The “death” of IE 6, presented by Aten Design Group at a mock funeral earlier this month in Denver, Colorado, was indeed symbolic and a long time coming. After all, funerals are supposed to be a time of sorrow for the deceased; however in the case of IE 6, we could not be happier to see the proposed ending of this aged browser.

Ask any developer, designer or quality assurance professional about the animosity they have towards IE 6, and you will get an earful about the limitations and frustration they have had working firsthand with the browser. For instance, websites that are built using current web standards practically have to be customized to work in IE 6. Designers wanting to push the limits are, well, limited, as their concepts likely won’t transfer to IE 6 very well. Quality Assurance professionals required to test IE 6 know to add plenty of extra time to the QA process. Testing a website in IE 6 is almost equal to testing two sites instead of one, as a site in IE 6 will render completely differently than it will in FireFox, IE 8 or Safari. In IE 6, content is most often misaligned or pushed down to the bottom of the page, and then there’s the ubiquitous transparent .png issue, where images appear to be surrounded by a light blue halo.

So with all the problems experienced by web professionals, plus the availability and quality of more modern browsers (not to mention IE 6 is prone to hacks), why are users still navigating the web with a 9- year-old browser?  

A few things:

• Older computers came with IE 6 pre-installed.
• Users are comfortable using IE 6 and aren’t willing to change.
• Employees have to use IE 6 at work and are prevented from upgrading or downloading another browser.
• Clients require sites to render IE 6 due to the number of users.

As of February 2010, Net Marketshare shows IE 6 with a nearly 20% penetration rate, which is on the heels of the # 1 browser Internet Explorer 8. IE 6, however, is on a steady decline.  

For a browser that is loathed by many, reduced usage could not come at a better time. YouTube is dropping support for IE 6 on March 13; UK citizens are petitioning their government to cease using IE 6; and France and Germany are warning against using any version of Microsoft Internet Explorer, citing security vulnerabilities.

Goodbye IE 6, 9 years is a long time. Users owe it to themselves to upgrade.

Need a Mobile version of your website? All signs point to yes. 

Apple released the iPhone, named Invention of the Year by Time magazine in 2007, and this October Motorola released its DROID phone, which Time named No. 1 of its Top 10 Gadgets of 2009. BlackBerry can be Bold or Curve, and Palm has its Pre. Chances are you have one of these phones and are just an index finger away from browsing the web.

According to Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, “Of the more than 1.2 billion mobile phones expected to ship globally in all of 2009, nearly 190 million will be smartphones.” They estimate this number to increase to 250 million in 2010.

Thanks to the smartphone, and other handheld devices such as Kindle and Sony’s PSP, the web has evolved to become mobile. Per Mary Meeker, Technology Analyst at Morgan Stanley, “People are underestimating how big the mobile Web will be in the coming years.” If you already have a mobile website or are considering creating one, you are way ahead of the curve. Here are a few resources available for developing a mobile version of your website sans coding skills.

MoFuse – A mobile-software start-up working with companies to create and maintain a basic site on all platforms, which is key due to lack of platform standardization.

Zinadoo – Received the Mobile Internet Innovation Award for 2008. It offers a free mobile site creation tool, free hosting and a free .mobi domain name. For these free services, Zinadoo mobile websites will display ads that can be disabled for a small cost.

Contec Innovations – A web content aggregator delivering current news, sports, finance and entertainment via its patent-pending BUZmob Mobile Media Network.

While the resources above will certainly get your mobile presence up and running, it’s important to develop a mobile content strategy beforehand. Springbox has found that condensed, simplified versions of primary sites — designed for navigating content on a smaller screen — are your best option. Next time you are on your smartphone, check out Facebook, Target, YouTube and The Weather Channel to see a few companies who are doing mobile right.

 There goes the web evolving again. This time be ready.

If you’re reading this article, chances are you are either in the process of programmatically migrating your web content or daydreaming about the day you finish a successful content migration. It’s a daunting job, and not for the faint of heart. Moving content from one content management system (CMS) to another takes lots of planning and collaboration, so pack a lot of patience.  

Content migrations typically begin with simply identifying the content that needs to move to the new system. If you’re lucky, this content is clean and ready for the trip, as is.  Otherwise, you might need time allotted to rewrite, format and create new content as well as update links and add meta data, which can be a major undertaking in itself.

Just like books in a library, content and meta data have to be mapped to their respective locations in the new CMS for automated migration. Each content and data field will be mapped from the current system to the new system, and if everything goes correctly the first time, oh wait — you can count on several content import/export iterations for your migration to be a success. But don’t worry! The dust will settle.

During each iteration, content and migration scripts will need to be tweaked and the new system cleansed, as it’s likely that some content will be less than willing to cooperate and/or will have formatting and display issues.

Be prepared to deal with stubborn content that just won’t play nice with any migration script, period. And schedule it for manual entry into the new system, post final migration.

With all of the focus on the content migration, don’t forget about any newly created content that is still being posted to the old system. This is usually a challenge for larger companies that have continual content updates. Consider instituting a change management process, so that new content is posted to both systems and nothing is lost.  This will require maintaining both systems until the new CMS is ready to take the lead and single-handedly run the show.

Automated content migration successful and completed. Dream realized.

Ever heard the saying, “if you fail to plan, you're planning to fail?” Surely the sage who first turned this phrase was speaking of implementing a sound quality assurance program. In order to test a product, software or a website, you have to have a plan in place. First, identify the problem you are trying to solve. Second, picture what success looks like.  Once you know where you are and where you need to be, the next step is to outline a testing strategy to help you accomplish your goal.   

Within your plan you will want to include the testing strategy, identify key areas that need the most attention, testing environment – dev or staging, supporting documentation such as functional specs, traceability matrixes, comps or copy decks. A large part and very important part of your plan will be the QA test cases. These can be as informal as a checklist of things to test or as detailed as summarizing each test scenario, test data to apply, expected behavior, bug description and priority and any comments about the test. The benefits of creating test cases allows the QA specialist to formally track and document each step of the test they perform noting pass or fail, and log discovered defects. One of the biggest benefits is you are less likely to miss testing something, and you can always refer back to your documentation if anything blows up.

Now that you have your test cases developed as part of the plan, it should also include a communication and distribution process for handling bugs.  It could be as simple as entering bugs into a bug-tracking system or manually entering them into a defect log.  

Okay so I have provided all the parts of a comprehensive QA plan, which includes a testing strategy, an end goal, testing support documents, test cases and bug management. What are you waiting for? Go test.