utopia 365 - some of our clients
utopia 365 iPhone Development Services

Friday 24 April 2009

Moving on from IE6 (forcing the issue)

I'm not a developer (Andy does all the clever stuff), I dable.

What strikes me though when developing sites and apps for the internet is the amount of 'voice' regarding how horrible developing for IE6 is.

You spend all this time putting together a nice site or app which sits nicely in Firefox, Safari and Chrome - then load it in IE and despair....sigh, you then move through the site hacking it to play nicely with IE6. This can be a tremendous amount of work depending on what features you implement into a site.

We then despair that things are not moving on and we have to keep doing this extra work for our clients.

We've recently introduced a simple policy - if you want IE6 support then you have to pay extra.

And any personal work (for instance my own site), I have simply dropped support for anything below IE7.

What strikes me is unless the web-developers stop supporting IE 6 then the problem will never go-away. We're the guys that drive it, so if we make the point that the site wont work in IE6 then people will have to move on and upgrade their browsers.

People don't like change, so if a site sits pretty and functional in IE6 then why should they upgrade?



Naturally there is a slim possibility you might loose some work by not actively supporting IE6, but if most clients understand that for the web to evolve they need to help evolve it by NOT supporting a dated engine, then I think you'll find many will support it (and for those that don't they simply pay extra).

There are many ways to let users know they really should be moving on. I use a very simple method (which is probably not the most efficient):


<!--[if IE 6]>
< meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=ie6.html" />
< script type="text/javascript">
/* <![CDATA[ */
window.top.location = './ie6.html';
/* ]]> */
</script>
<![endif]-->


I then display a simple page telling the user to go upgrade, and give them some links to the latest browsers. One day I will make a pretty version of this, but for now it gets the point across.

ie6.png




If enough developers make the stand then in the long-run the web will be a happier place....

Sunday 5 April 2009

Announcing Masterspares update

logo.png


Almost one year on and Mastersparesonline.com has had a slight update.

We've introduced an advert/promo column to the site along with popular 'tags' and extra information into the home-page.



You may have noticed that Masterspares also switched to using Google Checkout several months ago which has been very successful.

However, like many on-line traders, Masterspares is considering moving to a direct-bank merchant system due to the controversial new charging system that Google is implementing, which starts in May.

For those that are unaware, Google are increasing their fees bringing them in-line with other online payment systems like paypal. Many have complained at this sudden price hike (where google actually become more expensive if you accept payments from overseas customers). The real 'sting in the tale' though is that they will no longer offer a credit in fees for traders using their popular Adwords system. This had made Google Checkout an exceptionally tempting option for traders.

Thankfully our checkout design means switching would be painless, but we are waiting to see if Google back-tracks on the Adwords credit removal. Time will tell....

Masterspares supply domestic appliance spares, accessories and sales for hundreds of manufacturers. They are celebrating trading for 10 years and have become one of the south-coasts premier suppliers for Dualit, Miele, Kenwood and Sebo amongst other makes.


Friday 3 April 2009

Announcing Osmotech.co.uk

Osmotech UK 2.png

We're thrilled to announce the new Osmotech.co.uk website which is now live.

Osmotech.co.uk uses a fluid design and ruby on rails for 'behind the scenes' goodness.

We opted for a different approach to the landing-page, giving broad, useful information to the incoming user. However, the main area being the header, navigation and 3 content boxes are all within 1st 'screen' viewing.

The design-goal was to bring a clean look, but allow the visitor to understand what Osmotech.co.uk do before they have to click through second levels.

The site features a custom blog tool for 'Our Work' along with various JQuery effects.

Osmotech, based in Hamble, are one of Europe's leading marine care centres specialising in GRP repair, osmosis treatment and providing expert installation of all yacht systems from bowthrusters to climate control.

Wednesday 1 April 2009

Happy Birthday!

1_today.png



Well, it's April 1st 2009 and we are happy to announce that we celebrate our first birthday as utopia 365 LLP.

What a year, it has flown past and in the midst of todays economics we could not be more happy with how things have gone.

A BIG thanks to all our customers and supporters out there, watch this space...lot's more exciting things are around the corner from utopia365.


 
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