photo credit: tj scenes

Just how important is your search engine ranking? Well consider that in 2002, about one-third of all users typically searched for something each day. Now in 2008, a new high of just under one half (49%) are searching daily for something on the Internet, according to the latest study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

If you don’t know, or want to rank better, feel free to contact me. I would love to talk with you about your web site, and how it can be more effective on the web.

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Hopefully you haven’t missed it. June 17th is the official Firefox 3 download day. They are trying to set a record for the most number of downloads in a single day. While it got off to a slow start (servers weren’t able to handle all of the traffic), it got much better.

Many people like Firefox because it is faster than most other browsers. While there are a few sites which will only work with Internet Explorer, any standards compliant web application will work probably better in Firefox.

Even better it works for Windows, Mac, and Linux, instead of just one operating system like other browsers.

So if you haven’t used it before, take a look at some of the features, and try it out.

Image via WikipediaAdobe Dreamweaver is a tool used to design and develop web pages. I’ve used Dreamweaver for several versions, starting back in Version 4, when it was owned by Macromedia. Version 10 was just released to public beta yesterday.

I didn’t upgrade to the previous version (V.9) because Dreamweaver didn’t add all of the value I was wanting or needing, and as I’ve posted about before, there were some issues regarding how effective it was for me given the more complex types of web sites I have been working on. Dreamweaver for example didn’t support things like:

• JavaScript libraries and Frameworks
• Poor PHP support
• Produced Bloated Code
• No real support for version control systems

However, Version 10 seems to have added support for some of the features I’ve been wanting, including JavaScript libraries like JQuery and Prototype as well as content version control (a much needed feature for many versions). It also, from what I’ve heard, runs faster than the last couple of versions, which was desperately needed as site development was becoming slow if you had any complex CSS in the design, such as this web site.

This is where the bad experience sets in. I find the link to download the new version and I find out that I cannot use it because I don’t have the previous version (CS3/V9).

photo credit: Jay DuggerSoftware companies have been using the web to push out new products at a faster rate, which is good, but when a company requires you upgrade every 12 to 15 months, about how long Adobe puts out new versions, and pay hundreds to thousands of dollars, they need to realize that not everyone can or will upgrade, especially, if they do not give them the features they need.

Then if you block off part of your users, you risk alienating them. Because of the limitations I’ve found in some instances, I’ve already started using other tools, and might continue to based upon this latest run in with them.

So if you, want to leverage the Internet to brings products to market faster, that is good, just don’t do it at a rate which your customers can’t keep up (because of speed or time). And if you move at that rate, don’t expect everyone to upgrade every version.

Some days you feel like your getting a sign. I got this error message when I booted my computer this morning. See which program Microsoft Windows thinks might cause an error.

Maybe it’s time to move to Linux.

Note: No PhotoShop involved. Just a screen shot.