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Website / Some advice to the developers

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bossisly
13
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 30th Aug 2010
Location:
Posted: 8th Oct 2015 00:51
Some advice to the developers

The nonsense in requiring potentially new customers to use the latest “Joe Cool” web browser that most potential new customers do not want on their machines is insanity. The sophistry that it is for new technology and/or security issues is transparent to most users.

I have created a number of websites for others over the past 18 years. One of the greatest things that can discourage traffic to your website is to require new visitors to install unwanted software on their machines just to navigate and/or use the interactive features of the website. You would be surprised how quickly a new visitor to your website will click out of it and go to a user-friendly website that does not have obstacles and hoops to jump through just to access the website. The customer takes the leased line of resistance!

Another thing that might surprise you is that a number of the Joe Cool web browsers that you are requiring potential new customers to use require the user to sign up for an account just to use the browser. This is ridiculous and annoying to users that have web browsers that are functional for surfing the web and making online purchases without having to sign up for an account just to use a web browser.

If you are going to make the claim that the user has to use the newer and/or latest Joe Cool web browser is to accommodate the new operating systems you need to do some serious research. The falling sales of PC’s have more to do with users building their own PC’s and/or laptops to retrograde back to windows XP. I myself was surprised at how many users are going back to using XP. Even more surprising is that there are now unofficial service packs available for XP just as there are unofficial updates for FPS Creator classic. If you think XP is no longer available just use your favorite search engine and type in the search box “buy Windows XP”. You might find some pirated versions. However, the majority that can be found are legal copies. As for the unofficial updates, use your favorite search engine and type in the search box “unofficial update for Windows XP”. The developer(s) of the unofficial updates do warn the user that they use the updates at their own risk.

Many of the home built PC’s that I have seen with XP on them look as if they were factory made. The users in my age group are building machines that look like they were store-bought. The younger users are building machines that look like they have come from a sophisticated science fiction movie.

Everyone I have talked to that has retrograded back to XP all give similar reasons. "Windows Vista was a disaster, Microsoft is embedding spyware into Windows 7 and 8 through the updates, Windows 8 is worse than Windows Vista, and Windows 10 has a ton of spyware and a backdoor that can be used to remotely access the hard drive by Microsoft and anyone else who knows how to do it. In addition, Microsoft is using the user’s bandwidth through Windows 10 to install updates on other users machines". They also complained that Windows 10 lacks the capabilities of XP. There are in agreement that the latest Windows operating system is more for so-called social networking. Independent developers regard Windows 7 through 10 to be a serious security threat to their proprietary software developments. The gamers said that the latest Windows operating system is a poor platform to play 3-D games from. If you have any doubts just use your favorite search engine and search for Windows 7 spyware, Windows 10 spyware, game performance issues Windows 10. If you are still using Windows 7 you will be horrified by what you will learn.

Keep in mind many of the latest browsers will not function on XP. By using straightforward HTML code and not aggressively going overboard using resource hungry Java applications as well as not overloading a webpage with JavaScript’s your website should be able to accommodate nearly every Web browser regardless if it is the latest version or an earlier version. By doing this you will see increased activity on your website which will increase sales of your product(s).
The Next
Web Engineer
16
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 3rd Dec 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 21st Oct 2015 08:29
Quote: "I have created a number of websites for others over the past 18 years. One of the greatest things that can discourage traffic to your website is to require new visitors to install unwanted software on their machines just to navigate and/or use the interactive features of the website."

That may be true if you require third party software such as flash, silverlight or others. However we are not requiring anything like that just up to date, secure browsers that are installed on most operating systems by default.

Quote: "Another thing that might surprise you is that a number of the Joe Cool web browsers that you are requiring potential new customers to use require the user to sign up for an account just to use the browser. "

None of the browsers we support require a use to sign up to use the browser, it is optional in all cases. In fact I don't know a single browser that requires registration.

Quote: "If you are going to make the claim that the user has to use the newer and/or latest Joe Cool web browser is to accommodate the new operating systems you need to do some serious research. The falling sales of PC’s have more to do with users building their own PC’s and/or laptops to retrograde back to windows XP. "

There is no evidence to support this at all, the Windows XP market share has been falling month on month and is now only 12% world wide, most of which is in developing countries and within large enterprises that have issues updating.

Quote: "Even more surprising is that there are now unofficial service packs available for XP"

Anyone installing these "unofficial" service packs, has no regard for their own security, installing anything not from Microsoft to patch your OS is a bad idea. We won't ever support users that aren't using official software.

Quote: "Keep in mind many of the latest browsers will not function on XP. "

Upgrade to a version of Windows that is supported then and you won't have an issue. We do however support FireFox and Chrome versions that do work on XP.

To give some actual solid statistics, over the last 6 months, before the site update to drop XP support, we saw hardly any Windows XP traffic.

The Windows XP traffic amounts to 0.63% of all our website traffic, if you factor in those that are using Internet Explorer on Windows XP it then drops to 0.42%

A percentage that small is not worth the time invested in developing for old IE versions or the testing required.
Windows 7 Pro, Intel i7 3.8 GHz, 16GB DDR3, NVIDIA GTX 780 4GB Superclocked
Doorman
8
Years of Service
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Joined: 12th Sep 2015
Location:
Posted: 21st Oct 2015 16:11
Windows XP? Who's want to run that out dated thing? It's a security black hole. If you wanna get hacked man go ahead.

PS anyone who installs netflix needs silverlight, get over it man. It's like 15 seconds of your life then you never have to do it again.

I'm running windows 10. Not had to install a single thing to make this site work. It's awesome!
bossisly
13
Years of Service
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Joined: 30th Aug 2010
Location:
Posted: 28th Oct 2015 12:22
Thank you for your reply.

Please forgive me if my post came across as pure criticism. However, in part it was constructive criticism. Since the redesign of the game creators website and message forum, some of the features and exhibits are no longer functional on earlier browsers. I do give credit where credit is due. The new layout of the home page is easy on the eyes and offers user-friendly navigation.

In your reply, “None of the browsers we support require a use to sign up to use the browser, it is optional in all cases. In fact I don't know a single browser that requires registration.”

One of the browsers that you recommended was Firefox. I went to the Firefox website and downloaded the installer. On the first attempt to install the browser, I was presented with a form to sign up for a free account. I declined and the installation process terminated. The second attempt to install the browser also terminated the installation when I declined the free account again. On the third attempt to install, I filled out the form and accepted the free account and the installation process for the browser completed.

In your reply, “There is no evidence to support this at all, the Windows XP market share has been falling month on month and is now only 12% world wide, most of which is in developing countries and within large enterprises that have issues updating.”

No one really knows what the worldwide percentage of XP or any other operating system is. Our only source of information in this matter originates from the marketing departments of various operating systems developers who are trying to sell or in the case of Windows 10 giving it away for free. A couple of times a week a pop-up appears on my desktop stating that 110 million users have upgraded to the latest operating system and it is time for me to upgrade for free. It makes me wonder just how popular the new operating system is when the developer has to resort using spam in order to give it away.

I agree with you that large enterprises have issues with upgrading to the latest operating system. If I were in upper management of a large enterprise I would also have a major issue with the developer of the computer operating system gleefully sharing (selling) the firm’s trade secrets to third parties (competitors).

In my original post, I stated independent developers were concerned about the security issues of the latest operating system. The independent developers I was referring to are mom-and-pop operations with little or no staff.

As for the users, I had mentioned in my original post, they value their privacy. They are not the type of users who photograph their dinner and upload the photo to their Facebook page on a daily basis.

As for the hard-core gamers I mentioned in my original post, one could regard them as a quasi-kin to the Beatniks of the late 1950s.

My original post was in part constructive criticism. It was also giving you and your colleagues a heads up on what is going on below the proverbial radar. If you wish to do a little independent research on your own just use the keywords I had mentioned in my original post when you use your preferred search engine. Most of the information will be found on other forum pages from websites across the World Wide Web. My observations in my geographical location are congruent with the postings that are on those forum pages.

To the second responder to my post

I am happy for you that you are not having performance issues that others are experiencing. As for your comment that the older operating system is a large black hole for security. Those security issues have been remedied by using in combination Anti-Malware Bites, Comodo, and the McAfee Site Guard. However, I do not believe the aforementioned remedies for the older operating system will work on the latest operating system, due to the built-in key logger that stores and transmits its log files to the operating system developer, and I don’t believe that those security measures will protect you from the built-in backdoor of your operating system.

To all who are reading my reply, this will be the only reply I will be giving on this thread.

I wish you all my best regards.
Kevin Picone
21
Years of Service
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Joined: 27th Aug 2002
Location: Australia
Posted: 10th Nov 2015 05:41

Why are there now different requirements between the TGC home page and forums ? You can happily use the TGC site from older FF versions, but are now then blocked via popup from using the forums. Which is rather overzealous, given marque sites give the user obsolette notifcations, while still allowing them to view away.

WickedX
15
Years of Service
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Joined: 8th Feb 2009
Location: A Mile High
Posted: 10th Nov 2015 17:28
I’m not impressed, I wish we could just go back to the old forum. I am down to 1 of 3 devices that can properly display the pages. I have Chrome on my phone but, I don’t know if someone added a post to a thread unless I open it. Now I cannot view all of a user’s threads on any device. This sucks.

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