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Web designers are begging you…
Posted on April 5th, 2007 by Kiere El-Shafie.
Categories: CSS, Firefox, Browsers.
…please abandon Internet Explorer 6!! Upgrade to Firefox. It is free and it plays nice with CSS (the language we use for designing nice looking web sites).
Yes, this is a completely selfish request. I am so tired of designing neat-looking stuff only to open Internet Explorer and see it completely jumbled. Why is it so hard for Microsoft to follow a well-published standard?
For more information, see my page titled got IE?.
See the column titled “IE6″? It is decreasing, unfortunately, about the same rate as IE7 is increasing. While that is better than the IE6 column NOT decreasing, we really want to see the column titled “Fx” increasing at the fastest rate.
So how ’bout it? Are you ready to switch?
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Fogbugz as a Help Desk application
Posted on October 28th, 2006 by Kiere El-Shafie.
Categories: Help Desk, Bug Tracking, IT.
It would probably help if I told you what I was looking for in a help desk system. First, I like my users to try to find the solution themselves. I find that when people know they have someone that can do something for them, they will often take advantage of that and forget even the most basic tasks. Sometimes, you have users that are just getting started with computers. These people need to do some simple things on their own so they become more comfortable with the computer and it’s software. So, the first thing I look for is a knowledge base. Some place I can type up articles on how to do things. It has to be searchable and I like it to list the most popular articles on the home page.
Second, I like the user to have a web form that they can use to submit a new help desk ticket. I find that systems that require the user to submit tickets solely via email don’t take into account that users have no idea how to write a help desk ticket “from scratch”. My favorite tickets are the tickets titled “help”. Once you open the ticket, the description says “my email crashed”. These are the days that I end up drinking way too much caffeine. 
There is no helpful information at all. No description of the problem. No background on what they were doing before the crash. Nothing. A web form gives them a “template” that they can fill out so that I at least get some of the basic information from them.
Third, I like an area for “quick links”. Sometimes, we have web-based software, web-based configurations (anti-spam), password reset websites, etc. that the person just can’t remember the address of. Having all their important technical links in one place can really help. Several web-based packages offer you a way to add this functionality. (more…)