The Big Three Search Engines Agree!

Google's SiteMap XML protocol provides a method for a web developer to publish a map of a site and submit it to Google. The purpose is to describe pages to be listed in the search engine. It's designed to let organizations guide Google's crawlers and should help get pages indexed more quickly and thoroughly. The big news is that now Microsoft and Yahoo! have agreed to also use this protocol! Visit http://sitemaps.org for information about using this XML protocol.

EV SSL Certificates

Verisign has issued the first Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificate to overstock.com. EV SSL is a new standardized validation process created by CA/Browser Forum, a voluntary organization of leading certification authorities and vendors of Internet browser software and other applications.

EV SSL Certificates maximize consumer confidence when visiting Web sites by providing another visual cue (in addition to the lock icon) that these sites are who they claim to be and that their online transactions are secured by encryption. Certificate Authorities perform much more stringent checks to than currently take place for SSL certificates. These checks include: verifing an applicant owns the domain, works for the organization, has authority to update the website, and that the organization is a valid, recognized place of business. Internet Explorer 7.0 will be updated in early 2007 to indicate when an EV SSL Certificate is in place.

Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Released

Mozilla recently announced the release of Firefox 2.0. Visit http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ for a free download. New features include improved tabbed browsing, session restore, "Live Titles", and more....

Internet Explorer 7 Released!

Microsoft recently released a new version of its popular browser. Check out the at CNET review of IE7.

browsershots.org

When testing your website it's a great idea to test in as many browsers and platforms as you can. Visit http://www.browsershots.org and submit your URL -- selecting the browsers and platforms for testing. Your request is placed in a queue and the (eventual) response will be a collection of browser screen shots. View a sample browsershots results page.

Just for fun: Popular URLs

Visit http://www.popurls.com to explore links to a collection of popular content from a variety of sites including Digg, Furl, YouTube, Slashdot, Yahoo News, Flickr, Spurl, Del, etc. Have fun!

Enlightening Web Design Review

Check out the article at Digital Web Magazine by McClurg-Genevese. The author analyzes various designs at CSS Zen Garden and discusses how the principles and elements of design were used to create these innovative and imaginative Web design compositions.