Welcome To Devils Workshop!!!

Posted: 30 Jan 2010 08:50 AM PST

Many of our regular readers are aware that we are working on a new theme for Devil’s Workshop. Yes we are coming closer to completing this project. We have included a lot of new suggestions from our readers who commented and emailed us with their suggestions.

We have tried to include everything that was asked for without trying to change ourselves too much. The endeavor was to make a better Devil’s Workshop and not a different one.

DW_redesign_update1

We have tried to keep to retain the familiarity of Devil’s Workshop’s current theme and tried to improve on it with our new theme. We have opted to have a magazine style theme which a lot of readers did want. Personally I think Magazine styled theme does help a great deal to navigate a website a lot more easily.

Homepage features

DW_redesign_update2

The new homepage layout will show lesser than 10 posts that we show with our present theme. This is to highlight with excerpts only the latest posts on the homepage. This was a decision which was debated but we feel that showing posts under categories would be better than showing 10 posts on the homepage. This will help make it easier to navigate our website.

DW_redesign_update3

A new addition on our homepage will be categories gaining a lot of prominence. We have got some feedback that using categories for navigating our website has been an issue. This will change as all the categories with some of the recent posts under those categories will be displayed on the homepage itself. The design is still being worked on and you can expect the navbar to have some more additions.

I hope you liked the screenshots of some of the several new changes we will have with Devil’s Workshop’s new theme. Hope you like what you see at the moment.

Note to Authors

If you are a guest author or privileged author with DW, you might want to look up and make some changes with your profile information. As you might have noticed we have stopped the Editor’s Note section for our guest authors as now there is a automated method of doing the same. See image below to check how the new information will be displayed.

DW_redesign_update4

As you can see the number of posts show up along with the website address. If you include your twitter account id, a link is generated for readers to get to your Twitter page.

Note that these changes are already in effect and all you have to do is

Log into DW and get to the Dashboard.
Once at the Dashboard click on Your Profile on the right hand side.
Carefully fill in all the details you want to show up with your guest post.
Ideally keep the biography short only up-to a line as you can see there is a space constraint for displaying the biography with the post.

Hope you all enjoy the new theme and do keep your suggestions and opinion on what you want through your comments.

This Post Update on DW redesign is Published on Devils Workshop .

Google Dropping Support for Internet Explorer 6.0

Posted: 30 Jan 2010 12:22 AM PST

Before going into some of the pros and cons of if Internet Explorer 6 is a defunct browser here are some statistics regarding its market share. 20.99% of internet users use IE6 while IE8 the latest version is used by 20.86% of internet users. This basically means out of every 5 internet users 1 of them is on Internet Explorer 6. I took these statistics from Marketshare.histlink website.

This reveal that when it comes to Internet Explorer people prefer using an older version than the newer one. What has compounded the problem is that Microsoft as yet has not forced its users to upgrade.

google_dumps_IE

Google has recently announced that it will not support Internet Explorer 6 as a browser version if you are using Google Docs or Sites. I think considering certain reports that the latest Chinese hacking into Google incident took place by taking advantage of a security flaw within Internet Explorer 6; Google might even stop supporting Gmail for IE 6.0 very soon.

So if you are using Google Docs and using Internet Eplorer 6 you will get a message to upgrade as certain new features will not be abvailable with IE6 at all.

This is a bold move by Google considering they are now essentially telling 1/5th of the internet users to either upgrade their browser or not be able to use their services fully. I think Google probably has with this statement passed a silent message that people should now start using Chrome.

Problems for Internet Explorer 6

Windows XP was well received and subsequently it’s default browser IE6 was also well received.
Windows Vista was not as well received and that led it’s default browser IE7 being not so well received. What probably should concern Internet Explorer developers is that many who did not opt for Vista also did not opt for IE7.
Now that Windows 7 has been well received you can expect the numbers for Internet Explorer 8 to pick up.
In the mean time more and more people are prefering to use Firefox and Chrome. Chrome is still an infant but it’s growth is quite phenomenal.
IE6 will see a rapid downward spiral considering many companies and security experts lampooning it for security flaws. Recently German government recommended people not to use it at all.

What do you think? Is it about time Internet Explorer 6 is given a retirement? Let me know your opinions through your comments.

Image Source: Spigot Design

Link: Google Docs

This Post Google Dropping Support for Internet Explorer 6.0 is Published on Devils Workshop .