Website Designing Amarillo Blog Articles

It seems as though each time that I get in the middle of updating my websites, I get busy on customers' sites and no longer have much time to finish my own sites. But that is okay! :)

The new layout for this website will be a partial return to a theme that I used about ten years ago. For business employees and others like myself who work on computers all day, our eyes get tired of seeing too much white, and so the dark borders are a welcome relief from eye strain.

This website is primarily aimed for the customers who are apt to use my web design services — businesses — and since businesses use desktop computers, then it is sensible that this website be designed for desktop computers. Some of my other sites are coded for mobile devices; examples are Allied Driveline Amarillo Welding & Machining and LarryGowdy.com.

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Automated Website Creation Software

December 05, 2017

Back on March 15, 2013 I commented "One of the main causes of poorly coded websites was due to people using automated website creation software". Over four years later and the problem has not improved; it has gotten much worse. I am now seeing so many of the 'build your website online for free' websites that I have chosen to simply and immediately tell my potential customers that their sites must be rebuilt from scratch. It is no longer even possible to de-bug the automated sites.

It's a shame that many people have invested hundreds to thousands of hours trying to build a 'free' website, but still the sites don't work like they should, and the automated coding is purposefully anti-SEO which makes the sites not only useless but also a business liability.

But on the bright side, my customers very much appreciate it when I build them a new website. :-)

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Website Updates

December 05, 2017

For about a year I have been making numerous little changes to my business, but now I am in the process of finalizing the changes. One of the changes will be seen in my websites' layouts. I have over a hundred web pages to update, so I am expecting around February 01, 2018 for the pages to be finished.

Too, the hobby websites that I have used for research are also being updated and configured for a new focus. I am anxious to finish this site's updates so that I can then begin creating some pages that are very important to a lot of people (I may make a couple of the pages as high-end, or maybe just close to high-end).

One of the several reasons for the recent changes is the worsening online security problems. I stopped accepting online payments about two years ago due to an unacceptable amount of fraud (the previous 1-2% had jumped to over 50%). The latest security problems are troubling, and at present the only plausible solution is to further tighten-down my sites as well as my business.

Most all of my business customers may not notice a difference of how payments are arranged, but some new non-business customers might not understand customary business transactions. Generally, my business model is returning to what I used in the 80s and 90s, which worked very well back then, and will work just as well today.

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SomaFM Free Online Radio

May 01, 2017

Of all the many online radio websites online, there is only one that I listen to now: SomaFM. The two main reasons for my liking SomaFM are that [1] it plays excellent music that is unlikely to be heard anywhere else online, and [2] no ads. I first discovered SomaFM years ago while working with a fresh installation of Linux that had no music files but did have the Amarok player that streamed online radio. In recent days I have found myself listening to SomaFM's Drone Zone more often than my own music.

In the past I paid for an annual subscription to a different radio site that promised to remove all ads, but after I paid for the subscription, the site still ran blinking ads for its own products. I, of course, did not renew my subscription. :-) Another online radio station had pop-up ads that triggered my anti-malware software: I quickly stopped using that site too. I support SomaFM, not to get rid of ads, but because the ads are already gone, and I like that.

SomaFM online radio currently has 33 stations to select from, with each playing a very wide selection of good music that you will likely not hear on other sites.

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The Rise and Development of illumos Operating System

January 10, 2017

It is profusely rare to listen to an individual speak of a technical topic of which the individual has personal firsthand experience and expertise. The Rise and Development of illumos Operating System video is utterly outstanding for Bryan Cantrill’s history and purposes of illumos as a 'non-fork' of Sun/Oracle. At about minute 50, Cantrill illustrates some of the terminal commands like zfs, sfcs, and zone which had me excitedly laughing and saying 'ahs' and 'ohs' before the speaker voiced his own. The video has a few less-than-family-orientated words, but spoken with humor.

While watching the video, I excitedly ran to tell my wife of illumos and of Cantrill's presentation, of which she also found to be remarkable (maybe we are not quite normal ;-) ). It is growing more rare every day to find an individual who can actually talk about a topic without the individual quoting from books. Individuals who have firsthand experience with complex topics can excitedly describe the topics at length and while using words that prove that the individuals know their stuff; a thing that scientists and philosophers cannot do, but Cantrill did. So for me, I was literally thrilled, excited, and uplifted to hear Cantrill's speech.

I had not been paying much attention to the illumos operating system, but I will now. Microsoft® appears to have abandoned desktop software that is suitable for businesses, which at present has a lot of us concerned that — within five years or so — we may have little choice but to begin converting business desktops to the Linux® operating system. Linux has some advantages over Windows®, especially Manjaro Linux, but not yet enough. The change from Windows to Linux will not be comfortable, so we are putting it off as long as possible. The illumos operating system, however, might be our answer if Microsoft does not return to producing desktop software.

One big hurdle at the moment is the reconfiguring of online business programs to work within Linux. Using Linux's Wine and virtual boxes solves some problems, but not all. The next five to ten years will be interesting, to see whether web designers and app programmers choose to continue restricting their apps to only work with Windows, or to become better standardized to work with all browsers and operating systems.

Give illumos a look. It just might plausibly be the business operating system of the future.

Oh, something else: when visiting the illumos website, I peeked at one of the pages' coding and performed a very quick 'test' of the code: I then smiled, laughed out loud, and happily smiled wider. Yeah, even their HTML code looks good. Wow, I'm impressed! :)

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Best Free HTML Editors for 2017

January 07, 2017

One of my favorite hobbies since the early 1990s has been to download and try different software. I have enjoyed thousands of different programs, and of all of the code/HTML editors that I have tested, the one that stands out as being the very best for my needs is NotePad++. NP++ is fast, light, stable, crisp, it has numerous different text themes available, it runs fine in Windows XP through 8 (probably Windows 10 too), it works well within Linux's Wine, it has support for numerous different languages, and NP++ is the text editor that I use over 99% of the time.

The only semi-disadvantage of NP++ is its skin colors not being quite what I would prefer. My personal preference is for a program to have dark gray menus and scroll bars instead of the light gray that NP++ has for default, but everyone has different tastes, and not everyone can be 100% happy with anything. I am 99% happy with NP++, and I think that is good enough. :)

My second-favorite HTML editor is Adobe's Brackets. Brackets has the modern dark gray skin that I prefer, additional themes can be installed from the extension manager, and Brackets' sidebar has the advantage of being able to drag and rearrange files into the order that the user prefers. Some individuals may like the live preview option, but for my needs, I never use it myself.

Brackets is an excellent editor, but the one main reason why I do not use Brackets more often is simply because it has a different feel. Brackets' character display is slower than NP++, and Brackets refreshes the screen after being minimized, which is not a problem, but for me, the slower and awkward processing of JavaScript is noticeable and distracting, and I have a quirk of JavaScript itself feeling... how should I say it... cheap and with unsteady patterns of execution (one of the primary reasons for why I cannot use Windows 10). Different languages process data differently, and I prefer the C++ of NotePad++. If NP++ uses any JS, I do not notice it. One of the big advantages is that Brackets is built on JS, which enables the user to easily modify the program to suit the user, but, unfortunately for me, the advantage is also a disadvantage. Nevertheless, I still use Brackets on occasion when I need to use two or more editors simultaneously.

Give NP++ and Brackets a test; they are both very good.

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Opera Browser 42 Review

January 03, 2017

All browsers have their own unique advantages and disadvantages, but each year the disadvantages appear to be decreasing. Today, the disadvantages are so few that the choice of which browser to use might boil down to being which one main advantage best suits the user.

One of the improved advantages in Opera is the built-in option to use Opera's free virtual private network (VPN). Different people use VPNs for different reasons, but I like it because it helps to hide my IP address, which helps to prevent my being tracked by advertisers. My IP address has been recorded as one that shopped for turtleneck sweaters a few years ago, and so now, whenever I view a website that uses a common advertising tracking script, I see display ads for turtleneck sweaters. Having ads on a web page usually do not bother me — I have developed an 'ad blindness' of habitually not looking at ads — but I do dislike knowing that I am being personally tracked and targeted with ads related to my history of Internet use.

Opera's VPN has fully hidden my IP from the advertisers, which now lets me visit sites without seeing ads for turtleneck sweaters, and which makes me feel much more comfortable than if I had used a different browser to view the same websites. Comfort and a degree of improved privacy are two good advantages of Opera.

Opera's VPN usually redirects me through a server in Canada, which does slow the speed of how fast a website will load, but usually not much, and never bad enough to be annoying.

Opera also has the option to use a built-in ad blocker, which works pretty well. The Internet is very rapidly becoming excessively intrusive by websites inserting tracking scripts onto visitors' computers, and the scripts are the ads themselves. Some people interpret the scripts as being harmless advertising, but some of us interpret the scripts as being highly unethical, impolite, and one tiny step away from being full-blown malware. Blocking ads not only helps to increase the speed of page loads, blocking ads also helps to block malware.

I like Opera's speed dial page, a lot. Using the speed dial page lets me have my favorite links all in one place without having a favorites toolbar showing while visiting websites. For my uses, Opera offers me a streamlined and comfortable user experience.

I am not much comfortable with Opera's theme colors, but apparently it is good enough because I have not yet given much effort to change the theme.

Opera is set as my default browser on the computer that I use over 99% of the time, and on another computer that I use for very specific business needs, Opera is used for automatically loading a list of business-related sites. All browsers have their advantages, and for me, Opera's advantages are the ones that I prefer for general surfing.

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Windows XP and Windows 8.1 Update Woes

April 17, 2014

A sizable number of my customers have asked me about XP's end of support and whether they should upgrade to Windows 8. My recommendations depend on what the customer needs and how the customer is using XP. If your company is dependent on software that is designed specifically for XP then you might or might not be able to upgrade because Windows 8 does not support all of the old software titles. Some individuals have chosen to keep using XP on one computer that is not connected to the Internet, while using a different computer for online work. As an example, my wife uses a Linux computer for online work and an XP for her work computer that has software that is not compatible with Windows 8. I use a mixture of Windows 8, Windows XP, and Linux PCs, each being chosen for a specific need. It isn't much convenient, but it works and does what I need.

The recent Windows 8.1 Update did not include a start menu like what many articles had promised: no surprise there. All businesses must cater to their customers, and since the vast majority of people today use mobile devices then Microsoft must place emphasis on mobile software. Don't blame Microsoft - or Apple - they are just doing what they have to do to stay in business. For the rest of us with keyboards, however, we are facing difficult choices of whether to stay with XP, accept Windows 8's uncomfortable GUI, maybe pay gouging prices for Windows 7 (if a full retail DVD can be found at all), or choose Linux. Unless Microsoft gets a wild hair and creates an operating system specifically for business desktop computers, the era of Microsoft business software is drawing to a close. The Libre Office suite is now pretty darn decent, as is the Thunderbird email client, and the Manjaro Linux distribution is perhaps the most stable operating system that I have seen in a very long time. Me, I would prefer to continue using Microsoft software, Microsoft always made the best software, but if Microsoft stops making the software - as it already has - then the only option is Linux/FreeBSD. The next few years will be interesting for desktop computers.

As if software woes were not enough, too many customers are now specifically asking for operating systems and software that are "not Microsoft, Apple, or Google". A current social fad is to promote a specific genre of 'minorities', and a whole lot of people are very unhappy with the fad, unhappy enough to say no to all things Microsoft, Apple, and Google. I don't know what the software giants are thinking; I even asked, but I received no reply. Interesting times for sure. If you cannot use Office 2003, and you cannot find Office 2010, and you do not want to suffer eye damage with Office 2013, then Libre Office or Apache's Open Office are the only reasonable choices. If Windows 8 is unacceptable for your business, then Manjaro or Ubuntu Linux are reasonable alternatives. If you decline products from the software giants because of their social views, then again Linux is the most reasonable choice. Mozilla/Firefox recently fell victim of the social fad too, so we are rapidly running out of alternative choices.

Use what works best for you, and try not to sweat the small stuff (yes I know it is difficult to ignore). There are ways to harden XP, and there are ways to make Linux do most everything you might want, but it is going to take a bit of effort for us all. It's time to face the hard decisions and choose what is best for you. The next few years will be interesting.

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Website Updates

November 2, 2013 (2:43 a.m.)

The first eight months of 2013 were crazy-busy with work, leaving me almost no free time to update this site, and I spent September mostly tending to personal chores that I had put off. After updating over a hundred pages in October this site and several others are pretty much back to normal, and I can now begin working at updating and uploading about half a dozen other sites. When it rains it pours... one emergency after the next, one unforeseen problem compounded on another, but little by little it's all getting done.

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Do You Run the Hosting Servers?

November 02, 2013

I am an electronic tech who has serviced many tens of thousands of electronic devices, and I know through firsthand experience to pay someone else to maintain my servers. I have a nifty little server sitting next to me that is only plugged in once or twice a month just so that I can enjoy playing with the settings: I don't even use my own servers, so the answer is no, I do not run the servers that my customers' websites are on.

Too, I charge a fair amount of money to service my customers' servers; I do not much enjoy spending dozens of hours each year on my own server for free. Servers need someone to watch over them 24/7 and be ready at a moment's notice to perform emergency repairs, and since I have better things to do in life rather than babysit a server, I therefore choose to pay other people to babysit their servers. Paying a host around $100.00-$300.00 a year is less expensive than the electricity to run my own server (not to mention the costs for additional data lines, IP addresses, and hardware replacements), and the host keeps high paid IT people on-hand 24/7 to make all necessary repairs at no additional cost to me or my customers. Sweet!

Except for a few businesses that need the security of an in-house server, the better choice is almost always to purchase a hosting package. If your company uses an in-house server with the company domain, still I recommend adding a Cname/Aname to the domain to have all website traffic sent to a separate host so that the company's server will be better isolated from possible security concerns.

I have always tried to point my customers to what works best for the customers, and I strongly recommend using someone else's servers rather than one's own for online content. I want my customers to be happy (I get a lot less emergency phone calls when everyone is happy), and I keep my customers happy by using well-established hosting.

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Web Design Tips and Opinions

Updated March 15, 2013

This page is a sub-directory of Website Designing by Larry Gowdy. The directory was previously used to show our web design customers examples of the Joomla!® content management system. The Joomla CMS page has been removed due to it no longer being needed, but I have recreated several of the articles that had become popular. As time allows I will post additional articles of web design tips and my opinions of various web designing techniques.

Please visit the new First Impressions website where the more lengthy articles are being posted. The main Web Design home page has also recently been updated so as to better show some of our projects and customers' sites.

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Viruses and Dangerous Pop-ups

Created on Saturday, 29 September 2012 - updated March 15, 2013

Clicking on a pop-up ad in a website is likely one of the most dangerous things a person can do online. The majority of the computers that I have removed viruses from had become infected when the customer clicked on a pop-up.

In recent weeks I have spotted several new scams, one of which claims that your Flash® player needs updated, and yes clicking on the pop-up inserts a trojan into your computer. My advice is that if a website pops up any ad of any sort, do not click on it. Some pop-ups lock the browser and will not allow you to exit without first clicking on the pop-up. If you cannot exit a website without clicking on the pop-up then simply right-click on your taskbar, open the task manager, and end the task (whichever browser that you are using).

Not all websites are honest or safe, and yes the pop-ups are often worded dishonestly with the aim to trick you into clicking on an ad. Some websites have deceitful pop-ups that lock browsers and will not allow you to exit the website unless you agree to allow the 'ad' to scan your computer for viruses: yes the pop-up is a scam and very dangerous.

The best method of preventing viruses is to immediately exit any website that has a pop-up ad. Do not click on the ad, do not click on anything, stop using the website, close the browser tab, and if possible contact the website's owner to let them know that their website may have become infected with trojans. Some websites become infected without the webmasters knowing, so tell the webmasters about the problem if you are able to contact them safely.

Thirty years ago if a person created a deceitful and dangerous scam the public would immediately rise to have the criminal arrested and jailed. Times have changed; today's criminals are almost fully free to commit any crime they desire. Many videos now have ads that shift location when the mouse button hovers over the ad, with the result often being that a person will mistakenly click on the ad when attempting to close the ad box. If a website uses deceit and trickery to get clicks on ads, then the public should rise up and refuse to ever again visit the site.

Please surf safely.

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Windows 8 OS Release and Review

Created on Sunday, 28 October 2012 - updated November 02, 2013

Just in case anyone doesn't know, Windows® 8 Pro is now available on DVD or for download at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/buy?ocid=GA8_O_WOL_DIS_ShopHP_FPP_Light.

Until January 31, 2013 the download price was $39.99, and the DVD was priced at $69.99. The prices were far too good to pass up! I purchased a DVD and two downloads, plus after verifying that a couple older programs are compatible I installed Windows 8 on a fourth computer. I also installed Stardock's® Start8 start menu which works much, much better than I expected.

Until recent months I was a die-hard XP fan. After tweaking a Vista® Pro computer I discovered that I liked Vista a little better than XP even though Vista is a little slower and less stable. I continued passing on Windows 7 because of the transparencies on the task bar (just something that I don't want to see each time that I look at a task bar). Windows 8 no longer has Aero, so for me Windows 8 is ideal. I am extremely happy with Windows 8!

When ordering and downloading Windows 8 through the advisor, if the advisor shows a "cannot connect" then you will want to download the latest advisor file from Microsoft®. I sat at one computer for a dozen hours thinking that the Microsoft servers were just too busy to log in, but after downloading the latest advisor file I was able to purchase Windows 8 immediately.

I had previously used the preview versions of Windows 8, and though they looked okay I wasn't fully sold on the idea of saying bye-bye to XP and Vista, but now with the release version installed I am not looking back. Windows 8 speed is still not quite as fast as a tweaked XP, but it's very close and plenty good enough for me. Now that Windows 8 has cached startup files for the programs that I use frequently (like Word® 2010) they load and start almost instantly like they did in XP.

In the weeks to come I will be creating a few Windows 8 reviews for here and on my First Impressions site, but for now it is enough for me to say that I believe that Windows 8 is a worthy replacement of XP. If an individual is currently happy with Windows 7 Aero and does not have a need to further sync computers and devices, then perhaps Windows 8 is not yet important enough to upgrade to, but for many of the rest of us I think Windows 8 is an ideal choice.

(Update October 3, 2013: After almost a year of using Windows 8 I am as pleased as I was from the beginning. On my newest computer I have Windows 8 loaded with minimal programs, and I have become accustomed to using keyboard shortcuts instead of a start menu (I did not bother to install the Stardock Start8 start menu). Speed, stability, appearances, usefulness, utilities, Windows 8 has it all.)

(Update November 02, 2013: The new Windows 8.1 appears to be a good stable upgrade. The only difficulty that I have seen so far with Windows 8.1 is if a user's computer has outdated software that is not fully compatible (some shell apps need to be updated prior to updating Windows 8). Windows 2000 was a huge improvement over all previous versions, and so far I continue to view Windows 8/8.1 as being the best version of all.

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Windows 8 Supports 16bit Programs

Created on Wednesday, 04 January 2012 - updated March 15, 2013

The developer preview of Windows 8 has shown to have several nice features like the ability to install and run older software. For the fun of it I installed Office 97 just to see what it looks like, and I was pleasantly surprised that Windows 8 has dedicated support for old 16bit software. The screenshot of Word 97 in Windows 8 was taken while in Word 97 (PrtScn / ctrl-v, saved to a Word 97 file, opened with Word 2003, copied to Jasc® Paint Shop Pro, resized, logo added, and saved as a JPG). I just have a lot of fun tinkering with old software, especially when it's in the newest operating system. ;-)

Office Word 97 in Windows 8

For myself I would rather use Office 2000 or 2003 rather than 97, but new CDs of Office 97 can be purchased for under $10.00 and work well for someone wanting to learn Microsoft Office. Office 2010 shines in Windows 7 and 8 and would be the best choice, but of course the cost is quite a bit higher.

One thing that I find amusing is that Office 97 has a more modern appearance than the default user interface of open source office suites for Windows. Some of us complain a lot about Windows and Office not being as perfect as we would prefer, but we do know that there are none as good as Microsoft's.

I passed on Vista, and I hesitated for years on Windows 7, but I believe that I will likely buy Windows 8 early: it's looking good.

[Update September 28, 2012: As odd as it may appear, I have begun using a tweaked Vista Business on my business computer, and I like it better than XP, 7, and 8 preview. At present I am so satisfied with Vista that I am not quite as anxious to upgrade to Windows 8 as I was before. Windows 8 is due to be released next month; maybe I will wait for service pack 1 as an excuse to procrastinate. ;) ]

[Update March 15, 2013: As mentioned in a previous article I have now upgraded all of my computers to Windows 8.]

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Brief Review of Opera Browser 11.61

Created on February 16, 2012 - updated March 15, 2013

Download the latest Opera browser at http://www.opera.com.

An interesting thing happened last week: I noticed that I am now using Opera’s® latest browser considerably more often than any other in Windows XP. It is normal for me to run Internet Explorer® 8, Firefox®, and Opera at the same time while working on websites, but I usually tend to prefer Internet Explorer for reading text on professional sites, and Firefox is often a good choice for audio/video and its password management (Firefox seems to often handle log-in forms better than other browsers).

The main things that I am liking about Opera are its general appearance (the default skins are clean and can easily have their colors changed to suit the user), Opera makes use of hardware acceleration (screen display speed is very good), stability appears to be quite good for the types of sites that I visit, and I appreciate the convenience of some of the web tools (DragonFly and the simplicity of right clicking on a page to validate the code through W3C).

The latest Opera browser has an improved scroll that appears to be as smooth as Internet Explorer for text as well as for screens with graphics. All major browsers are now of a similar quality when used for specific tasks, and often we will choose which browser works best for the sites that we visit most often. On one page that I used for comparing browsers, Firefox was so fast that the scroll was more of an almost instantaneous jump rather than a scroll. I will continue using Firefox for web pages where I want Firefox’s advantages, but Opera is the Goldilocks ‘just right’ compromise for many of the other sites that I visit.

Microsoft’s Pandora® is in my opinion the very best online radio/music available. Up until recently Pandora did not work in Opera, but now it does, and Opera stores the log-in information correctly so that I don’t have to type my log-in each time when listening to Pandora on a web page (yes I’m lazy). It’s a bit odd in its own way; recently I let my Pandora subscription expire and for various reasons I was not anxious to renew, but now that Opera has made it easy for me to log into Pandora, I will likely renew my subscription soon.

This is the cool thing about the browser wars, that the competition not only improves the quality of all browsers, but the competition also helps to improve customer satisfaction among the competitors, which bounces back to increase everyone’s business. Opera and IE may be competitors, but Microsoft will get more of my money by having Pandora work with Opera, and Opera gets my support for it supporting the sites that I feel are most important to me. Competition is a tremendously good thing, especially when it simultaneously focuses on the cooperation and bettering of one’s competitors. Stay competitive while making your competitor stronger, which makes you work harder to create a more competitive product: it’s the stuff of greatness.

Appearances, speed, stability, accurate rendering of web pages, and tools for people who want tools, Opera is doing a very good job of bringing them all together in the latest browser. If you haven’t used Opera in a while, give it a try, you might be happily surprised at how good Opera has become.

[In recent months I updated my work computer to Vista Business (yes on purpose!), and I am now using Internet Explorer 9 almost exclusively. On my XP computers I do still prefer Opera. Operating systems can be more of an influence on the choice of browsers than the browsers themselves; Firefox in Linux, Opera in XP, and Internet Explorer in Vista and 7. From what I have seen of IE 10 in Windows 8, I am of the opinion that the other browsers are going to have to work very hard to catch up, but that's good because the competition will surely make IE 11 even better.]

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Which Browser is Best?

Created on March 15, 2013

A lady recently told me about people on television speaking poorly about Internet Explorer. Several years ago the only two usable browsers in Windows were Netscape® and Internet Explorer. Both browsers had their good and not so good points, but the thing to remember is that the Internet was still relatively young and a browser had to — or at least attempt to — read poorly coded HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP on millions of websites. Internet Explorer usually did a better job of properly displaying websites than Netscape, which is one of the reasons why Netscape lost users and is now all but dead.

One of the main causes of poorly coded websites was due to people using automated website creation software. The early software was notorious for never creating accurate code, which simply meant that a browser had to second-guess how to display the website, and again Internet Explorer was the best at second-guessing website code. The early Internet Explorers required coders to second-guess Internet Explorer as well, but for the 99% of Internet users who never had a need to know anything about websites except whether a browser displayed the website correctly, Internet Explorer fulfilled its job.

The arrival of Firefox has likely been the single biggest influence on browsers. Firefox is a true competitor with Internet Explorer for speed, stability, and second-guessing website coding. Firefox is not perfect — no software is perfect — but Firefox is very good, and the goodness of Firefox has forced other browsers to improve their programming so as to remain competitive. Google's® Chrome browser and Opera are also competitive, and now that we have four main brands competing against the other, the result is that all four browsers continue improving. Apple's® Safari® is also good, although for me I am of the opinion that Safari might best be chosen if a person prefers its appearances; I myself have not found an advantage for Safari on a Windows computer.

Another big plus is that some modern website creation software — or at least the ones that I have seen from Microsoft — can now create code that is reasonably accurate and sometimes surprisingly accurate. Browsers do not have to second-guess website coding quite as often as in the past, so all browsers can now do their job a little better. Nevertheless, there are still countless millions of web pages that are poorly coded — especially through the 'free' website companies — and browsers continue having to second-guess. Here in Texas there are government websites that can only be viewed through Internet Explorer because of the many thousands of errors in the website coding (which only Internet Explorer can second-guess), and there are some corporate websites known to me that can only display in Firefox because the website's coding errors were purposefully modified to not work in Internet Explorer. There is no such thing as a better browser if the website itself cannot be viewed except in one specific browser.

Too, if a person is using an old Internet Explorer (version 8 or earlier) then yes a 2013 version of Firefox or Opera would of course be better for speed, but if the person were using a similarly old version of Firefox and Opera then no, they would not be as good as an old Internet Explorer. It is not fair to judge cars, airplanes, computers, televisions, software, or browsers unless the comparison is of the same year of production.

It is now 2013, and the four main browsers for 2013 remain to be Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome. All four of the browsers are good, and each browser has its own advantages for what the user wants to use a browser for. The only way to know which browser is best for you is for you to install all four browsers and then determine for yourself which one you personally like best. The bottom line is that Internet Explorer 10 is an excellent browser, and the negative talk on television was not accurate.

Now that I am using Windows 8 almost exclusively I rarely use any browser other than Internet Explorer 10. I am very pleased with IE10 and at the moment I cannot imagine the possibility of any browser being much better for any purpose. It will be interesting to see IE11 when it is released years from now.

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Ethical SEO

Created on March 15, 2013

In the past it was relatively easy for an unscrupulous website to be ranked well on search engines by employing dishonest tactics. Search engines have improved and can now detect most dishonest tactics, but some of the techniques can still trick a search engine into ranking a bad website highly.

On occasion I run across an individual who wants to use any means possible to achieve a high search engine ranking, and the person will not hesitate to lie and cheat to get the ranking. In my opinion if a potential customer is willing to be dishonest with their website, then there is no reason to assume that the individual would not also be dishonest with their customers and me.

Ethical SEO is building a website that earns high search engine rankings because of the site's quality and up-front honesty of presentation. A good website will earn high search engine rankings because the site is good, and there is no need to cheat; ever.

A humorous thing is when a potential customer calls and wants to be ranked #1 on Google 'right now,' and the individual does not want to spend more than around a hundred dollars. Wow! Apparently, some people have not given attention to who their competitors are. Major corporations invest hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars each year into search engine optimization, and it is extraordinarily unlikely that a hundred dollar website will get ranked above the corporations' sites, especially not within one day or one month, and even if I or any other SEO professional could pull off such a grand stunt, we for sure wouldn't do it for a hundred bucks. Yes I can work a site up above most major sites, but it will take time, and a little more than a hundred dollars . ;-)

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Updated August 03, 2018

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