With Google recently announcing it is withdrawing support for IE6 from March 1 and YouTube support slated to be dropped on March 13  the web has been alight with celebratory posts, tweets and blog comments. There's even been a funeral arranged. Are we finally seeing the beginning of the end for the webs most hated browser?

There's plenty of articles bemoaning the digital barnicle that is IE6, but not so many people seem to be looking at what's actually happening in terms of actual usage. Yes there's plenty of alternatives such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari (hell- even upgrading to IE8 isn't that bad) but the uptake seems to be slow.

Global browser trend stats from Hitslink tell a slightly more depressing story. At time of writing 20% of users are still using IE6. 10 months ago it was 30%. Its simple maths, IE6 usage is dropping around 1% point every month. Take a look (click the image for a larger version):

At Frame Digital we wouldn't consider dropping support for a browser unless it was well under 10%. At the current rate of decline it looks we'll still be applying IE6 specific CSS and javascript PNG hacks probably until the end of the year. Not to mention the additional development hours testing and supporting the piece of junk dated software.

Fingers crossed with the big online mega-corps starting to withdraw support it will force the remaining IT managers and home users to finally upgrade. 

Even though Flickr has had an API since 2004 its never been very good at showcasing applications built using the API. Until recently, there was the Third Party Flickr Apps list on Flickr, and also lots of other websites took up the challenge to showcase Flickr apps such as Flickrbits and the Great Flickr Tools collection.

Well, this glaring omission is now over. On 3rd of November, Flickr removed the Third Party apps list and launched the Flickr App Garden, an area specifically designed for showcasing third-party apps, its a great repository for Flickr users wanting to find all sorts of cool new ways to show off their photos, whether it be a desktop, mobile or online. Read more »

Since launching our new google maps and flickr mashup creation tool iMapFlickr two weeks ago users have created around 500 Google maps with flickr photosets.

We've been busy too, and have introduced a number of new features. We've started announcing updates on get satisfaction, but there's been so many updates we thought we'd list them here.

All maps will be automatically updated with all these new features. Read more »

For the last few months, we've been hidden away in the Frame Digital secret lab playing with a new website making heavy use of the Google Maps and Flickr APIs. After getting our way through a mountain of coffee, lots of late nights and more than just a few beers, we finally finished our new google maps and flickr mashup creation tool iMapFlickr. Read more »

Yes, its true. We are now advising NASA on overcoming engineering difficulties on their Mars rovers. It seems anything is possible with Twitter - sadly the space-fairing uber boffins never got back to us with how effective our suggestion was. Still, there's always next time.

Click the image to view the full screen version

Subway is a complex organisation in that as a franchise business and a national brand, it has both Business to Business and Business to Consumer marketing objectives and a high level of responsibility to its franchisees with respect to both driving consumers in store and using franchisees marketing contributions responsibly and effectively.

In mid 2008 the Subway site contained a great deal of B2B information, but there was little there for the consumer. Moreover, it had grown organically over time and was no longer intuitive to navigate or use.

We were tasked by the National Marketing team at Subway, to redesign and redevelop the brand website to make it more appealing to consumers and more effective in terms of converting franchisee or property prospects into bona fide enquiries.

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I noticed that Smashing Magazine recently posted a pretty epic article about CSS sprites. I've been using this technique for quite a while now, but its still surprises me how many sites (even relatively new ones) still go down the single image rollover state, often using that bloated chunk of javascript code from Dreamweaver that has been around since the dawn of time. You know the one - with the MM_preloadImages() and MM_swapImage() restore functions.

Not a CSS Sprite

I first knew of CSS Sprites as the 'sliding doors' CSS technique posted on A List Apart and there was an article in 2004 that put it forward as well. I like sprites, sprites are cool. Not just because they sound like something you should bump into at Halloween, but because they remind me of designing 8-bit graphics on my ZX Spectrum. Before anybody have even thought of Photoshop I used to design small bitmap images on graph paper then figure out the binary so I could make my custom 8-pixel square space invader boing around the screen in one of the random mini-games I used to make when I was a kid (I've never been one for football) It was all the rage in Your Sinclair. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, watch this video.

So what exactly is a sprite then?

Sprites are just a collection of small images on one single larger master image arranged in a grid that is then mapped or positioned into a smaller space. When computers had less power than your mobile phone it was seen as a resource friendly way to handle graphics without having to load or search for new images everything something changed on screen. There's plenty of examples on Google. Read more »

Flickr has a really nice API exposed that allows anyone with an API key to interrogate and present public Flickr data on their own website or application. The API supports a number of formats such as REST, XML-RPC and SOAP, or you could use a third-party API kit. In .NET-land there is a fantastic open source wrapper for the API - FlickrNET. This article explains some of the fundamentals of getting up and running with the FlickrNET API.

Why we used Flickr

2009 is the 250th anniversary of Robert Burn's birth, In Frame Digital towers we received a brief at the end of 2008 from Homecoming Scotland to create a promotional site to mark the bard's birthday and launch 'Homecoming Scotland 2009', a global campaign to promote Burn's night worldwide and encourage people to host their own Burn's party. The website would be used to provide historical information on Robert Burns and also be used as online resource for users wanting to host their own Burn's Supper, wherever they were in the world. One of the key aims was that registered users could create their own online account, accessing special stationary and manage invitations online. After the big day, users could upload images and videos of their Burns night to the website and share them with the world. Rather than build our own image upload and management tools we immediately thought 'Flickr'. Why reinvent the wheel where there are some perfectly good round ones available already?

Cool, before I read on, can I see it working?

Sure. Download and play with the demo, or use the live example to upload files to our own Frame Digital account. Just don't go getting clever with your image uploads, everything is set to private by default.

You could also do worse than look at the website the inspiration for this article came, our implementation of Flickr.NET on the World Famous Burns Supper website.

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