I am an avid Mac user as I believe they are the best platform for developing and designing on.  However there has always been one main problem, that of how to test your sites in Windows environment without switching to a Windows machine.  Well I think I have the answer – meet Parallels desktop for Mac.

It is very important to test sites in a Windows environment as the majority of the visitors to a site will be using Windows.  For example looking at the statistics for this site 68% of visitors were from Windows machines and the statistics for Equal Design show that 61% of visitors are from a Windows environment.  However please don’t confuse what I am saying here about what I wrote the other day about not developing for Internet Explorer 6.  I am talking here about making sure sites look fine on more modern browsers such as IE7 and IE8 (even though I hate them just as much!).

But testing sites in a Windows environment when using a Mac to develop sites is often difficult.  I have been pointed to a number of tools on the web, however all of which never seem to quite do the required job.  It was about 6 months ago that I learned about ‘Virtualising’ machines, which is what Parallels desktop does.  It creates a Virtual Machine on your Mac with the operating system you choose.  Off course in order to install an operating system you still need to valid discs and product codes.  You can also have as many virtual machines as you like.  For this reason I have installed 2 instances of Windows XP.  One with IE7 and one with IE8 so that I can test sites in both version to make sure they display correctly.

It has lots of really cool features, perhaps one of the best being the ‘coherence’ mode.  What this does is, instead of running the virtual machine inside its own window you can run the machine alongside all your other Mac applications which means that to someone looking at your computer they would never know that it is a virtual machine.  Also you can drag and drop files between the Mac and Windows environments as well as being able to copy and paste between the two.

It really is excellent value at just under £50 and I would recommend any Mac user who also needs a Windows environment to take it for a test drive at least as you can trial it for 30 days without charge.

I  am about to list my Dell Inspiron 530s top sec desktop PC on eBay and therefore I thought I may as well list it here as well to get a little more exposure and give the opportunity to give a little more details about the unit with some more photos.  So here goes…

The unit is a 12 month old Dell Inspiron 530s slimline desktop PC with the following specification:

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz
• RAM: 4Gb
• Hard Drive: 300Gb SATA drive
• Graphics: 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT
• Card Reader: Built in 19 in 1
• Wireless: Wiresless PCI card installed
• Accessories: Mouse and Dell Keyboard
• Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium

This is a really high spec desktop PC that is great for high end tasks such as video editing and working with large photographs etc.  However it will also run all the usual programs etc. and is good for web surfing with built in wireless antenna as well and running Office etc.

The unit is is excellent as new condition and comes with power cable and all the install discs that dell supplied with the unit.  The asking price for this system is £250.

This may seem a strange article coming from a web designer, but yes you have read the title correctly, I think that web designers should stop developing sites that will display correctly in Internet Explorer 6.  In this article I will discuss why Internet Explorer sucks and also why I think that developers should stop developing sites for IE6.

Let me start by saying that Internet Explorer is a terrible web browser.  Why you might ask?  Well quite simply it just does not follow the rules that are set out by the W3C in terms of interpreting code into a web page.  What I mean by this is that you can develop a site that looks near on the same in all other browsers (such as Firefox, Safari, Opera and many more) but in IE6 it looks pants.  It just doesn’t handle transparent PNGs at all and floating elements never seem to display correctly at all.  And last but not least its old!

In fact one of the tests that you can run on a browser to test how ‘standards friendly’ it is, is called the acid 3 test.  When running this test on Internet Explorer 6 it scored a pathetic 12/100.  Firefox 3 scored 93/100 and Safari 4 scored 100/100.  Yet another reason why not to use or further support IE6.  Looking at my web stats for this site I  can see that 16% of users are still using IE6 and for the stats for Equal Design that figure drops to just 9%.  Numbers using it are decreasing and I believe that if web developers stop developing for IE6 these numbers will drop off massively.

There are many that argue web designers should still be developing sites that will display in IE6.  Their argument for this is that there are a large proportion of the web population that are still using IE6 – why I don’t know as it is free to upgrade or use a different, more modern browser such as Firefox.  People are not still using Windows 3.1 for goodness sake so why are people still hell bent on using a browser that is getting on for 5 years old.

So why do I think that we should stop developing sites for IE6?  Well the main reason is that the longer people keep their sites looking the same on IE6 then the less likely people are to change or upgrade their browser.  I mean if they see things looking OK all the time then they are less likely to take the time to get a more up to date browser to fix any visual elements that looks poor.  Therefore by making sites compatible with IE6 we are merely prolonging its life.  Lets take a stance to get rid of it once and for all and stop developing sites for IE6.

Holidaying this year was going to be different as we have Harry.  Never of us really felt like going anyway for any length of time and therefore we decided on a couple of days away, whilst Harry stayed with Grandparents.  However we did decide to splash out a little seen as this would be the only holiday we would get this year, so we decided on the Scotsman Hotel in Edinburgh.

Our trip started out a few months ago when we have to make the decision of how to travel to Edinburgh.  Having done some digging around on the Internet my wife found a pretty good train deal there and back which would be far cheaper than the car.  We therefore option for that since the hotel was in the centre of the city and all the attractions etc. that we wanted to visit were in walking distance.

We set off for the station at around 0700 in order to miss the traffic and arrived in plenty of time for the train.  So much so in fact that we had around an hours wait on the platform at Preston station for our Trans Pennine Express to Edinburgh.  The train was bang on time and the journey was great.  In fact so much so that I managed to code an entire website on the way there, a testament to how coll WordPress actually is.

We arrived at around 1130 in the morning.  Our room was supposed to be ready at 1400 and therefore we had a few hours to kill.  However we had rang previously to check whether the hotel could hold our backage until checkout which they could.  Therefore we made the small walk across the road from the station to the hotel.  After climbing a rather long set of stairs to get to the reception we were greeted by a concierge who kindly took our bags and sat us down for checkin, where we were surprised to hear that our room was ready and that we could go straight up.  It was clear that this was a a ‘posh’ hotel, as ‘Richard’ took us up to our room and explained in every detail about all the luxury services that were offered, including the ‘privacy hatch’ to the room with complementary shoe cleaning services.  There was also a mini bar (which we never touched!) stacked to the hilt with alsorts of niceties including a half bottle of champagne at £26 and a packet of Polo’s at £1.

Once we had got settled we then left for the dungeons.  Earlier in the year we have been to the York dungeons and thoroughly enjoyed the experience and therefore we decided to take a trip to the Edinburgh version.  Having used a Tesco voucher in order to get in half price, we were feeling rather smug and then the experience began.  Now don’t get me wrong there were parts that were quite scary but I think there is something about the fact that you are ready for it that really makes it not all that bad.  The overall visit however was well worth it and not only did we enjoy the rides in there, such as the vertical free-fall but also we learnt a lot about what happened in Edinburgh ‘in the older days’!

Then it was back to the room for a brew and then off the the Spa in the hotel.  The Spa was wonderful and relaxing.  A lovely long swimming pool with Jacuzzi and Steam room as well as a full gym if you wanted.

In the evening we ventured out for some tea and found a pizza express not a million miles away from the hotel.  We both enjoyed a La Reine and Sloppy Guiseppi Pizza with a bottle of red and a Banoffee pudding and that was the end of day one.

Having had a long lie in in the morning we finally set off for Edinburgh castle on the morning of day 2 at around 1045.  Arriving at the castle we joined the queue for tickets.  45 – 50 minutes later we had bought our tickets (a reasonable £13 each we thought) and headed off into the castle for a look around.  There is loads to see in the grounds of the castle making it a worthy visit.  There are also some tremendous views of Edinburgh and beyong and I managed to capture some photographs.

We spent the afternoon wandering around Edinburgh and swimming in the hotel Spa before heading out for tea at Bella Italia.  After a nice meal and a wander up the Royal Mile we headed for bed.

The train journey home the following day was as good as the initial jouney there – on time, comfotrable and about right for the money.  It was great to see Harry again when we returned home after a lovely break to recharge our batteries.

Firstly sorry to those non-geeks that read this, as it is another techy post.  Well Day 1 of Wordcamp UK is now over and with lots of different sessions, and people that I met its difficult to know where to start.  So lets start with the jounrey.

I woke at around 0312 in the morning as I couldn’t sleep (no not the exitement).  It was a bunch of rowdy drunken girls that walked past our house and woke me and from then on I couldn’t sleep.  There must be something about sleeping when you know that you have to get up early the morning after, which is probably why I couldn’t sleep.

We left on time at 0430 after a coffee and headed off to Cardiff, the venue for Wordcamp UK.  The Freelander was a good choice of vehicle; comfortable, fast and reasonably economical!  Apart from a kamikaze mini driver hogging the fast lane and some type of people carrier driven by a women half asleep the journey was excellent.  In fact we made it is double quick time to get some breakfast before things kicked off.

The first thing that stuck me, interesting I know, was the amount of attendees using Macs rather than PCs.  In fact I would go as far as saying that there were more Mac users at WordcampUK than there was PC users.  This is unusual as although Macs are growing in the community there are still more PC users than Mac users in general.

The last session of the day was when we all got to listen to Matt Mullenweg with a WordPress question and answer section with Peter Westwood also taking part.  This was interesting to hear, particularly what Matt had to say about the developments of WordPress over the coming years.

So with the day over it was time to head off to our Hotel and get some food.  It was then a few drinks and back to the hotel room for some work and then bed.  We shall see what tomorrow brings with day 2 of Wordcamp.