Tag Archives: browser

Blocking IE6: You, Me and…PayPal?

Posted on April 21, 2008 by Kelson

Internet Explorer.On Thursday I stumbled across a campaign to Trash All IE Hacks. The idea is that people only stay on the ancient, buggy, feature-lacking, PITA web browser, Internet Explorer 6, because we web developers coddle them. We make the extra effort to work around those bugs, so they can actually use the sites without upgrading.

Well, yeah. That’s our job.

And a bunch of random websites blocking IE6 aren’t going to convince people to change. If I were to block IE6, or only allow Firefox, or only allow Opera, I’d have to have seriously compelling content to get people to switch. Mostly, people would get annoyed and move on. Who’s going to install a new browser just so they can read the history of the Flash? Or choose an ISP? Or buy a product that they can get from another site?

Slapping the User in the Face

It’s so easy for someone to walk away from your site. One of the tenets of good web design is to make the user jump through as few hoops as possible to accomplish whatever you want him/her to do. Every hoop you add is an obstacle. Too many obstacles, and they’ll just go somewhere else more convenient.

Back when I was following Spread Firefox, every once in a while someone would suggest blocking IE. Every time, people like me would shoot it down. Continue reading →

Posted in Browsers, Computers/Internet, Web Design | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Joining Opera Watch

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Kelson

[Opera Logo]Daniel Goldman, who has been posting news about the Opera web browser at Opera Watch since 2004, has embarked on a new project that has kept him too busy for blogging full-time. So he’s launching the next phase of the blog as a group effort. And, I’m happy to say, he invited me to join as a contributor.

Thanks, Daniel, for the opportunity to be part of Opera Watch!

Now I need to think of something to write!

Posted in Opera | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Flocking from Netscape

Posted on April 2, 2008 by Kelson

Netscape. Flock. When AOL first announced they were discontinuing Netscape, they recommended Firefox (a logical choice for many reasons). Since then, they’ve also started heavily promoting Flock—to the point of offering seamless upgrades from NS8 to Flock. (In theory, anyway; I fired up the copy I had for testing and couldn’t get it to do anything but update to the most recent 8.x version. Confirmed. I let it sit open in the background for a while, and it eventually popped up the offer for 1-click Flock migration.) Netscape 9 has an update notice that offers to download Flock or Firefox.

The key issue, of course, is moving as many users as possible from a discontinued browser—there’s no doubt that security holes will be found in it over time—to one that is actively maintained.

Why Flock, specifically? Well, sticking with the same toolkit and user profile makes migration easier, so that narrows the field to Firefox and Flock. (Not sure about SeaMonkey’s profile.) Since Netscape 8 and 9 were big on integrating with websites, Flock’s “social browser” seems a slightly better fit. And it turns out most of the Netscape 8 team went on to build Flock. Talk about social networking!

(via Flock: The Netscape Spirit Lives On)

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Web Browsers of the Future

Posted on January 14, 2008 by Kelson

[Opera Logo]Firefox.I’ve been using the Opera 9.5 previews across the board since September, and the Firefox 3 beta 2 on my secondary work computer for the past month, and I just can’t bring myself to go back. The full-history search available in both browsers has got to be the most useful new feature I’ve seen in a browser since inline spell-check.

Really, the only things holding me back from jumping up to Firefox 3 on my main computers at home and at work were Firebug and some of the HTML validator extensions. Firebug is complicated enough that I didn’t want to rely on the Nightly Tester Tools to disable the compatibility checks. Then I found out that there’s a Firebug beta that does work with Firefox 3. That was enough. Last night I took the plunge.

Internet Explorer.Meanwhile, things look good on the ditch-IE6 front. After last month’s false alarm due to a local maximum, it looks like IE7 has solidly overtaken IE6 on this site! For the first 13½ days of January, Internet Explorer accounted for 62.5% of total hits. IE7 was 33.5%, and IE6 was only 28.4%. Even better, that’s barely over 1 percentage point from Firefox’s 27.2%!

Most likely, a lot of people got new computers for Christmas. New Windows boxes would mostly be Vista, and would ship with IE7. Another factor might be techies visiting their relatives and helping clean up/update their computers. They might have taken the opportunity to install IE7 or Firefox.

Posted in Browsers, Mozilla, Opera | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Stylish Links

Posted on January 13, 2008 by Kelson

2008: Year of the Layout Engine – CSS3.info takes a look at the four major categories of web browsers, and where they’re likely to go this year.

Also, Progressive Enhancement with CSS3. This is an approach I’ve been taking for quite a while, particularly with my personal sites, but it’s starting to creep into sites I’m building for work as well. Essentially: Build it to look decent in everything, but throw in enhancements to browsers that you know can handle them.

An example of progressive enhancement: the rounded corners on the tabs on my Flash site. They’re not critical to the design, but it does make it look better in Safari and Firefox. And in theory, Opera and IE will eventually pick up the capability. (Though in this case, since border-radius is still experimental, I’ll have to change the CSS when they do—so maybe it’s not the best example.)

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Behind the Times

Posted on December 28, 2007 by Kelson

I’ve been meaning to post these photos for a while now, but with the discussion on Netscape’s impending doom, I should post them now.

Back in February, I was wandering the aisles at Micro Center and noticed a couple of odd software titles on the shelf:

  • Netscape Basics, a jewel-cased CD-ROM which contained Netscape Communicator 4.5 and boasted compatibility with Windows 95 and Windows 98.
  • Opera for Windows, a boxed copy of I forget-which-version, but judging by the “New! Voice Enabled!” badge, it’s probably 8.0.

Keep in mind that this was February 2007. So that was an 8-year old Netscape box, and a 2-year-old Opera box. Netscape had been free for 9 years, and Opera had been free for 1½ years.

Someone had sensibly marked the Netscape CD down repeatedly, ending with a price tag of $0.42. I was half-tempted to buy it just to prove that I’d found it, but decided taking a picture would be better, since it wouldn’t clutter up my desk. Incredibly, no one had thought to mark down the Opera box. They were still asking $39.99 for it.

Did I mention pictures?

Netscape Basics CD for $0.42 Opera for Windows for… $39.99

Posted in Browsers, Opera | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Farewell, Netscape!

Posted on December 28, 2007 by Kelson

NetscapeIt’s been a long time coming, but AOL has officially decided to shut down the Netscape web browser. The final security updates for Netscape 9 will go out in February, and then that’s it.

It’s been on life support for a while now, as AOL has tried repeatedly to revive it. After they dismantled the Netscape team in 2003 (just before spinning off the Mozilla Foundation), everyone expected that would be the end, but they came back with a surprise update, Netscape 7.2, the following year. Then they hired an outside company to reinvent it as a mash-up of Firefox and Internet Explorer, producing the Netscape 8 chimera. And just a few months ago, they went back to the well and released the Firefox-based Netscape 9, trying for the Flock model of integration with social networking sites…but only integrating with their own.

So what killed it? Netscape was arguably the pioneer, building on Mosaic’s success to create the first widely-used browser on the fledgling World Wide Web.

  • Internet Explorer being pre-installed on every Windows desktop
  • The commercial-to-freeware transition. Back in the 1990s, the only business model for giving away a free web browser was to subsidise it with revenue from other products. This led to selling the company to AOL, and opening the source code.
  • The missing Netscape 5. IE5 was considerably better than IE4, and arguably better than Netscape 4 in some areas. And Netscape didn’t have a new version to compete, because…
  • The transition to open-source took a lot longer than expected, leading to…
  • The disastrous Netscape 6. While there’s something to be said for meeting deadlines, Netscape 6 was a prime example of why not to release early. The program just wasn’t ready (Mozilla actually declared the code to be 0.6), and it turned off many users who might otherwise have stuck around a little longer for a stable release.
  • Fundamentally, though, AOL never seemed to know what to do with it. Is it a product? An exploitable brand name? A threat to brandish during contract negotiations with Microsoft?

Get Firefox!It’s interesting that, as I made this list, I realized that the transition to open source really didn’t help Netscape, the company. But it led to the formation of the Mozilla Foundation and the release of Firefox, one of the most visible open source success stories out there. The company and brand name withered, but the code itself flourished.

Like the demise of IE/Mac, it’s more of a symbolic end than one of substance. In my opinion, the true “heir” so to speak of the early Netscape has been Mozilla, and now Firefox, for quite some time.

Update: Asa Dotzler has a somewhat less nostalgic take on the matter, as well as a link to commentary at TechCrunch. I can’t believe I forgot to mention the crippling/crufting of Netscape 6-7 as compared to Mozilla.

Update 2: More comments at Slashdot. Gee, I wonder who submitted that story? ;)

Update 3: Some commentary from the Web Standards Project, with a somewhat familiar-looking title.

(via Opera Watch)

Posted in Browsers | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

IE8 will pass Acid2

Posted on December 19, 2007 by Kelson

Internet Explorer.Okay, this will mean nothing to most people out there, but to web developers, particularly those who use standards-based design to maximize compatibility with different browsers, this is monumental.

An internal build of Internet Explorer 8 has passed Acid2.

The Acid2 test was released in April 2005 to test a number of pieces of the HTML and CSS standards that, at the time, no modern browser handled according to spec. The purpose of the test was to prod browser developers into improving their products, and to do so consistently, so that developers would have more tools available for cross-browser sites.

At the time, Microsoft dismissed its its importance entirely. Even though they were working on rendering improvements for IE7, they stated that Acid2 was not one of their goals. Meanwhile Opera and Firefox were both in the wrong phase of their development cycles to make sweeping changes, so Safari jumped on it and became the first browser to pass. (Every once in a while I see someone say Opera was the first, and I have to wonder where they were.) Opera followed with version 9, and the Firefox 3 betas pass it as well.

With Gecko (Firefox), WebKit (Safari), Opera and IE accounting for the four biggest web browsers and the most popular minor browsers (Flock, Camino, Shiira, etc., plus IE shells like Maxthon), this shows unprecedented convergence among clients. It will be much easier to develop a cross-browser website that runs on IE8, Firefox 3, Opera 9+ and Safari 3+.

There are, of course, many aspects of the specs that aren’t covered by Acid2. And there are emerging standards like HTML5 and CSS3. And there are plenty of other bugs, quirks, and extensions among various browsers (IE’s bizarre concept of having layout, for instance, trips up all kinds of weird issues). And then there’s waiting for IE8 to be released, and moving people up from IE7, not to mention all the people we still have to move up from IE6. Full benefit is probably at least 3 or 4 years away. *sigh*

(via WaSP Buzz)

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Legality Links

Posted on December 14, 2007 by Kelson

Organization for Transformative Works – dedicated to protecting the expression of fan fiction, fan art, etc. (via Naomi Novik)

Open Standards, One Web, and Opera – Just why are standards important, anyway? (via Opera Watch)

Speaking of Opera, their EU antitrust complaint against Microsoft has been making waves. Responses at CSS3.info, Web Standards Project, Slashdot (edit: more Slashdot), Asa Dotzler, Opera Watch, plus a Q&A w/ Haarvard. My take: Good luck on unbundling, but if they can force Microsoft to catch up with the rest of the market in terms of standards support, I’m all for it.

Nissan vs. Nissan. On my way to work I saw a bumper sticker on an XTerra that said “In support of our freedom, it’s my last Nissan.” Huh? There was clearly a web address below it, but it was too small to read at that distance. So I looked up the phrase, and apparently there’s been a long-running dispute over the domain name nissan.com, between a small computer business named after its founder, Uzi Nissan, and the Nissan car company. The dispute was eventually resolved (correctly, IMO, since he has a legit reason to use the name) in favor of the little guy. On the other hand, I don’t see why the site makes such a big deal about Nissan’s “French Connection” to Renault.

Posted in Computers/Internet, Opera, Politics, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Firefox, Kindle(ing) and more

Posted on November 20, 2007 by Kelson

Firefox.Firefox 3 Beta 1 is out. Nice so far. Oddly enough, it runs better than the current Opera 9.5 previews on my old Linux box at work, though that mostly seems to be the fault of the find-in-history option.

I usually avoid any sort of shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, online included, but I’ve been getting email from various online stores that are trying to get into Black Friday. Amazon is advertising a Black Friday Sale, and Apple is promoting a “special one-day shopping event” on their website—and annoyingly, neither of them is giving any clue as to what sort of deals are involved. Amazon keeps forwarding me to today’s deals, and Apple just says something’s coming. And neither site lists actual hours. Is it midnight to midnight? What time zone?

Amazon KindleSpeaking of Amazon, their entire home page is currently taken up by the announcement of their new eBook reader, Kindle. At $400 I’m not going to rush out and buy one, but it looks like they’ve solved some of the main e-book problems: it’s small, light and wireless, and they even bring up the reading-in-bed issue in the intro. The real question is going to be compatibility & openness: It’ll read plain text, HTML, Word, and a few other document formats (and they’re promoting its access to Wikipedia), so it should be possible for other stores to sell books for the device. And what about the e-book offerings themselves? Will they be loaded down with draconian digital rights management like the Adobe ebooks of a few years ago, or are they following the model of Amazon’s MP3 store?* In a nice change, their music downloads are entirely DRM-free and they use it as a selling point. Edit: Per Andrea’s comments and further research, Kindle ebooks are locked down with DRM. No, thanks!

The name, however, makes me wonder how soon they’ll offer Fahrenheit 451.

Finally, the Internet Storm Center has an insightful response to the statement, “There is nothing on my computer that a hacker would be interested in.” Let’s leave aside the question of your personal data for the moment. Just the fact that you’ve got a computer with an internet connection could prove very useful to someone who wants to cover their tracks or just add more power to their own distributed system.

* Amazon’s MP3 store is also surprisingly cheap. I replaced my old tapes of the original cast recordings of Les Misérables (Broadway) and Phantom Of The Opera for $9 each—they run upwards of $30 on CD.

Posted in Computers/Internet, Entertainment, Mozilla | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments