At the next major EventHQ update we will be phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6). All users are encouraged to upgrade to a more modern web browser.

• Internet Explorer 8
• Mozilla Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Safari

IE6 was launched in 2001, some 9 years ago. Subsequently Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) and Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) have been released (2006 and 2009 respectively) and Internet Explorer 9 is in the works. Our decision to drop support for IE6 has been driven by analytics which show that IE6 usage is now confined to a minority of our customers. Since modern web browsers provide a substantially better online experience, we feel now is the right time to drop IE6.

Why is IE6 usage dropping?

We believe there are two main drivers for IE6 usage dropping.

1. Upgrades; IE6 is 9 years old and 2 replacements have been released in that time. It is only natural that most users will have upgraded or purchased new computers with a newer version of IE pre-installed in that time.
2. Security; THe recently publicised hacking attacks on Google, Adobe and other high-profile companies was enabled, in part, by security flaws in IE6. As a result, both commercial and non-commercial organisations are actively upgrading their internal machines to avoid being subjected to the same sorts of attack.

What will this mean in practice for EventHQ users?

The improvements and some features of new version of EventHQ may not work with IE 6. If you are using IE 7, Firefox 2 or 3, or Safari, you need not do anything. However, if you are using IE 6, and you want to make sure everything works, you will need to upgrade to a more modern browser. The links at the top of this post will help you with this.

The majority of cutting-edge features are to be found in the administration interface of EventHQ and we realise that whilst you can upgrade your own browser, you cannot control your customers browsers. Therefore, whilst we will not be officially supporting IE6, the public pages of EventHQ where your customers actually register, will be developed to be as compatible with IE6 as possible whilst still offering a great experience for users of up-to-date web browsers.

A number of customers have told us that when they export their bookings data to an excel file, some fields are replaced with the word ‘array’.

This fault has now been solved and we also took the opportunity to improve the ease with which you can export registration data for your events to Excel. Why not take the free online demo for a test drive yourself to see how easy EventHQ is to use?

Happy New Year to all our customers for 2010. We have (finally!) managed to find time over the Christmas break to get a blog up and running. We will be publishing posts both on EventHQ itself (e.g. new features on the way or tips on getting the most from the system) and also on the many and wonderful events that you are running through EventHQ. If you have an event you would like us to talk about then please fire off an email to us!

In the meantime, a major update of EventHQ is taking shape with an approximate launch date in April/May 2010. During 2009 we listened carefully to both existing and prospective customers to find out how we could make organising events easier for you. Look out for a series of articles describing the improvements being made to EventHQ for 2010.