My tree at Carbon Grove

Thanks to the folks on the Internet Explorer team I planted a Virtual tree. I’ve made some commitments to help improve the environment (for instance I don’t drive to work any more, I take the bus or ride my bike) and if I visit my tree over the next six weeks then the IE folks in conjunction with Carbon Grove will plant a real tree.

As well as supporting the environment the site takes advantages of not only some of the new IE8 features (though it will work just as well in older browsers) but the folks at Jackson Fish Market have done a really creative job in bringing the forests to life.

This is just one of many ways you can get involved in making the world a bit better – recycling, composting, reducing your power bill … it doesn’t have to be hard (just remembering to turn out your office light or shut off your PC when you’re not using it) and over a year it adds up.

Thanks to Michael for pointing this out.

Your Windows Live ID is your passport (no pun intended) - it’s the key to a world of services (not just Microsoft – a number of third parties use LiveID as an authentication method) and you should treat it as carefully as your ATM PIN.

The Windows Live team have posted some pretty straightforward bits of advice to help keep you safe – check it out before you next log in…

Some services – such as Microsoft HealthVault – enforce some of these requirements, and sites like PayPal are encouraging users to play it safe.

Thanks to a tweet from FrankArr I’ve been playing with Digsby, a fairly new combined IM, Email and Social Networking client.

So what does that all mean?

Essentially it provides a replacement to the Windows Live Messenger and GTalk clients I usually have running on my dekstop. In that role it’s much like Pidgin or AdiumX for Mac users and does the job at least as well as they do. It still needs a bit more polish to get it on par with more developed clients for things like smileys but it does what it says on the tin (and I get tabbed chat which I love!)

The it adds on a notified for Social Networking tools like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook to let you see messages, alerts, status changes and what have you. It saves me many a wasted moment in the browser checking these things. You can even respond to some things directly, or get taken straight to the relevant item to manipulate it however you want.

Finally it acts as a mail poller for Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, POP3 and IMAP accounts – letting you read, manage and reply to email.

If it continue to evolve and deliver a stable, reliable, light footprint (resources and screen real estate) client I think it’s going to be a keeper.

It’s not going to replace Outlook (or Communicator for Exchange based IM and phone control) any time soon, and it doesn’t support Skype or MagicJack to manage all my communications … but who knows what the next build will bring :)

IE7 has been available for a couple of years, and IE8 has just gone into beta. Firefox 2 is getting on nicely with v3 in the wings and even Safari with version3 is looking pretty good on Windows. Some people even like Opera (actually, it’s pretty cool on the Mobile platform).

So why are folks still persisting in using IE6? 31% of internet users in recent reports. That’s almost a third. More than all the non-IE browser population combined.

It’s old, and it’s got some quirks. And those quirks make developers lives a misery (I should know, I spent many happy years wrangling browser incompatibility issues).

If all those folks using a version of any browser older than IE7 could just upgrade, get with the program and do their bit (it’s only a few moments to download and install and it doesn’t even insist on a legal copy of Windows these days!) then developers could concentrate on making great web applications using all the cool Ajax, Silverlight and Javascript features without having to worry about testing a load of different quirky behaviors.

It’s not just old versions of IE that are a problem – if you’re running anything older than the current version of a browser then you’re part of the problem – be it Firefox, Opera, IE, Safari, Maxthon or one of many others. The newer browsers still can’t quite agree on what standards they’re complying with and how they interpret some of the instructions in the standards (and I’ve read some of those documents… they’re not exactly unambiguous in places) but they’re better.

I’m not saying you should run business critical processes on bleeding edge beta versions of IE or the alternatives, but at least upgrade to the latest “released” version – you’ll save a lot of developers a lot of pain.

Please. Save the developers. It’s a great cause and supporting it won’t cost you much more than a few moments of your time.

In my previous post I looked at using WebSlices to expose updates to my blog but Joshua pointed out there’s a much simpler solution in IE8 if you have an existing RSS feed…

Rather than subscribe to a web slice or an RSS feed as you normally would simply drag the URL of the RSS feed to your links bar (or in Favorites add it to your “Favorites Bar” just like any other link) and thanks to the goodness of the underlying RSS platform in Vista you not only get subscribed to the feed but in your links bar you get a notification when a new item arrives (just like for WebSlices) and can even see unread and read items at a glance.

The more I play around with IE8 the more ways I’m impressed with it. Things like standards compliance and improved Javascript and rendering performance are, without a doubt, exciting – but the subtle things that are happening in the chrome itself serve as a reminder than innovation is alive and kicking on the IE team ;)

After playing with WebSlices in the run up to MIX08 and the IE8 Beta1 launch I thought I might give it a try here.

Turns out it is as easy as the IE8 told us ;)

I use BlogEngine.NET as my blogging platform but if you can edit your template the following rules should hold true… (it’s fully documented on the IE8 site as well)

<div class="hslice" id="1">

<h1 class="entry-title"><%=BlogSettings.Instance.Name %></h1>

<div class="entry-content">

<blog:RecentPosts runat="Server" />

</div>

</div>

The first line with the hslice div defines the block of code that will be presented to the browser as a WebSlice. You can have more than one on a page, but each must have a unique ID.

The addition of the class=”entry-title" to the title determines what will be displayed in the browser toolbar

The content of the entry-content div determines what will actually be polled/displayed in the slice.

You can see the code as displayed on the right hand side of the blog below the calendar… or if you’re running IE8 add it to your slices.

In my instance it’s not very pretty at the moment as the default “RecentPosts” functionality in BE.N isn’t optimized for WebSlices…. but I’ve asked how to improve it and when I get an answer the slide should magically improve.

So there you go. WebSlices. So easy even an Offbeatmammal can work out how to use them.

I first heard about XIOS (aka iCloud) about a year ago and I've been keen to have a play every since to see if finally someone would get it right.

I've wanted a portable "play and play" OS for a long time. Things like U3 and MojoPac looked like lightweight solutions but had their flaws (MojoPac still doesn't work with Vista) and going for a full VM solution like Moka5 didn't help (Internet Cafes where you can't install a USB device or incompatible host operating systems and problems getting network access from the guest OS)

Internet OSes seemed like a great idea but I've yet to find one that works well enough to deserve a return visit once I've set them up.

Well iCloud (or XIOS - I can't seem to work out what they want to call it) is the first that does a good enough job that I've been playing for a few days as I bounce around machines. In fact, I'm posting this with iCloud running and even using their Music Player to listen to BBC1xtra from the UK and test an IE app.

But nice as it is, it's still very early days. There are typos galore but on the whole it's pretty polished. And there are some pretty cool apps - Dayplan, Money Manager, Notepad and (rather bizarrely) a Balanced Scorecard app complement a collection of widgets, a desktop messenger and an internal browser instance (tabbed, supports Silverlight, Flash and anything else the host browser supports).

But there's a way to go which the development language (for you to write your own apps as a collection of XML files) doesn't quite compensate for.

No email client, the IM client won't talk to my Messenger buddies and there's no Word or Powerpoint app or a database (although these are all promised "real soon")

The other limiting factor for many is that it relies on IE. Now 90% of my time I have that available, but I also have a Mac Mini at home at the moment and would love to be able to move from one to the other seamlessly.

That leads me on to desktop sync.

In the ideal world I'd have a portable desktop I can take anywhere I happen to be working, and have the latest documents to my fingers or up to date email. In a secure, reliable manner (to allow me to work in a connected or disconnected manner) that doesn't impose limits based on if I'm on a PC or a Mac, at home in the office or at an Internet Cafe. Sadly there's no sync yet so I have to carry files on a USB key still!

Nice as it is... iCloud isn't quite my digital dream yet... it's the closest I've seen so I'll keep hoping (and Windows and OSX don't have to worry just yet!)

There is much said about standards compliance and IE in it's history. On occasion I've had some frustrations getting things to work in IE only to find it fail in Firefox or Safari.

Well, the good news is that IE is moving forwards in that direction.

Dean has just posted the details on the IE teams blog.

Every time you use the internet to find a website you're using a Domain Name Server (DNS) to actually locate the physical server. The DNS is what translates the nice friendly URL (eg offbeatmammal.com) to the IP address which identifies the actual server.

The problem is that the DNS service isn't that clever, and hasn't changed much since its inception. It doesn't help with spelling mistakes (eg google.cmo or googel.com) and it doesn't do anything to protect you from phishing attacks

Well. That was until a year or so ago, with the arrival of OpenDNS. Up until then most DNS services have been provided by ISPs simply delivering a replication of the available information with no intelligence or added value. OpenDNS offer two very valuable 'add-ons'.

The first is typo correction. If you make a common mis-spelling for a URL that doesn't have a legitimate site assigned to then the OpenDNS service simply corrects your spelling behind the scenes and you go where you meant to.

The second is an active anti-phishing solution. Using information from third parties such as SpamHaus OpenDNS checks the request and warns you if you're heading into trouble. Because the check happens at the server there is no delay while a browser plug-in goes off to check if the site is good or bad.

As OpenDNS have a very sophisticated caching solution, with none of the requirements of the legacy DNS providers (and because it's their business after all) their DNS servers are very fast.

OpenDNS is very simple to configure. In fact, there is no software to download or install as every network capable computer (no matter what operating system) can simply be set to override the default ISP provided settings with the OpenDNS server settings (there are also options for quickly setting up home and corproate networks in a totally transparent way) - it took about 30 seconds when I switched my laptop to use their servers.

Although the OpenDNS service is free to end users they will be making money by delivering sponsored results if you type in a non-existent URL that they can match in a similar way to Googles AdWords.

While the idea behind OpenDNS isn't new, unlike solutions like DNS Redirector it's free and doesn't require an install.

At the moment the OpenDNS service doesn't include additional services such as ad blocking or customization (eg specific over-rides for suspected phishing sites or common typos) but over time I can see this service evolving. For now however it's a great little solution all of its own....

I've been playing around with Silverlight again in the last few days (I know - coding rather than talking about things. It's going to do my reputation no good at all) and I wanted to do something a little neater than the basic workflow where the user is directed off to the Microsoft.com download page and has to go from there.

A quick search and I spotted Laurences article on using inplace (aka direct aka inline) install for the Silverlight control and that made for a much better user experience - the control could be put where I wanted it and the user didn't have to leave my page to install it.

That then left the little challenge of what happened after they'd installed the control. In Firefox because of the architecture you have to restart the browser to activate plug ins so there's nothing I could do about that, but in IE7 the control is usually available straight away. The problem was the page didn't know the control had been installed.

Luckily the Silverlight Javascript libraries include a test for the plug-in being present (and you can check the version number) which means it's a simple enough task to write some Javascript that loops around every 5 seconds or so and tests to see if the plug-in is there and when it is stop showing the install prompt and show the goodness that you were after in the first place.

You can download my very simple sample from here or see it in action here