Pleasanton Web Design

Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 8 was released a few months ago, and since then my automatic updates have been bugging me to install it. In fact I did intall it on one of my machines when it first came out. I do web design and development, and in order to do cross-browser testing I have a number of machines with a wide variety of browsers and versions of those browsers installed. With the possible exception of Netscape 7 for the Mac, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a buggy browser. Here are some of the problems I’ve had:
1. Frequent crashes
2. Many popular websites not functioning or displaying correctly (there is a compatability mode, so maybe I should have had that enabled all of the time).
3. Inconsistent cookie handling.
4. Frequently incomplete downloads. More often than not, when downloading files to my computer using Internet Explorer 8, the downloaded file would be incomplete and unusable.

On the positive side, IE8 does appear to comply with css standards better than any other microsoft browser to date. I will ONLY be using Internet Explorer 8 for cross-browser testing. It’s not ready for the big time. Add it to the list of microsoft problem products like Windows Vista and XBOX 360. Only a monopoly can get away with putting out such junk on a huge scale.

I have never really understood why web applications, like Drupal, that have the capability of producing search engine friendly (SEF) URLs don’t have them enabled by default. Who doesn’t like SEF Urls?

To Enable SEF URLs in Drupal 6, follow these steps:

1. enable mod rewrite – this can be done through .htaccess or httpd.conf
2. from admin: enable site building>modules>paths
3. enable site configuration>clean urls
4. create aliases site building > url aliases > add aliases

You have to add aliases manually using this process. Perhaps Drupal has, or will have a module that is more automatic in the future. We can only hope (but not hold our breaths)!