Zia Notice Board

Well, the time has come: YouTube no longer supports Internet Explorer 6, and recommends to update to a newer browser: Internet Explorer 8, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Google Chrome.

Links:

• YouTube Drops IE6 Support on March 13th
• IE6 No More
• It’s Time to Finally Drop Internet Explorer 6
• Apple’s MobileMe drops support for IE 6
• More…

YouTube announcement: We will be phasing out support for your browser soon. Please upgrade to one of these more modern browsers: Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.6, Opera 10, Safari 4, Google Chrome.

It is a matter of fact that Internet Explorer [IE] 6 does not support web standards and modern technologies.

These web standards and modern technologies have been developed to easily build web sites and to provide a better web navigation and experience to any internet user.

Unfortunately, web developers have to use obsolete and unnecessarily complex techniques to ensure their pages would render properly in IE.

In other words, IE6 downgrades the internet.

Who still uses IE6 and why?

Mostly companies running their PCs on Windows 2000 or Windows XP.

Windows 2000 can run any version of Internet Explorer up to 6, while Windows XP can run any version of Internet Explorer up to 8.

Most of the companies still uses IE6 because they built applications and software running on Microsoft APIs belonging to IE6, and if they update to a newer version of Internet Explorer, their applications and software will stop working or become buggy.

Good practice when building any application or software is to make it platform independent, so that it can run on any operating system, does not depend on any third party software to work, and it makes future upgrades easier.
A good example of a platform independent software is Java.

YouTube and its parent company Google have chosen to phase out support for IE6 after the attack from hackers in China to their platforms.

Digg has been the first web firm to announce their phasing out support for IE6.

How to Clean the Computer Cache for better Performances
Windows 2000 and XP

1. Close every application.
2. Items in the following folders have to be deleted to clean PC, Browser and Office Cache.
   • Cookies:
     "%userprofile%\Cookies"
   • Browser History 1:
     "%userprofile%\Local Settings\History"
   • Browser History 2:
     "%userprofile%\Local Settings\History\History.IE5"
   • List of Programs that you most recently used:
     "%userprofile%\Local Settings\Temp"
   • Browser Temporary Internet Files 1:
     "%userprofile%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files"
   • Browser Temporary Internet Files 2:
     "%userprofile%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5"
   • MicroSoft Office Temporary Files:
     "%userprofile%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.MSO"
   • List of Files and Documents that you most recently used:
     "%userprofile%\Recent"
   • Empty this folder to restore Internet Explorer Security Settings Default level:
     "%userprofile%\UserData"
   • To open a folder, click Start, then Run, in the Open box type the folder path and then click OK.
3. Clean Java cache:
   Start, Settings, Control Panel, Java, General, Temporary Internet Files, Delete Files, check all the boxes, OK.
4. Disable Java cache:
   Start, Settings, Control Panel, Java, General, Temporary Internet Files, Settings, View Applets, uncheck Enable Caching, OK.
5. Empty Recycle Bin.

How to Clean the Computer Cache Automatically for better Performances
Windows 2000 and XP

Important !!! This article contains information about how to modify the Microsoft Windows Registry.
Make sure to back up the Registry before you modify it.
Make sure that you know how to restore the Registry if a problem occurs.
For more information about how to back up, restore, and modify the Registry, click [256986 Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry] to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

1. Download the text file [c-cleanup-cache_bat.txt] to your C: drive.
2. Rename the file as “c-cleanup-cache.bat“.
3. Open Windows Registry by clicking Start, then Run, in the Open box type “regedit” and then click OK.
4. Go to the string “Userinit” contained in the key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon“.
5. With a standard Windows installation the Userinit string contains the value:
   • Windows 2000: Userinit = “C:\WINNT\system32\userinit.exe,“
   • Windows XP: Userinit = “C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,“
   • Do not delete anything already present in Userinit !!!
6. Modify Userinit by adding the value “C:\c-cleanup-cache.bat,” in front of the already present values.
   • Windows 2000: Userinit = “C:\c-cleanup-cache.bat,C:\WINNT\system32\userinit.exe,“
   • Windows XP: Userinit = “C:\c-cleanup-cache.bat,C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,“
7. Make sure that every file name is separated by a comma [ , ] and there is no single quotation mark [ ' ] nor double quotation mark [ " ].
8. Close the Registry and restart the Computer.

This batch file will provide to automatically clean up the computer cache, also removing the index.dat files, at every start up.

See also:

• What are index.dat files?
• Clean Internet Explorer (up to version 6) Cache