Longview, WA Web Design, Graphics & Marketing

According to the webstats, almost 80% of the people who visit the sites I’ve built, are viewing them IE or “Internet Explorer” the default browser on Windows computers. Thankfully this number is going down. Most of the professional web surfers, computer nerds, or website building people I know already absolutely despise Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser.

Why do people dream of stabbing IE repeatedly?

Well, there are a lot of reasons… mine is because of the hacks required to make websites look uniform in IE when they look perfect in all the other browsers out there. Unfortunately, because the IE percentage above is so high, I’m forced to spend huge amounts of time trying to make the websites look correctly in IE. This is Microsoft costing you money people! Just kidding. I eat the time! It’s all part of bettering myself as a designer/coder, and another reason you should pick me for your project… I’m not charging you time for stuff I don’t know

I’m writing this with the hope that I may convince even one person (maybe you?) to download and use one of the browsers below. They’re all free.

#1 Mozilla’s Firefox
This is my personal favorite. Firefox is “awesomeness” with extra emphasis on the ness. Firefox has a million (or it seems like it) “plugins” or gadgets that you can add to customize, tweak, or bend for your liking. I have like twenty web design plugins to speed up my daily tasks involved with work. Firefox = Practical, and I’m a pretty practical guy.

#2 Apple’s Safari
This is the default browser on Mac computers. I’ve heard there are some security issues with Safari, but I don’t know how true that is. If you want the ultimate in web surfing beauty though, you need to download Safari. Even ugly websites look beautiful in Safari! Well maybe not, but they look better. I use Safari when I’m not doing anything work related and want to browse the web. This is why it gets my #2. Apple claims it’s the fastest out there now, but I’m pretty sure the nerds say differently.

#3 Opera
Opera is rumored to be the fastest browser out there. I don’t know… it seems a little sluggy on cold start-ups, but it does have some cool features and is gaining momentum in wireless devices these days. Have a Blackberry? You might be using Opera. I really haven’t used this browser all that much other than for testing sites, but I like it well enough. There are plugins or “widgets” available, but I haven’t tried any of them because Firefox has everything I need.

#4 Google’s Chrome
Google a name you can trust… or can you? Ha-ha. They send my check on the same day every single month, so I can trust the to pay me on time anyway! This is a new and really clean looking browser. It’s also open source. I think we can expect big things from this browser in the future, especially with a powerhouse like Google, it’s flock of geniuses, and a cult following.

I don’t care which one you try, but humor me and just try one of them! I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

~ John

“Error performing inpage operation.”

Last night I started having a problem with an external drive which stores a bunch of semi-important information. If you’ve ever had a drive problem before, you know this can be quite stressful.

The drive is a USB2 Maxtor One Touch external drive. I tried to access the data on the drive with two different computers and came up empty. One computer couldn’t even find the drive.

I could not run a check disk via the regular ways since the PCs would not access the drive, so I ended up figuring out how to run it from the command prompt. There’s not a lot of easily found information online to solve this relatively simple (at least in my case) problem. This is why I’ve put up this page. Hopefully this will help someone.

Here is the process I used to fix the disk:

1. Start > Run > type cmd.
2. Click [OK] to get a command prompt.
3. Type in chkdsk e: /r (replace e: with the letter of your external hard drive).

Your computer will run check disk and hopefully fix the errors on the drive allowing you to re-access it once again. Hope this helps!

P.S. If for some reason it doesn’t, here’s another way you can potentially see the errors its having.

1. Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer

If this article helped solve your problem, leave a comment.

So your PC seams a bit slower than it use to be? Here are a few tips…

1. Do us all a favor and un-install your Norton or McAfee anti-virus (if you even can) AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. There is a 95% chance this is causing most of the problem.

Now that you’re “freakin” about not having an anti-virus program on your computer, download AVG’s free program and be happy!

2. Install Mozilla Firefox web browser or maybe even the new Google Chrome and delete every Internet Explorer icon you can find to resist your temptation to use that “waste of code” web browser.

3. Install CCleaner and RUN IT! Chances are you have about 2 gigabytes of garbage temporary files on your computer.

4. Love chatting? Un-install your 6 chat messengers and download Pidgin Messenger. It will combine your AIM, Yahoo, MSN, GoogleTalk, ICQ, MySpaceIM and probably anything else you have into one! No more stupid banner ads and pop-ups either!

5. Turn off the 25 tray icons you’re not using. The tray is the little group (or huge group in your case) of icons down in the right corner by the clock.

Right click on each icon and hit either [disable] or [Properties] and find the disable tray icon check box. This will make a big difference in your PCs performance if it is an older machine.

There! That’s your 30 minute homework project to make your PC better. If it still sucks, give me a call and I’ll come take a look.

Happy Friday! ~ John