Just a quick note to say that I’m now on holiday for a week. I will return on Thu 4th March to bore you with my photos of Scotland!
Swell Designs is on Holiday!
February 24th, 2010Chrome moving up the charts
February 3rd, 2010Yesterday, browser market share figures came out from Net Applications, and the big news is how Chrome is moving up the ranks at the expense of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and even Firefox, compared to December. But you have to look further back to get a sense of what is really happening.
The various flavours of Internet Explorer (IE6, IE7, and IE8) together have 62.1 percent market share, down from 68.5 percent last March. That is a 6.4 percent drop in about a year. During the same period Chrome went from 1.6 percent share to 5.2 percent. Firefox and Safari each gained about a percentage point each over the same period to 24.4 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively. (Although Firefox is a tiny bit down since November, when it peaked at 24.7 percent). If you add up the gains from those three—Chrome, Firefox, and Safari—that is where most of IE’s share went.
But even that doesn’t tell the whole story because if you look at share of individual versions of the different browsers, you can see another dynamic in play. Namely, a big part of the share shift can also be explained by the uneven rate at which people abandon older browsers like IE6 for newer ones like IE8 or Chrome. Let’s look at the share shifts just among IE6, IE7, and IE8. The pitchforks are out for IE6, people hate it and Websites (especially those run by Google) think the sooner it dies, the better. Even Microsoft wants people to move away from IE6.
IE6’s individual market share has dropped by about 11 points since March, 2009, from 31.4 percent to 20 percent. Meanwhile, IE8 took almost twice as much share as IE6 lost, it’s up almost 21 points from almost nothing to 22.4 percent share. So why did IE show an overall drop? You can blame poor old IE7, which lost exactly as much as IE8 gained, going from 35.2 percent to 14.5 percent share.
But taken alone, IE8 actually gained more than any other browser during the period (up 20.6 percent), followed by Firefox 3.5 (up 17.1 percent). Chrome’s 5.2 percent share gain was spread across its Windows and Mac versions. So IE8 is making stronger gains than you might think from simply looking at the overall IE share numbers. In fact, in January, it finally surpassed IE6 in market share and is now the largest single browser. As IE6 and IE7 continue to dwindle, IE8 needs to capture as much of those legacy users as it can. With almost 35 percent share left between them, IE8 will no doubt continue to see rapid individual share growth simply by getting people using older versions of IE to upgrade. It helps that IE8 comes pre-installed with the Windows 7 operating system also.
But those users are also prime targets for Chrome and Firefox (which is still going through its own transition from 3.0 to 3.5). Chrome, in particular, has the most to gain here. It only needs another 5 percent to double its market share, whereas IE8 can win over another 20 percent and still see IE’s overall share go down. It remains an open question where the overall shares will settle when all of this shakes out over the next year or so.
Source: TechCrunch, NetShareMarket
Google phases out support for IE6
January 30th, 2010
This has not been the greatest start to the year for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. Days after news of the latest security flaw in Internet Explorer, Google is adding fuel to the fire by phasing out support for IE6 for two of its Google Apps products, Docs and Sites (which recently got an aesthetic upgrade).For both the consumer and enterprise versions of Google Docs and Sites, the only browsers that will be fully compatible are Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+, Mozilla Firefox 3.0+, Google Chrome 4.0+ and Safari 3.0+. The phase out will take place beginning March 1. While you’ll still be able to access Docs and Sites from IE6, you will have restricted functionality and many features won’t work, making the applications for the most part useless. We hear that Google will be phasing out IE6 support for the remainder of Google’s major products, including Gmail and Calendar, over the coming year. This isn’t Google’s first move to phases out IE6 functionality for its products. Last July, the search giant began phasing out YouTube support for the Microsoft browser. For users of IE6, the online video site began pointing to ‘modern’ browsers like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5 as alternatives. A similar prompt will now take place on Docs and Sites for users who are browsing from IE6.
For the most part, the tech community, including web developers and designers, tend to have a profound dislike of Internet Explorer 6. Obviously, the browse has many issues, including low performance and major security flaws. Even Microsoft itself, is recommending that all its customers upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, the latest version of the browser which has better security in place. The main reason why IE6 is still being used at all is because of corporate IT departments across the globe needing to make upgrade decisions. Unfortunately, a number of these companies still have to use the browser because they have systems in place built specifically to run with it. To add insult to injury, IE6 continues to lose market share in the browser world.
And Google isn’t the only technology company that is looking to close off support for IE6. Digg has hinted at wanting to cut support for the browser too. I have a feeling that as Google joins the web in gathering pitchforks around IE6, more companies will flock to join the movement.
Source: TechCrunch
Web Security: Are You Part Of The Problem?
January 18th, 2010This is a great article about the most common web security vulnerabilities, from Smashing Magazine. If your a novice it will probably open your eyes and strike a spear of fear through you, but not to worry. With a little reserach you’ll be able to overcome most if not all of the covered vulnerabilities and make your site quite secure. If your an expert, you may find it interesting just what percentages these vulnerabilities are.
OS OpenSpace API
January 15th, 2010Yet another mapping API?
The OS OpenSpace API is free to access and lets developers create amazing web applications and online projects with Ordnance Survey maps.
But OS OpenSpace API is not just for developers.
Although the API uses JavaScript to make web pages more interactive, anyone can create an application
Chrome Dev 4.0.288.1 Brings Extensions for Mac
January 10th, 2010
This is it, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Well, those of you who are Mac users that use Chrome anyway. Though it took longer than expected, bookmark syncing and extensions have been turned on in the latest version (4.0.288.1) that just went live today.
However, before you start commenting that you don’t see it working yet, please not that this is on the dev channel version of Chrome for Mac. That version is slightly different from the beta channel version, as it’s updated more frequently and could possibly be suseptible to more bugs. But really, if you’re using Chrome for Mac at this early point, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be using the dev channel version (which you can find here
), and that’s especially true now that it has these two key features.
Last month, Google officially unveiled the beta version of Chrome for Mac and Linux. But what the Linux version was pretty much inline with the year-old Windows version of Chrome, the Mac version was far from feature complete, leaving out a number of key elements, such as extensions. And while they have been working in the Chromium builds (the open-source browser on which Chrome is based) for Mac since last month when extensions were also formally unveiled.
Source: TechCrunch
22 Design Freebies to Kick-Start the New Year
January 8th, 2010Replenish your graphic design arsenal with this week’s freshest design picks. Get on the creative groove by downloading free textures, brushes, fonts, icons and even Wordpress themes for your design projects. Spread the good news by bookmarking, tweeting and sharing this post!
Source: YOUTHEDESIGNER
Help Save MySQL!
January 4th, 2010
If Oracle buys MySQL as part of Sun, database customers will pay the bill.
In April 2009, Oracle announced that it had agreed to acquire Sun. Since Sun had acquired MySQL the previous year, this would mean that Oracle, the market leader for closed source databases, would get to own MySQL, the most popular open source database.
If Oracle acquired MySQL on that basis, it would have as much control over MySQL as money can possibly buy over an open source project. In fact, for most open source projects (such as Linux or Apache) there isn’t any comparable way for a competitor to buy even one tenth as much influence. But MySQL’s success has always depended on the company behind it that develops, sells and promotes it. That company (initially MySQL AB, then Sun) has always owned the important intellectual property rights (IPRs), most notably the trademark, copyright and (so far only for defensive purposes) patents. It has used the IPRs to produce income and has reinvested a large part of those revenues in development, getting not only bigger but also better with time.
If those IPRs fall into the hands of MySQL’s primary competitor, then MySQL immediately ceases to be an alternative to Oracle’s own high-priced products. So far, customers had the choice to use MySQL in new projects instead of Oracle’s products. Some large companies even migrated (switched) from Oracle to MySQL for existing software solutions. And every one could credibly threaten Oracle’s salespeople with using MySQL unless a major discount was granted. If Oracle owns MySQL, it will only laugh when customers try this. Getting rid of this problem is easily worth one billion dollars a year to Oracle, if not more.
Source: Help Save MySQL!
Desktop Wallpaper: January 2010
January 4th, 2010
Happy New Year!
Apologies for lack of posts, but was having a well deserved break 
This post features 35 free desktop wallpapers, created by designers across the globe. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free.
Source: SMASHING MAGAZINE
Give Google Chrome for Christmas
December 15th, 2009Not sure what presents to get for the holidays? How about giving away a free browser? Your friends and relatives won’t think you are too cheap to get them a real present. They might even thank you, if the present is Google’s shiny new Chrome browser all wrapped up in virtual wrapping paper.
In a holiday promotion, Google lets you give ChromeForChristmas. It’s a pretty simple, but effective, marketing site. You choose some themed paper which gets wrapped around the Google Chrome logo and then is delivered via email to the person receiving the “gift,” along with an e-card with your picture or even a video attached. They get to unwrap the virtual gift and are prompted to download Chrome.
Google is starting to push Chrome in a big way now, not just in the U.S., but also abroad. The Chrome beta is now available on Macs and it is now offers a growing array of extensions. There are worse presents you could give.
Source: TechCrunch
