Visual Lizard
Ross McDowall
Ross is a senior web developer for Visual Lizard. In working for the company for the past 9 years he has steadily upgraded his skills. Both the best and worst thing about this industry is how fast things change. It is great finding new ways to do things, but in finding the new process, it sometimes means having to go back and redo all of the programming that was done the old way. Thus, he fears change... but since the world is always changing, he nevertheless changes with it. He enjoys working for the company as the small staff doesn’t allow for office politics. The office environment allows for independence, creativity, and quick access to a fairly substantial knowledge base.
Ross enjoys roleplaying games, science fiction and fantasy books, and movies. He has his own website which he uses as a place to experiment with his programming skills from time to time. He has done substantial work on the majority of the sites developed at Visual Lizard, with particular pride in working on Destination Winnipeg, The Forks, IMAX Winnipeg, Folklorama and the Winnipeg Airports Authority.
Ross is learning more about developing online web applications including a more comprehensive version of his own diabetes blood sugar testing recorder. He has honed his skills in both PHP and MySQL as these are the primary tools of his trade. His latest goal is becoming fully familiar with the CAKE framework (not easy as I am not good with change *harrumph harrumph*).
In our industry, the concept of standards for web and browser development should be at the forefront. Competition between browsers should not affect how the viewer sees the product which is being developed. It is up to the web developer to determine how a site should look. The browser should just be the platform to view the site, and should not interpret how to display what is written. Unfortunately the browsers are not quite to that stage yet, so for now we have to make the odd piece of non-compliant code to accommodate those browsers. One day soon maybe we will see all browsers following standards. Cross your fingers.
On My Radar
Nov 11, 2008
Rememberance Day
Paypal Increases Security
This week Paypal announced that it will no longer process transactions that come from deprecated browsers. In this BBC news article a Paypal representative noted that there are still a significant number of people using very old deprecated browsers that do not carry the appropriate level of certificate security to safely allow for secure transactions to take place.
These insecure browsers allow for phishing websites to track the transactions which allow the criminal to gain access to a person’s personal information including passwords and credit card numbers.
It is important to remember to keep your browsers up to date. Criminals using phishing attacks create their fake websites in a way to take advantage of these security vulnerabilities. As described in the article, an obsolete browser will not trigger the Paypal script which determines whether the user is using a secure browser. If you are not using a secure browser, you cannot be sure if your personal information is vulnerable.
Paypal has taken the step to not allow for transactions from insecure browsers to take place as a way to inform their clients about the risks of using this deprecated technology.
Paypal said it was "an alarming fact that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers such as Internet Explorer 4". [ Paypal to block ’unsafe browsers’ - BBC News Online ]
Paypal has also noted which browsers are safe and support EVSSL certificates. The current releases of Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 have full support, but Safari for both Mac and PC do not currently support EVSSL.
While we here in the office really like Safari as a browser, not all of us use it to make purchases over the internet.
Comments
From The Web
Aug 18, 2008
Moisture Vaporators: Moisture Vaporators Spotted In Buenos Aires
Linked by Ross
Jun 16, 2008
The Ancient Romans Were d20 Gamers
Linked by Ross
Jun 12, 2008
Wind Power: Modular Turbines for Urban Environments
Linked by Ross
Jun 11, 2008
New Lithium-Ion Chemistry means more Power?
Linked by Ross
May 23, 2008
'Tunnel' links New York to London
Linked by Ross
Mar 13, 2008
Zombies - Be Prepared
Linked by Ross
Mar 11, 2008
Geek Jewelry: Rings on the Periodic Table
Linked by Ross
Feb 13, 2008
Russia proposes space arms treaty
Linked by Ross