We are very excited to announce a great new resource for our customers!  Some are already familiar with the Customer Center and all its glory, but for those that may be reluctant to venture into the unknown, the following information may help to make this transition a bit less stressful and will make managing your products a little easier. Here’s what the Customer Center can do for you…

Activate Products:

Customers who have purchased a .NET product version 4.0 and greater, will use this tab to activate their license(s).  All other product versions can still be activated by visiting http://www.dart.com/register/.

Customers with an active subscription wishing to upgrade to version 4.0 or greater, will need to be issued a new Product License for that version. New Product Licenses may be retrieved by visiting the “My Products” tab in the Customer Center.

Customers wishing to activate any version prior to 4.0 do not need to acquire a new Product License.

My Products:
The “My Products” tab will provide valuable information regarding your products. You will be able to review the subscription status of each product, receive qualified updates, and manage all products owned by your company.

Clicking on any Product License number listed under the My Products tab will allow you to see the registration history of that particular product, the current subscription status, and whether or not an upgrade is available to you. Please remember that an active subscription is required to receive the most recent version available.

Managing your company products is also easy! Product License numbers are linked to the email account of either the original purchaser or the most recent registered user.  You may notice that not all of your company owned product are listed. To resolve this, simply add any number of valid email addresses to your account (See “Edit Profile”), and the products linked to those email addresses will appear in your “My Products” tab as soon as the email address is validated.

Edit Profile:

Under the “Edit Profile” tab you will be able to change your personal account information as well as link additional valid email addresses. Once an email address is added, a message will be automatically be sent to the requested address for verification. Once the link contained in the email is clicked, the email address will be confirmed in your account and you will be able to view product information associated with the new address.  You can check the status of any requested email address on the left hand side of the Edit Profile tab. It will provide a list of all email addresses added to the account and whether or not they are in a pending status. The pending status means your request has not yet been accepted from the email account holder.

I hope this article has provided some valuable information regarding the many benefits the Customer Center provides. Keep checking back for updates and new features!

Please contact sales@dart.com if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions regarding the Customer Center.

As recently reported by mainstream media outlets like CNN, there is a vocal and vigorous campaign to kill IE6.  At first, I pumped my fist and looked around for someone to high-five.  Having developed both intranet and extranet web applications for over a decade, one of the most frustrating and time-consuming aspects of my job is supporting cross-browser compatibility.  It used to be just a "simple" cross-browser problem.  But because of the differences in client script engines, DOMs, HTML rendering, and CSS behaviors, it has become much more complex.  Now I have to consider Firefox 3.0.x, Firefox 3.5.x, Safari, IE6, IE7 and IE8.  And that's just if I want to support the major players.  I'd absolutely love it if we could ignore everything except Firefox 3.5.x and IE8.  My job would be much simpler.  Right?  But if I'm honest with myself, I'd probably complain just as much about the differences between two browsers.

Then I start thinking about WHY people are still using IE6.  Perhaps I'm wrong, but maybe it just works for them.  There are many environments out there with several hundreds (or thousands) of machines that need to be monitored and managed.  Having configured these machines to function properly against stable intranet applications, there's no pressing need to upgrade.  From an IT management perspective, why should a functional infrastructure be destabilized so that the browser can render an external e-commerce site?  How about the individual (forgive the stereotype) grandmother who doesn't obsessively update her machine?  She just wants to enjoy browsing the web and interacting online.  Should she disrupt a comfortable setup so we web developers can add more features with less work? 

What happened to "the customer is always right"?  Look at the statistics.  According to CNN's article, 15% to 25% of all online users are still running IE6.  When was the last time anyone could afford to disregard or denigrate 25% of their customers?  I suspect that the organizations paying attention to "legacy" browser users will reap benefits, but each will need to decide if the added maintenance and development costs are justified.  And against my initial reaction to the push to kill IE6, I'm going to disagree.  Let it live as long as it can.  Just don't ask me to promote it.