With Microsoft’s unsolicited bid to purchase Yahoo, how would such a merger affect the Internet, especially where search technology is concerned?

By now, everyone – even those who aren’t addicted to the news or the Internet – has heard of Microsoft’s unsolicited bid to purchase Yahoo for a proposed $44.6 billion dollars. We’ve even touched on the subject in an earlier post. As the merger appears to be more and more likely, what exactly does the deal mean for US? How will it affect the way we use the Internet the day after the merger’s done? Or how we use it a month after? Two months after?

Before we start worrying about how we will research a new topic or how our favorite websites will fare, keep in mind that even if Yahoo runs out of options things won’t change overnight. Say that Microsoft finally succeeds in purchasing Yahoo. Given the scope of the buyout, there will be an anti-trust review in the United States. Once that has been completed, there will be another anti-trust review, one that is much lengthier and under the jurisdiction of the European Union. Should the buyout pass those two anti-trust rounds, there is the larger issue of assimilating Yahoo into the larger Microsoft whole. And that will take time.

Assimilation of Yahoo presents cultural and technological problems for Microsoft to overcome. Many of their products and technologies overlap and Microsoft will have to decide which will be combined or which will be eliminated. That in itself is a lengthy process, particularly in terms of combining products and technologies. Additionally, there are cultural concerns. Yahoo has long modeled itself as a fun-loving online company with an open-source technological model. Microsoft’s culture is more corporate and focuses on proprietary software. When the two cultures collide, there will be casualties.

Which leads us back to…how will this affect our Internet? The one we know today?

In the short term, the merger won’t have an impact outside of share prices and continued speculation in the blogosphere. The approval and assimilation processes alone should take years to complete. Add to that the fact that Google has voiced concerns regarding innovation on the Internet and has even taken the step of forming a lobbying campaign to block a Microsoft – Yahoo merger.

So, what of innovation? How different will the Internet be after such a historic union? How much will things really change once all is said and done? Stay tuned. In the next installment, we’ll take a closer look at the advancements made by Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google to see if we can determine how our use of the Internet might change post-merger.

Part 2 – A few tips on improving your relationship with ie and its bugs

In part 1 of this series IE 6 Reluctant friend and frequent foe – Part I, I did rant just a bit about the myriad of downsides to Internet Explorer 6 and how much this frustrates me on a daily basis. I am often tempted to pin the logo to a dartboard and let rip! However, from the hours of trouble shooting, re-coding and incoherent, angered mumbling, a few small gems of knowledge have emerged, that help me cope.

Since it looks like we will have to live with ie6 for a while, let’s cozy up and make friends. Here are some things that make ie6 happy.

1. Fix ie Stylesheet
   For larger sites and many bugs, using an ie6 specific stylesheet helps you troubleshoot for ie6 alone.
   All you need to do is add the following code underneath the link to your regular stylesheet
   <!--[if lt IE 7]>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" xhref="fix-ie.css" mce_href="fix-ie.css"></link>
<![endif]-->
   The code in fix-ie.css will only appear in ie6 (or as the code says; less than ie7) and over-ride any identical code in the regular stylesheet.

2. The miraculous double-margin manifestation
   It is a well observed phenomenon that if you have a floating div with a margin, ie will take that margin and double it! Now that’s generosity! But if you meant what you coded, then all you need to do is add
   { display:inline; }
   to the floated div and you are back on track.

3. More Padding and Margin drama
   While I haven’t got a full list of all the phantom margin additions in ie, I do know that it doles them out quite liberally. My advice: if you are having any margin, padding, or placement issues, set all paddings and margins explicitly. Do not leave any of it up to the browser’s defaults. If you want padding only, then set {margin:0;} just to be sure!
   I have observed that ie6 adds a lot of default padding to elements like <ul> <p> and <h1> and <h2> tags, so be sure to state all padding and margins on these elements.

Hopefully this may help clear the ie fog, or at least assist you in extending an olive branch to ie6. If not, then all we can do is wait and cross-check. In my next post, I will share all our MoreVis browser cross-check and testing secrets. Hint: it involves a lot of desk hopping!!

Part I – How to troubleshoot, design, and make friends with ie6

For those of you who don’t spend your days wrestling with cross-browser compatibility (read: making the website look the same in all browsers) you may be unaware of the constant battle therein.

Of the many browser choices out in the wild world web, the three most used are Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox. Those three are the ones we primarily troubleshoot for here at MoreVisibility, and in doing so, attempt to ensure that the greatest number of users will be able to view our sites as the designer intended. Of course we check Safari on a Mac too, but it is rarely problematic.

So all three programs are browsers, all designed to do the same thing, turn code into a readable page, and transmit data from server to client, right? So why are there so many cross-browser issues?

That’s what I’d love to know! In programming these browsers, some companies got it right, some didn’t. A certain software conglomerate’s early browser incarnations couldn’t handle, for one, valid CSS. This means, for designers that code in CSS, a myriad of ‘hacks’ and shortcuts must be engaged to force ie6, yes you guessed it, to render the layout correctly. This is not only exhausting, but incredibly frustrating for someone who has spent hours laying out a design in, say Firefox, then switches over to ie6 to find that the right sidebar is above the header and all the links are pink!

Microsoft made many improvements in ie7, which does a far better job of paying attention to what the coder meant, but there are still bugs. In addition, not all users have upgraded to ie7 and are still browsing daily on a severely outdated browser.

Firefox is my browser of choice, and it rarely lets me down. It is an open-source software, meaning that updates and fixes come regularly, ensuring that you always have the latest and best version of the browser.

But as much as I am tempted to force users into switching to Firefox, or any standards compliant browser, the reality is that it won’t happen. I have to work around the ie6 bugs and learn from the curveballs it throws me.

In my next blog, I will share some ie6 secrets, and shed some light on how to get your layout to function in ie6 with minimal pain and wasted time!!