Thanks to all of you that have liked the new design. It has really helped page views and lots of people are finding tools that used to get ignored. All of those are good things. However, the new theme might have caused certain problems as well. I have heard complaints in two general areas:
- This blog is broken on Internet Explorer 6.x . Not sure if and how I can fix it since I do not have access to a machine with IE 6 and IE 6 is on its way out. I have received screenshots from a couple of helpful readers, but they only go so far to help. Any ideas or suggestions on fixes would be greatly appreciated.
- Google seems to have lost most of its interest in WeblogToolsCollection. My Google traffic has dropped down to a single referral yesterday. I checked the Google cache to make sure that I was still there and the AdSense Diagnostics to make sure they could get to everything (and there were no errors). Searches that could be used in Google to get to a specific page or category in WeblogToolsCollection.com, do not work anymore. I am hoping that this will quickly clear up on its own.
Please report any other issues you are facing with the layout/mechanics of this blog. Thanks for your help.
if you got some of those screenshots, I can “try” to help
function onLoad() {
var links = document.getElementsByTagName(‘a’);
for (var i = 0; i
I would be interested to know WHY these people are too lazy to upgrade to IE7?
No doubt, they will say that IE7 doesn’t work with several other applications that they find essential. I do believe it’s in Microsoft’s best interest to fix such compatibility issues instead of making the rest of the world wait around for them to catch up.
Love the site – and especially the new design and I read almost every post you write.
Sorry to hear about your google traffic declining – mine seriously dipped yesterday as well, with the only referrals coming from people that searched for my site by name or url. Does anyone know what caused this – and most importantly when will it be back to normal?
Yes, I got the same problem, the javascript error.
Here’s the problem with IE6: ie6 problems
And here are some browser compatibility testing tools you can use. IE7 seems to check out just fine, but use those tools to test for other platforms.
That Javascript error should be fixed. Thanks for the catch.
Argh. I am having the same problem with IE6 users, who really need to get with the f’ing program and upgrade (better yet, switch browsers!) because it drives me insane having to tweak for a browser that SUCKS. I’m about to go to just a plain theme with NOTHING on it.
I’m also having the same Google issues. I checked to see if they were crawling my site, and they are, but where did all the referrals go that I was getting until a few days (?) ago? And maybe it isn’t just you and I having this problem?
As regards the drop in Google traffic, I suggest you take a look at this article, it may help:
http://tinyurl.com/yh5wd4
Mark, maybe a good idea would be to revert to the old design for a while to see if your Google results improve?
Also, the site doesn’t validate.
I’m not sure if this has anything to do with the google problem, but I distinctly remember that right before Christmas I did some tweaking and changes to the design, most notably removing the translator wp-plugin. Over the past few days, I’ve barely even been able to find my own articles on google. Needless to say, I’m returning to the old design.
Gee, I wonder if some people are using IE6 because they’re at work and they don’t get to make a decision about what browser to use?
Doesn’t matter, though — it’s still their fault, right?
😛
Don’t forget that IE6 is only available to people on Windows XP and later. XP is the majority by far, but there’s still a sizable minority — especially in businesses — using Windows 2000.
Mark, I don’t recall what OS you use, but if you’re on Windows with IE7, Microsoft is offering a free pre-configured Virtual PC image running XP with IE6. It’s time-limited (it expires in April), but it should help debug stuff.
A site like this should work in IE6 of course, on any browser. There are so many people who even do not know about IE7 although they will not soon run into this one. Anyway, marvelous site, I hope Google will overcome its shock or whatever happened since new years eve 😉
“Don’t forget that IE6 is only available to people on Windows XP and later. XP is the majority by far, but there’s still a sizable minority — especially in businesses — using Windows 2000.”
2000? We still have computers on Windows 98, which we were still buying up to a couple years ago because XP wasn’t compatible with some business-critical software.
Interesting that people who don’t do as other people do get called lazy and other names, and assumptions made about them. IE6 will continue to be the default browser for the majority of global users for some significant time to come. IE6 is what you still get when you buy a brand new PC in a store. Plenty of users still out there not running WinXP, still on Win98 and ME. Maybe lazy developers should get with the program and do the thing called backwards compatability? Users tend to avoid sites that won’t work unless they upgrade something.
agent & Beth, sometimes as users, we don’t get a choice at our worksites. I use Firefox and IE7 on my home machines, and have personally given up on IE6. However, in much of the corporate and government world, the IT folks just aren’t ready to upgrade, for whatever reason. Developers simply will have to live with that for a while, yet. Right or wrong, it’s the way the world is.
You said that you don’t have access to a computer with IE 6, but I don’t know if that means you don’t have access to a Windows computer period or that the one you have is running IE 7 upgraded.
To test my sites, I installed the free multiple IE package from Tredosoft. On my Linux computer, which I use primarily, I installed IEs4Linux which works well when I don’t feel like firing up the Windows box to check on something I’m working on.
Hopefully one of those helps with your testing since they both cover up through IE 6… unless of course, you’re a Mac user 😉
~Nicole
I second the suggestion of getting IEs4Linux. The WINE-fied package includes IE 5, 5.5, and 6.0. Its a different way to get about it for sure. I hope that you do get a handle on what it is as well. When I’m at work, I have to use IE6,a s many of the pages in the intranet aren’t functional with IE7 yet. With workstations for around 80,000 employees, my company will be testing IE7 for some time yet before they trust it. I won’t “upgrade” the thing yet either,a s we don’t use it except to go to Windows Update. Otherwise its Firefox 2.0 or, occasionally, Opera. Explorer should remain as the file manager, IMO.
I’ll email you a few screenshots of what it looks like, if you like.
As of today, the design is documented to be compatible with Firefox/Mozilla, Safari, IE6, IE7, Opera 9, and usable in IE5.5. 🙂
I still run on IE6 as well as Firefox. The reason people don’t upgrade to IE7 is the same reason they won’t upgrade to Vista. That is because all of the bugs and security issues that IE7 has. I work on Microsoft development products on a daily basis and I seen how buggy IE7 is right now. Its saver to run on IE6 for another couple months until Microsoft fixes the bugs then upgrade to IE7. If you don’t believe me, then check out the Microsoft support page. There is already a few security patches release since IE7 was released.