Afterwards, looking forward to the prospect of telling the tale of our encounter with nature and all her stunning majesty, we were told that our story had been upstaged:

image from The Guardian

The lesson we learnt from this last few days? Whales: Bloody Show-offs.

I’ve always used this site as the testing ground for new techniques I learn on my treks around the internets — usually they tend to feel like they’re just tacked onto the site, simply for the benefit of using them. Which obviously it is. These aspects tend to be removed fairly quickly after their novelty has worn off, as I feel that they’re usually not particularly beneficial to the site as a whole. Sometimes, however, I find an aspect that I ADORE.

Such is the case with fluid layouts — I’ve always thought it was the approach to take with site layouts, but found it to be too broad a brush to use with some designs, resulting in slightly hackish and half-thought-through implementations in attempting to get it working on all browsers. So usually I would resign it to the category “not for this project”.

However, recently the the really rather clever Ethan Marcotte wrote a fantastic article for A List Apart on Responsive Design, and it’s opened my eyes to a whole brave new world of flexible layouts  — one where the site layout and so forth is dependant upon the medium the site is being viewed. In a world of widescreen monitors, iPads, smart phones and televisions of different resolutions, colour depths and orientations, the WC3’s media query allows the constructor of websites to create a design that can accommodate them all should they wish.

So now, I can proudly boast that this site will change and alter it’s appearance to best capitalise upon the dimensions of the browser it is being viewed upon. I still get to keep my layout at full desktop resolution, but as the space becomes narrower, the various forms, menus and columns start to realign and shrink to accommodate the new viewpoint.

It’s a small detail, but I feel that this is such an important step that most sites should at least be thinking about taking — and means that there’s no need for elaborate header detection techniques, subdomain or style sheet switching — the layout now has the ability to instantaneously alter to the new requirements, all from within the style sheet itself. Marvellous stuff!

Obviously, with pretty much any new site design technique, we all know that Internet Explorer 8 and lower will not get to natively take advantage of these just yet. I feel that this isn’t enough of a problem to prevent site implementing them — after all, we all know that websites don’t have to look the same across all browsers, and most people don’t judge sites because of that. As far as most IE visitors to this site will think, there has been no change to the site as it was a week ago. No harm, no foul.

It’s still in the testing phase, and the small amount of trials I’ve done on an iPhone (when I pinched a friend’s for a few minutes) show that it’s all working very nicely indeed. Have fun, muck about on the site and please drop me a line to let me know what you think!

Beautifully animated, unashamedly plucking at the heartstrings, and guaranteeed to give you a warm feeling inside. Enjoy!

CC image courtesy of Whatleydude on Flickr

In the last few days since the FIFA World Cup commenced, the vuvuzela has rapidly become one of the most discussed aspects of the entire tournament. In Britain, the BBC has been forced to comment on broadcasting vuvuzela-free coverage, because of the sheer number complaints made. Those 545 people really need to get lives.

Britain, Britain, Britain. I love you. You know that. But really? This goes a little bit further than the usual complaining we do about kids on the back of buses playing loud music on their phones, or bickering over how the rubbish bin lorry made a bit too much noise in the morning and interrupted your lie-in when they (eventually) got around to picking up the bins.

You are witnessing one of the rare occasions when the planet can join as one and enjoy a truly global event, when many diverse cultures can come together and yell at 22 people chasing a ball. A magical time when most of the petty backbiting and corruption we usually witness in our news bulletins are replaced with vibrant discussion over who kicked a ball into the square net things the most.

These occasions have to be hosted somewhere, and with each one, we learn of and adapt new facets to the game, especially when the  events are hosted outside of Europe. Mexico in 1986, we learned about the Mexican Wave. Korea/Japan 2002, we got our first hints of a world with early opening pubs. This year, in South Africa, you are learning of the joy of a 1m plastic trumpet that on it’s own sounds like the roar of an elephant, but multiplied by 20,000 sounds instead like a swarm of angry elephants.

If you want to watch the effect of 32 national football teams playing together without the effect of the 32 national football team supporters alongside, I suspect that the World Cup isn’t really the event for you.

I sympathise, really, I do. I first heard it’s parpy rasp at last year’s Confederates Cup. I thought it was a noise pollutant, completely uneccessary and looked to become something I would really start to hate. But now, I have to admit, it has become as vital to the African football supporting crowds as the football chants are to the average English football match, singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” is to the English rugby match and as trumpeting and shouting “ole!” is to the French game. Although that last one still has me confused.

Sure they’re loud, but isn’t that the point? Just like the roars, chants, rattles and drummings of other World Cups, this is the same effect. I can only suggest that if you’re in SA right now, go to a fan park today and take in the electric atmosphere that the vuvuzela is part and parcel of. Better still, get your own vuvuzela and blow away. If you’re watching at home in the UK, turn down the volume and stop whinging, it’s just embarrassing. This is how South Africa supports its teams, and for the next month we are her guests. How about we try things her way for a bit?

1. Least I Could Do Let’s start with some of the Big Guns. A veritable behemoth in the industry, Least I Could Do is the ‘Friends’ of the Webcomic world — you’re never going to split your sides laughing at every single show, but you can easily find yourself watching episode after episode, absorbing yourself into the life of Rayne and his friends’ lives. Written by Ryan Sohmer with frankly stunning artwork from (most recently) Lar DeSouza — the output and frequency is staggering, especially as the quality has remained consisted for much of their run together — the strip has been updated Monday to Friday for the last 6 years. What makes this all the more impressive is that the both of them also produce the epic Looking For Group at the same time.
2. Questionable Content Man Alive, I love this comic. If LICD is ‘Friends’, then Questionable Content is ‘How I Met Your Mother’ — sharp, funny, and with enough angsty relationships and kinky subversiveness plots to retain the elusive ‘Factor Cool’. The premise is the same as pretty much any sitcom you care to mention; a group of friends enjoying mini adventures together  (with the occasional mini robots romping around every so often). However, it’s the writing that would keep you coming back time and time again — the banter between the characters is a joy to behold. Oh yes, did I mention there’s swearing now and again? Swearing is awesome.
3. Pictures For Sad Children Dark, a little twisted, a lot meloncholy — John Campbell provides the emo content of this list, daring you to find anything enjoyable about some of the twisted standalone tales involved here, because you know, happy comics are so… ugh, mainstream or whatever. Start from the beginning, work through them all, then go find something cuddly to hug.
4. The Abominable Charles Christopher TACC tells the story of Charles, a kindly forest dwelling man-beast, and his encounters with the various woodland creatures and mythical beings that share the woods. The comic mixes standalone strips with an ongoing story about an approaching ‘great danger’, seemingly signified by approaching human civilisation. The strip displays creator Karl Kerschl’s mastery of brush and pen — rendered entirely in black and white, I can happily browse between strips for the artwork alone. Invoking memories of Jeff Smith’s wonderful ‘Bone’ this is a magical and involving comic that will keep you entertained for hours.
5. The Perry Bible Fellowship Although not updated since 2008, I cannot recommend this strip enough. Surreal, sometimes offensive, always hilarious. You will almost certainly have seen this comic somewhere about your travels on the web. I’m really just including it here because if just on the off-chance you HAVE missed this gem, you simply need to go read it. Now.
6. xkcd A regular entry on Digg’s front page, xkcd has been running now for 5 years — and is another strip that you will have seen the familiar stick figure drawings before now as website avatars or email forwards. xkcd describes itself as “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language”, and is aimed at those of us that derive enjoyment from computer geekery and “your mum” jokes. And let’s be honest here, who doesn’t enjoy those?
7. Platinum Grit I’m still not sure if this counts as a webcomic in the traditional sense. Not providing regular content in the form of a strip as the others in this list do, PG provides a full comic episode every 9 months or so. And what a comic! the scripts are tightly written, the artwork stunning and the stories whip along as you are drawn further into the strange world of Jeremy and Nils. The stories have been written and drawn by Trudy Cooper and Danny Murphy since 1994 (there are 20 episodes to date) and as such there is a noticable improvement in style between the first chapter and the more recent entries. Set aside a few hours, start at the beginning and enjoy.
8. Nedroid Featuring mainly the adventures of Beartato and Reginald, this is the sketch show comic of this roundup. The two stars, a bear and a bird respectively do goofy stuff that’s funny. Very funny. You should read it.
9. Bunny Caught somewhere between xkcd, nedroid and ‘The Far Side’ — Bunny is a (mostly) single pane comic featuring somewhat obviously, bunnies in surreal situations, commenting on themes as wide-ranging as technology through to Daleks, through to love. And ninjas. Drawn by Welsh artist Huw Davies, it’s sharp and witty enough to keep you entertained for a very long time and it’s excellent to see that my fellow Brits can hold their own in this department.
10. Western Nostril I learned of this webcomic after moving over to SA — and it’s a goodie! Western Nostril, written and drawn by Cape Town artists Patrick and Alex Latimer, specialises in wordplay and punnery. Yes, you’ll be groaning, but you’ll be doing it with a smile on your face.

Honorable mentions

A couple of extra shouts should definately go to MenageA3 and Oglaf.com — both beautifully drawn (and incedentally NSFW; not sure if there’s a direct correlation there)

As one of the last groups to start the Cape Argus 2010 Cycle Tour, we are definately losing some of the carnival atmosphere that I had seen on SABC2 at 6am this morning. The crowds, having patiently and noisily waited at the sides for their various beloved cycling enthusiasts to depart are decidedly thinner than they once were.

The adreneline is pumping hard now, nervous energy causing me to shiver in my saddle. I’m keen to start now, because I’ve worried about this long enough. A fairly light sleeper by nature, I’ve wasted hours and hours lying in bed at 3am agonising over what people will say if I can’t even finish the race — a miniscule problem with the benefit of hindsight, but a seemingly genuine real-life trauma beforehand. I’m fed up of the ‘what-ifs’ — lets just get on with it so I can concentrate on the issue at hand.

The opening of the race is the usual jumble of grinding gears, cheering spectators and angry cries of “LEFT!” from the speedier starters to those slower mortals that dared slip into the fast lane on the right side of the road. The first series of climbs past the University are some of the steepest of the route, but with a fresh pair of legs and a gallon of adreneline in me, I quickly find myself becoming one of the ragey ones, desperately trying to get past the slower cyclists. Oh, how the tables turn. Elizabeth Drive is the first major bottleneck of the race and I’m forced into a lower gear, any momentum I may have had from freewheeling past Kirstenbosch now lost. However, the crowds are out in force here, music playing, braais sizzling, vuvuzelas… parping — it’s probably not a bad thing to settle down and enjoy the fun for a while!

Over the top of the Elizabeth Drive and the crowds clear, leaving me room to fly down the hill onto the Blue Route into Tokai. The speeds I take the that descent at are incredible — my R500 cheapo mountain bike records a speed of 55kph- a new record for me. Soon, I hit the slopes of Boyes’ Drive over the top of Kalk Bay — there’s a real community vibe going on here amongst the cyclists, some of the louder participants shouting and encouraging the rest up the first real challenge of the course. Fortunately for me, this section of the course is a part I know forwards and backwards, so I can more or less sit back and enjoy the spectacle of various Afrikaners hurling what I can only assume are kindly words of comfort…

Simonstown. I choose to skim through this part as it was the low part of the course for me — being sandblasted as I fly past Long Beach, followed by a 20 minute puncture repair stop still rankle somewhat, and my competitive side is still offended by the time wasted. Bloody Simonstown.

The long and winding road down to the halfway point of the course was a draining slog of long, lazy climbs and attempting to pedal through the first twinges of the pain barrier — but this soon made way as we rounded the peninsular and onto the parts of Cape Town that I’ve never had much occasion to visit: Scarborough, Misty Cliffs, Kommetjie, Noordhoek — they all start to blur as I keep on pedalling. The legs are really starting to ache now — but my pre-race resolution of never stopping cycling once I’d started meant that any stretching I did was strictly performed on-board. One thing that’s starting to become more and more apparent is that the supporters lining the roads are mentioning Chapman’s Peak and Suikerboisse more and more frequently. “Come on! This is the easy bit — the big hills are coming up soon!”

Chapman’s Peak. Shit. Every time over the last few months when I mention my training to another person, they say one of two things. If they’ve ridden the Argus themselves, they say “Wow — Chapman’s Peak is a bitch, eh?” and if they haven’t, it’s “Wow — people that have ridden the Argus tell me Chapman’s Peak is a bitch, eh?”. Neither statement particularly fills me with confidence, and it’s made even worse by the fact that for either of these comments, I can only reply “I haven’t tried it out, yet”.

As I rapidly approach these monolitic bitches, painfully aware of how I’ve never cycled this far in one session before now; let alone tried to conquer two of the Cape’s steepest hill climbs, there’s little to inspire me; my first view of Chapman’s Peak is a Cecil B. DeMille-esque scene of hundreds, nay, thousands of cyclists trudging up the obscene gradient of that hill. Some are crying at the side of the road, helmets and shoes off in a clear sign of resignation to the fact that enough is enough. The climb of Chapman’s Peak itself is far removed from the earlier sections of the course — there’s no room for supporters on the narrow road, so it’s a silent affair, with nothing but the sound of the pedals being slowly pushed. The enthusiastic Afrikaners have seemingly now decided to keep their own counsel. The strange part is that for all the exaustion I was fighting through 5 minutes ago, it’s all forgotten when I see the views from the top. Wow. It’s almost worth the soul destroying agony of ascending that mammoth.. ascent, purely for one of the most amazing vistas that Cape Town can give. Don’t forget that this is a city easily capable of holding its own in the “Places with a shed load of fantastic views” stakes — THAT’s how beautiful this view is.

The descent from Chapman’s peak was a welcome rest of not having to pedal for a few minutes — the whooping and screams of delight from my compatriates makes me think that I’m not the only one that enjoying the cooling breeze. My computer calmly informs me I’m breaking the 60kph speed limit as I head onto Suikerboisse.

Suikerboisse, I’m told, is The Killer. Although not as steep as some of the earlier climbs, it’s the final one of the course, and the one that with burning  and cramping legs, you do NOT want to finish the course on. I’ll be honest wth you — by this juncture, I’d stopped caring about the pain — I’d adopted the “head down, pedal like buggery” approach — I don’t really remember clearing the crest, nor do I remember the final sprint through Clifton, past the parties of Beautiful People as aloofly cheered us though to Green Point. I just wanted to finish. I’d seemingly pulled out hidden reserves of energy from somewhere (had I paced myself too much?) and ploughed on towards the end. The only real moment I clearly remember after this was crossing over the finish line at 5 hours 15mins.

Hang on — I’d finished? Moreover — I’d done it in just over 5 hours? “To hell with that!” I thought, before I’d even come to a halt “Next year I’m doing it in 4!”

It’s 11am on a warm and windy Sunday morning on the 13th of March. I and seemingly half of South Africa have decided to enter or to come out and support the Cape Argus cycle tour. My trusty bicycle and I have been hanging around the centre of Cape Town since 9 this morning, waiting anxiously for our group to be summoned to the starting line. The Argus, like many other events of this calibre, groups people by levels of ability and experience. The faster, more professional bods get let out first, and unfettered by the inevitably slower enthusiastic amateurs. This continues back until the very slowest groups are allowed to drag their pathetically unfit, sorry carcasses over the start line and into the race. My group is the penultimate group to leave.

Lance Armstrong was here this year. It caused quite the media storm. He’d started at 6am in the morning and finished about 3 hours later, and was probably right now calmly relaxing in his executive green room. Before the sun even had a chance to burn off the morning dew, the boy had already cycled the 108km tour of the entire Cape Peninsula. He probably has longer baths than the time it took him to pelt it around the course I was just about to undertake.

Unlike Lance, this was a bit of a big deal for me. He did it in 3 hours – I’m not even sure if I can finish it at all…

A few months ago, when the rather rash decision was made that this cycle tour would be an amazing thing to do, March 13 seemed a fantastically long way away. I was confident that with my years of commuting into work, come rain or shine, day in, day out, that I would surely be able to complete the course. The only question really was how quickly I’d blitz my way through. October passed quickly, as did November and December. Christmas and New Year’s Day came and went. The beginning of 2010 I decided was a good time to begin my intensive training schedule.

I dusted down my bicycle and started getting back into my cycling commuting regime. The first day I cycled from my home to Kalk Bay, a 20km ride in each direction. In hindsight, I’d say that when I eventually made it back home that evening, a sweating and panting mess, was probably the first time that the seeds of doubt were sewn. I tried again the next day. Back at home that evening I was becoming dangerously dehydrated. My legs were in agony, I had developed huge blisters on the balls of my feet that made it look like I had actual balls on my feet, and I felt like I would never stop smelling of sweat. This wasn’t looking good.

It was at that moment I realised that I may have been kidding myself over the years. Where before I recalled cycling through the busy streets of London, nipping expertly between buses and lorries, flying over Westminster Bridge on frosty mornings, I now remembered more than one occasion where the treacherous thought of “Bugger it, I’ll catch the Tube” crossed my mind.
When reviewing my perceived healthy lifestyle of winging my way homewards for a lovely fruit smoothie and chicken salad, I remembered the frankly alarming amount of times I left the bike at the office, preferring instead to go for post-work pint. Or four and a kebab.
It was possible that maybe I wasn’t in line for the easy ride I had thought.

Undaunted by this blow to my confidence, I persisted. I focussed on the small gains, becoming slowly (oh so slowly) faster each and every time, happy that it was becoming gradually easier to cover 40km each day.

This was February. All the training schedules I’d read told me I should now be in the maintenance phase of my training – with less than a month to go, I was nowhere near ready.

Back at the starting line, we’re herded into our collecting pen, I look around at my comrade cyclists. All of these ‘amateurs’ look sleek, trim and are chomping at the bit to get going. I start to feel more and more that maybe I should be one more group back. I find myself talking to a particularly peppy chap next to me, who was busy liberally applying tons of sun cream to his arms (damn it – forgot to pack some! That’s gonna hurt tomorrow). He informs me that this is his 5th Argus. “Just relax and enjoy it!” he tells me. When I tell him my concerns over not finishing he looks at me and says the words that have stuck with me since “only a total prawn wouldn’t be able to finish this”. I nodded and laughed  along with him.

I have absolutely no idea what a prawn in this context is – but I’m hoping to hell that it’s not me.

[To be continued…]

Last night I couldn’t sleep. No big thing, it’s something I’ve always had; the brain just tends to be a little overactive at 3am. I’ve always dealt with it in different ways, all with varying degrees of success. last night however, I realised that I’ve never actually tried that old staple of sleeplessness cures, counting sheep.

“No biggie” I thought to myself “I can count sheep”. So I settled in. I pictured them perfectly; a bleating, woolly mass of wool, slotted eyes and hooves — at a guess, I’d have said there must have been  a couple of thousand of them — and every single one of them had yet to be accounted for.

I started simply. As each sheep passed me by into the Imaginary Pen I had created, the numbers increased by 1.

“1, 2, 3, 4″

So this was counting sheep, eh?

“5, 6, 7..”

Hmm. Surely there’s an easier way to do this. Increasing the number of sheep by one is well and good — but what happens if I lose count? And surely simply counting the number of sheep isn’t enough? What if the Imaginary Farmer who’s Imaginary Sheep I was counting wanted more information about his Imaginary Flock?

I looked to my collecting Pen, and divided it into a series of SubPens, each labelled after a breed of sheep. There seemed to be a LOT of breeds, and I wasn’t really sure how many there were — so I simply resolved to add a new SubPen each time a new Imaginary Breed showed up.

The task was getting a little more complicated now, but order was being restored — the Sheep were now not only being counted, but indexed nicely. The process was temporarily interrupted by the fact that an Imaginary Goat had somehow been maliciously inserted into the flock — so I imagined up a ‘type’ filter at the Gate that would filter the Goats from the Sheep; and then subdivided the Pens to allow for each animal type that appeared.

I ran a few optimisation tasks that added a bit of extra ‘meat-information’ to each animal’s ear tag about it’s specific diet, fat-content and age to make the butchery process a little easier. Once again, a bit more overhead on the overall processes, but would be worth it in the long run.

I’ll be honest, by this time I was starting to lose count — all the categorising and filtering was getting in the way. So I employed an Imaginary Helper to keep track of the counting for me, giving me more time to concentrate on the main task at hand.

It was around then that I realised that the rams and the ewes were all in the same pens and were starting to get… frisky. *Sigh* Another subdivision of the pens in each Animal/Breed into ‘Ewes’ and ‘Rams’, and time out to recategorise the sheep I’d already done. Whilst I was at it, I added some extra information to each sheep’s ear tag, recording when the last time it was counted, and their parentage.

The sheep counting continued again, the Helper adding extra information being added, and the animals themselves being added to their respective pens by me. The Helper was getting tired by this point doing the counting and the assigning of extra information, and wanted to do me to bring in some extra assistance to spread the load.

By the end of the resulting Strike Negotiations I had 15 different helpers, each with a different task, and their own Helpers’ Union. I was still trying to imagine up new containing pens for the seemingly never ending variety of Imaginary Sheep breeds — and I was starting to suspect that some of the Pens were being needlessly duplicated — I mean, is there really a need to differentiate between the ‘Cheviot’ and the ‘Border Cheviot’?¹

The next animal that came up wasn’t an Imaginary Sheep or Goat.. I don’t really know what it was — maybe an Alpaca? Whatever it was, it clearly could have gone in either Breed Pen. This was clearly getting out of hand. Time to reassess.

Maybe it would be better to simply put all that categorisation information onto their ear tags and not put them in seperate pens. Apart from the Rams and Ewes, the horny buggers… and probably the sick looking ones — whatever’s wrong with those I don’t want spreading around the rest of the Imaginary Flock… Hmm. If I’m starting afresh, I should probably incorporate some of these fancy new ways of accessing Imaginary Sheep data from your mobile device. Probably add in some social aspects from Flockbook and MyFleece whilst I’m at it…

The next morning, I got absolutely no sleep whatesoever, and the Helper’s Union had refused to give me the final tally until their salary demands had been met.

Next time I want to sleep, I’m just going to use tablets.

¹ Who’s with me sheep farmers? Eh? EH?

Another video I’ve come to adore and give serious consideration towards adopting; Weezer’s Buddy Holly accompanied by a dancing troupe of Ferrets.
Watch it, bounce along to it’s happy little melodies, giggle a bit, then replay it.
And replay it.
And probably replay it again.

Google Chrome Frame is an IE6 plug-in that will render any html page (that contains a specific script tag in the page’s header) with the full majesty of the Google Chrome engine, giving the late browser adopters the chance to view some of the more advanced modern web pages in glorious standards compliant CSS3-o-vision. Unmodified pages, those without the script, would be left to be rendered in the savage wasteland that is Internet Explorer 6. This is great news for those users in corporate environments that still require IE6 to to function – but still want access to popular sites such as YouTube that are now starting to scale down their IE6 support.

Who actually *needs* IE6?

‘Why do so many corporations keep hold of such outdated software?’ you may ask. A lot of the usual reasons/myths are there – the perceived cost, outdated hardware that cannot support newer browsers; the majority, to be honest, wrong.

However, one viable reason is that a lot of companies are bound to various bought-in web-based management and customer support systems that simply cannot function in modern browsers. A large portion of software out there, developed at a time when the only viable browser choice was Microsoft, and tied into a plethora of MS-only components and controls, have not moved with the times and allowed for the next generation of browsers to work with their systems. Their solution? Only allow IE6 to be supported. The corporate sectors and their reticence to upgrade (in part due to restrictions imposed on them by their software suppliers) have been widely reported as one of the reasons for the longevity of IE6.

Having worked in IT departments in the past, I feel that I can speak on behalf of a goodly portion of them when I say that, by and large, most departments want to upgrade browsers. They might not necessarily care about standards compliant code and how it renders in relation to other browsers, but actively enjoy the extra security enhancements that newer browsers provide. They love the fact that the gaping maw of security loopholes can be plugged up in IE7 and 8. It makes their lives easier not having to clear up the mess that security exploits in IE6 leaves them susceptible to. They can’t get enough of that sh*t. It’s not the IT departments that are preventing the upgrades. Usually it’s because their hands are tied by the requirements of their software.

The Downside

If I have a concern, it’s that in my experience, some of the companies that have developed this software for IE6 alone, have a… failure to prioritise (yes, I’m putting that nicely). They’ve had 4 years –FOUR! – since the first announcement of IE7 to upgrade their software to allow for modern browsers, but instead have been… what? Tracking bugs? Adding more superfluous features into their mix in a bid to catch up with more progressive software houses? Putting their fingers in their ears and loudly shouting whenever anyone mentions the HTML5 spec?

Whatever it is, up until these last few days, there were quite a few development houses out there becoming more and more uncomfortable about the fact that their clients are starting to enquire about upgrading their outdated software. If they wanted to retain their business, they were going to have to look into spending some actual cash and look into upgrading the system wholesale. It wasn’t going to be easy. The software is a mish-mash of old ActiveX controls and outdated programming methods. The initial site developers have left and no-one knows how to use their impenetrable code.

With the news from Google, there’ll be a huge sigh of relief as they inform their tech support guy to tell their customers to install this virtual ‘get out of jail free’ card, oh, and whilst they’re at it, up the annual licensing costs as well, will you? Economic downfall and all that.

Google have come up with an excellent viable and workable option for allowing IT departments to have some way of allowing their users access to the corners of the web that IE6 wouldn’t go. They’ve also (‘incidentally’, I’m sure) found an excellent method of gaining access to a large portion of the market share that Firefox and the other browsers have no current chance of getting into. What they’ve also done, however, is give a quick and easy ‘out’ for lazy developers that have no business providing modern web software, and potentially extending the lifespan of many woefully inadequate web applications that should have died years ago.

Look at the web stats of IE6’s share of the market over the last few months. There’s a steady and noticeable drop there that I’d like to see continue – but I have a nasty suspicion that this may no longer be the case for a good while.