As a web developer, it is VERY impotant to check how your website looks in various browsers and screen resolutions. A problem has arisen when developing on a Windows Vista machine and its inability to install IE6. The first thing I did is attempt to install my old favorite “MultipleIE”, but I got an error as soon as I attempted to open a version of IE6.

Luckilly there is an option available to run IE6, but I will forwarn you, it requires about 1.5GB of hard-drive space and will expire in a month. When using MultipleIE, it was a smaller download and provides even older versions of Internet Explorer.

First of all, head on over to Microsoft and download the VLC Winows image of Microsoft Windows XP with IE6 installed (download it here). This file is about 421mb in size and will extrat to the 1.5GB in sizeI previously mentioned. To use this file, make sure you download and install Microsoft Virtual PC, which is now free to use (download it here). You should be able to run the VHD file from the Virtual PC.

Honestly, my site gets hit by about 4% of the time by a Windows IE6 browser, so my concern to get this browser functionality is minimal. Plus IE6 interpretation of the box model causes me headaches even tough I usually avoid it all together by some small tricks. These tricks were previously discussed in this post.

As some may have noticed…well probably none..but anyhow, the design has slightly changed. I have never been a fan of fixed divs on a page and that feeling was brought back after having fixed divs on this site. So I removed all of them, aside from the color bar on the far left. So now everything is more traditional and is floated.

Concerning the color bar on the left side, you may have noticed that there are a lot less colors to choose from. There were close to 200, but I really felt that choosing anything but the default detracted from the design. So I chose some colors and refined them to reflect the look I wanted for the site. I think I may set a random feature if a cookie is not set, but we’ll see.

Let me know what you think! And don’t forget to vote!

I was working on a particularly annoying ASP.NET custom control today and someone asked me what I was listening to. “Nothing!” I said, because I wasn’t really listening to it. Then I realized that I was in fact listening to a movie. I had the movie playing on my computer, but it was minimized so [...]

I just got out a particularly frustrating meeting today and I feel like I need to explain myself out about how the “World Wide Web” (WWW) should work and how it is losing the battle in effectiveness.
In the WWW there exists many pages, obviously. In each of these pages exists links and menus to other [...]

When I develop in CSS, I make a habit of removing all predetermined padding, margins, or borders by simply declaring this at the top of my CSS file.
* {
     padding:0;
     margin:0;
     border:0;
}
Beginners learning CSS will commonly run into the problem of random spacing issues because every element has some form of formatting associated with it. [...]

Today I found out that our baby who is due March 20, 2009 will be a girl and we are very excited! However I was looking at our old website at http://www.theblazekfamily.com and decided it needed to reflect a more playful look since we are having a baby.
The idea is based upon recent posts concerning [...]

As you may have noticed on this site, a color scheme can be selected on the left and it will be remembered as you navigate the site. It will even be remembered for a months time, or however long I would decide to have it set.
Simply put, setting a cookie is the perfect way to [...]

In regards to my previous article concerning dynamic CSS, I have elaborated a bit further concerning the endless possibility of its uses. While writing that post I had made about 8 color schemes available to you. Now, however, there are over 200 color schemes to choose from. Each color scheme is held and maintained on [...]

While working on this site,I decided that it would be cool to have the ability to change the color or design of your website. This thought was quickly diminished when I realized that it would mean that I would need to create a new stylesheet for every color option imaginable….ugh….
What I decided to do was [...]

While in the process of redesigning this site I came across an idea that I thought would be cool, but I found that it had its flaws. What I am talking about is identical to the effect you see on the left side of this page. The effect?
Floating a transparent image over links, yet have [...]