Real time webpage comparison in different Explorer Versions

With the recent release of Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft has added some subtle changes about how the HTML web pages are rendered. So the new challenge is: how to upgrade web pages that work in the old IE 6 to work in the newer Explorer 7 and 8 versions?

Fortunately, Microsoft has released a new tool to help migrating websites optimized for Internet Explorer 6 to the new Explorer 7 and 8: Expression Web SuperPreview.

Super Preview allows real time webpage comparison of the HTML rendering using different Explorer versions. Both webpages are simultaneously displayed, overlapping the output of each Explorer window, so you can detect (and correct) even the most subtle difference of Internet Explorer!

List of image input ports sorted by image quality

Many people gets confused about which are the best image inputs to plug your gaming console to a High Definition (HD) TV. Even I was confused about the tv input ports not so long ago.

For all these people I'm listing all the TV image input formats sorted from the better input format to the worst (some of the input ports are of the same quality, but we need to list them).

HDMI > VGA > COMPONENTS > SCART > S-VIDEO > COMPOSITE > RHF

What's the number of IE 8 users?

Did you wonder how is Internet Explorer 8 doing? You can take a look at the real time market share of IE 8 since the new version of the web browser was released.

It's interesting that there was an usage drop of IE 8 with users going back to Explorer 7. But with the so called compatibility view button (which renders a webpage in IE 8 like the previous IE 7 would do) there shouldn't be any problem at all. More info about this here.

And now, the number of Internet Explorer 8 users continues growing steadily.

Google boosts long tail searches with 2 improvements

Google has recently posted at its official blog 2 new search result improvements. These improvements are essentially as follows:

  • An improved algorithm to suggest related searches, which will simplify how users refine the search towards more specialized terms (that is, search queries composed of more search keywords).
  • Longer descriptions at the search result snippets under the title of the pages when the user inputs a long search query (with more than 3 search keywords). This makes sense, as the snippets provided with longer queries could be too short to understand the keyword context.

The increased importance of long tail searches and keywords

And, what's the main change in Google from an SEO point of view? Basically, these new improvements in Google search results will increase the effectivity of the searches composed of many search terms (the so called long tail searches), because the user will find the results easier to find and more relevant.

A search performed with more than 3 keywords is considered a very specific long tail search and thus:

  • With such specific queries, you will be facing less competing pages and it will be easier to achieve good positions in search results.
  • The bounce rate of such specific queries tends to be low: the search terms are so refined that the content has to be exactly what the user is expecting.
  • Long tail searches are the kind of searches with the highest conversion rate at e-commerce websites: the potential customer knows perfectly what he is looking for.

So, do you have information about a very specific subject and want to create a webpage about it? Now that Google improves how users will manage search results of these kind of searches, it's the time to boost your most accurately targeted webpages.

Besides long tail searches with lots of keywords are not so frequent, you shouldn't underestimate the importance of these specific and refined queries, specially now that Google boosts these long tail searches.

Free and open source software listing

Fortunately, nowadays there are plenty of quality free software to perform many PC tasks. I recently talked about some of the best free open source applications. And here are some of the best free apps listings.

Open Source Living is a website with an excellent design and a complete and accurate classified listing of free open source software.

FOSSwiki (Free and Open Source Software wiki) is a wiki based website that you can update with any new free and open source application.

Sevenup: say no to the old Internet Explorer versions

If you ask me about what web browser to choose, I would suggest you to install Firefox because its customization capabilities and ease of use, or Chrome because it's really fast loading webpages.

But I'll have to admit that Microsoft Internet Explorer has been improved a lot in its latest releases (mainly because its interface was a copy of inspired by the graphic interface of Firefox). And now we are very close to the improved Internet Explorer 8 release.

There's an interesting open source javascript project that encourages users to upgrade user versions to Explorer version 7 an higher: Sevenup. Add this simple line of javascript and then you can even require the upgrade to access your webpages, or leave it just as a suggestion for outdated users.

Another similar project is the IE6 Upgrade Warning which also features translated warning messages and a carefully designed layout to encourage users about updating their web browsers.

It seems like a good initiative for a safer web browsing (and to reduce the headaches of website designers).

Gmail undo send

Have you ever sent an e-mail and immediately thought that you should have aborted that sending? Google has thought the same and has included this feature in Gmail as a part of the Google Labs options: the undo send feature.

If you enable the undo send labs option, you will have 5 seconds to click the undo send button. Most sending mistakes are discovered immediately after sending an e-mail, so 5 seconds would be enough. No more wrong recipients, and mispelled words!

Don't forget your e-mail attachments

My most common mistake is to send an e-mail with a missing attachment, which is followed by an embarrasing "Subject: the attachment" email.

Combine the previous feature with the useful Gmail Labs forgotten attachment detector and forget about this common mistake.

Send only emails when your mind is enough focused

There's also another feature to avoid sending something you later regret: Mail Goggles tests your mind with some simple math problems - if you are too tired working overnight to solve such problems, you better have some rest and retry sending that later.

With all these Gmail features, I hope all our e-mails become error free from now on!