WebDunnRight Design & Troubleshooting

A few years back it was widely agreed that HTML 4.1 was the last release of the HTML family of standards.  After all, we were moving towards XML by way of XHTML, and all our web experiences would be better for it.

Times, they are a changin’.

Unless you are in the web design world, you may not have heard much about HTML 5.  You may have notice, however, that browsers continue to move forward and offer new capabilities – like Mozilla’s Firefox latest upgrades touting open video and HTML 5 support among other things.  These may spark your interest from a consumer point of view, but should also spark your curiosity about what you need to be doing as a web designer.

First, should we all adopt HTML 5 and start to move forward with it in our designs right now?  I’d say – it depends.  While the standard is not yet finalized, we do see where it is headed and we also see how browsers are starting to adopt many of the changes (click here for some of the differences between HTML 4 and HTML 5).  But this brings up an issue you need to take into consideration – adoption of new technologies by the masses.

If you have looked at any of your web site statistics, you may find that adoption of new browsers / technologies has slowed.  Don’t get me wrong, there are some that adopt right off the bat (as shown in this older IE7 / Firefox 2 adoption rate post) but others may choose not to adopt for a myriad of reasons (older hardware, distaste for change, if it isn’t broke don’t fix it mindset, etc.).  In your web statistics, you may be surprised how many IE 5 and 6 (along with Firefox 2 and other older browser versions) are hitting your sites.

You, as a web designer, need to look at the new standards and test against them to ensure what was created earlier still renders as you intended.  If you have created your code using the standards, then backwards compatibility should not be much of an issue.

The issues seem to come in when you code exclusively to bleeding edge standards, test with the latest browsers, then wonder why your site does not get the traffic / response / praise from your customer as anticipated – and they are not using your computer loaded with the latest software wizardry.  So, as we have said since design began – we tend to forget that we need to design to include the lowest common denominator.   And for me, as I’ve stated before, I think of my wonderful mother.  How would this impact her and the computer / browser she uses?

Technology is moving forward, and we must move with it.  As we move, don’t forget about others who may not be as technically savvy as you are – the folks who may not upgrade just because something new is available.  Stick with the standards in coding, but allow for others to come on board as time moves forward.  And when you get the time, be sure to look at the HTML 5 specs so you can be familiar with (and start to adopt as you move forward) what is starting to become reality.

Many of you have received new systems, either for Christmas or from a few Christmases ago. Congratulations! If you are using a Windows based operating system, starting with Windows Vista, you have a new tool in the toolbox for your use–reliability monitor. I wanted to introduce you to this tool in the event you need information from your system to better assess where issues may be with your computer.

At times we find our systems running slow or being less responsive than we remember them when they were shiny and new. When that happens, often times I would ask my customers question that centered around virus attacks, spyware, adware, malware or just general badware issues that may have caused behavioral issues with the computer. And the truth of the matter is, this is still my first line of questioning. However, it is possible to have a machine that is free from any known viruses or other bad stuff which still runs a bit sluggish or performs less than desirably.

And that’s where reliability monitor comes in. Using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can open reliability monitoring by following these steps.

Click Start
Click in the Start Search box
Type     perfmon /rel
Press ENTER.

Once you’ve done those steps you should see a screen that is similar to the one I pictured below.

What reliability monitoring is doing is monitoring your system and trending how it performs over time. On the screenshot that I provided above, you’ll notice that my system stability was the low of five earlier this year and has since climbed up to 7 1/2 or more as of this posting. Notice in the screenshot to reliability monitor is reviewing software installs and uninstalls, application failures, hardware failures, Windows failures, and other miscellaneous failures that it monitors.

By looking at the information provided to me by reliability monitor, there times where I can use this to my advantage in troubleshooting various failures that occurred over the course of time. The information provides insight into application configuration changes as well as software installs and uninstalls. If you see the yellow triangle with the exclamation mark in it, that indicates a warning of some sort. When I click on that particular area of my screen I see that Google toolbar for one of my browsers had a configuration change that was a failure. And if you see a red circle with an X inside, that indicates a failure of some type. Be aware that you can have multiple icons on any given day across any of the monitored areas.

So reliability monitor gives you the opportunity to look at what is going on with your system as events are captured and correlated along a time line. This could be very helpful when you’re trying to troubleshoot those problems that happen when you don’t expect them or those issues you can’t repeat on a consistent basis.

I hope this post has been some help to those who read! There are other posts on reliability monitor in various areas on the web. Here are a few that I like:

• Technet: Using Reliability Monitor
• Use Windows Vista Reliability Monitor to Troubleshoot Crashes
• Using the Reliability Monitor in Windows Vista
• Windows 7 Reliability Monitor

As I was working with my computer recently, I noticed I was running–at least in my opinion–a bit low on storage space. What do I mean by storage space? Well, I like to have at a minimum 10% of free space on my hard drive.

When I purchased this computer back in March of 2008, it was quite a deal. It had two hard drives, and each had 160 GB of hard drive storage. So, you would think with 320 GB of total space, I would be hard-pressed to run into a storage issue. Fast forward to 2010. I’ve been fighting storage space issues for quite some time on my D drive. My temporary solution was to move some information off of that drive onto an external storage device. While this worked handily, it was not the end solution I had hoped for. It was obvious to me I needed more storage.

Not only that, what operating system hard drive was also running low. I only had about 25 GB of storage space to spare. That’s getting dangerously close to the 10% threshold that I was alluding to earlier.

Why 10%? I like to keep some headroom on my hard drives because they are used for swap file space and free space for defragmentation. And there was no reason for both of these areas to the lacking on my computer.

You may be running into the same space issues. Without going into detail, I would encourage you to find out what size hard drive you are running and what type of hard drive you have installed. That means, do you have an ATA hard drive, an SATA hard drive, or even an IDE hard drive. Because if we look for new storage, we need to know what type of storage to get (exactly what we want to put in the machine so it fits and works – you wouldn’t put a 2.5” laptop hard drive in a desktop that has space for a 3.5” drive – and heaven help you if you get a 3.2” hard drive for your internal laptop storage!). In my case, I was running SATA hard drives (5400 RPM). I could upgrade to faster access hard drives that were SATA, but decided against this (only because of the age of my computer and the additional cost).

There are many hard drive manufacturers to choose from. Personally, I like Western Digital hard drives. So I started my hunt! As I’ve written before, there are many sites that you could start to research hard drives and other technological pieces and parts. I knew I wanted to upgrade my storage, so I looked for at least two times the storage I have currently. What I found was a pair of 320 GB hard drives that cost $55 each–and that includes shipping (so I paid a little over 0.17 cents per gigabyte for storage)!

So I was well on my way to doubling my storage space. Once the hard drives arrived, my next task was to clone the each hard drive so I lost no information. Western Digital has a very nice set of tools to do just that, and they are free. Using their Acronis software, it was easy to upgrade each of my hard drives. The only snafu I ran into was forgetting to change my power settings on my machine  so it would not go into hibernation after one hour (Note to self, don’t forget that again).

The reason I wrote this post was to encourage you to look at your hard drive space and see if you’re running low on storage as well. To do this, just open the my computer window. Once you have that window open, in the left-hand navigation column click on my computer. Over in the right-hand pane, you should see a listing of hard drives or external storage devices attached to your computer along with their storage capacity space used and available (if that is not there, simply right-click on the drive you are interested in learning more about and select properties). If you are running low on storage, why not go and look for additional storage space today?

As I write this we are in the third day after the earthquake in Haiti.  Images, videos, the sounds and the horrors of the earthquake have sunk into our collective memories.  While many of us feel a great need and compassion to give, in the hopes of helping those in their hour of great need, it would behoove us to take pause for many of the requests that we have coming in for donations.

It is noble that our government has chosen to send aid to this impoverished nation.  In my mind, it is more than noble–it is a necessity.  Having said that, in no way do I want you to think that means that we, as American citizens, should not give of our own resources and wealth that God has so graciously bestowed on us to assist those in need.

While this is not a blog post that is intended to encourage you to give, I certainly don’t want to discourage giving. The intent of this post is to merely point out the obvious–during this time of need, you will probably receive e-mail requests that are designed to get you to send your hard earned money to assist some organization in order to help the Haitian people.

And I want to let you know that you should be wary of many, if not all, of these requests for assistance. As I have previously posted on this blog (here and here), it is not hard to craft an e-mail that can send you to a phishing or a spoof site that will take your donation and put it into the pockets of some unscrupulous persons.

If you really want to give so that helps folks in Haiti, I would recommend you take the initiative and give to the nonprofit charity of your choice. This maybe the American Red Cross, World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, or any one of hundreds of organizations that can help during this time of need.

I would not suggest you give to organizations that are run by our government. Unfortunately, many of these organizations have higher overhead costs (such as management, oversight, bureaucracy, etc.) so that your dollar dwindles in its assistance power.  (Note: I’m not saying giving to government organizations is bad, I am pointing out the obvious–that you may not get the most bang for your buck.)

So during this time of great need, I’m positive Americans will rise up and give greatly.  It seems to be in our nature.  It seems to be the path we continue to choose to walk down.  And that’s (yet) another reason to be proud of being an American!

But be wary of those asking for your donations.  You may want to bypass the e-mail requests altogether, and just take the initiative to give to the organization of your choice.  Keep the people of Haiti in your prayers as they struggle through this time of great sorrow.

Welcome to 2010!  It’s a time for a new start, a new way to do things, and on and on it goes.  Perhaps you could start your resolutions with a set that starts off the year right with your computer.

Blow Out the Dust

Yes – it is time to do this.  You may be very surprised at the amount of dust tumbleweeds frolicking about inside your computer unit, bouncing off your NIC card, motherboard, and RAM chips.  Not a pretty sight!  But it is something you can (and should) do.  So boot it down, take it outside, open it up and start a dust storm.  Here’s a link with photos to generally show you how this is done: Geek to Live: Evacuate PC dust bunnies.

If you have a laptop you should clean it too.  It may not seem as simple as the Desktop computer, but it is just as necessary.  Oh, and while you are in there, get the crumbs out of your keyboard!  Here’s a link to get you started: DIY: Clean up your notebook.  It will probably be helpful for you to visit your owner’s manual or the manufacturer’s website to ensure you can take the case apart and put it back together again without damaging it (especially if you have never taken it apart before).

Back Up your Data

If you haven’t been doing this on some schedule, why not start off the new year right by doing this?  The cost is truly minimal (get an external hard drive and use some free software), and the payback is huge if you have a failure to your system (software or hardware).  Start the year off right by backing up your data!

Update Programs and OS

Make sure your computer is up to date – in all ways possible.  You could start by making sure you have downloaded and installed all needed patches, hotfixes and service packs for your operating system.  Windows users can visit http://update.microsoft.com and Mac users get started here.

While we’re talking updates, you may want to check for updates for the various software programs you frequently use (can usually be found in the ‘help’ link in the menus of your software, or you can visit the website of the program to see if updates are available).

Also, don’t forget you can update firmware for your computer hardware and chips.  For me, this is quite simple since I own a Dell – I just put in my service tag number on their site and they have all drivers and updates in one location for my hardware.  I trust your manufacturer provides something similar!

Clean out the Old

This could be temp files that you need to dump (perhaps you have read this blog before, or maybe not – I’d recommend Priform’s CCleaner) or programs no longer used.  Why not look through your Add/Remove Programs list and do a bit of house cleaning this year?

Run All Maintenance Programs

I’ve typed on this subject many times – so be sure to read older posts here for running your Anti-Virus, spyware, malware, adware, badware, and other programs you may use for maintaining your computer.  Of course, make sure you update the program definitions before you run them so you can eradicate the most recently released stuff that is in the wild (and perhaps in your computer).

I hope you start off your year with the peace of mind that comes from following the advice given above.  May God bless you in this year – and years to come!

I thought it would be best to start thinking of this before the season got too far along.  I admit it, my wife (at times) wishes she would never see another ‘old’ computer grace the doorstep of our home.  You see, folks give them to me so they can be passed on to some other person that can use them.  Let’s look at some things you need to think of when doing this wonderful deed.

Is the computer worth re-gifting? If your PC is over 5 years old, it may not be.  Technology has been moving along at a pretty good clip, so your older PC’s may not be a great gift for some (but for others, they work wonderful as a print server or file server).  So ask yourself if this is really something the grand-kids or kids will use.  If not, perhaps recycling is a better option.

Should you erase the hard drive? Probably not – the operating system (OS) is what makes the PC function and the hard drive is where it has a home.  The places you would take the PC probably don’t have the money to invest in purchasing and loading a fresh OS on the system, so if you want it reused erasing the data on the hard drive may not be the ticket.  Granted, your data will be gone, but any value the machine had may be gone as well for an older PC.

Should you erase your data from the hard drive? Absolutely. This is different from erasing the entire hard drive, but sometimes it seems like the lines blur.

“Personal information” includes your Internet browser’s cache, cookies, history; your email contacts and messages; your documents; your recycle or trash folder; and all nontransferable software. The best way to clear this is with a disk-cleaning utility that overwrites all the sectors of your hard drives, making your data unrecoverable. Listed below are examples of recommended disk-cleaning utilities.

Commercial Windows Disk-Cleaning Software:

• Blancco Data Cleaner (WAN Server editions available at TechSoup Stock)
• WipeDrive

Freeware Windows Disk-Cleaning Software:

• Active@ Kill Disk Hard Drive Eraser
• Darik’s Boot and Nuke

Macintosh Disk-Cleaning Software:

• Disk Utility (built-in in Mac OS X, under “Security Options”)
• WipeDrive for Mac

If the computer is still under a manufacturer’s warranty, you can also call the company’s technical services department and ask for specifics on how to delete personal files.
(an excerpt from Ten Tips for Donating a Computer)

To add to this, many computer manufactures make hidden partitions so you can restore your computer to the factory settings.  This could be used to effectively remove your personal data – but I’d recommend you get rid of it yourself if at all possible.  That way it won’t be in someones hands down the road who may use it for less than noble purposes.

Lastly, don’t forget any disks / software and other items needed to make the computer useful (keyboard, mouse and monitor come to mind here…).  It gives you the opportunity to clean out some clutter as well as the needed disks in the event the person using the PC ever needs them.

I don’t mind PC’s coming to my house because I can spruce them up and find a home for them (many times it is to a local organization here that places them in homes of kids who can’t afford a PC yet need the ability to get online and the skills that come with using a PC to better position themselves in today’s job market).  But what if you aren’t near me?  Here’s a thought – RECYCLE!

You can start on that quest by reviewing the page Where Can I Donate or Recycle My Old Computer and Other Electronic Products?  This is part of the US EPA’s web site and offers you some national options for recycling.  There are also some manufacturer’s options (Dell, HP and others have them) that could help you, or you may have some local shops in your area that do this as well.  Search and help others – while helping yourself get rid of unwanted clutter.

As always, thanks for reading.  If you have ideas or locations for eCycling, feel free to leave a comment.  God Bless you and your family this joyous Christmas season!

This post is really just giving props to a great resource.  I mean, I could start to discuss all the implications of spam, how spam bots go about harvesting e-mail addresses to add to their growing list of spam addresses, or even if there is a way of keeping your e-mail address from being harvested.  But, let’s be realistic.  Once one way is figured out, normally there are ways that can be worked around to find out the address, especially if you are just typing the e-mail address in as plain text through your web software or blog.

That’s where this great page comes in.  Before I give you the link I must give props to Will Bontrager.  I would certainly recommend signing up to receive his weekly newsletter and any of the many software offerings he has in his growing library.

Now for the promised link.  Will has provided a great resource for those of you wanting to cut down on spam harvesting of any e-mail address or e-mail link you may want to post.  It’s called the Advanced Email Link Generator with Anti-Spam Encoder. Now I want you to know(as does Will) that this method is not perfect, but it is better than a plain text e-mail address.  In fact, there are links to other resources you can use for harvest proof links.

My intent is just to give you some tools to help you when developing your information – and that includes giving folks an e-mail address to contact you with!  So I hope this starts you down that path.  Take care – if you have other helpful resources feel free to leave a comment and rave about it!

It’s the season of giving again.  And all the techie folks want techie stuff!  And it is a good season to find lots of bargains, so let’s talk about how to find the best gear for your hard earned money.

Before we get to all that Black Friday sales and good findings, ask yourself a question (especially if you are buying this for yourself, but it is just as important to ask the question if you are purchasing the gear for someone else) – what is this going to be used for?  It sounds like a silly question, but if all you will be doing is ripping / purchasing music for your iPod, surfing the web and reading composing e-mail, do you REALLY need the top of the line processor, video card and maxed out memory gaming laptop?  Probably not…

So how do you know what to shop for?  Well, once you know what you are using the gear for, that should make your shopping a bit easier!  If you are gaming, you will need some beefier gear than the casual computer user (same goes for those doing heavy graphics work, animation, CAD work, video editing and other processor / memory / hardware intense programs).  For those just surfing the web and working with word processing, you can probably do with a very capable machine for many dollars less than that top of the line option.

OK, so we figured out what we want to do with our machine.  Where can I find a good deal on one?  One of the often overlooked areas is Consumer Reports.  I bring that up because they offer good information on various models, and the latest issue has a slew of ratings on the latest Desktops, Notebooks and Netbooks.  I would recommend looking this over for sure.

If you know what you have been hunting for, or are working in a tight budget bracket, the site I would highly recommend is TechBargains.  They allow you to see the latest sales and coupons for Dell, HP and other manufacturers as well as allow you to see the best bargains for NewEgg, Buy.com and loads of other sites.

Finally, don’t forget about the sites that have been around and continue to offer great bargains on gear.  TigerDirect, CompUSA, CircuitCity, Amazon and many others just can’t be beat for deals and convenience.

I hope you have a great shopping season and give gifts that are cost-effective as well as useful.  Take care!

This is the second part of my series on Click Behavior.  A lot of problems and headaches could be avoided if we had some tools at our disposal to go with the knowledge we are gaining about what to click on – and what not to click on.  In this post I’m going to speak of two tools that I use, but I don’t want you to think these are the only two available.  There are loads of tools that you could use, but I can really only speak to those I trust and use.

Often times we find things using search engines.  And many search engines are available to you and I, so sticking with a single search engine is not our best strategy!  We need something that is looking out for us as search results are presented to us.  This is where my use of tools pays dividends.

Let’s say I happen to be using a search engine to research crack for a paper I’m writing.  Now, the search engine doesn’t know if I’m looking for information on an illegal drug for my paper or if I’m looking for an illegal code for some software or even if I’m looking for information on fixing a crack in my home’s foundation.  So, it just presents information on crack.  Here’s an example of what I found on the first page of results.  (Click on the image for a larger picture to review.)

The two tools that you are seeing are (1) WOT (Web of Trust – http://www.mywot.com) and (2) AVG LinkScanner (part of my AVG Anti-Virus package, but you can get it for free here).  Let’s take in WOT first.

WOT is a tool that I use that is part of a community of users keeping the web ’safe’ upon themselves.  It’s not that they don’t want others to help, I believe it is just that many folks don’t know about this tool.  You sign up and install the application (I use it as a plug in to my Mozilla Firefox browser).  Then, you get warned of dangerous sites and you can contribute to the community by rating the sites you visit.  As you could see in the image I posted up above, I point to one that is red and another with a question mark in it (and you can see the others are green).

If you hold your mouse over that red circle you can see what information others have compiled on this site in 4 areas: Trustworthiness, Vendor reliability, Privacy and Child safety.  You get a visual of how others have rated the site with the red / yellow / green circle at the end of each link, and you can rate the site yourself or see why others rated the site as they did.  A very nice addition to your security / web surfing safety arsenal!

Next, let’s see what the AVG LinkScanner does for us.  Again, in the first screenshot for this post there are two arrows from bubble 2 – one to a green check mark (all is safe) and the other to a yellow with a couple of exclamation marks.  Again, if we mouse over this icon we get more information about why we are getting the ratings we are presented with.  These are green, yellow or red as well – so that eases your thought processes while looking for information.  If something is red, you should certainly stop, yellow should be approached with caution (if at all), and green should be good to visit.

While these tools are not perfect, they are better than having no information at all on the links that are presented to you when you perform a search.  I mean, let’s think about it.  SEO (search engine optimization) does wonderful things for site owners – and some site owners do not have your best interest at heart!  So they can certainly work for top (or near the top) placement on popular keywords and then you click on them.  I mean, if they weren’t the right results, they wouldn’t show up first, right?  That’s exactly what they want you to think!

It’s my hope this helps someone to practice safe surfing.  If you have other suggestions or tools you want to share about, feel free to leave a comment.  Until next time, take care!

You’ve heard it all before – practice safe computing.  That means (to this writer and many others) keep your software patched and up to date, put a personal firewall on your computer (to control what comes in to the computer and out from the computer) and install anti-virus software (and keep it up to date with current definitions).  And many folks follow this advise – good for you!

But there is an area that still faces challenges even with all of the other items done above – that would be your click behavior.  Some people might put this in with other behaviors that we face everyday, or even in the category of social engineering.  I’m certain there is some validity to these thoughts – however, click behavior I’m talking about has to do with you, your mind, your finger(s) – and how all that comes together to become more than a thought, it becomes the action where you click on … something.

Let me explain.  We sit down to read our e-mails.  Oh, cousin Aaragon sent me all the normal jokes and chain letter warnings – I just delete them.  There’s a message from my friend Legalos, with a link to a news article.  I click on that – oh my, that wasn’t the type of news I expected at all!  Now I have this pop up saying my computer could be at risk because of (fill in the blank here, anti-virus, trojan, spyware, etc.).  Click on the box!

And you’re had.

Often times, these ‘ads’ appear to be legitimate, or at least they look like they may be something that came from our installed protection software.  Be very careful, many are not.  A quick look at Wikipedia reveals interesting names like ANG Antivirus (not to be confused with the product I use – AVG Antivirus).  Or maybe MS Antivirus (or one of the other names it is known by, like XP Antivirus, Vitae Antivirus, Windows Antivirus, Win Antivirus, Antivirus Pro, Antivirus Pro 2009, Antivirus 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 360, Internet Antivirus Plus, System Antivirus, Spyware Guard 2008 and 2009, Spyware Protect 2009, Winweb Security 2008, System Security, Malware Defender 2009, Ultimate Antivirus2008, Vista Antivirus, General Antivirus, AntiSpywareMaster, Antispyware 2008, XP AntiSpyware 2008 and 2009, WinPCDefender, Antivirus XP Pro, Anti-Virus-1, and Total Security).  The name changes all the time, but the intent does not – to infect your machine and to get your money if possible.

Now how did this all begin?  Oh, right – we clicked on something.  So, are there ways we can avoid this problem?  Certainly!

First, make sure you ARE practicing safe computing.  Then, be wary of pop ups that are warning you of impending doom (don’t click OK on them).  If you have that happen, perhaps you should learn to kill that window using Windows Task Manager (for you Microsoft Operating System users).  Here’s an article on how to get Task Manager open (normally by pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE, and then click Task Manager).  From there you should be on the application tab, select the window you want to end (or shut down or get rid of) and click on end task.  Below is a screen shot of this tool, I circled the tab at the top and the end task button so you could easily see what I’m referring to.

That could be an easy first line of defense.  Another area is that of knowing that your click will take you somewhere – but it may not be where you think it is.  My rule of thumb there is – don’t click.  If you want to see it, type in the URL (if you are reasonably certain it is legitimate).  There are times that you don’t know what the link leads to – you mouse over the text and see!  Below is a screen shot (and click on it to get a larger shot that opens in a separate window).

Here, I’ve numbered these so I can better type to them.  Number 1 is the address bar of my web browser.  That tells me where I currently am, or the page I’m currently viewing.

Number 2 shows me with my cursor over a link on the page.  When I put my cursor there, notice what happens in the bottom right of my web browser screen – it tells me where that link is going to go (if I click on it).  That’s a nice clue to have, even when the link has a URL in there, I’m going to check the bottom of my browser to make sure it is going where it is suppose to go and not somewhere else.  This even works in many computer-based e-mail programs (see below for one).

Clicking on that link is not taking me to PayPal…perhaps that is one I shouldn’t click on (actually, I forward these to spoof [at] paypal [dot] com so they can work to stop this type of abuse).  So be smart and use these clues to your advantage.

Number 3 as shown earlier is part of my Web of Trust.  In the second part of this post (will be up later this month) I’ll address this tool and others you may want to use when searching the web as you follow links in search engine results.  Until then, thanks for reading!