K-Squared Ramblings

Suggestions Wanted: Alternative Browser Alliance Relaunch

You may have seen my website, the Alternative Browser Alliance. I put it together in 2005, when flame wars between Opera users and Firefox users were at their height, to show that we shared a common goal: opening the web. The most popular page on the site is a list of web browsers, which is linked as a resource from a number of sites and also gets a steady stream of traffic from people searching for alternative browsers.

Of course, things have changed a lot since 2005, so I’m planning an overhaul of the whole site. Read the rest of this entry »

Summer of the Browser

Firefox: The new release candidate Firefox 3 RC2 is out. No date yet on the official launch, but they’re still saying June. Also, developers are starting to talk work that’s gone into what will become Firefox 3.1, such as completing CSS3 selectors support.

Opera: A new Opera 9.5 preview came out today, showcasing the browser’s new look. Also, the Opera Core team takes a look at what you can do if you put hardware acceleration on the whole browser.

Internet Explorer: IE8 beta 2 is scheduled for August. I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ve done, and figure I’ll start updating sites to accommodate changes. I held off changing too much when IE8b1 came out, because some of the differences were obviously bugs (triggering the Caio Hack, for instance; and yes, I reported it).

Flock has been moving ahead with small, rapid releases, adding integration for new services each time. They just added Digg and Pownce in Flock 1.2 a few days ago. Now they’re getting ready to start on Flock 2.0, which will merge in all the new capabilities of Firefox 3. That means it’ll get new rendering capabilities, better memory management, probably EV certs and such.

Blocking IE6: You, Me and…PayPal?

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Joining Opera Watch

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!

Stylish Links

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.)

Behind the Times

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?

IE8 will pass Acid2

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)

Firefox, Kindle(ing) and more

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?

Speaking 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.

Safari Blend Coffee

In honor of the release* of Safari 3, here’s a little something we found at Trader Joe’s.

The mug is from the short-lived Mozilla Coffee. It seemed appropriate. Now if I can just track down some Opera Coffee, or Explorer Coffee…

*Safari 3 was included in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, released 2½ weeks ago. And it’s included in the 10.4.11 update for Tiger, released today. An updated version of Safari was released today for Windows, but it’s still a beta, according to Apple’s website and the license (even though the about box just says it’s Safari 3.0.4—the same version that’s in Leopard). I’d been planning to hold this until all 3 releases were out, but clearly they don’t feel that the Windows version is quite release-quality yet. So, on the premise that two out of three ain’t bad, I’m posting.

Browser Bits

The Flock web browser has just made its 1.0 release. This is the Firefox-based browser that’s built around integration with social networking sites.

Still no sign of a non-beta Safari 3 outside of Leopard.

Five years ago, Mozilla was forced to rename the Phoenix web browser because Phoenix Technologies was working on an in-BIOS browser that would let you get on the internet and troubleshoot/download drivers/etc. even if your operating system was trashed. It became Firebird, and then Firefox. The Phoenix product has finally been released. Ironically, it’s evolved into an embedded Linux distro that runs… Firefox.

Random Tech Bits

Taking a break from the fire commentary:

Apple: Finally pre-ordered Mac OS X Leopard, removing the temptation to run out to an Apple store or Fry’s this weekend (though I’ve been meaning to put some more RAM in the Windows box). Saved a few bucks by ordering from Amazon ($10 off the family pack, would’ve been $20 off the standard box), and picked the free shipping so that I won’t be tempted to install it until there’ve been a few days’ worth of bug reports.

Meanwhile, I’m wondering when Safari 3 comes out for Windows and Tiger. Tonight at 6:00? Monday? I’m looking forward to this putting some of the new CSS3 capabilities into the hands of potentially 5% of the web audience.

Opera: Speaking of web browsers, Opera 9.5 beta came out yesterday. In addition to lots of work on rendering & site compatibility (as seen through the last few weeks’ worth of alpha releases), they’ve launched a new service called Opera Link. It’s primarily a bookmarks sync service, plus a web-accessible interface. So you can automatically sync multiple copies of Opera—including Opera Mini—and also be able to access those bookmarks from Firefox, IE, or a computer where you’re a guest (friend, computer lab, cafe, etc.). I think the biggest impact here is going to be syncing between the desktop and phone, like Safari on the desktop and the iPhone.

On the other hand, imagine adding a bookmarklet or Firefox extension to more easily update from—or even fully sync with—other browsers. Or better yet, a way to synchronize Opera Link with, say, del.icio.us, which can integrate fully with both Firefox (via an extension) and Flock.

Spam: I’m astonished that, with the amount of comment spam that hits this blog (many thanks to Bad Behavior and Spam Karma for helping stem the tide!), I’ve only netted 7 comment spammers for Project Honeypot since they started tracking comment spam 6 months ago. I guess the software is smart enough to only hit the real forms?

Wordpress: Just released version 2.3.1 with a bunch of bugfixes and (of course) a security fix. Updated.

Web Browser Milestones

Two web browsers hit milestones on Net Applications’ stats for September: Safari has passed the 5% mark, hitting 5.07%, and Opera Mini has climbed onto the chart at 0.39%. That might not sound like much, but considering that nearly all web traffic is from desktop computers these days, for a mobile phone–only browser to reach that size is impressive.

A bit closer to home, this site is currently seeing 64.6% IE, 26.2% Firefox, 4.4% Safari, 1.2% Opera (which probably includes both the desktop and mini versions). Splitting IE into versions, we’ve got 35.9% IE6 and 28% IE7. We’re already at the point where IE6 users are a minority (albeit the largest one), and more than 50% of visitors are using something more modern.

I’m looking forward to the next 2 milestones: IE7 overtaking IE6, and Firefox overtaking IE6. Come to think of it, I’d really like to get rid of IE6. Its time has passed, and the web will be better off without it, just as it’s better off without Netscape 4.

What’s in a User-Agent String?

Some people browse collections. I collect browsers. Mostly I just want to see what they’ll do to my web site, but I have a positively ridiculous number of web browsers installed on my Linux and Windows computers at work and at home, and I’ve installed a half-dozen extra browsers on our PowerBook.

One project I’ve worked on since my days at UCI was a script to identify a web browser. In theory this should be simple, since every browser sends its name along when it requests a page. In practice, it’s not, because there’s no standard way to describe that identity.

Actually, that’s not quite true. There is a standard (described in the specs for HTTP 1.0 and 1.1: RFC 1945 and RFC 2068), but for reasons I’ll get into later, it’s not adequate for more than the basics, and even those have been subverted. That standard says a browser (or, in the broader sense, a “user agent,” since search robots, downloaders, news readers, proxies, and other programs might access a site) should identify itself in the following format:

• Name/version more-details

Additional details often include the operating system or platform the browser is running on, and sometimes the language.

Now here are some examples of what browsers call themselves: Read the rest of this entry »