Important Notice About Internet Explorer 6
The Preamble
As the web matures and operating systems continue to forge ahead we are constantly at a crossroads in our work, between modern techniques and backwards compatibility. Our products are not nearly as advanced as they could be and this is primarily because we must also consider how to make our RapidWeaver themes render on older browsers.
But consider this for a moment — the ONLY browser that gets backwards support is Internet Explorer. We ensure the proper functioning and relatively good rendering on three versions of Internet Explorer (IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8). We do this with no other browser; not Safari, FireFox, Opera or Chrome. In all modern browsers we support only the most current versions.
The reason for this is simple. There is no reason or excuse not to be using the latest version of these aforementioned modern browsers. None. So why then do we excuse Internet Explorer users? Some say that other browsers may not be allowed in the corporate workplace or that those who are stuck on IE 6 don’t know any better. I think it’s because we don’t give them any incentive to do so.
Why upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer when the internet looks just fine the way it is in IE 6?
We have been enablers for those who are unwilling or supposedly unable to update their browsers, bending the web backwards to make it look just right in a 9 year old browser!
Just last week, Google announced that support for Internet Explorer 6 on their web apps will be phased out by March 1st. This is great news, as the number and stature of those web services that are choosing to take this path is increasing by the month. Already sites like YouTube, Digg and many others have begun to issue warning to users of IE 6 that they need to upgrade to a newer browser to take full advantage of their services.
We would like to follow suit.
The Announcement
As of August 27, 2010, Internet Explorer 6 will officially be 9 years old, and that is old enough for us. So on that date, seyDoggy Systems and seyDesign Themes will be discontinuing all support for Internet Explorer 6 (IE 6) and focussing only on Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7) and 8 (IE 8).
The Reasons
The biggest, most important reason is that Internet Explorer 6 poses a serious security risk to all who use it — including those of us who have to test our products with it. With the recently exposed exploits and Microsoft’s continual insistence that users should leave IE 6, we see no reason why we should expose our own systems to such threats anymore. We are just as vulnerable to IE 6 exploits as the rest of the world and if Google can be effected by such exploits, so too can we.
And then there is the matter of how IE 6 looks. Internet Explorer 6 is nearing 9 years of age… the web was a different place back then. IE 6 is incapable of performing many of todays web tricks and common standards. It renders the web horrendously and the hacks and workarounds required to make web pages look half ways decent can some times take as long to develop as the page itself.
This is neither fair to us as developers or you as end users who would like to see the latest and greatest the web has to offer, not some dumbed-down in-between stage of the web that looks ok in all browsers.
Usage
According to StatCounter, IE 6’s market share has dropped to below 15% worldwide* — that’s more then 6% lower then its contemporary, IE 8, on the worldwide stage. If more people are using IE 8 then IE 6 then I see no reason to slow that trend down and will gladly assist IE 6’s timely demise by any means necessary.
As IE 6 users find it increasingly difficult to take part in many web services and find that the web looks more and more hideous as 2010 rolls on I suspect those still on IE 6 will migrate to newer versions of Internet Explorer (or other modern browsers) faster and faster.
* North American figures show that IE 6 sits at just below 6% while IE 8 has earned a whopping 27% market share.
Summation
While I can certainly understand that some of you may have reservations about us ceasing support of IE 6 in August, we can assure you that this is the best way forward for us, our end users and the web as a whole. It is time to move on from browsers built in another decade and focus on the future. It’s time that we focus on standards compliant, forward thinking browsers that enhance the web and not cripple it.
We may meet with some trepidation over our decision to stop supporting Internet Explorer 6 and in turn you may decide that our products are not for you. This is a calculated risk that we feel is necessary for the future of our company and the continued quality of our products.
We hope others in our industry will follow our lead as we have followed those before us. We feel this is the only way for the web to move forward.
THEME UPDATE: Sleeker Gets Another Speed Boost for IE6
Well it was back to the drawing scripting board when Tuesdays Sleeker update didn’t quite have all the desired effects I had hoped for. So I took a step back and reworked the code from r2 in hopes that I could gain IE6 load speed another way… and I could… so I did.
Give the update a spin on your favorite IE6 machine and let me know if that does it for you.
Theme Modification With CodeCutter
For some time now Chris from Varsis Studio has been working on a new RapidWeaver utility to allow users to quickly and easily modify the CSS in their themes. The idea was born out of my frustration with trying to support user modified themes. I asked Chris if he could make an application that could help users modify their themes the right way — in a non-destructive manner — and in such a way that users could keep their mods even after the themes developer updates or upgrades that theme.
Here is a quick look at what Chris has come up with. It’s code named “CodeCutter” for now. If you like the idea, please get on board and take the alpha out for a spin and help Chris get this application closer to completion.
The Video Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, this Adam from seyDoggy.com. I want to give you a brief introduction to an exciting new application in the works at Varsis Studios. This new application is a RapidWeaver utility that will allow users to modify the style of their themes in a non-destructive manner and will also allow users to retain those modifications through future developer issued updates.
Theme Editing Today
Lets first look at how themes are modified today:
Hack the Theme
[00:00:25] The most common, and arguably most problematic way to modify a theme is to open the themes contents and edit the style sheets within. The success rate will often vary since the modifications placed in one file may or may not be overwritten by another file further down the line.
[00:00:41] If you look at these results you can see my font changes made to the blockquote were effective, but the color changes were not recognized in the blockquote, the h1 tag or the link.
Modifications done this way can cause a lot of damage to theme and may create havoc for the developer when supporting it in the future. In fact, lots of theme developers will not support modified RapidWeaver themes.
Custom CSS Box
[00:01:11] The second, more ideal approach is add custom css to RapidWeavers own CSS field. This will result in the most successful style modifications but they are not carried over from page to page, making it necessary to copy your custom css to each page in your site.
CodeCutter method
[00:01:32] So what’s the solution? Varsis Studios has come up with a way to browse your themes CSS code, modify it and save it to it’s own style sheet directly in the theme. The application is code named CodeCutter and is a RapidWeaver utility with one purpose in mind, to help you modify your themes the right way. Lets have a look.
[00:01:49] Upon opening Code Cutter you’ll notice some familiar buttons. Let’s start by selecting the theme we wish to modify.
[00:01:58] Notice how the left-hand column gathers all of the style sheets used within the theme. It does so in the order that they appear on a published site. This important for recognizing the style sheet hierarchy. You can either browse through each sheets entire contents, or by expanding the sheet you can chose each selector individually.
[00:02:17] Once you have found the selector you wish to change, simply click the “Add To CSS” button, and your selector is now copied to the lower panels. This is where your custom CSS sheet is created.
Make some changes… and those changes are reflected in the theme preview.
[00:02:39] Remember how those styles I added directly to the themes contents didn’t work? Notice that there is nothing getting in the way of them working in Code Cutter. Also notice that the changes now effect every page in your site.
Always in Sync
[00:02:59] But here is where the real power of CodeCutter comes into play. All too often users will modify a theme only to have those modifications deleted or overwritten the next time the developer updates their theme. CodeCutter is smart enough to sync your changes back up if it detects that you customizations have been lost!
[00:03:30] And here is the other beautiful thing about CodeCutter; remember I said it’s non destructive? This means that CodeCutter doesn’t modify your themes built in style sheets. This makes it easy for developers to still support their own themes. Your theme modifications can be found in a single, easy to identify, CSS file. This makes it quick and easy to rule out, or remove your modifications all together. Getting to the root of the problem is now as easy as flipping a switch.
Wrap up
[00:03:59] I hope you’re as excited about CodeCutter as I am. It has a way to go still and Varsis Studio is looking for testers to help make this app become a reality. If you are interested in getting involved please visit dev.varsisstudio.com
Celebrating 4 Years; New Theme and Big Savings!
It’s hard to believe we’ve been doing this this for 4 years! We have remained unwavering in our pursuit of RapidWeaver theme perfection. In that time we have seen a lot of developers come and go and have remained close with those who’ve stuck around. We’ve enjoyed highs and suffered lows and in the end our drive, passion and determination to be the best RapidWeaver theme developers we can be has led us to this… a four year success story that we can only be proud of!
We continually strive to improve both our products and ourselves as a company and we do it for one reason, the reason that got us here in the first place… you, our loyal customers.
So from our eternal appreciation of everything you have made possible for us we would like to offer you a discount code worth 30% off your entire shopping cart. This offer ends on December 7th so don’t delay.
Discount code: birthday2009
And what good is discount code without anything new and shiny to spend it on?
Our All New RapidWeaver Theme, GiD3OUS
GiD3OUS, our latest theme for RapidWeaver 3.6 and above, is the culmination of months of design, planning, and exhaustive testing. We believe the end result is our finest work to date.
This is a design we’ve been sitting on for nearly a year now. Chris (DEVi8) brought it to the table even before CR3ATiV3. We’ve been refining and revising it constantly — we didn’t want to even think of coding it until we knew it could be done right. That’s why much of what we’ve released in the last year has been in preparation for GiD3OUS.
We could have made GiD3OUS a fixed, graphical layout with very little flexibility, but this layout warranted more. The GiD3OUS theme deserved to be as flexible as we could manage and that meant we had a lot of new ideas to test out before hand, like work done previously on advanced systems such as 3 tier navigation, rounded corners, combination drop menus and ExtraContent … all of which we put together to make GiD3OUS the flexible, easy to use but highly polished theme that it is.
As a seyDoggy Ultimate theme, GiD3OUS comes fully loaded with powerful features, including width control, 3 tier tabbed navigation, rounded corners, ExtraContent, and a variety of others:
- 2 ExtraContent areas
- RWmultitool ready
- 10 customizable headers
- 10 customizable footers
- 3 tier hybrid-split navigation
- sidebar positioning
- comprehensive color control
- width control
- font size and style selections
Learn more about GiD3OUS (Ultimate)
See the live preview
Learn more about ExtraContent
Also Check out Some Updates
We have also dropped some minor updates to 5 other themes, badNas, Tuo, TW004, TW005 and TW006. Be sure to check those out and update your themes today.
THEME UPDATE: viEw r2 Refines Font Sizes
We’re nearly complete with all the new demo sites and we’re still finding things to pick apart in each theme as we go. With viEw we found some old updates that we never issued and found a few things we could improve as well — namely the font size control.
You can download the update installer here.
THEME UPDATE: Sleeker r2 Fixes Color Picker Issues
In Sleeker r2 we have addressed a few small items that we’re missing from the color css file which was effecting the way the color picker was (or wasn’t) effecting some of the more obscure elements.
This was a really small change but it was bothering me just the same.
You can download the update installer here.
THEME UPDATE: TW010 r4 Nails the Footer to the Bottom
Yet again, while updating every themes demo site in turn, I found something I didn’t quite like in TW010. What better time to fix it then while I am about to update it’s live preview.
Anyhow, I have nailed the footer to the bottom of the page they way it was intended to be (and not actually sure why it wasn’t).
You can download the update installer here.
THEME UPDATE: TW007 r5 Fixes a Navigation Issue
While mucking around, making an all new demo site for TW007, I discovered a little niggly rendering glitch in the horizontal navigation bar that only appeared when an item was hovered over. You might have seen it too, a 4px overlap? Well we’ve fixed it anyhow.
You can download the update installer here.
THEME UPDATE: Simplistic r6 Improves Movie Album Styles
Similar to yesterdays discovery of a little glitch in the RetroFilm theme, today we discovered some style issues with Varsis Studios Simplistic RapidWeaver theme. This update will add improved styling to the movie album page (for those few who use it).
You can download the update installer here.
THEME UPDATE: RetroFilm r7 Patches Small Glitch
While working on all our revamped demo sites we discovered one tiny nasty in our RetroFilm RapidWeaver theme that caused the sidebar to just cut off if you were to use proper paragraphs (as we normally do). The quick fix was to add a break following the %sidebar% syntax within the themes index file.
You can download the free update installer here.
