Archive for the 'Browsers' Category
October 31st, 2007 @ 12:49 comments(2)
Blimey, this is strange. I haven’t written anything here in a long while. I have meant to as I’ve been doing loads of fun stuff, I just don’t seemed to find time not to do the fun stuff and write about it.
This is a small tip that I find useful and others might. I had always thought that Safari never had a session saver (something I really use in a browser as I always have many tabs open waiting to be looked at). It turns out that in Safari 3.0 this is already in there just slightly hidden away. If you go to the History menu item there are 2 options [ reopen last closed window and reopen all windows from last session ]. It would be nice if you could choose to reopen when the app reopens (maybe you can, anyone know?)
Filed Under: Browsers, Safari
October 24th, 2006 @ 11:41 comments(0)
I’m sure people will not fail to know about this but as it’s not completely official yet and I think the Mozilla FTP site has melted under the load, you can still get a copy from this mirror. Version 2.0 comes with a bunch of new features: Spell checker, Better Session management etc etc. I’m sure there’s loads more but I haven’t looked through the release notes. I hope they have made an effort to fix the hogging of memory that FF is is infamous for.
This release comes just 2 weeks after the IE7 release, which seems to have done half a job in improving the poor IE6. I can’t believe they’ve found a hole already!! Thank goodness I don’t have to use it (Thanks Steve). I’m sure the dissecting of both browsers will occur over the next few weeks I imagine you’ll find it hard to fine someone backing IE.
Filed Under: Firefox, Browsers, ie
June 14th, 2006 @ 00:28 comments(4)
Now I must admit, I’d always been in the I’ll-use-Opera-like-I-use-IE ….. *ahem* Never! camp due to it’s own bunch of strange behaviours. But I’ve been playing with the Opera 9.0b2 release and you know what, it’s really very nice.
The bits I like. Oh and I’m using the Mac version__I assume the PC version is the same__. The most obvious plus for me was the speed of the thing. I find it renders pages much faster than Firefox__my current browser__ and in the relms of Safari, Omniweb or Camino. They’ve also kept the whole UI compact and un-obtrusive. Opera customisation has always been good but now it’s an art form. You appear to be able to change anything and everything. Other nice features are Session saver, Fast-forward, User styles, CSS3 support, blimey so much I like.
They also seem to have packed many different apps in. Quite a feat. Extras include Email Client, IRC, Bit Torrent, Small screen mode, Widgets the list goes on. I’ll be honest I don’t think I’ll use many of these extras__why would you not use Mail? and I have widgets__but the fact you have them available is a bonus.
But …. and there seems always to be a but with Opera, the bloody thing still doesn’t work on sites I view frequently. My first example is flickr. I visit this site a lot as it’s where I store my photos and the first thing I got was ‘your browser is not supported’ looks like the user_agent problems, I think they have set the user agent back to ‘Opera’ in this one. Anyway. Next, after I have forced my way in I try and organise some photos and the brower either hangs or does does nothing, oh and the DHTML menus don’t work.
I realise these are likely not Opera problems but not a great start. I don’t know how Opera fix this, after all they are well known for their Standards Support and it’s one of the rare few that passes the Acid2 test. I know this browser is good, no infact I know this browser is great, but if the big sites break it then where’s the confidence. I wonder if they can make it more flexible in certain situations maybe a toggle should/will work. Hmm, I guess that goes against the grain. You see I really want to use this browser, but viewing the sites I like is far more inportant.
So, in summary I think this browser’s fantastic but I won’t be using it just yet, lets hope some of the problems are addressed in the final release.
Filed Under: Web Standards, Browsers
February 1st, 2006 @ 19:53 comments(0)
I’m sure anyone who would want to know this already does but Microsoft have made IE7 available to the public in beta 2 release form.
I’ve had a play with it briefly on the girlfriends laptop and I have to say, on first glances it seems quite nice. I need to do more thorough testing with complex layouts but on the surface things are looking good, not great, but good. I know they’re working hard to do the best they can with this next release (and boy, they had to work hard) so hopefully they will continue to fix as many problems as they can before the final release.
Please go get IE7 and try it for yourselves and if something doesn’t work, tell them.
Filed Under: Browsers, microsoft, ie
November 29th, 2005 @ 22:41 comments(0)
It looks like the final release of Firefox 1.5 is available for download. Get it now. Oh and it also looks like the Spread Firefox site is gearing up for something exciting.
Filed Under: Firefox, Browsers
April 24th, 2005 @ 17:35 comments(0)
It’s not often you will hear me say this, but I read with interest on the IE blog .. that they have already fixed a few bugs in the next version of IE. The PNG alpha channel problem that creates big design restrictions has been addressed. They have also sorted the peekaboo and guillotine bugs. They’ve still a few more to fix though.
Now I think these fixes are great, but I hope that they’re going to be doing more that just fixing stuff. In my opinion IE fixes should be addressed in the same way they address the many security fixes that people have had to apply to IE in the past. While I appreciate the fact that they are being open and telling us what is going on in the development of IE7, it still concerns me that they will not be addressing the main problem us developers have and that is the lack of full standards support, the fact that IE currently doesn’t fully support CSS2 which has been a W3C Recommendation since 1998.
In the mean time, I do welcome these snippets of information about current development but I will not be happy until I see some forward thinking steps by the IE team that make me feel happy that MS are not just palming us of with sweeteners.
Filed Under: Web development, Browsers
February 3rd, 2005 @ 10:02 comments(0)
I know this extension to firefox has been around for ever, but I feel it deserves it’s own little big-up as I find it so useful. Developed by Chris Pederick, it is a toolbar extension for Firefox that allows you to use many great tools that the toolbar has built in. For example a useful one is the ablity to highlight all block level elements, also to view the CSS ID’s and Class information on the page and then edit that information live.
There really is too many features to list. Let’s just say if you are a web developer, you need it!
Filed Under: Firefox, Browsers, Extensions
January 6th, 2005 @ 11:09 comments(0)
One the guys at work did a quick browser stats review yesterday for the figures in 2005 (yes I know we’re only 6 days in) and my they have made interesting viewing. Firefox has made a giant leap. Let hope this continues for the rest of the year.
58.92% IE6 (down 8%)
23.37% Firefox (up 11% - bear in mind this is from just 3 days of stats though)
5.41% IE5 and 5.5 (down 3% - IE5 family appears to be dying out!)
1.62% Safari (down 0.2%, but still above FF on Mac which is now at 1.058%)
1.20% RSS News Feed Aggregators (new, better detection = higher % here)
1.12% Phones + Handhelds (new, better detection = higher % here)
Filed Under: Firefox, Browsers
December 13th, 2004 @ 09:35 comments(0)
In little more than a month, Firefox has been downloaded more than 10 million times.
This is fantastic. I’ve been using the browser since the early days of development and singing it virtues to everyone I know. MS must be quaking in the there boots? I don’t think they’ve ever seen such completion growing so fast. To show the level of growth it has, even my grandparents have it installed on there computer!
I read from the spread firefox site that the advert in the NY times is set to be out by this coming Wednesday, December 15… If you keep tuned into the site they’ll let you know the day before the ad is set to run. There’re also saying ‘You’ll want to be sure to stake out a copy for yourself - we’ve got a surprise for you!’
Filed Under: Firefox, Browsers
August 4th, 2003 @ 22:04 comments(0)
This site has I’m sure been around ages but I have only just found it and it has proved very usefull. Just passing the info on. Click here.PS. sorry for the lack of posts recently. I’ve been on my hols. Went snowboarding in Les 2 Alps a couple of weeks ago and just came back from Amsterdam yesterday. What a lovely place Amsterdam is, friendly, clean and well priced. Highly recommended.
Filed Under: Web development, Browsers
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