IE6 is at an end

February 15th, 2010    8:14 pm

Lately Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) has been in the news and not in a good way.

The old browser had many flaws, not mainly that it never worked with standard code that well, but Microsoft themselves were not as quick as other browser manufacturers to plug holes in their software.

IE6 was an ok browser a long time ago right up until Firefox started getting used by many and promoting it to be one of the main front runners in browser technology. There were a good few browsers at that time namely Opera & Safari.

Google’s Gmail accounts in China were recently hacked and the cause of the hack was good old IE6. This revelation has prompted Google to phase out support for the old one.

Microsoft, a huge corporation in both wealth of staff and money, should have fixed the browsers faults a long time ago. But instead they have let it to rot in the wilderness and let some surfers still use flawed technology instead of letting older operatiing systems use modern software. IE7 came along but you needed Windows NT, XP or Vista to use it. Now IE7 was superseeded by IE8 (not a bad browser) but you still need OS’s Nt – Windows 7 to run the browser. This is no good from Microsoft, when you can get a free alternative like Firefox, Opera, Safari & Google Chrome.

So I have been trying to phase out IE6 in my own way personally on some sites I do for myself, this site being no exception. But I have to think of clients now. I will be explaining the main problems with IE6 to all clients & potential clients in the hope to keep surfers safe.

As of today IE6 had a 10% share of the browser market, but we need to phase that out to 0% for our security mainly.

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Free Strong Password Generator

January 21st, 2010    9:44 pm

A while back early last year, I needed a very strong password. After searching the internet for a while some sites gave you free strong passwords, but I found they wanted people to sign up. I wasn’t for that. so i looked into what kind of chars are available as passwords and which ones are not.

Once I decided upon what chars were suitable I made a web page and stored it locally on my computer for my own personal use.

I have been using my strong password generator more often to create strong passwords for different sites.

I was wanting to add in the functionality of storing the generated password with whatever website that I was making the password for. I realised that most people will be using modern browsers that store passwords anyway, plus sites like foxymarks can store these as well.

Plus I thought that it would be better to ignore this option for more security reasons. I found it better to save a copy of the password with username & site locally or let your modern browser do it.

This strong password generator is free to use, it is not as fancy as the paid ones, it is simple, it is quick it is length customisable & best of all it is free to use. Nothing is being watched or stored here, it is just a simple html document with a bit of javascript to generate the random password.

if you like it and use it, please leave a comment.

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BuySellAds are elitest

January 19th, 2010    4:59 pm

After signing up with buysellads and getting my site checked, they got back to my account to say that they are not approving my registration.

The reason: it does not bring in enough traffic for them. Although I got a very general list of reasons, like the site is not about web design or niche.

Well, to be honest, it is probably better that I stick to the big guns and hopefully make a bit from advertising through cliks with google & amazon.

However, I may actually try and sell space myself, give a calendar month to some company that wants to adverise on the site. If it takes off, then I might make a random ad generator from a list of paid advertisers. But that may be in the future.

Although, my martial arts club is thinking of doing this right now. Only time will tell.

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Going to test out Adverts

January 18th, 2010    11:13 pm

I have been thinking long and hard about this over the last few months, weather or not to give up some space on my site for adverts.

I have been weighing up the questions, like:
Do I really need to have adverts on my site?
Would I benefit?
Will it cost me anything?
Will anyone actually want to advertise here?
Will anyone click on the ads and actually buy?

Well I honestly did not think I would ever be selling adverts & I never thought that my site might actually attract advertisers. But, my traffic has been increasing lately and more amazingly the time spent on my site has been increasing with people from all over the world (thanks google analytics for this information). So I kind of thought that if traffic and time spent on the site increases I might get more potential customers. This is good for me, no doubt, so some people might find an advert for a product or service they might like to try.

So I took the plunge and looked into a couple of options.

First of all I signed up for Google’s Adsense, it is easy to configure, so far so good. But my only problem with that is, it picks keywords from your page to advertise. One to keep my eye on I think, plus google is a huge company and I believe this would work in the long run.

Secondly I signed up for Amazon’s Associates, a bit more complicated I thought, easy enough to configure, but to many options to begin with. Plus you can only pick certain size widgtes and it does not seem to let you change any of the values – this option is currently on the home page.

Thirdly, I signed up for BuySellAds, hmmmm… sign up and wait. I am unsure about this one at the moment. Well to be honest this might be the best option on the whole, but this seems to me, at the outset, to be elitest, your site gets reviewed before you can advertise on your space. Advertisers should want as much exposure as possible, even from small sites. You never know the potential of this site.

All above options are free which was my main reason for trying. I will be trying for a few months to see if it really is viable for me mainly, but also advertisers.

If any of these options work out then all I can hope for is a small reward for the space I set aside for them, if it does not work out then I have not lost anything at all but my side bar for a few months.

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Woskf new design

October 14th, 2009    9:11 pm

I am a student of West of Scotland Kung Fu & I have always done their site, from my first steps into web coding to design.

When I was looking for a martial arts club that I would like to join I hunted the internet high & low to find a club. However, I was not to find any club I desired to attend through cyberspace.

I did manage to hear of woskf through other media.

I was in talks with the instructor about a site, and a long time ago, then woskf.co.uk was born.

Although it was a basic site, we noticed it had lots of content that was relevant, and we also noted that some other martial arts clubs were plagiarising our content. This did not really bother us. The way we saw it was, we have a good enough site that someone wants to copy us. I noticed the site was plagiarized by a bigger organisation… How did I know? the questions & answers that I made up were used word for word, including grammar & minor spelling mistakes at the time.

So I changed the site a few times in its history. I needed a fresh outlook on some out dated information and pictures.

I amended the site to its new version lately, however this has not went live yet, as we are gathering all images taken by all students at competitions, gradings & classes. Once these images have been gathered, I will add these as a bank and randomly generate them for some areas.

The current site looks like this:
old site

to the new proposed site:
new site

The SEO has been improved to help us stay high on Google for what we need.

I hope this site is a lot cleaner, easier to use and can bring more people to our site, to help us expand the classes.

Posted in CSS, Code, HTML, PHP, Sites | No Comments »




All up and running

August 2nd, 2009    5:22 pm

Well that is it all up and running.

So what have I learned from all of this???

well I now know how to build a computer, I have also learned what to do – by mistake.

so for anyone that has watched this or, eventually finds this here is what I will do in future builds.

Instal power supply
instal Processor & fan to motherboard
instal motherboard to case
attach the power, sound, reset, HDD LEDs etc
switch on (test)to see if processor fan is working
instal RAM – test
install HDD – test
instal DVD – test
instal Graphics card – test
connect USB & Audio connectors – test
attach Monitor – test
close case – test – install OS
instal motherboard drivers
instal any other drivers

complete.

A Big thanks goes out to all who helped – Tommie (came over to diagnose power unit failure), Matt (CSS Tricks for your help in resourcing components) and any others who I have not mentioned but who did help.

Cheers
install

Posted in Computer Build | 6 Comments »




We have the Power

August 2nd, 2009    5:05 pm

power supply is now a 650W, had to go out and pay for a new one, mainly so I can test to see if anything else blew. Which thankfully it has not.

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Bang

August 1st, 2009    12:13 pm

Well……………

Something has blown as I powered up the computer, I hope it is just the powere supply, it smells as if it is the power supply.

I am very unhappy and want to cry

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Adding some periferals

August 1st, 2009    11:40 am

Now is nearly the moment of truth…..

I need to use this keyboard, so I will be off for a bit then I will come back with the verdict.

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Graphics Card being installed

August 1st, 2009    10:30 am

As the title says…..

Graphics card is being installed as we speak.

After this one final pic, then is is time for monitor keyboard, mouse then test.

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Houston … we have a problem!

July 31st, 2009    11:09 pm

My salvage operation never went according to plan.

I need a dedicated graphics card, my old one was integrated, but I need one on its own.

I need to get this tomorrow so i will need to find a good cheap one and get it at 9am so I can try this out to see if I can join the legions of geeks out there as I am a geek at heart.

Who am I kidding, I am a total geek.

So I have to say good night here, and try again tomorrow.

I will keep you all updated

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A salvage operation

July 31st, 2009    10:12 pm

A slight salvage operation is going to have to be had here,

I thought on board graphics meant I could just plug in the monitor, how silly am I…..

so I am going to salvage the one I am using to test it all out, I think thats all I need to do before I boot up.

speak soon

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HDD Sorted

July 31st, 2009    8:40 pm

I have installed the motherboard to the case… I think I may be getting into this….

Installed the SATA HDD.

Now I want to install the DVD, but not sure how this case is working, it hase a mesh front and behind that, looking inside the case, it has metal bits, like where your graphics card should go…. So – do I break it from the front or the back?

Decisions decisions.

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Ramming Along

July 31st, 2009    7:54 pm

After much frustration & sheer surprise that it just clicked together, the heatsink went on, and completely locked into place.

The Sweet looking RAM has been inserted and it is now time for a sweet picture. (they will be up later) within certain posts…)

Now I am about to insert it…. the motherboard people…. Jees

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This fan is a bugger

July 31st, 2009    7:29 pm

I canny get it to lock cap’in

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Motherboard time

July 31st, 2009    7:02 pm

After many minutes trying to find a better screwdriver, I managed to get the power unit in…. and the right way up.

Now I have earthed myself, I am now going to open up the motherboard then put the CPU on.

here goes

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And….. we’re off

July 31st, 2009    6:38 pm

OK starting it all now, and the first thing I am doing is connecting the power unit. then going to earth myself.

Posted in Computer Build | 3 Comments »




Parts Arrived

July 31st, 2009    5:56 pm

Parts have arived today just after I arrived at home from work…. Talk about timing.

Well I have currently cleaned my desk, you don’t need a pic of that, and I am going to wipe it totally clean, thten get rid of this computer from the desk and start to build.

I will of course keep you up to date of all the action from my brothers computer, however, I don’t think I will get the pics up on his machine, as I don’t have the right stuff on that machine to re-size, but I will take pics along the way of how I am doing, then add them in later.

wish me good luck….. Poo time first, get the nervousness away than I could get started.

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My New Computer Build

July 29th, 2009    10:25 pm

I will be building my new computer, soon,  which consists of:

  • AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2 GHz Socket AM3 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
  • Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 AMD Nvidia 720D Socket AM2+ 7.1 channel audio ATX Motherboard
  • OCZ 4GB (2×2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Gold Memory
  • Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II 7200RPM 16MB Cache – OEM
  • Shiny Black Mid Tower Case with Mesh Front Panel and Front 12cm LED Fan With Top Mounted 4x USB2.0 – No PSU
  • Casecom 500W 12cm Fan – 20+4pin, ATX12v, 4x Molex, 1x SATA – Retail Box
  • 16x DVD±RW Dual Layer IDE Black Bare Drive – OEM
  • LG W2242S 22″ TFT Monitor 1680×1050 8000:1 300cd/m2 5ms VGA Black 3 Years Warranty
  • Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium w/SP1 – W/ Windows 7 Upgrade Offer Form – licence and media – 1 PC – OEM – DVD – 64-bit – English

This will be my first ever build so I may take a bit longer than most at doing this.

I will update as I go along, encounter any problems and show you my horriblly messy workstation as I build.

Hope you stick around for the outcome

davy
aka ikthius

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