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While smartphone views are currently only a small percentage of viewers of my web site (IE6, for better or for worse still has a higher percentage), their number is increasing while legacy IE user percentages are decreasing.

That in mind, here are some tentative plans for updating the web page design in 2012:

• The web site was a table-free design until testing shows this was causing problems in Internet Explorer 7 and 8. I had to add tables to work around CSS bugs in these older browsers.

• That in mind, I would like to return to the original table-free design, along with <!--[if lt IE 9]><![endif]--> code to show only ancient IE releases tables.

• The webpage shows a banner suggesting upgrading for IE6 users. I may either keep this banner, remove the banner and test the webpage design in my older laptop with an IE6 virtual machine, or lock out IE6 users using code like this.

• I will need to have access to some kind of smartphone to perform small browser testing.

• I will keep the same appearance as the current design; the redesign is so smartphone users on small screens see the ads at the bottom, instead of the right, of the page.

• I have already updated my archive of some ancient Usenet postings with a design that works well on smartphones; this design works well because those pages do not have ads--I can simply hide the right-hand sidebar from small-screen users. Of course, looking at 80-column fix-width text on a tiny smartphone screen is never going to be the same as looking at it on a modern tablet or PC.

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