I had the opportunity to review Google Analytics and Urchins data sheets lately and I am quite surprised to the amount of control and the many reports you can get with Google Urchin for the low price.
Most Analytics tools, hosted remotely or in-house, cost in the 5 to 6 figures but Google Urchin 6 (newest version) costs $2995.00 and has all the tools you need to track unlimited domains on unlimited servers.
All support is provided by their sales representatives and not directly by Google but so far I am extremely happy with all the support and help I have received from ROI Revolution.
During the site’s redesign I had been struggling with one issue: IE6.
All web designers know the pain it is to make a site work in IE6. There are sites dedicated to IE6 hacks to solve the many problems IE6 can display when rendering a fully valid (XHTML and CSS) page.
Apparently I am not the only one and have been reading on several blogs about a new trend of dropping IE6 support completely.
Of course one has to weigh the pros and cons of doing so and just like
We Are Not Freelancers have said on their posts, there is the problem that potential clients who have not upgraded their browsers and are still using outdated software might question your skills when viewing a site that doesn’t work in IE6.
The rebuttal to that thought is that if we, designers, don’t do our part to educate clients and users about IE6’s deficiencies then we will be stuck with 30% of users still using it for many years to come.
So I have again decided to take a stand on this issue and drop support for IE6 from my contract. I still have a IE6 sheet with basic hacks but I am not going to waste precious time trying to find ways around issues that are possibly unsolvable problems created by IE6’s lack of support for valid css.
So for those who want to read more about it:
For those potential clients reading this blog and still using IE6, please know that you would be wise in upgrading to IE7 as IE6 has many security holes that can compromise your computer. Even wiser if you started using a fully standards compliant browser like
Firefox instead of IE altogether.
If you would like to read more about IE6’s vulnerabilities here are some links:
IE6…Good riddance.
I just took the 2008 survey and I recommend that all in the field do so too.
It’s important to have a better view of the field and how we are growing, who are our peers.
Now it’s waiting time for the results…
I was checking
Cuil this morning. Attracted by the boasting of being a more powerful search engine than Google I had to try it.
I started with browsing the site’s About pages and what was my surprise to see that it couldn’t find it’s own Features page.
When I clicked on the Features tab I got a “Oops! We couldn’t find that page.”. Somehow that was a little discouraging…
As Chris Brogan says on his “
Cuil Misses Me” post, it can’t even find my domain name if I type it in full.
And boy was it slow as molasses… I guess everybody else is doing what Chris and I did - searching our own names, nicknames, domains, to see what it comes up with.
I will try again tomorrow…
