How to move the newsletter subscription block to the footer in Magento 1.4

The Magento 1.4 update provides an effective way of modifying themes that keeps changes separate from the default files through the use of the layout.xml. This allows for layout changes to be kept in one location. For a full explanation of this see ‘The better way to modify Magento layout“.

Classy Llama’s article provided the answer on how to move the newsletter signup from its position in the left column (within the blank theme) to the footer. Continue reading “How to move the newsletter subscription block to the footer in Magento 1.4”

Adobe Contribute and Google Analytics Code Don’t play Nice

The standard Google Analytics code contains auto-detection for HTTP/HTTPS. Unfortunately Adobe contribute enforces a level of XHTML compliance that exceeds the level built into the Analytics code causing corruption of the HTML, leaving “)); at the bottom of a page after it has been edited.

The solution to this is to remove the auto-detection and document.write. Read the Analytics Help Forum Archive for more details.

BT Yahoo! An Outdated Browser

Talking about outdated browsers I’ve been working on a Magento project over the past few months and facing serious styling issues with my clients browser set up.

BT Yahoo!’s browser is custom Internet Explorer based on an outdated version of IE. However the browser reports itself as the most updated version of IE on the system. This means that the browser could be reporting itself as IE8 and in doing so misses any code served specifically to the older software.

What made the problem worse was the inability for us to recreate the situation here as the older version of BT Yahoo!’s browser is no longer available. The only solution to this was to have the client post us the setup disc for installation on a VM.

With this in place we could identify the display issues and with a little help from Firebug and an IE5 – IE7 mindset, we were able to fix the issues.

I’ve not been able to locate usage statistics on BT Yahoo!’s browser, which is a shame as I’m quite interested to know. If the core of this software is based on an outdated IE then this is a serious security issue here – there is a reason the older browsers are replaced over time. The BT Yahoo! browser itself will not work with the latest banking software.

If the response from this browser is that it is IE 7+ then Google’s drop of support message won’t get through. That really is a shame as the power of Google could really help get the message across to all users to keep their software up-to-date.

Internet Explorer 8 Officially Becomes World’s Most-Used Browser

I’m not saying it’s the best browser out there but it’s certainly not the worst.

What the stats are saying though, is that IE8 has become the World’s most used browser.

It is a good sign that there has been widespread take up of the lastest IE browser. I’m hoping this means that users of older browsers such as IE6 are upgrading.

Microsoft supports the recommendation to move off Internet Explorer 6.

“Modern browsers such as Internet Explorer 8 bring benefits for customers and developers alike.”

As both a internet user and developer I say “Here,  here!”

Internet Explorer 8 Officially Becomes World’s Most-Used Browser

Google Drops Support for IE6 – Hurrah!

Happiness is a web developer reading that Google is dropping support for IE6.

That is me this afternoon as I received the news from Google that they will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

Google will start with their Docs suite and move on to Google Main and Google Calendar. By showing Apps users the message that they should upgrade their browser the number of users on outdated software should certainly fall.

In my opinion, this can only be a good thing; for internet users, for website owners, for web designer/developers, for all.

The excitment of it all!

Just got my Amazon order through. God am i excited. I want the world to stop turning so that I can sit and read for a week. Solid.

Not going to happen though is it. I’m mean, world stops turing and we all stop staying attracted to the earth and go flying off into outerspace. extreme – but you know what i mean.

Back to the books. my wish list has had the Zen of CSS book by Dave Shea and Molly e. Holzschlag on it since i heard it was about to be published in the UK. The website that started it all (www.csszengarden.com) is fantastic and taught me not only how to use cascading style sheets but also that there is no limit to the creativity that can be appliad to a standards compliant website. It’s helped me up my game.

So the book came today, along with designing with web standards, Jeffrey Zeldman (see this book everywhere) and cascading sytle sheets 2.0 programmer’s reference, Eric Meyer (thank the lord for amazon and it’s add on selling!). So there’s four names that really are synonimous with webdesign now-a-days. I’m pretty sure these books are going to be fantastic. Flicking through them I really do believe they were the right combination to buy. Lets just hope I get the time to read them.

I’ll keep you posted.