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Mozilla released Firefox 3.5 today. 3.5 delivers greater web standards compliance with support for HTML5 and CSS3. It's also much faster that Firefox 3. I would recommend all Firefox users download a copy.

Meanwhile a few weeks ago Apple released a new version of it's web browser, Safari 4. Recent benchmarking tests have shown that Safari is the fastest and most standards compliant browser out of all the big browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome). And yes even faster and more standards compliant that the just released Firefox 3.5.

Anyway both Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4 are available in Windows and Mac versions.

By the way if your using Internet Explorer (any version) I would recommend switching to either Firefox 3.5, Safari 4 or Google Chrome. All of these browsers are vastly superior to Internet Explorer.

There is a growing movement on the Internet to discontinue support for Internet Explorer 6. Here are some sites all about stopping support for IE6:

• Bring down IE6
• Phasing out support for IE 6 across all 37signals products
• Quirksmode - To Hell With Bad Browsers — the sequel
• Stop living in the past

Microsoft has officially released Internet explorer 8! I recommend this for anyone who uses Internet Explorer 6 or 7.

Microsoft has spent a fair bit of time working on improving standards compliance and now finally IE passes the Acid2 web standards test in Ie8 standards mode.

On a related note... Please, if your still using IE 6, please upgrade. Your using a 8 year old browser which doesn't support modern web standards and is now 2 versions old. :(

Link building rap video transcript

Once again thanks to Nick Evans for finding this video.

SEO Design Video transcript

Thanks to Nick Evans for finding this video.

A quick shout out to the School of IT who are really getting into some new media technologies and have made a great video page to promote their school.

I was having a look at our corporate website statistics and thought I would share some numbers.

The percentage of website visitors who use Internet Explorer 6 is now 27.7%. If we exclude internal University traffic then this number drops to 23.2%. This is good news for web developers who have for a long time suffered from the headache of having to code for a browser with such poor standards compliance.

It's a bit 'old news' for those on the bleeding edge of web technology but Microsoft has released the second beta of Internet Explorer 8.

The Seed Conference website is a beautiful example of the use of typography on the web. Proof that you don't need images to make a website look good.

Here is a few quick tips on designing HTML forms.

• Use the <label> tag to name your fields - this makes your code more semantic and also makes forms easier to fill out (e.g. browsers often process a click on a label associated with a radio button as a click on the radio button)
• Use different input field types when appropriate e.g. radio buttons, drop-downs, text areas etc
• Place field labels above the related field and left align them - eye tracking studies have found that using labels above their related input field allow users to capture the field and label in the same eye movement
• Indicate required fields and special input requirements. The de facto standard for indicating required fields is to place a red asterisk (*). Also try and alert the users of errors in their input before they submit the form (can be achieved via JavaScript). However do also build input validation into your server side form processor just incase the user doesn't have JavaScript turned on
• Use helpers - use javascript to help the user to enter certain types of data. For example you can use a JavaScript date picker/calendar to help a user enter a date, but be careful to allow more advanced users to enter these values manually.

More:

• CSS Tricks - Label Placement on Forms

In an effort to try and balance out this blog a bit away from all the <insert Google product> posts, I though I might post about some usability testing software DPM has been using as part of our interim review of the University's corporate site. The app is called Silverback, runs on Macs (sorry Windows guys) and cost about $50.

Silverback helps you track how users use your website by recording what they on screen as well as using the built in web camera and microphone found in most Macs to capture facial expressions, the direction the user is looking and spoken comments. Admittedly it's not quite as advanced as (very expensive) eye tracking software/equipment but for $50 who is complaining.

Also for fans of easter eggs have a go at resizing your browser window and see what happens to the vines at the top of Silverback's website.