It’s aims were noble: more privacy, reliability and flexibility.

Why Does IE6 Cause So Many Problems

Internet Explorer is a very popular piece of sotware. It is included in distributions of Windows and is the default web browser. This means that all home users and particularly office users will have it as their default browser when they first start using Windows. According to Market Share from Net Applications, it is still the most widely used web browser, with 22.08% share of the market.

The reason it causes so many problems is because it is so old and full of vulnerabilities and lack of support for modern web standards.

Why Won’t People Upgrade?

Many web developers have become totally fed up with the frustrations of testing and developing for IE6 and are forever bemoaning people to upgrade to either a different browser or a more recent version of IE. If you find know somebody who is running IE6 on their personal PC, you could probably convince them to upgrade.

When it comes to office users, the problems is not that people won’t upgrade, it’s that they can’t. A survey by Digg in August 2009 revealed that 3 out of 4 IE6 users were using this browser because they had no choice.

Office Users and Corporations

Large companies and particulary Government organisations all over the world rely on Internet Explorer and force their employess to use it. Since it is a standard part of Windows, it is supported by Microsoft and they will guarantee to support it until 2014.

Unfortunately, the software contained many bugs, flaws and failed implementations of web standards. Web developers were forced to introduce “hacks” and workarounds to get web pages to work as expected in Internet Explorer 6.

However, due to bad coding techniques and lack of foresight by these developers, many of these workarounds are not forward compatible. Companies may have invested in 10 year web projects back in 2001. At that time web developers could only work with what was released at the time. And that was IE6. There was no competition back in those days. Indeed, if Firefox had not been released, IE6 could very well have remained the only web browser available today.

It is difficult to find a case to convince IT administrators to invest in upgrading. While you may quote savings of 25% on future web development tasks, is this really significant in comparison to the potantial cost of updating business-critical web applications?

In a nutshell, if all the IE6 installations in the world were upgraded tonight, there would be a lot of broken web applications tomorrow morning. For a hospital or a school or a government department this is unacceptable. For them it is much easier to continue to use IE6 rather than invest time and money making sure applications work in more up-to-date versions of IE.

What Should We Do About It?

Some massive sites on the internet such as Digg and You Tube have publicly discussed the idea of blocking IE6. Sites like these probably don’t receive a lot of traffic from office users (or at least they shouldn’t) so blocking these users probably won’t cause a lot of impact.

However, what if a site like Google decided to block IE6? It is fair to say that Google is well used by corporate users and it would cause a whole lot of trouble if this ever happened.

Until Microsoft do something about forcing corporate users to upgrade IE6 we are going to have to continue to support it. So just get used to it!

A Classic Captcha

It is probably not unreasonable to say that everybody who has ever used the Internet has come across a Captcha before, even if they did not know that is what it is called. Just to get everybody up to speed, a Captcha is an image of a word or random text that you have to type into a box to verify that you are a human.

Captchas on the web are a pain for visitors. As hackers and crackers become more sophisticated, Captchas need to become more difficult to break. If you regularly see Captchas that you cannot solve then you are not alone. It is not just people with physical or visual impairments that struggle with Captchas, what about people with javascript or images disabled? Or what about people using mobile phones?

So we know what the problems are with Captchas, but what are the alternatives?

Image Recognition

Kitten Auth – Asking you to Recognise Images

Instead of having an image of some text that you type into a box, you will see a selection of pictures or photographs. You will be instructed to “click on the pig” or “choose the red flower.” So long as you follow this instruction correctly, the system will verify you as a human.

For

• Harder for a computer bot to recognise a picture than a string of text

Against

• Still requires the use of images, so a problem for visually impaired users
• Usually requires javascript to be enabled
• Only a certain number of images can be used, so eventually they will start to be repeated

Sound Recognition

This is often provided as an alternative to regular text Captchas. A user listens to a word or a string of letters that are spoken and types them into the box for verification.

For

• Using it as an alternative for text Captchas doesn’t impede visually impaired users

Against

• Very difficult to implement technically
• Still open to attack by bots that can recognise sound
• If used by itself will discriminate against deaf users

Multiple Choice Question

You add a short sentence with a missing word to your form and give your users a few options to choose from to fill in the gap.

For example you could use “I have a ______ car.” The options could be “red”, “house”, “monkey” and “spoon.” Only a human would be guaranteed of getting the answer right.

For

• No requirements for javascript, sound or images

Against

• If a bot randomly guessed an answer, ther is still a 25% chance it will guess correctly.
• There is a limit to how many questions you will be able to use. A bot could be programmed with all the correct answers.
• It may prove to be a problem for users who do not speak you native language

Hidden Form Elements

This solution sounds technical but it is actually quite simple to implement. Many bots scan the source code of your page for form elements. They give all these elements a value depending on what the field name is. For example if you have a field name called “email,” it is not difficult for the bot to guess what type of data is required in that field.

If you introduce a dummy form field into your form and hide it with a style sheet, the bot will not know it is an invisible field and will insert a value into it. You will find it easier to trick the bot into filling in this field by calling it something like “Name” or “URL.” You can hide a form field by using the style attribute display:none;

On processing the form, any submissions that have a value for the hidden field can be regarded as submissions by a bot and investigated or discarded.

For

• Technically, it is very easy to implement
• No reliance of javascript or images, but does require stylesheets to be enabled

Against

• As soon as a spammer becomes aware of your system, the bot can be modified to avoid filling in the field

Filtering Content

Akismet Can Cleanup Your User Generated Content

In my opinion, the future of preventing spam is about analysing what is being posted. Spammers are using the form on your website in order to post their content and links on your website. The most common areas are blog comments, wikis and forums. Therefore it is useful to think about filtering these posts themselves rather than validating the form that was submitted.

Akismet is a system designed to do just this. It is produced by the people who created Wordpress and it analyses the content of what is posted to determine if it is likely to be spam. The system has analysed billions of messages and is highly effective. You do not need to store anything on your own server because Akismet handles eveything remotely.

Akismet is very popular on Wordpress blogs but can be integrated to analyse any user submitted content. It won’t stop bots from submitting registration forms, but you can still block any content that they might submit.

For

• No need for installation or storage of messages
• Very, very accurate

Against

• Relies on an external service, so it is beyond your control
• Not free for commercial purposes

In Summary

Google’s Difficult Captchas

Despite the many problems associated with their use, Captchas are very prevalent on the web. This article is intended to make you think twice before you blindly drop in a Captcha. How many potential visitors (or even customers) are you going to lose by putting such a barrier in their way? You need to decide if the trade off is worth alienating a large group of potential visitors, or is a more intelligent solution available?

Accessibility is just as important on the web as it is in the real world

Creating accessible website has never been as important as it is now. Accessibilty used to be about making sure your website was compatible with screen readers, used by people with visual impairments. These days an accessibile website is now more about creating a user friendly website for everybody, whatever their needs.

Why Make a Website Accessible?

The web is becoming more about rich media, audio, video and AJAX. The bottom line is that you want as many people as possible to be able to use your website. There are several situations when thinking about making your site accessible will help you:

• The use of mobile phones to access the Internet has exploded in the last few years. Many have limited support for Flash and Javascript, and they have small screen resolutions.
• 6% of all web users don’t support Javascript, either because they have it turned off or because their web browser doesn’t support it. (Source: The Counter, December 2008 statistics.
• Browsers such as Lynx do not support images. All browsers have the ability to switch images off. Would a visitor be able to use your website effectively if they were not able to see the images?
• Supporting users with diabilities. Whether they are visually impaired, or are unable to use a mouse and rely solely on the keyboard, or touch screen. Many countries have laws that make it illegal to discriminate against disabled people. Link to law article.
• Search engine spiders need to be able to access every page on your website, just by following links. They cannot enter terms into a search box and they cannot choose options from a drop-down box. Any page that is inaccessible will never feature in the search results.

How Do I Make My Website Accessible?

The W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative announced on 11 December 2008 that version 2 of its accessibility guidelines were finalised. They are a great resource for learning what steps to take to make your website accessible. Some of the steps are basic and very obvious, but there are many that you may not have heard about before.

This list outlines some of the more important steps that you should take to ensure that your website is accessible. Most of them should not be after thoughts, but things that you consider as you build your pages. Take a look at the W3C’s site for an exhaustive list.

Audio and Visual Content

Sites like Youtube are making an effort to make their videos more accessible to people who either cannot see them or cannot hear them. Subtitles (or Closed Captions) are a good idea for deaf visitors. It is not just about disbaled people however. What if I don’t have a sound card installed on my computer? Always provide alternatives. A text version of any audio is essential.

Don’t Confuse With Colour

Make sure text and background have a suitable contrast level. This is a basic rule, and doesn’t just affect people with visual impairments. There is a reason why black text on a white background is so popular.

Don’t highlight errors by simply changing their colour. For example if a page features a form and that form is validated on the client-side before it is submitted, ensure that any errors are highlighted clearly. This should include a text-based warning rather than simply changing fields colours to highlght an error.

Decorative Graphics

Never use graphics as spacers on a page. Use CSS for this, as it was intended. Any decorative images should be implemented in a way so that blocking them doesn’t affect the use of the page.

Make Text Readable

Text should be at a sufficient size. Additionally, the user should be able to adjust the text size using their browsers text size controls. You should never block this function.

Ensure headings are clear. The use of proper heading tags should ensure this.

Use A Proper Page Structure

Keep all your content and layout information separate by using stylesheets. Not only will this help people who diuse screen readers and text-based browsers, it also helps keep your code cleaner and easier to manage. It is easier to make layout changes if all the presentation data is an an external stylesheet.

Avoid Using A CAPTCHA As Much As Possible

CAPTCHAs are designed to prevent automatic registration by bots. They require the user to identify some obscured text to ensure the visitor is a real person and not a machine. Some argue that they are very effective. Few would argue against them being an accessibility nightmare. Decide if a Captcha is really necessary. For blocking comment spam, perhaps Akismet would be better.

Navigation Must Be Easy To Use

Navigation is something that needs a lot of thought put into it. Every page on your website must be accessible. If the only way to access your pages is through a javascript drop-down menu or a Flash menu, you need to rethink. This type of poor navigation doesn’t just impede disabled visitors. What about search engine spiders? What about people who don’t have the Flash plugin (still 1% of Internet users).

In Summary

These are just a few of the reasons why it is essential that your website is accessible. Not only will your website meet local accessibility laws, it will be spidered by search engines much more frequently and easily. You will find your traffic levels increase. You see, by creating an accessible website, everybody wins.