In a move that couldn't make the fellas in the Portland office any happier, Google announced that they will no longer support Internet Explorer 6. Beginning March 1, users of IE6 will notice that certain Google services, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites, will stop working well and eventually won't work at all.

Internet Explorer 6 has been a major headache for web developers everywhere. IE6 is well-known for bugs and incomplete, inconsistent, and often incorrect support for Web standards. Hearing that Google is beginning to phase out their support of IE6 gives developers around the world more confidence to do so themselves and encourage their users to download more recent browser software such as Internet Explorer 7 or 8, Firefox, Google Chrome, or Opera.

Google Apps senior product manager Rajen Sheth recently wrote, “The web has evolved in the last ten years, from simple text pages to rich, interactive applications including video and voice. Unfortunately, very old browsers cannot run many of these new features effectively. Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.”

Even Microsoft itself won’t be supporting IE6 in its own Office Web applications. However, though Microsoft has been encouraging Windows users to update to IE7 and IE8, it intends to support IE6 through 2014.

Google recently announced the launch of their Site Performance feature as an addition to their webmaster tools. The new tool shows you information about the speed of your site and gives suggestions for making it faster. We are always conscious of page speed as we build sites; users won't stick around to view your content if they have to wait for your pages to load. Not only that, but faster sites engage users, leading to better conversion rates for things such as purchases or email signups.

The Performance Overview shows the average time it takes for your site pages to load and rates your site against average speeds across the Web. You can delve into specific pages to see what their exact load time is, and see Google’s suggestions for improvements. All you need is a Google account to set your site up to use the webmaster tools. It’s a great collection of tools for developers, webmasters and anyone with a website.

You can set up a Google account here.

Do I need a Newport or Newport H2? Which sandal is best for hiking?

We recently added the ability to compare products on the KEEN website to answer questions like these. Shoppers can easily add products to their comparison chart from the product wall, detail page and search results page.

The chart displays a photo of each product being compared along with bright green dots that clearly show the features of each product in an easy-to-read format. To give shoppers the most flexibility, the cart can be printed, saved to a KEEN account for later use, or emailed to the customer or a friend. Shoppers can also buy products directly from the chart! It’s a friendly way for KEEN to help customers compare lots of important information and make informed purchases.

Behind the scenes, extensive CSS work allowed us to make the comparison chart information rich and easy to read. When more than three items are being compared, the chart automatically adjusts to a scrollable frame for easy viewing, and the printed version maintains the same clear format. Check out KEEN Footwear to compare products now.

Through our experience and research in building blogs for clients, we now recommend using WordPress over other customizable blogging platforms. Since its inception in 2003, WordPress has become the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used by hundreds of thousands of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

Using WordPress’s publishing platform allows us the freedom to create customized, unique blogs without having to reinvent the wheel for each project. Best of all, by allowing template customization, our clients’ websites and blogs can share the same design aesthetics. Creating a seamless look between the two allows our clients to communicate with their consumers through a blog, while maintaining the impact of their website.

We’ve recently built blogs for SmartBank and KEEN using the WordPress platform. The SmartBank Blog has enhancements including pictures of the authors and a built in RSS feed feature allowing users to sign up for email blog updates. The KEEN Blog features the same navigation and background as the ecommerce site and an RSS feed.

The WordPress platform also offers a number of free and easy-to-use plugins. We’re currently building a mobile website for a client and implementing a plugin to automatically divert blog traffic to a mobile-friendly version of the blog. By simply uploading the files to the clients’ server, their blog will be instantly converted. And, of course the look and feel of the mobile blog is customizable too!

You can learn more about WordPress benefits here, or feel free to contact us to discuss adding a customized blog to your website.

1.3 billion people can access the Internet from their mobile phones, making the mobile web a new marketing channel predicted to generate $150 billion by 2011. Building a mobile-specific version of a website is important because of the different needs. Mobile users want a quick-loading site that provides important information like directions or contact info.

With recent advancements in mobile technology, you can still provide a rich user experience, balanced with an attractive fast-loading site. Because a mobile website is usually a stripped down version of the full site, most code can be repurposed for the new project.

If you are ready to create a mobile-specific website, here are a few tips:

• Keep it simple – provide simple pathways to information, as it is more difficult to maneuver a mobile device. Divide content over multiple pages to keep each page as friendly as possible.
• Make contact information and directions easy to find and available on each page of the site.
• Scrolling on a mobile device can be tedious. Repeat navigation at bottom of each page so users don’t have to scroll back to the top.
• Use brief, descriptive text and few graphics to aid in load time. Make sure the graphics that you use are small, optimized thumbnails.