How IE7 forced me to change my blog …

Couple of days back, I decided to download and install the all new Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. And I must say, that I have been greatly impressed. After having used FireFox(while I was in Dubai) for quite sometime, I became quite a fan of tabbed browsing, and when I saw that IE7 has incorporated the same, I was really glad that I could now use IE with the FireFox like feature. And that’s not all … IE7 comes packed with all features fire-foxy. To list a few, it has support for RSS feeds, improved user interface, inbuilt search and also the ability to have add-ons (IE7 Addons). Although, the add-on’s would not quite compare to the those we have for FireFox, but it sure is a great move. Infact I even found a Internet Marketing Toolbar called the VRE Toolbar.

Here is a snapshot of the new IE7 …

One thing I noticed with the new IE is the stricter approach towards cleaner code. I can say that, ‘coz it literally forced me to change the code (HTML bit) for my blog. I had noted that my blog’s homepage appeared differently in FireFox as against IE6, but never really bothered cleaning the code, ‘coz I knew from that stats that majority of my blog readers were using IE6. However, considering the fact that 90% of IE users will eventually upgrade to version 7, I decided that making my blog design compatible would make sense.

Well, it turns out that I not only made a few design level changes to the blog, but a whole lot more. I added some amazing plugins, thanks to the amazing collection of Wordpress Plugins at The Wordpress Plugins Competition Blog. You can now see that I have replaced the meebo-mo plugin with a Evoca.com plugin, which allows me to collect Voice based feedback from you .. my readers ! I would encourage all of you to leave me a voice message, it would be really great to hear from you, and would also mean a lot to me !

I have also moved the related posts, code from my sidebar in the main wordpress loop, so all the posts will now have a trailing list of possible related links. The sidebar now dons the most Popular Posts links, which was made possible using Alex King’s Popularity plugin.

The idea of upgrading/revamping my blog was also boosted by the fact that my pal Kedar has upgraded his blog to the new blogger beta, which seems to have quite some cool features to it ! Infact, I even started a test blog, just to check out the new Blogger Beta. You can see a blogger beta blog example at http://kedarsule.blogspot.com. (Checkout the cool sidebar features !)

I am also planning on posting some password protected entries, where I can share some really valuable information. If you want to gain access to those pages, you’ll have to opt-in to receive the access password. I have created a (not-so-great-looking) opt-in page, the link is in the top navigation, where you can drop in your Name and Email address, and I’ll send the password once I start posting password protected content. Hopefully, in the near future, I’ll also beautify the opt-in page and make it more salesy.

That’s all for now … go grab yourself the all new IE7 browser, it sure rocks !

[tags]internet explorer 7, ie7, wordpress plugins database, password protected posts, alex king popularity plugin, voice message plugin evoca, blogger beta, wordpress loop[/tags]

5 Comments so far

Kedar

I had installed the IE7 on my office PC. IE7 sure is great, but it hogs a lot of memory. I had to uninstall it, since my PC almost choked on it.

And dude, I think u’ll need to tweak your CSS a bit more, coz in IE6, your sidebar is appearing below your blog. I think it’s because of the recording thingy, which might be too wide to fit in your sidebar…

October 31, 2006

Saumil