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It’s time to upgrade, folks.

We’re not talking about signing up for Facebook or downloading the latest version of Tweetdeck for your iPhone. We’re not talking about pushing all of your data to the cloud (the city of Los Angeles only did for 30,000+ employees) or replacing your networked tower computer with an iPad.

When we say upgrade, we’re talking about moving into the current decade with the latest and greatest version of your browser.

You know how some people say eyes are the window to the soul? Well your browser is the window to the internet [read: world].

We [dynamIt] and our industry brethren who work days (and nights) to create and deliver efficient, usable, beautiful work to our clients and their clients politely ask [demand] that you upgrade. Now.

Your browser - be it Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari or Chrome (current usage statistics) - is a tool. Its job is to interpret the code and design that we create and express them to you. In contemporary web, the expression of images and text is coupled with functionality and usability. When you mouse over something, it may move or change color. When you click, things happen. In progressive web applications you may see things happening without the entire page refreshing. Movement, images, video, data collection and distribution - all through cool and attractive interfaces. The capabilities of contemporary web truly are amazing. We [the people who think about and make things for the interwebz] very much want to continue delivering these tools and experiences to you.

However, WE NEED YOUR HELP. You see, the older versions of your browsers weren’t built to help us deliver the experiences we are capable of and that you expect. And, when we can finagle our code to make things work, it greatly increases development time (I’m talking hours and hours and hours to ensure compatibility across all of the different versions and types).

The biggest perp is Internet Explorer 6. Honestly, Microsoft will discontinue support for IE6 (commonly run in corporate and educational environments) in July. It was an Internet Explorer security hole that led to the most recent Google attacks. Google is no longer supporting IE 6 for some of it’s most important applications and websites. We all know and respect Google. Please, follow their lead.

So, please, help us out!

• Beg your IT department to upgrade the browsers on your network.
• Plead with your schools to give you the tools you need to experience and consume information the way it’s intended.
• Insist that your spouse concede to learning a slightly new position for the refresh and home buttons when you jump versions.
• And, contribute to the cause yourself. Fire up your laptop or desktop and (generally) click ‘Help’ in your top menu. Look for updates and download them.

The internet is a great place to interact with information and accomplish both professional and personal tasks. As more tools move to web, we’ll continue to to be sure they are working properly and are easily accessed. All you need to do is be sure you’re ready and able to put them to good use!

Tell us - what’s the reason you (or your company) haven’t upgraded yet?

The majority of our time as web developers is spent writing markup (xhtml and css). Because we are committed to building the most functional, usable, and accessible sites, we do our best to adhere to web standards. So, we often refer to the CSS 2.1 Specification, a 384-page document fully defining and explaining the many properties of standards-compliant CSS programming.

Now, this document is great, but it is still up to the browser and device creators to support all of the properties set forth in the specification. And, we know that certain properties just aren’t going work in certain browsers.

With great care, we learn the ins and outs of the specification and the idiosyncrasies of all popular web browsers, then write code accordingly. Of course, we still must diligently test and tweak our code and make sure that it does in fact look just as intended.

Then comes IE6 to ruin the day. IE6 is an out-dated piece of technology that just won’t die even though Microsoft released the next generation of Internet Explorer long ago. IE6 is the bouncer that throws you out of the club for no reason at all. You are being a respectful gentlemen, following all the rules then suddenly IE6 comes up behind you, grabs you by the collar, and tosses you out onto the street.

And we deal with this, we have a laundry list of IE6 workarounds that force it to act right. Throw in a little more tweaking and cleaning up of code and before long we have IE6 displaying our work as it should be displayed.

So, last night I was a bit distraught when we received an e-mail from a client with the following IE6 problem.

The list of videos on their site was displaying a bullet next to each video when it should not have been. The client sent a screenshot of the problem and luckily she was savvy enough to have the “About Internet Explorer” dialog open displaying the browser version detail. It was version 6.0.2900.5512.xpsp_sp3_gdr.080814-1236 to be exact.

Next, I opened up IE6 on our computer and I saw no bullet. So, I opened up the “About Internet Explorer” and found that we too were running version 6.0.2900.5512.xpsp_sp3_gdr.080814-1236.

Client IE6 View	dynamIt IE6 View

That’s not fair.

We work too hard to have IE6 render pages on a whim. How am I supposed to solve this when IE6 refuses to play nice?

Do all of us web developers a favor by finding one non-tech-savvy friend and assisting them in downloading Firefox or Opera.

Download Google Chrome

Nothing too crazy, here, but I have to make sure I tell everyone I meet today - and that includes those of you who happen across our blog.

Google has released a new browser (Google Chrome), and my initial reaction to it is that it’s absolutely the best thing since sliced bread. I’ve never seen pages or Javascript work so quickly, so smoothly. I’m holding out on final opinions for some serious usage time, but so far… the improvements are noticed and welcome.

There is a lot more to this browser than simply browsing, but we’ll get into that later. For now, I’d invite you to try it out.

EDIT: Nick, here at the office, pointed out a potentially interesting problem in the EULA for Chrome. I’m still using it, but it’s definitely something to consider before you go forth and conquer.

http://tapthehive.s483.sureserver.com/chrome.html