Tag: Browsers

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Link Goodness

Allrighty, how about a little linkitudinal updatage going on here?

First, for those of you in the Asheville area, I have for you perhaps the best online weather info available. Current NCDC Weather Conditions provides you with current data from atop the Grove Arcade in downtown Asheville. There are also links to regional radar maps (loopable) and lots of other cool weather geek info. I have an inside track on this sort of thing these days, which makes me even geekier. I know you are jealous.

Montage-A-Google is a neat way of creating photo montages by searching with Google Images.

If the news that Microsoft is finally releasing an update to its bug-ridden, non-compliant, piece of doo security threat called Internet Explorer (for XP users only, mind you) isn’t enough to make you crumple over with a hernia from laughing, check out their “A parent’s primer to computer slang” article.

Key points for learning leetspeek

  • Numbers are often used as letters

40w 08|?10U$, M@N.

And about the Internet Explorer thing, it’s not really a new version of the browser, it’s a service pack. Looks like they are feeling a wee bit threatened by someone.

In case you didn’t know, you can opt out of a lot of credit card junk mail. It’s your legal right, so do it.

Lastly, for those of you who need to surf the Internet in style, I give you Pimpzilla the bling-bling Firefox theme.

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Hil-ariousness

This is just too funny. Microsoft just launched a new Internet Explorer Security Newsgroup. 4 years too late!!!

The comments posted are just too funny. Here are a few choice ones:

“This blog is a great metaphor for how well Microsoft understands the full implications of everything it does. ”

“I found a security flaw where IE accidentally loses massive amounts of market share every time I launch it.”

” Hi, can you make IE as secure as firefox?

Shouldn’t be too hard right, since you guys have like 30 billion dollars? … and mozilla has … 2 … million?

Thanks.”

(link via waxy)

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Firefox Flourishes

Firefox Downloads
This image (borrowed from Asa) shows us the number of times Firefox has been downloaded over the last two weeks. As Asa speculates in his post on why the spike around New Years occured, it all seems to be attributed to yours truly. Well, maybe.

It’s good to see Thunderbird taking flight as well, with over 2,000,000 downloads since it was released last month. Go smart people, go!

And for those non-smart people remaining, check out the latest “Extremely Critical” Internet Explorer flaw and think about changing your browser.

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Many Things

Today I shall endeavor to post a long update. I have been collecting a lot of good things to say here but haven’t had time to elaborate until now.

First, if you are one of the hundreds of people who leave comments on my posts each day, you will notice a new “captcha” that you must get by in order to submit a post. This I implemented using Gudlyf’s AuthImage plugin for WordPress. The spam bots finally got to be too much to handle, so this was necessary.

On to the world of Mozilla, the excellent email client Thunderbird was officially released this week. I have been using the Beta version for about a year, and am highly impressed with all the cool stuff version 1.0 offers. If you want to reduce spam and have a much safer email experience, download it now.

Since I know you are already using Firefox, I will throw out a handy link for the free MozBackup tool that will back up all of your Thunderbird mail and settings, as well as Firefox settings, and save them as a self-executable file for easy restoration. I use this tool weekly in case of a disastrous catastrophy. Additionally, I found the Firefox Deploy tool a great way to install Firefox on multiple machines with the exact same settings, extensions, and bookmarks.

Folks, free, reliable stuff like this is why Mozilla and the whole open source movement rule. Of course, this guy seems to have been in the bathroom when they passed out the brains.

I found an interesting article at 43 Folders called 5 Mistakes Band & Label Sites Make that lists some very common web design no-no’s. I couldn’t agree more. I learned a few things from the article that I will definitely resolve on the two band sites I have done so far, and will keep them in mind down the road.

Place The State is a fun game that tests your USA geography skills. Do you know where on the map to place the state of Delaware? I have to brag and say that the first try I got 90% with an average error of 53 miles.

For you iPod owners out there, you can now download the United States Constitution as an audio book for free. All it takes is an email address.

I was interested to read Jakob Nielsen’s recent post regarding Most Hated Advertising Techniques. I had a feeling about many of these, but now I can back up that feeling with facts when I try to convince a client that popup windows are just not cool.

While doing some research on Web Accessibility, I found HP’s site regarding the subject. I was laughing alound in my cubicle when I read their page about What to do if your screen reader says “horsepower”. Yes, it’s sad when one’s sense of humor slumps so low that jokes about screen readers are funny (but the higher geek factor is cool).

And lastly, but not leastly, Mackie, the maker of excellent sound equipment, is giving away a full-featured audio editing application called Tracktion. Again, all it takes is an email address. (link via my new favorite blog, Plastic Bugs).

whew!

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Irony

The brand spankin’ Firefox 1.0 gives you an option of setting your default Home page to a Firefox-branded Google search page calledFirefox Start Page. This is cool, and I have chosen to use it.

However, it seems ironic that Google chose to befriend Firefox users in this way and not create a valid html document out of this start page. What gives?

This would have been a perfect opportunity for Google to lead the way with Web Standards. Firefox supports standards, so why not use them? It would certainly give them a little more clout if they are worried about the new Microsoft MSN Search Engine, which is built with XHTML (albeit slightly invalid). Not to mention, it could even save them a little bandwidth.

C’mon Google – show us what ya got.

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The Big Blue ‘e’

Today marks the official release of Firefox 1.0, the first full release of the web browser that has already started to “take back the web”. If you are a regular reader of this blog (of which there are, like, 3 of you), you know I am a staucnh supporter of Firefox and have written about it extensively.

As we have seen in recent weeks, Firefox has started encroaching upon the dominant web browser of today, Internet Explorer, taking away a small (but important) part of it’s marketshare. So far, the general consensus is that mostly the tech-savvy geeks such as myself are the ones that have been behind this push. The hope is that the trend will carry over to the ‘average’ internet user with the official release of Firefox 1.0.

However, I still see one big obstacle. The fact remains that no matter how much you try to inform users of the advantages of using Firefox over Internet Explorer (the security, the usability, the tools, the features), the average user is too used to clicking the Big Blue ‘e’.

To most people, “getting on the Internet” means clicking the Internet Explorer icon. It has become intrinsic over the last few years, and until the Big Blue ‘e’ disappears from desktops and quicklaunch toolbars, Firefox will face a hurdle.

So what can we do? Ideally, when one installed Firefox, all occurences of the Big Blue ‘e’ would be removed from a user’s desktop. Or, the shortcuts would be remapped to launch Firefox.

Unfortunately, there are probably legal implications to doing this that would keep it from ever happening. Maybe the Mozilla team could still look into it.

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Firefox Advances

CNET reports that Firefox is still gaining ground on Internet Explorer. Granted, it’s not much, but IE has seen a drop in browser marketshare to about 92%.

The first full version of Firefox has yet to come out, and with a new version of the resurrected Netscape out, IE might just slip away even more.

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Beachy Keen

Within about 36 hours, you will be able to see the latest round of Gray pictures. I am just waiting for the domain name to resolve to my new server. I went ahead an remade the whole site again in addition to posting pictures from the last 2 months, including our beach trip last weekend.

In other news, I was happy to see the Bookmark Synchronizer has finally been updated to work in Firefox 1.0PR, which means I can now maintain a shared set of bookmarks between home, work, and now my USB drive with Portable Firefox.

Firefox keeps getting better and better. Now if they would only develop a version for Windows Mobile 2003 so I could run it on my X3i…(hint hint)

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Flash Free

By sheer coincidence, I recently had to reinstall the operating systems on both my home PC and my work PC within a couple of days of each other.

I loaded all my usual software, set Firefox as my default browser, then started doing my usual 10 to 12 hours a day of work online. A few days later I realized that I never loaded the Macromedia Flash plugin in Firefox on either PC. The only thing that led me to realize this was some sort of Flash banner ad on a site I visited. As a little test, I decided to not install the Flash plugin and see how much of my ordinary internet life would go on without being interrupted.

3 weeks later, I can say that I have not been negatively effected by not having the Flash plugin on either my home PC or my work PC. There was only one site, the Weekly Standards, that had a Flash menu for voting which I was unable to see or use. Still, everything else on the site was usable.

It would seem that either creating sites in Flash is becoming more widely known as a hinderance to accessibility, usability, and search engine optimization, or the sites I visit happen to use Flash only on banner ads.

It’s a mixture of both of these things I suppose, but overall, I think this is a good sign. Web designers seem to be moving away from Flash-based design as Web Standards and Accessibility gain ground. They are realizing that Flash has a place on the web and can be useful for certain interactions, but dominating a site’s navigation and design with such a restrictive media definitely smells like poo-poo-poo.

If Flash goes the way of animated gifs and scrolling marquees, we will see it used more and more for advertisements, and less and less for practical design. The ‘kewl’ factor is fading.

clicky