TRINIX

Google analytics is getting more and more used these days for measuring and getting statistics on all kinds of websites. But I estimate that only half of the people who uses it, know the full range of functionality that is available within Google Analytics.

Features like:
- conversion measurement
- e-commerce
- outbound link tracking
- ….

For those who want to learn to use it properly, please have look at the SlideShare presentation from the people from Queromedia

Special thanks for Joris Roebben and Tom Michiels from Queromedia, for putting together the presentation and being kind enough to share this with us.

As every mature webdesigner and webdeveloper knows that are a lot of differences between all the different browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari,..) Each browser renders a webpage and lay-out a bit differently.

Being the good webdesigner and webdeveloper you want your website / application to look the same in all browser. For this you use CSS hacks and exceptions and so on…

But the problem was usually testing the lay-out in different browsers.
You can install usually different browsers a long each other but there was a problem with installing different versions of browsers.

Example: Internet Explorer 6 still is used a lot, but if you update your windows you get the Internet Explorer 7 (which renders pages very differently from the Internet Explorer 6). So once you upgraded to IE7 there was no real possibility to test or install IE6. This is a widely know problem for most of the webdesigners and webdevelopers.

Until recently you had 2 options:

Option 1: install a VMware OS with for each VMware a different OS with different browser version
This was not ideal because of all performance issues with VMWare and not practical for debugging

Option 2: use a portable version of the browser (as mentioned in my previous post “Portable Internet Explorer 7“)
This was working, but also not ideal since limited and not always stable.

The kind people from DebugBar (IE alternative for Firebug, like mentioned in a previous post “Firebug for IE“) created a new tool “IETester”.
This is 1 tool which has all the different interenet explorer browser engines build-in.

Official description:“IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process.”

I tested it and this is what every webdesigner has been looking for, believe me!!!
No more messing around with VMWare and portable version. Just 1 tool for all versions of Internet Explorer, what more do you need.

Download it here: Download IE Tester
Or have a closer look at the official website: http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage

PS: you find the DebugBar (IE alternative for Firebug) there as well, a most have IE add-on

Screenshot of IE Tester:

A couple of months ago, I saw some promissing screencast of Adobe MAX convention about the new tool Adobe was working on.

The RIA tool was called “Thermo” and allows non technical people to put together a complete prototype of an application by simply drag and drop elements. This will close the gap between the design and development of applications. Thermo will provide the functionality to simulate application behavior and making it easier to build complete mock-ups for demo’s or for providing to the IT development teams. I think that this tool will be a great improvement for all the project managers. Giving them a lot of freedom to put together applications and playing around without actually having to develop everything. This tool could replace the wireframe design and speed up application development. I’m anxious awaiting the release.

Official Adobe description: “Thermo is an upcoming Adobe product that makes it easy for designers to create rich Internet application UIs. Thermo allows designers to build on familiar workflows to visually create working applications that easily flow into production and development.”

More info can be found on the official Adobe Labs website: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Thermo

A couple of screenshots:

A couple of Youtube previews: