Inside the Excruciatingly Slow Death of Internet Explorer 6

It's the bane of designers everywhere, and it makes most modern sites look broken and horrible. So why are 20% of Web surfers still using it?

Today was supposed to be a great day for the Web. As of March 1, 2010, Google will no longer support Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 browser—a decade-old dinosaur engineered to navigate the Web as it existed in the year 2000. Why would this be cause for celebration? Because IE6 is barely capable of navigating the modern Web and a total nightmare to build sites, services and applications for.

But ten years after its release, it’s still being used by an estimated 20% of surfers. And while Google’s move is one in the right direction, I’m not breaking out the whiskey and noisemakers for IE6's funereal wake quite yet. Sadly, IE6 isn’t going away for good anytime soon.

Those unfamiliar with the Internet Explorer 6 saga might be wondering what the big deal is. How could the life or death of one browser be so critical to the future of our increasingly Internet-based lives? When compared to browsers of today, IE6 is a standards-incompliant antique. It debuted during a dark, dark period in Web history; In the summer of 2001, Microsoft had soundly beaten Netscape into submission for a 90% lock on the browser market and was in the uniquely powerful position to decide which Web standards it would ignore, which it would integrate, which it would halfway adopt and which it would simply make up. And IE6 is the bastard child of this hubris. It doesn’t behave like any other browser on the market because it doesn’t interpret Cascading Style Sheets or JavaScript according to the universal standards set by organizations like the W3C. I’ve heard of developers spending anywhere between 20% and 50% of their time on a project making a site work in Internet Explorer 6. I know of many others who simply chop out advanced features, enhanced interactivity and slick design elements altogether, just so their work doesn’t “break” in IE6.

Why do they bother? Because nearly a decade after it shipped with Windows XP, IE6 still commands a mind-blowing 20% market share for browsers, according to the most recent statistics compiled by NetMarketShare. That’s more than double the shares of Chrome and Safari combined, and just shy of Firefox’s 24% piece of the pie. And that’s only Internet Explorer 6. Combined with its better-behaving but by no means perfect descendants, IE7 and IE8, Internet Explorer as a whole owns 62% of the browser market. Now, browser market share is not an exact science and the numbers vary widely from site to site and country to country, but you get the picture.

The longevity of IE6 is the result of a perfect storm of unfortunate factors. First among them: Microsoft’s IE division simply fell asleep. Having emerged the undisputed victor of the late ’90s browser wars, Microsoft had virtually no competitors and so no incentive to fix any of IE6’s bugs. It took Microsoft more than five years to release IE7, which was an improvement over IE6, but still a disappointment for Web designers and developers. Five years! In the five years between 2004 and 2009, Mozilla released three versions of Firefox (actually, 3.5 versions to be exact). Meanwhile, Chrome has gone through four iterations in just over a year. In those five years between IE6 and IE7, technological progress on the Web was severely hobbled to say the least. After all, who cares if Firefox can do something really cool if only a handful of users will ever see it?

But Internet Explorer 7 did eventually come out, and so did Internet Explorer 8, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and new versions of Opera. And yet, IE6 remains the second most popular browser in the world (behind IE8). What gives? The chief reason Internet Explorer 6 keeps hanging on is because people are using it at work or on work computers.

As anyone who’s ever used a computer furnished by their employer can attest, IT departments are slow to make any changes that might disrupt the delicate balance of their electronic ecosystems. And they sure as hell aren’t going to let you upgrade or install anything yourself.

Making matters worse, Internet Explorer 6 is deeply embedded in the infrastructures of countless corporations worldwide. Back when IE6 was the only game in town, businesses invested in Intranets and browser-based apps that functioned only in IE. Why bother with anything else? Five years later, of course, a lot of businesses learned the hard way that “IE-only” actually meant “IE6-only.” Oops. Now, ask yourself how much interest corporations have in re-investing more capital to fix something that, in their eyes, isn’t broken. The answer is: not much.

A recent article on Dell’s IT Expert Voice blog cited another reason your company doesn’t upgrade to IE8 or another browser: user control. Your bosses don’t want you on Facebook and YouTube, and they know that the experience of visiting these sites with IE6 will be painful enough to limit your time on them. They effectively block you without coming off as overtly Orwellian. Win win.

Finally, there are the countless folks who simply don’t know any better—a contingent I was reminded of by David Walsh, a developer for the Mootools Javascript framework (for which IE6 support remains a priority). “When it comes to Internet Explorer 6, developers ask, ‘God, why do people choose to stay with it?’” he says. “But, I like to remind them that users don’t care and shouldn’t have to care. The one example I give is my grandmother. She doesn’t know what a browser is. She just knows that when she clicks the little blue ‘e’ on her desktop she gets to see the Internet.”

It’s not just grannies, either. I was using the computer of a 30-something year-old friend recently and mentioned my surprise to see him still using IE6. He asked me why it even mattered.

If people aren’t allowed to upgrade or have no idea that they need to, then does the Google announcement inch us any closer to an IE6-free Web today than we were yesterday? “It’s an important first step that I’m quite happy about,” Walsh says. “But, I don’t think it would be wise for developers to say, ‘Well, Google is doing it so I’m going to do it too.’ I foresee at least another year or two of having to support Internet Explorer 6.”

I’m less optimistic than Walsh, and that’s thanks mostly to Microsoft’s pledge to support IE6 until April 8, 2014—the day it officially ends support for Windows XP, the OS it was bundled with. As much as it pains me, I have to give Microsoft a tiny bit of respect for doing this. Though the company wouldn’t provide comment for this story, it pointed me to a blog post explaining the method behind this madness. “Dropping support for IE6 is not an option because we committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of the product. We keep our commitments. Many people expect what they originally got with their operating system to keep working whatever release cadence particular subsystems have.” Microsoft is basically taking the exact opposite approach to upgrades that Apple takes, which is to upgrade quickly at the expense of its users (Snow Leopard on G5, anyone?).

For its own part, Microsoft would be happy to see you stop using IE6, too. In another blog post, the company says, “Think about what technology and the Internet were like in the year 2000 – and consider how they’ve evolved since then. In 2000, ‘phishing’ was something that happened at the lake, not online. There was no social networking, no RSS feeds, and no real blogs. It was a different time – and people’s browsing needs were different.”

The post goes on to explicitly recommend moving off of IE6. The problem is, corporate IT departments won’t do so until they absolutely must, which may be well after the April 2014 death knell sounds. If Microsoft was smart, it would actively help businesses upgrade their IE6-based systems to IE8 (and future versions). And they would do it for free.

Why? Because IE’s very survival could be at stake. If Microsoft doesn’t, then Google could certainly afford to offer similar support for companies to move their systems over to Chrome. Overnight, we could see Chrome’s market share balloon to 30% and all versions of Internet Explorer shrink to below 40%.

Walsh points out that Explorer’s market share is being further threatened by empowered Web developers and a more educated Web-going public. “There’s this assumption that people are going to go straight from Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 7 or 8,” he says. “But, the thing we have to realize is that browsers as a whole have become more popular. Five years ago, most people probably didn’t know what a browser was, but more and more they’re able to indentify them. And as Web sites drop IE6 support, developers are going to steer people toward the browsers they like. Firefox, Chrome and Safari are going to be pitched a lot more than IE and I think those browsers have a good chance at being the next step for people.”

But IE6 is something many Web developers will have to tangle with for years to come. For any Web site considering following Google unto the breach, I ask you to remember a few things. First, Google.com isn’t going to suddenly stop working for folks using IE6. By dropping support, Google is saying that future upgrades to sites and services like YouTube, Gmail and Google Docs will no longer prioritize IE6 compatibility. Second, let your user base determine your course of action. David Walsh’s blog, for example, is targeted at professional Web designers and developers. “My Website is 1% IE6,” he says. “So I don’t really care about it.” (Only 5% of PopSci users are on IE6). But, you can believe a site like the New York Times will care about IE6 until the bitter end. No matter what you do, consider this comment to one the above-mentioned Microsoft blog posts:

“I work for a large financial services company with 40,000+ employees. And yes, every desktop PC and laptop runs WinXP and IE6. More than 85% of all browsing is intranet. Basic news sites etc deliver the information without the frills. For our vendors who offer Web portals (eg home loan valuations, stationery suppliers etc) - we'll simply dump them if we can't access their sites after a ‘no-IE6 revamp.’”

So, there it is. Continue at your own risk. And in the meantime, IE6's celebratory funerals might be in haste.

Prototype: Luxury Eco-Zeppelins Will Fly Future Passengers Around the World

Phileas Fogg may have hopped aboard hot air balloons, trains, and elephants in his race around the world in 80 days, but future airship passengers need only step aboard the Aircruise for a far shorter and more luxurious travel experience. The 2015 concept for a sky hotel comes courtesy of London designers Seymourpowell, and a commission from Samsung Construction and Trading to make the vision come to life.

Passengers would enjoy living and dining above the clouds for journeys lasting up to 90 hours from Los Angeles to Shanghai, or perhaps less for other destinations. The hydrogen and solar-powered airship could perhaps only top itself in our minds by flying us to Cloud City on Bespin -- not that we're expecting Leia or Lando as fellow travelers.


London design firm Seymourpowell unveiled its vision for a future sky hotel -- a vertical airship lifted by hydrogen and powered by solar energy. Korean giant Samsung Construction and Trading commissioned the designer to elaborate upon the concept as a luxury zeppelin.



Aircruise passengers could gather in their own open-view kitchens for breakfast. The luxury zeppelin offers a bar and lounge area, four duplex apartments, a penthouse and five smaller apartments.



The airship travels silently and without pollution thanks to hydrogen fuel cells supplemented by photovoltaic cells collecting sunlight on the outer surfaces. It can reach a cruise ceiling of 12,000 feet or drop within a few hundred feet of the ground for a closer look at landmarks. Here the Aircruise passes over Incheon Bridge in Seoul, South Korea.



Airship passengers can enjoy an indoor view of the clouds beneath their feet in the moon pool, or go to the upper deck promenade for an open-air excursion.



Evening allows Aircruise passengers to kick back and enjoy a spectacular view not unlike that of an alien world. A group of 14 support staff attend to passenger needs as the airship cruises along at 62 - 93 mi/hr (100 - 150 km/hr).

WORLD'S FIRST LIGHT-POWERED CIRCUIT CREATED

This new circuit could eventually lead to a whole new generation of touchscreen devices that power themselves.



Although this self-powered circuit is a major breakthrough, it is unlikely to replace its silicon counterpart any time soon.

Microsoft's Project Natal

Exclusive: Inside Project Natal's Brain

Deep in Microsoft's lairs, the Xbox 360 team is working on more than just a new video-game system. They're actually trying to solve an incredibly difficult problem in artificial intelligence. Their prototype Project Natal lets you control a game just with your body movements—no buttons or Wii-like wands—by watching you with a 3-D video camera. Sounds simple enough, but most cameras just snap images without having any idea what they're looking at. To make Natal work, Microsoft has to teach its camera to understand what it sees.
Here at CES, Microsoft announced last night that Natal will go on sale "by the holidays." Before the show, we were given an exclusive look at the smarts that make Natal tick.



The Brain

The part of Natal that players see looks like a webcam. (Microsoft's not divulging details about this hardware yet, presumably because the release is many months in the future, but we do know that it measures relative distances using a black-and-white camera sensor and an near-infrared beam.) But it's the software inside, which Microsoft casually refers to as “the brain,” that makes sense of the images captured by the camera. It's been programmed to analyze images, look for a basic human form, and identify about 30 essential parts, such as your head, torso, hips, knees, elbows, and thighs.

In programming this brain--a process that's still going on—Microsoft relies on an advancing field of artificial intelligence called machine learning. The premise is this: Feed the computer enough data—in this case, millions of images of people—and it can learn for itself how to understand it. That saves programmers the near-impossible task of coding rules that describe all the zillions of possible movements a body can make.

The process is a lot like a parent pointing to many different people's hands and saying "hand," until a baby gradually figures out what hands looks like, how they can move, and that, for instance, they don't vanish into thin air when they're momentarily out of sight.

How To Teach A Machine To See

Microsoft is currently training and improving the version of the brain that will ultimately go into the final product. How? By painstakingly gathering pictures of people in many different poses, and then running all this data through huge clusters of computers (as shown in the gallery) where the learning brain resides.

The process of gathering the data actually requires a lot of manual labor. First, reps went into homes around the world and recorded people moving in front of a specially built rig. The images captured are real people moving the way any ordinary person would. But those recordings can’t tell the computer anything useful about joints and limbs on their own, so programmers dive into the raw data and hand-code it to label each body part (at each frame!).

Microsoft also uses professionally staged motion-capture scenes, which provides similar data but without all the manual labor of coding by hand (since the systems use sensors that mark individual body parts). And Microsoft has a mini mo-cap studio of its own, where staff can make a quick recording when a new chunk of data is needed.

All of these marked-up images comprise tens of terabytes of information. Microsoft's computer farms sift through this huge data set, letting the brain come up with probabilities and statistics about the human form. Once the brain is done learning, it and its stats get packaged into the Natal system. An early version is now making the rounds of trade shows, and later, more-accurate versions will eventually show up in your living room. Next, read about how it applies its hard-earned knowledge to decipher your game-playing moves.

Inside Natal's Thought Process



What's the Brain Thinking?: What's the brain thinking as it watches you jump around, swinging imaginary bats or head-butting imaginary soccer balls? As you stand in front of the camera, it judges the distance to different points on your body. Then the brain guesses which parts of your body are which.

What's the brain thinking as it watches you jump around, swinging imaginary bats or head-butting imaginary soccer balls? The above screenshot shows what's going on in it's head—the different images represent different stages of Natal's computational process. Here's the step-by-step:

Step 1: As you stand in front of the camera, it judges the distance to different points on your body. In the image on the far left, the dots show what it sees, a so-called "point cloud" representing a 3-D surface; a skeleton drawn there is simply a rudimentary guess. (The image on the top shows the image perceived by the color camera, which can be used like a webcam.)

Step 2: Then the brain guesses which parts of your body are which. It does this based on all of its experience with body poses—the experience described above. Depending on how similar your pose is to things it's seen before, Natal can be more or less confident of its guesses. In the color-coded person above [bottom center], the darkness, lightness, and size of different squares represent how certain Natal is that it knows what body-part that area belongs to. (For example, the three large red squares indicate that it’s highly probable that those parts are “left shoulder,” “left elbow” and “left knee"; as the pixels become smaller and muddier in color, such as the grayish pixels around the hands, that’s an indication that Natal is hedging its bets and isn’t very sure of its identity.)

Step 3: Then, based on the probabilities assigned to different areas, Natal comes up with all possible skeletons that could fit with those body parts. (This step isn't shown in the image above, but it looks similar to the stick-figure drawn on the left, except there are dozens of possible skeletons overlaid on each other.) It ultimately settles on the most probable one. Its reasoning here is partly based on its experience, and partly on more formal kinematics models that programmers added in.

Step 4: Once Natal has determined it has enough certainty about enough body parts to pick the most probable skeletal structure, it outputs that shape to a simplified 3D avatar [image at right]. That’s the final skeleton that will be skinned with clothes, hair, and other features and shown in the game.

Step 5: Then it does this all over again—30 times a second! As you move, the brain generates all possible skeletal structures at each frame, eventually deciding on, and outputting, the one that is most probable. This thought process takes just a few milliseconds, so there's plenty of time for the Xbox to take the info and use it to control the game.

Button-Free Control

Project Natal lets you control a game just with your body movements—no buttons or Wii-like wands—by watching you with a 3-D video camera.



The Brain

It's the software inside, which Microsoft casually refers to as “the brain,” that makes sense of the images captured by the camera.


Natal Maps Body Positions

In programming this brain--a process that's still going on—Microsoft relies on an advancing field of artificial intelligence called machine learning. The premise is this: Feed the computer enough data—in this case, millions of images of people—and it can learn for itself how to understand it. That saves programmers the near-impossible task of coding rules that describe all the zillions of possible movements a body can make.


Teaching The Brain

The process is a lot like a parent pointing to many different people's hands and saying "hand," until a baby gradually figures out what hands looks like, how they can move, and that, for instance, they don't vanish into thin air when they're momentarily out of sight.


The Learning Brain

Microsoft is currently training and improving the version of the brain that will ultimately go into the final product. How? By painstakingly gathering pictures of people in many different poses, and then running all this data through huge clusters of computers (shown here) where the learning brain resides.

What is Pay Per Clicks Marketing??

Pay Per click Marketing is a huge step for any website owner when it comes to marketing your website. Before you actually start doing this type of marketing, read through the information below to get an idea of the pro's and cons of PPC marketing.

What is Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing

Understanding PPC marketing is actually quite simple.
It is one of the many ways you can pay to get people finding, and going to your site. How does it work? Well lets say for example you go to yahoo and search out "paper cups" After you have searched this you will get several results, in those results you then go through and decided to click on one of them, in a highlighted box. Right as you click on that link the company that owns that website just paid a certain amount for your click, this is PPC marketing.

Website -: What Where How Why :-

If you want a website ... follow these steps.

Step 1: Check whether the Domain or address is available. (What is your
Company or individual name, Reg your Domain)

Step 2: Buy a Hosting Space. (Where is your website is)

Step 3: Build your index page or home page, place the index page in the hosting server.

Step 4: Give your hosting server IP address in the domain control panel.
( How the Website is visible when you enter your web address)

Step 5: Submit your website in search engines (why- see below 2 steps)

Step 6: Market the website using Pay Per Click. ( Increase the visitors)

Step 7: Give advertisement in your website. (Increase your monthly income)

Website: Wat is actually it is?

A website is a collection of web pages maintained by a single person or organization.
A company or an individual tells you how to get to their Web site by giving you the address of their home page. From the home page, you can get to all the other pages on their site.
In most cases, a website has a distinct fully qualified domain name or Address
example: www.forsfortis.net
Since site implies a geographic place, a Web site can be confused with a Web server. A server is a computer that holds the files or webpages for one or more sites. A very large Web site may be spread over a number of servers in different geographic locations.
Placing the Webpages in a server is known as Hosting.