous is that there will be a loss of functionality for those who still use IE7, Firefox 3.5 and Safari 3. This could actually work against them, but hey they probably think that they are doing the right thing. The announcement by Google was made on their own blog.
This is all to push HTML 5, which will hopefully be the new standard in the not so distant future. So there you are, it is officially the start of the end!
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
Speed up the death of Internet Explorer 6 (IE6)
10 years ago, in a galaxy not so far away...a browser was born.
Alright, as dramatic as that wasn't, ten years ago Internet Explorer 6 came along and sat on pretty much every PC out there. The reason for this wasn't that hard to understand really because there was little in the way of competition, and when Windows XP was launched this was the standard browser that came pre-installed. The adoption of XP was massive and still is today, with many organisations out there still running the ageing system. It had a massive market share of well over 95% and so other companies found it incredibly difficult to come close. This Wikipedia entry for Internet Explorer 6 tells it all, and is actually great reading.
History lesson over then, or not. IE6 had and still has massive flaws. It's not secure. It doesn't render pages well. It doesn't do a proper box model. It has very little in the way of standards support. It's slow. I will stop there because the list gets boring. And yet, with all of the flaws, it still has about 10% of the browser share at the time of writing. It's actually so bad, that even Microsoft wants to kill it. Even though that site isn't fresh news, I still check back from time to time to celebrate the pending death of IE6.
At the time though as I mentioned before, IE6 had a goliath amount of market share. The flaws weren't apparent then because there was nothing better to compare it to. Microsoft obviously were so confident and thought that it was so good, that they actually gave up the development of the product entirely and killed their IE development team (not literally I hope). In their eyes, it would have been the last ever iteration of the browser. And yet, that didn't happen.
The rise of other browsers such as Firefox and Opera at this time caused Microsoft to have a bit of a rethink. These were both better in every way, and had certain benefits such as tabbed browsing and better security. Although other browsers such as Google Chrome and Safari (on Windows) came later on, these both did little to help the demise of the Internet Explorer brand. Microsoft began work on IE7 and released several closed betas which were actually pretty good (I was part of these). Suddenly, there was a massive movement by all of the browser boys to upgrade your web experience.
So anyway, back to my original point. At this moment in time, IE6 has no future and is actually hindering my development more and more. I think more and more that web developers should be encouraging the cull by just dropping support altogether. I must admit, I hang on myself so that I wouldn't infuriate users, but now they are the minority. IE7 will be the next to go in the not too distant future, but I believe that IE8 will be around for much longer due to Microsoft not willing to move IE9 to Windows XP (silly decision in my opinion!). And that's it really. It was more of an announcement on my part that IE6 is dead to me and I won't be spending any more time with it.
The next big range of problems exists with the new generation of browsers with what I previously have discussed - the various adoptions of CSS3 standards. Also, browser optimisation for mobile platforms will be a massive area that everybody is at right now (including myself). We'll see what the future holds very soon.
Oh, and on a final note, an early version of my new personal site will be launching soon called Soulfire Design that will be giving tutorials and best practice tips for anybody looking to start their own website, or make any improvements. Please check out that link and if you are feeling generous please click on some of my ads!
Alright, as dramatic as that wasn't, ten years ago Internet Explorer 6 came along and sat on pretty much every PC out there. The reason for this wasn't that hard to understand really because there was little in the way of competition, and when Windows XP was launched this was the standard browser that came pre-installed. The adoption of XP was massive and still is today, with many organisations out there still running the ageing system. It had a massive market share of well over 95% and so other companies found it incredibly difficult to come close. This Wikipedia entry for Internet Explorer 6 tells it all, and is actually great reading.
History lesson over then, or not. IE6 had and still has massive flaws. It's not secure. It doesn't render pages well. It doesn't do a proper box model. It has very little in the way of standards support. It's slow. I will stop there because the list gets boring. And yet, with all of the flaws, it still has about 10% of the browser share at the time of writing. It's actually so bad, that even Microsoft wants to kill it. Even though that site isn't fresh news, I still check back from time to time to celebrate the pending death of IE6.
At the time though as I mentioned before, IE6 had a goliath amount of market share. The flaws weren't apparent then because there was nothing better to compare it to. Microsoft obviously were so confident and thought that it was so good, that they actually gave up the development of the product entirely and killed their IE development team (not literally I hope). In their eyes, it would have been the last ever iteration of the browser. And yet, that didn't happen.
The rise of other browsers such as Firefox and Opera at this time caused Microsoft to have a bit of a rethink. These were both better in every way, and had certain benefits such as tabbed browsing and better security. Although other browsers such as Google Chrome and Safari (on Windows) came later on, these both did little to help the demise of the Internet Explorer brand. Microsoft began work on IE7 and released several closed betas which were actually pretty good (I was part of these). Suddenly, there was a massive movement by all of the browser boys to upgrade your web experience.
So anyway, back to my original point. At this moment in time, IE6 has no future and is actually hindering my development more and more. I think more and more that web developers should be encouraging the cull by just dropping support altogether. I must admit, I hang on myself so that I wouldn't infuriate users, but now they are the minority. IE7 will be the next to go in the not too distant future, but I believe that IE8 will be around for much longer due to Microsoft not willing to move IE9 to Windows XP (silly decision in my opinion!). And that's it really. It was more of an announcement on my part that IE6 is dead to me and I won't be spending any more time with it.
The next big range of problems exists with the new generation of browsers with what I previously have discussed - the various adoptions of CSS3 standards. Also, browser optimisation for mobile platforms will be a massive area that everybody is at right now (including myself). We'll see what the future holds very soon.
Oh, and on a final note, an early version of my new personal site will be launching soon called Soulfire Design that will be giving tutorials and best practice tips for anybody looking to start their own website, or make any improvements. Please check out that link and if you are feeling generous please click on some of my ads!
Thursday, 17 March 2011
What to do with CSS3?
Recently, there has been a lot of activity on the CSS3 front. W3C have only just released a new set of CSS3 specifications (http://www.css3.info/) that will already change the level of support that the newer generation of browsers can offer. The change fundamentally means that only updates to these new browsers will enable support for these new specifications. There aren't any massive changes in there so there aren't any nasty surprises for those learning the new specifications.
The release of IE9 is a massive roll of the dice for Microsoft. Microsoft has seen the market share for Internet Explorer slowly erode over the past few years with the continued efforts of the likes of Firefox, Chrome and Safari, all of which have had CSS3 support for quite some time now though. By all means, none of these browsers are perfect, and all have their own small problems supporting the CSS3 specifications. They aren't problems as such, more like, their own interpretations of the specifications. Personally for me, this is potentially worse than the old 'IE box model' problems that plagued earlier versions of Internet Explorer. What I really don't want to happen is for me to suddenly have to adopt several standards of the CSS3 specifications. For example, to have rounded borders for an element, we have to look at the following:
To be fair to Microsoft on this, they have correctly followed the specification laid out by W3C. You never thought that you would see that did you? Early reviews and personal testing have found that IE9 is a massive improvement in many aspects such as speed, security and usability. I actually prefer this browser to any other now. IE8 was too buggy and would eat memory like there was no tomorrow and Firefox would crash for no apparent reason. I do like Safari, but things sometimes look a bit odd in it, as does in Chrome. Saying this, Microsoft have done themselves no favours by restricting the platform for IE9 to Windows 7 - probably to encourage those who are still on XP to upgrade.
What I have done so far is give in to these horrible new varied specifications. A new site that I am working on for myself employs all of the bulleted list above. I believe that we are currently at the turning point for moving to CSS3, although HTML5 is further away I feel. All of the latest browsers support CSS3 whilst support for the older browsers will suddenly start to slide. From what I have read already, IE9 already has 2% of the market. Not a bad achievement for a product released only two days ago.
| These changes are great in terms of moving forward with standardised specifications, but also potentially harmful with the lack of support currently out there. Only a couple of days ago (15th March 2011), Microsoft released their latest and greatest weapon in the browser wars, Internet Explorer 9. |  |
The release of IE9 is a massive roll of the dice for Microsoft. Microsoft has seen the market share for Internet Explorer slowly erode over the past few years with the continued efforts of the likes of Firefox, Chrome and Safari, all of which have had CSS3 support for quite some time now though. By all means, none of these browsers are perfect, and all have their own small problems supporting the CSS3 specifications. They aren't problems as such, more like, their own interpretations of the specifications. Personally for me, this is potentially worse than the old 'IE box model' problems that plagued earlier versions of Internet Explorer. What I really don't want to happen is for me to suddenly have to adopt several standards of the CSS3 specifications. For example, to have rounded borders for an element, we have to look at the following:
- border-radius (Real CSS3 / IE9 specification)
- -moz-border-radius (Firefox specification)
- -webkit-border-radius (Safari / Chrome specifiction)
To be fair to Microsoft on this, they have correctly followed the specification laid out by W3C. You never thought that you would see that did you? Early reviews and personal testing have found that IE9 is a massive improvement in many aspects such as speed, security and usability. I actually prefer this browser to any other now. IE8 was too buggy and would eat memory like there was no tomorrow and Firefox would crash for no apparent reason. I do like Safari, but things sometimes look a bit odd in it, as does in Chrome. Saying this, Microsoft have done themselves no favours by restricting the platform for IE9 to Windows 7 - probably to encourage those who are still on XP to upgrade.
What I have done so far is give in to these horrible new varied specifications. A new site that I am working on for myself employs all of the bulleted list above. I believe that we are currently at the turning point for moving to CSS3, although HTML5 is further away I feel. All of the latest browsers support CSS3 whilst support for the older browsers will suddenly start to slide. From what I have read already, IE9 already has 2% of the market. Not a bad achievement for a product released only two days ago.
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