Browsers
The Browsers category has articles about the various programs used to access the World Wide Web and extensions for those programs.
Other Browsers and Testing Pages
Last Updated on Friday, April 23 2010 08:52 Written by Pierce Presley Tuesday, February 09 2010 10:07
Do not let my endorsement of Firefox and Chrome keep you from trying out different alternatives. You should definitely try Opera and Safari, if only to see what they are like. (If you don't have a smartphone, and maybe even if you do, you should try Opera Mini or Opera Mobile. They do a really respectable job of rendering modern Web pages on cell phones.)
Whether you decide to use a lesser-known browser or not, when you start creating Web pages of your own you will want to check them in different browsers on different platforms. Nothing kills a site faster than being absolutely broken in one of the major browsers. But who can afford to have two dozen computers lying around with different operating systems and different browsers on each, much less has time to load a website into all of them, check for differences and tinker with the code until it works? Well, you don't have to (except for that last one).
Browsershots will take a screenshot of your page rendered on as many as 75 different browser, version and operating system combinations. (You really only need to check out the latest Chrome, the latest Firefox, the latest Opera, the latest Safari and Intenet Explorers 6, 7 and 8. Why? Because most people who have the first four keep them up to date; the latter won't or can't.)
For a more comparative at page rendering, try Adobe BrowserLab, which can load your page in two browsers (actually, it loads your page in several; it just displays two at a time) and display them either one at a time, two side-by side, or two on top of one another with a transparency slider to change which one is more visible. (You will need an Adobe ID, but you can sign up for one at the BrowserLab site.)
If you want to avoid adding extensions to your site that break it, use a development server. If you want to ensure everybody can see your hard work, test your site.
Stop Using IE 6
Written by Pierce Presley Tuesday, February 09 2010 14:35
Browsers have come a long way since NCSA first offered Mosaic as a way to traverse this new World Wide Web thingy. From only being able to show text, links and images to Flash animations, video files everywhere, charts that update when you change parameters and entire movies and television shows right on your monitor, things have changed.
Modern browsers almost always have tabbed interfaces that let you open more than one website per window, extensions that add functionality not included in the core product and standards-compliant rendering that greatly lessens the differences in how the browsers compose a web page. Combined with the continually evolving security features, and it behooves you greatly to have a modern browser.
What spurred much of the growing number of browsers and the emphasis on adhering to standards was one really bad one that almost everybody had: Internet Explorer 6. Bundled with Windows, the quirks and oddities of its rendering combined with terrible security flaws that seemed to take forever to fix, it was a nightmare to make Web pages for. (And this was in the dark ages when Web development programs were far too weak to help much or actively made code worse, forcing developers to hand-code almost everything.)
Sad to say, even after two much improved versions of IE have shipped, far too many people still use IE 6. Web developers, content management systems and whole companies are abandoning IE 6 and refusing to tweak their code so this old monster won't mangle their pages. If you're still using it, and it's not because your corporate masters have decreed its use, download Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Opera—or even IE 8—right now, but get rid of IE 6. You will see an improvement.
— Pierce
Firefox
Last Updated on Tuesday, April 20 2010 11:25 Written by Pierce Presley Thursday, February 11 2010 07:09
Since it first came out of beta in 2004, Mozilla Corporation's Firefox has gained in popularity and today accounts for almost one in four browsers surfing the web. That this is due in part to Internet Explorer's stagnation and standards-flaunting ways is not debatable, but there's far more to Firefox than just not being Internet Explorer.
Out of the box, so to speak, Firefox is a robust, standards-compliant and well secured browser. But what really makes it great is its extensions (and other add-ons, Mozilla's term for extensions, themes and plugins). They allow you to customize and extend the browser so that it does what you want it to do how you want it done. Think of a sedan that you could turn into either a family wagon or a screaming race car by bolting on accessories that had a common interface.
Extensions range from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the raw to the polished. Most of them are available through Mozilla's Add-Ons page, though some only reside on their developer's page. I recommend everybody get Adblock, Better GCal, Better Gmail 2, Better GReader, Coral IE Tab, Forecastfox, Google Gears, Linky, PDF Download, Update Scanner and Xmarks. Writers should add After the Deadline, ScribeFire and Word Count Plus. Web Developers should add ColorZilla, Firebug, FireShot, Greasemonkey, MeasureIt, Stylish and Web Developer. All are explained below.
My installation of Firefox includes these extensions:
Chrome
Last Updated on Tuesday, April 20 2010 12:27 Written by Pierce Presley Friday, February 12 2010 06:15
Google Chrome is the new kid on the browser scene, but it already has more than 7 percent market share after being available for only two years. The Google name certainly didn't hurt it initially, but what keeps users coming back is simplicity and speed.
Chrome is simple nearly to the point of absurdity. There are only two menus (which open from a page and a wrench icon at the upper right) with 11 and 14 options. The rest of the interface is just back and forward, reload and home buttons, an address entry text box with a star for bookmarking on the left and a triangle for going to the URL on the right. If you have extensions installed, they are icon-only buttons between the address box and the page menu icon, and you are limited in how many you can display (though not all extension require an icon). The full page mode (F11) simply does away with those and your windows task bar, filling the screen from edge to shining edge. Extensions are new to Chrome, having become available earlier this year, but many of the offerings are top notch.
I have the following extensions installed in Chrome:
