Michael Wales

Is there a topic you want me to write an article on? Today’s your lucky day! I’ve added the GetSatisfaction Skribit widget to the right-hand border of this page.

A quick click of the widget will allow you to submit ideas, a question, a problem or give me some head-bloating praise. Feel free to use and abuse but remember this is a public means of communication, if you need to contact me privately you can always email at webmaster@michaelwales.com.

Edit:
Chris Harrison pointed out Skribit to me and it is much better suited for this purpose.

As web developers we typically fulfill a number of roles: developer, designer, marketing, SEO. Of all these roles nothing is more frustrating than the designer role, primarily due to the evil that is Internet Explorer 6. Thankfully, Google has taken a stance, primarily fueled by the recent Chinese attacks, and IE6 is going down.

Last week, on the Official Google Enterprise Blog, the Senior Product Manager of Google Apps announced that as early as March 2010 Google will start phasing out support for older browsers. The official lineup Google recommends consists of Internet Explorer 7.0+, Mozilla Firefox 3.0+, Google Chrome 4.0+ and Safari 3.0+.

Google also sent an email to all Google Apps for Domains administrators yesterday that clarified some concerns people had: this isn’t just for the enterprise users. Users of the standard GMail and Google Calendar will see functionality dropping off on older browsers as well. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise. As developers, would you expect Google to maintain two separate codebases, one of which has inherent flaws that consistently introduces security vulnerabilities? I didn’t think so…

Is this the nail in the coffin that is Internet Explorer 6? I think so! With such a drastic change from one of the industry leaders, a company most people couldn’t dream of living without in this day, older browsers have no choice but to die off. Most people using IE6, or various other older browsers, aren’t doing so by choice – they are in enterprise environments in which they are not able to upgrade. These companies are now being told by one of the largest providers of software they use on a daily basis, the time is now! If more companies, and even developers like us, took a stand like Google is we would see an end to the 8+ year browser lifecycle that IE6 has enjoyed.

After a number of months of the blog being down because Wordpress decided to melt-down during an update, I finally got it back up and running. Because of the process I went about getting it up and going my older posts are lost in another database for the time being. I will be spending a significant amount of time porting those over to this new database – I’m going to try to keep the URLs the same, but you guys know me: fuck PageRank.

In the past I have tried to get some really nice themes up here thinking it would encourage me to write and share more. I’ve come to realize that’s just not true, so I will be sticking with the tried and true Simpla theme. It gives me plenty of width in the primary column to share code and that’s my goal from here on out – share code.

I’ve got freelance projects, a full-time job, a book deal, and a family up to my ears – no more trying to market myself as a freelance developer. I’ve succeeded there beyond my wildest dreams and I have to thank more of you than I can possibly name for that. From here on out, I’m going to try and improve your code – make you a better developer.

Hang in there with me – I’m pretty excited about trimming the fat and really getting deep in the content here. Better hold your watches up…