The definition of a web site that refuses to upgrade is one that does not "understand" anything other than Internet Explorer 6 or 7. For many this is a constant source of frustration for three very good reasons:Internet Explorer 8 has been in existence for almost seven months at the time of this writing. The administrators of these "IE...

People save web pages to ensure they can retrieve information later without having to load it on the internet. It also is a way of retrieving a web page just in case the original web site has an outage or goes offline for whatever reason. There are two basic ways of saving web pages, that being via the browser or "printing it" to a PDF. Via the...

Some people may be under the impression that if a web site loads slowly and/or causes your browser to crash that it might be your computer’s fault it happened. Not necessarily. There are several things that people interpret as a fault with their computer when in fact it isn’t. Things that are not your fault when problems happen loading web sites Web...

Caret Browsing is when you use your keyboard to navigate a web page as you would if you were in a text editor or word processing application. This style of moving within a document is nothing new as it’s been around for a very long time, however most don’t know it exists in web browsers. IE and Firefox both have the Caret Browsing feature, accessible...

Last night on the PCMech LIVE show there was someone in chat who was having a not-so glorious time with Thesis, a theme for WordPress. This theme costs $87 so it’s not cheap. Actually, not-so glorious really doesn’t accurately describe his experience. He hated it. Why? Because when he tried it, it didn’t work. Unfortunately it’s very...

Google seems to have an odd way of deploying their Chrome browser. The first reaction when it appeared was, "Hey! Where’s the Mac and Linux versions? What gives?" It was nothing short of strange why Google seemed to concentrate on Windows so much concerning their own browser offering. Granted, Windows is the most-used desktop operating system in...

In our last episode.. I talked about how much web browsers suck. But now it’s time to discuss how great they are. The best way to describe the greatness of modern web browsers is to point out the features we have now that most people take for granted. 1. Tabbed Document Interface Most people know this as simply tabs. This was one of the best improvements...

The web browser is the most used application on your computer, period. Even when you’re not using it, it’s probably minimized to the taskbar/dock/panel. Unfortunately web browsers still to this day have a fair degree of suck factor. Here are 5 reasons why web browsers suck: 1. Plugins are the browser’s own worst enemy I call them plugins. Call...

Yahoo, yes (that Yahoo) made some significant changes to their main web site. While this angered some, to those I say this: Yahoo is not Google, and I’m glad it’s not. If you’re expecting Y! to be another Google clone, it isn’t. And it shouldn’t be. The first thing I do on Yahoo is switch over to the compact view and change the...

Opera is one of those browsers that has a very dedicated community, but pales in usage compared to Firefox and Internet Explorer. The perks of Opera have pretty much always been the same.Best native tab management Lightning fast operation in just about every way Low memory usage A user interface that just makes sense More options that are actually usable...

Some sites make it easy (more or less) to delete your account if you don’t feel like using it any longer. Others however make it exceedingly difficult. Recently I was going thru my password manager and realized there were a ton of accounts I simply didn’t use anymore, so I figured I’d get rid of them. Some I was successful with, while others.....

There are certain times when you need to access your instant messenger from the web rather than from a client. For example, if you’re at a friend’s house and want to login on his or her PC for a few minutes, it’s the easiest way to get chatting without installing anything. The Big Three are AIM, Yahoo and Windows Live (formerly MSN). AIM The...

The primary email address I use is from my personal domain name. After all, that’s one of the perks of having your own web site, right? A problem I routinely encounter is getting people to remember my email address. Is it a long address? No. It is difficult to spell? Not in the slightest. But it does have two things going against it. First is the fact it...

ReadWriteWeb posted their 2009 Web Predictions back in December 2008. We’re almost half-way thru 2009 at this point. Here’s a few from that list that were and weren’t (so far) true. Yahoo sells to a big media company, but it won’t be Microsoft. Status: Didn’t happen (yet – and that’s a big ‘yet’ because it...

Ah yes, Internet Explorer 6. It has more holes than Swiss cheese, is exploited easily and is slow as molasses. It doesn’t even do tabs. You might be thinking, "What moron would still use IE 6 when you could use 7 or 8?" Corporations would, that’s who. Windows 2000 is still used widely in the enterprise environment. And as anyone who uses...

I have been a long-time reader of both UseIt.com and Web Pages That Suck. Both concentrate on what’s called web usability. Web usability can be defined by answering a simple question: How easy is it to use your web site? A large portion of ease of use comes from your selection of colors and fonts. Color: Foreground and Background Black on white is always...

The purpose of a team web site is for organization and communication. You may lead a team, be it a gaming team, bowling team, soccer team, etc. and are in need of a central location for all team activities. A web site takes care of that. So the next time a member needs any information about anything going on with the team, you point them to the site. These are...

After trying out Safari 4 beta and not being overly impressed with it, I went ahead and downloaded the latest version of the Opera web browser, version 9.64. The petite 5MB installer file whizzed thru its installation process. I don’t remember a browser installing itself this quickly since Firefox 1.5. This browser is lightning quick. Pages which...

More people these days are getting away from instant messenger programs and using the in-browser way, because there really isn’t too much reason to use an IM app these days. Years ago a large chunk of the IM functionality was provided by the application, but that’s not the case anymore. You can do voice, webcam, manage your buddy/contact list and...

There are some web browsers that are safe in older versions and some that aren’t. The safest (and fastest) web browser in the world is Lynx. This is because it’s 100% text-based. There is no malware, spyware or malicious code that exists for Lynx that I know of. The only drawback is that there aren’t any images in Lynx, nor can you use a mouse....