the Web · Grey Nicholson

Netscape 4 is newer than Internet Explorer 6

2005-04-12T05:03:00+00:00

Browsing W3Schools, I've found something interesting – IE6 is older than Netscape 4.

Sort of. From their incomplete and somewhat dogmatastic overview of web browsers: Netscape Communicator 4.8 was released from Netscape in August 2002. whereas [Internet Explorer 6.0] was released in August 2001.

I know this has nothing to do with the age of the rendering engine, but dumb users know and care nothing about the rendering engine; in their eyes Netscape 4.8 is newer than IE6.

So if you're gonna stop supporting one of them next time you design a website, shouldn't it be the oldest? (Ideally, screw both of them.)

It's a Weblog Entry!

2005-01-08T02:48:00+00:00

OK, so the normal service has been a bit thin on the ground. Aaanyway... I'm back off to university tomorrow (Sunday); any new text and/or other whatnot will appear at Mooquackwooftweetmeow B, my university webspace.

Meanwhile

It took them four years, but this Christmas the people in charge finally cottoned on to the idea of putting two and two together, where the first “two” is a lot of homeless people in London and the second “two” is an empty Millennium Dome.

Over in Mozillaland...

Some guys decided to call Firefox “1.0” for a change. It seems to have worked. Then some other guys did the same with Thunderbird; that also worked reasonably well. And then roughly 20 million people downloaded them and they saw that they were good. And they divided the Firefox and the Thunderbird from the other applications; the Firefox and the Thunderbird they called “cool!” and the other applications they called “less so”. And lo Internet Explorer became without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of its developers. And Bill said “let there be users” but there were no users, for they saw that it was bad. And the grace of web standards be with us all. Amen.

Or something like that.

And in Operaworld...

They made a browser that can talk like an American, but it still insists on trying to sell me things I don't want, and I can't stop the browser or webpages from doing it. I guess they're firmly targetting users who can't see.

Oh! And...

It's 2005, you know - happy new year to everyone.

IEBlank

2004-09-13T14:39:00+00:00

The Internet Explorer crew over at Microdollar clearly spend a lot of time thinking about browsing the web - as well they should, since they're supposed to be making a web browser. Now, they've pooled their collective thoughts into the IE weblog's Browsing the Web section, which serves as a useful, entertaining and enlightening glimpse into... oh, hang on a sec... what's...? No, it's definitely empty.

Odd.

UNcalled-for pUN

2004-08-02T23:38:00+00:00

Wow - the UN's website is godawful! In fact as godawfulness goes, it's Zeusawful - the king of the godawfuls.

It's not accessible via the “www”less version of its address; its charter uses frames; an animated GIF flag; unantialiased cursive text in an unalted image; and “practice” as a verb.

And this is the UN - the most influential body that exists. Are they really this inept?

Don't hash those numbers!

2004-06-21T21:30:00+00:00

I just remembered XHTML ids aren't allowed to begin with numbers, so it's probably not a good idea to give weblog entries permalinks like mine.

Never mind - they'll all be breaking soon anyway (I know - Atom sacrilege, but until URNs work better it's sometimes gonna be unavoidable).

Hash those hs!

2004-06-21T13:55:00+00:00

A quick request of everyone who writes web pages, especially weblogs, or who designs web page templates:

Give every heading an id, so that other folks (and you) can link to sections of an article or entry.

It's not quite Purple Numbers but it does the job more than effectively (and it's not half as overkilly). I reckon it's fair to assume that if someone wants to link to a part of your page in another page, they'll have the ability to view your page's source and find the ids. And if they can't, purple numbers would probably befuddle them anyway.

I do it automatically - it really takes little effort. Another point is to use proper titles, not #title4, so that if you add a chunk, nothing will break (and referring urls look much friendlier).

The Twaddlebot has been unleashed

2004-06-07T18:40:00+00:00

Last night version 1.0 of The Twaddle went live. It uses arbitrary XML and XSLT to generate valid XHTML pages... offline.

The idea of uploading bare-bones articles and an XSLT template, allowing the browser to generate pages as they're required, was a no-go. But I managed to rig up the transformation offline, to be run as a batch.

Following the tradition of giving XML languages names that are barely-logical acronyms beginning with X, I call the language XTw, which stands for XML... Twaddle... something.

Here's how I worked the magic (borrowing liberally from a newsgroup posting I made on the subject):

This assumes: no programming experience, but enough computer savvy to create XML and XSL files to need transforming in the first place; and a Windows (XP) machine)

First off, you'll need Xalan, available from http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/ (and the requisite Java runtime, which you probably already have)

The actual file I downloaded was http://apache.rmplc.co.uk/dist/xml/xalan-j/xalan-j-current-bin.tar.gz

There's also http://apache.rmplc.co.uk/dist/xml/xalan-j/xalan-j-current-bin.zip if you prefer a zip.

The version I got was 2.6.0 (the Java version).

Unzip Xalan into a folder. I used C:\Program Files\xalan-j_2_6_0

Now the code from http://evc-cit.info/cit041x/batchfiles.html#transform:

echo off java -cp h:\java\xmljar\xalan-j_2_5_1\bin\xml-apis.jar;h:\java\xmljar\xalan-j_2_5_1\bin\xercesImpl.jar;h:\java\xmljar\xalan-j_2_5_1\bin\xalan.jar;. org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process -IN %1 -XSL %2 -OUT %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9

The only line break should be after echo off.

Copy this into a plain text editor (e.g. Notepad), and save it as filename.bat (I used ANSI encoding, if it matters)

You should now have an MS-DOS Batch File.

(Apparently some versions of Notepad append .txt to filenames, even if they contain a file extension. In these cases, quoting the filename - e.g. “filename.bat” - allegedly solves the problem)

You'll most likely have to modify the code to point to the actual locations of your Xalan installation and files.

I only plan on using one XSL stylesheet with multiple files; the input files will be filename.xml. The output files will be filename.htm and will be kept in the folder above the one where the input and XSL files are kept. So, I modified the code a little:

java -cp "c:\program files\xalan-j_2_6_0\bin\xml-apis.jar";"c:\program files\xalan-j_2_6_0\bin\xercesImpl.jar";"c:\program files\xalan-j_2_6_0\bin\xalan.jar";. org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process -IN %1.xml -XSL "c:\path\to\an\xsl\file\xsl.xml" -OUT ..\%1.htm

This should all be on one line. %1 in the code will be replaced by the first argument passed to the batch file, %2 by the second argument, etc. ..\ means up one folder. The quotation marks around the filenames cause them to be treated as one item, despite their containing spaces.

You can add @echo off (without quotes) in an empty line above, if you prefer not to have masses of textual output in the command console. e.g.:

@echo off java -cp "c:\...

echo off turns off the display of subsequent commands; @ hides the echo off command.

To perform the transformation, open a command console (Start > Run > "cmd") and navigate to the location of your XML, XSL and batch files, by typing

cd "c:\path\to\files"

(including the quotes)

For simplicity's sake, I've shoved everything in the same folder, and used absolute paths for the programs. You could probably also mess around with relative paths or the path environment variable, but I can't be bothered.

I ended up having to use HTML Tidy to contort the output into valid XHTML. My final batch file reads:

java -cp "c:\program files\xalan-j_2_6_0\bin\xml-apis.jar";"c:\program files\xalan-j_2_6_0\bin\xercesImpl.jar";"c:\program files\xalan-j_2_6_0\bin\xalan.jar";. org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process -IN %1.xtw -XSL "XTw2XHTML.xsl" -OUT ..\thetwaddle\%1.htm "C:\Program Files\HTMLTidy\tidy.exe" -q -m -c --show-warnings no --output-xml yes --output-xhtml yes -latin1 --doctype strict --tidy-mark no --wrap 0 --ascii-chars no --drop-proprietary-attributes yes --fix-bad-comments no ..\thetwaddle\%1.htm echo Done %1.

(Line breaks have been doubled for clarity.)

The input XML files are all labelled filename.xtw; the XSL stylesheet is XTw2XHTML.xsl, and the output files are cacked into the folder thetwaddle, a sibling of the folder where the batch file lives, and assigned a suffix of .htm.

Those options shown for Tidy are the result of trial and error, or rather, trial and testing and reading Tidy's Quick Reference - no warranty implied. The echo command prints out a message for each finished file.

This batch file is wrapped up in another one, which repeatedly calls the first, thus:

@echo off echo Transforming XTw into XHTML... call xtw2xhtml afile call xtw2xhtml otherfiles echo Done.

The text output is just to make the command console more interesting while the batch program is running. It also helps pinpoint any errors, such as typos, which show up as blobs of text in the command console.

The result of all this fiddling is that I can change pages' contents more easily; I've been able to, fairly easily, implement a few minor changes that would have taken effort before. The final product lives here.

In semi-related news, it turns out that PURLs such as purl.org/mooquackwooftweetmeow, without the trailing slash, are possible - it's just partial redirects that have to end with slashes. The Twaddle's now on PURLs, too - purl.org/thetwaddle - with or without the slash.

While uploading “Unleash The Twaddlebot!” (The Twaddle v1.0), I was reminded that we're approaching the 50-file limit; that's not including styles, which are kept in a separate account. This means we'll probably have to change hosts.

Fortunately, ntl provide 55 megabytes of space, so I'm planning to shift everything there. This shouldn't be too troublesome now that everything's on PURLs.

On-the-fly page validation

2004-06-01T18:15:00+00:00

I wonder if this is possible. I've been dabbling with JavaScript a little recently, in order to produce The Twaddle's Expletatron and this seems like something that should be possible with JS:

I want a script that can load up a given remote page (internally - I don't want to display the page, just to extract info from it), look at an element on that page with a given id, and return its class as a variable.

What's this got to do with validation? Well say the remote page was http://validator.w3.org/check/referer and the given id was result. Then, if the returned variable is valid (i.e. the class of that element is valid) you've got a valid page; if the returned variable isn't valid you haven't.

So, you could, using JavaScript, whack in a “Valid XHTML” logo if, and only if, the page is actually valid. If you like, you could throw in an “Invalid!” image if the page is not valid.

I know it's possible to refer to an element by its id; I know it's possible to get the content of that element. I don't know if it's possible to get an element's class, and I'm guessing it's slightly impossible to do all this for another, remote page.

It'd be nice though.

Adventures in XML

2004-04-27T17:40:00+00:00

I did manage to get the XML+XSL-based jiggery-pokery for The Twaddle working - quite nicely, actually. Getting the entire contents of the content field onto the page took a little bit of effort, as described on the mozillaZine forums.

I won't be implementing this on The Twaddle, though - for a start, Opera and KHTML don't like XSLT. And it's not half as accessible for non-standard browsers (relics, mobile devices, text browsers...) as plain, extraneous-menu-items-and-such-written-into-the-article XHTML is. Nonetheless, a working example is online for the time being.

Update: the real thing's gone live... sort of... so the prototype has been removed. Additional related blurb is contained in a later entry in this weblog.

There's a slight chance that I might implement an XML-driven article system on Mooquackwooftweetmeow, where I'm not too fussed about old and/or buggy browsers. The fact that mobile devices won't render the page is more of a concern.

Perhaps some way of pulling in external XHTML fragments could be handled in CSS3? Then again, why duplicate XSL functionality in CSS - small devices' browsers could just be taught to handle XSL.

One more Twaddle-related thing: thanks to Internet Explorer conditional comments (on which MSDN has an hilarious article), I'm now feeding IE users some nice propaganda in the foot of the front page:

You're using Internet Explorer?! You do realise that it's years out-of-date, and screws up most modern web pages, don't you? In fact it's screwing this one up right now and you don't even know it. Try a proper web browser instead.

Oh, and another tiny little piece of The Twaddle-related trivia: the version number on the front page is now in the title text of the copyright notice - it's tidier and it leaves room for a pointless codename.

Over to the Mooquackwooftweetmeow Weblog now, where, thanks to our old friend XML namespaces, and our newer friend the XSL copy-of element, proper links are now in use. I've gone back through the weblog and updated plain text URLs to be links. The more observant of you will have noticed that there have been a smattering of links throughout this post - that'll be the norm from now on.

The even more observant of you will have noticed line breaks as well. I'd use paragraphs but the XSL stylesheet inserts the content into a paragraph - I don't think the XHTML validator would like paragraphs within paragraphs (not that it'd like this Atom file at all...). And I don't think the site's CSS would like divs to hold the text, in place of paragraphs; it might - I just haven't looked at mqwtm's CSS in ages so I can't remember. Besides, line breaks are lighter on the markup than open-and-close <xhtml:p> tags.

And in a final twist of XMLish loveliness, I've chucked a few XHTML <code> tags in as well.

</epic>

Opera + XSL = Eugh

2004-04-23T14:16:00+00:00

Evidently Opera doesn't like XSL - this weblog shows up as a lot of plain text with the odd URL chucked in. The question is whether I care.

The Twaddle is more of a public offering than this weblog, so it matters a little more if it's inaccessible using Opera... but then how many readers of The Twaddle use Opera? I'd say few to none. (Checking the site stats for The Twaddle will probably show a few Opera hits - most of which are me).

IE + XML + XSL + XHTML + W3C = Get In!

2004-04-23T14:07:00+00:00

As a prelude to some major back-end renovation I'm planning for The Twaddle, I decided to see if I could get Internet Explorer 6 to display this XSL-ified weblog nicely, not accounting for IE-unsupported CSS (which is already taken care of at The Twaddle). Previously, IE displayed the DOCTYPE declaration as plain text at the top of the page; using strategic HTML commenting, I've managed to prevent it from doing so.

Actually, I bet simply removing the DOCTYPE declaration wouldn't affect either Gecko or IE's rendering of the page, as I think XML kicks both of them into standards mode anyway.

The next step is to try this with some of The Twaddle. And I'd probably best check Opera's effort, too.

April Fool!

2004-04-01T20:40:00+00:00

Only kidding - it's not really.

Last Wednesday (the 24th) we “relaunched” The Twaddle. In fact, the only change made to the XHTML was the addition of unique page id's - something I've always done on Mooquackwooftweetmeow but never used. The rest of the jiggery and/or pokery was accomplished using just CSS and a few Google Image Searches - a testament to the power of CSS and the excellence of my XHTMLing.

We've also got some nicely foolish spiel on the front page about The Twaddle shutting up shop. In case the date of March 32nd, and the Can you say April Fool? message at the bottom of the page didn't tell you: it's an April Fool, fool. And finally, we've screwed with the forums' word filter, replacing innocuous conjunctions with words such as cheese and Alan Shearer - see http://thetwaddle.proboards27.com/index.cgi?board=atrium&action=display&num=1080773096 for the complete damage assessment.

Apostrophes

2004-03-15T16:10:00+00:00

I'm now using the aforementioned RSS Reader to read this weblog. So it has to be valid Atom, the content must validate when RSSified, and still validate when XHTMLified. Thus, to save hassle relating to escape characters and other such technicalities, I'm now using straight apostrophes as “quotes”. It's ugly, but it works.

Update: with the advent of the Mooquackwhatnotbot I'm now using proper HTML quotes - <q> and </q>. The usual disclaimer about Internet Explorer's crapness applies, as does one about Atom feed readers - they probably won't show any quotes.

The Twaddle is now printastic, and other web-authoring-related digressions

2004-03-08T19:30:00+00:00

A while ago I added a print stylesheet to Mooquackwooftweetmeow; now, The Twaddle's had the same treatment. On Saturday I also gave The Twaddle a site icon, so the site's now approaching Mooquackwooftweetmeow in completeness. Does this mean v1.0 any time soon? Probably not...maybe.

I've been meaning to overhaul Mooquackwooftweetmeow's underlying XHTML/CSS for a while, mainly due to unnecessary over-id-ing in anticipation of some sort of use in future. My approach to The Twaddle was exactly the reverse - things were added in as and when needed. The Twaddle went from idea to reality in two days, and from blank files to website in one evening, so I didn't really have time to consider what id-s might come in handy later.

The Twaddle was initially based around some content - the website only existed to purvey the content. By contrast, Mooquackwooftweetmeow has only ever existed “for the hell of it”. The approach taken with The Twaddle seems to have worked better. Mooquackwooftweetmeow seems perhaps over-designed now; the Georgia font probably didn't help as it prompted the small-caps for the “UTC” at the foot of each item; this is titled with “Co-ordinated Universal Time”... all of which seems rather over-elaborate.

Another source of much annoyance is the fact that the menu items aren't centred; I might have another bash at centring them nicely...

RSSification

2004-02-24T19:20:00+00:00

2RSS (http://www.2rss.com/) has a nice converteriser which outputs any Atom feed (such as this one - wink, wink) as RSS, available at http://www.2rss.com/software.php?page=atom2rss So now even if your newsreader isn't Atom-enabled you can still read this weblog; now you've got no excuse.

Mooquackwooftweetmeow's Going Nowhere

2004-02-20T23:00:00+00:00

I now have my own PURL top-level domain. “What in the heck is a PURL top-level domain?” PURL stands for Persistant Uniform Resource Locator - an URL is just a normal web address. A PURL is simply a redirect, designed so that it persists indefinitely; I can change what purl.org/mooquackwooftweetmeow/ points to, but the PURL itself never changes. This means that if I ever move to another webhost (which I don't expect to happen very soon), I can point purl.org/mooquackwooftweetmeow/ there instead. This weblog can be found at http://purl.org/mooquackwooftweetmeow/weblog, but unfortunately KlipFolio doesn't understand HTTP redirects. Bugger.

Nonetheless, if and when - :) - you link to Mooquackwooftweetmeow, use http://purl.org/mooquackwooftweetmeow/ for the main site, and http://purl.org/mooquackwooftweetmeow/weblog for this weblog (note the distribution of slashes). Now that I've got my own PURL, I've changed the Atom feed so that the items are IDed using PURLs; items' IDs are never suppose to change, so PURLs are perfect for that. This means you may get duplicate items in this feed now (and only the once), but you never will later.

Update: Yeah, well - I can't always be right. The appropriate URL to link to this weblog is now http://gkn.me.uk/ for the web page, and http://gkn.me.uk/atom for the Atom feed.

Klipfolio + Atom = 1/2

2004-02-20T19:20:00+00:00

OK, I can't embed an Atom feed in a Klip, but you can view Atom feeds using Klipfolio. Its Feed Reader Klip (http://www.klipfarm.com/farm.php?page=info&klip=916) accepts Atom as well as RSS 2.0 and RDF (RSS 1.0).

Isn't XML wonderful?

2004-02-20T19:15:00+00:00

Despite an hour of valiant effort, I've been unable to convince Gecko to render XHTML embedded in an Atom feed. I've tried encoding the arrow brackets, various namespace trickery... to no avail. So you're gonna have to put up with plain text URLs, until someone can show me how it's done... anybody?

Namespaces are fairly fun

2004-02-19T18:30:00+00:00

The Feed Validator (http://feedvalidator.org) gave me a thumbs-down :( Entries' IDs have to be valid URLs, you see, and I'd been using them as arbitrary labels. I'd also been leeching off these arbitrary labels in order to create anchors in the XHTML representation of the feed; those using a web browser can check they work by clicking this item's title; those using a news aggregator can visit the alternate link; in both cases, the item's title should be at the very top of the browser window.

I managed to circumvent Atom's rigidity using XML's flexibility - I invented a new arbitrary label for each item - label, under my own namespace; I now have everything working as before, plus a valid feed. Glory!

I think I'll go and play a bit of pool now...

Wow! Internet Explorer can even mangle XML!

2004-02-19T16:15:00+00:00

Here's me thinking Internet Explorer wouldn't display this feed properly! Obviously, it doesn't... but it at least has a go at mangling it, leaving this text (and this) legible. You do get a nice piece of HTML above the title, however.

So, then - Hello! to all you fools reading this in Internet Explorer! Do yourself a favour and fetch a web browser (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/).

Actually, on the topic of plain text links and Mozilla Firefox, I've now reinstalled the text/plain extension for Firefox (http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/textplain), so I can now select plain text links, right-click 'em, and do stuff. I suggest you also install it; it'll come in handy for this log.

Freewebs aren't very good at MIME types... part II

2004-02-19T15:40:00+00:00

Sorta got side-tracked there... Anyway, to get around the incorrect MIME type problem (which made Gecko refuse to play ball), I've tagged .xml onto the end of the weblog's files; hopefully that'll satisfy most browsers.

Freewebs aren't very good at MIME types

2004-02-19T15:30:00+00:00

Freewebs is obviously designed to cater for “webmasters” who've never heard of Jeffrey Zeldman... Like most, if not all, free web hosts, Freewebs use filename “extensions” to determine what MIME type to serve for a file; this is OK, until they get it wrong. Granted, Atom and XSL aren't the most commonly used file formats on the web but nonetheless Freewebs could bother serving them with the proper MIME types.

A few months ago, I asked them if they could serve .xhtml files as XHTML rather than plain text. They responded by saying they wanted to comply with web standards; could I please send them the reference to the W3C recommendation. Great! ...except that nothing's happened since (or at least they haven't told me about it if anything has) - a couple of weeks ago I checked and .xhtml files were still being served as plain text.

I'd appeal to Freewebs now, except I suspect they use Internet Explorer, and thus won't be able to read this...

Copy and paste...

2004-02-19T14:30:00+00:00

By the way, those URLs in the previous post are just plain text; unless your browser parses plain text URLs, you're just gonna have to copy and paste them for now - I'm not an XML expert and the prospect of digging about trying to force Atom and XHTML to work together to produce links, isn't appealing... maybe later.

Hurrah once more!

2004-02-19T14:20:00+00:00

That w3schools (http://www.w3schools.com/) is pretty decent. I've now concocted an XSL stylesheet for this feed, so visiting its URL in a (good) web browser should display it as a nice page.

I managed to cajole XML namespaces into doing what I want with a little help from a random blog entry (http://today.icantfocus.com/blog/archives/entries/000430/) by Christopher H. Laco, and his one-size-fits-all feed stylesheet. Those who are interested can have a gander at my resulting stylesheet (http://purl.org/mooquackwooftweetmeow/weblog.xsl.xml).

Next job: rig up a klip.

Hurrah!

2004-02-19T13:00:00+00:00

Well, then... this is an atom weblog. Why's it only in atom format? Everything on Mooquackwooftweetmeow is done the old-fashioned way - using the human brain, a plain-text editor, and no PHP, ASP, SQL or any other fanciness. And I don't want to have to copy every entry out into an XHTML page. I'm thinking of having a bash at some XSLT, to automatically generate a fancy front for the weblog; I tried it with the RSS feed, but didn't quite manage it satisfactorily; perhaps my standards are just too high (after all, I am using a free web host).

Take Back the Web

2004-02-17T19:23:00+00:00

Mozilla Firebird has reached version 0.8 and has been renamed Firefox; Mozilla has an FAQ explaining why. That gets the obligatory announcement out of the way; now on to the original content.

Still To Do

Ben Goodger's Firefox roadmap outlines what will actually be included in the 1.0 release; this is a collection of other noteworthy shortcomings (a.k.a. “pet bugs”).

Don't Steal Image Associations

Currently, when you set Firefox as the default browser (in Windows, at least), it automatically assigns itself as the default application for PNG, JPEG and GIF images. In the days when Microsoft Paint only handled BMP bitmaps, this sort of thing was OK; but now the ability to not only view, but also edit these types of images is built in to Windows, Firefox has no business associating itself with them.

Uninstall Extensions

Firefox won't be widely adopted by businesses and workplaces until one can easily remove any extensions that are installed. Bosses don't like their minions making any changes to their standardised computing environment, let alone irrevocable ones.

Single Window Mode

This one's a bit chewy. When its developers say Firefox is a “tabbed browser”, they mean it has the capacity to open multiple pages in one window. However, some folk interpret “tabbed browsing” as where all documents are opened in the same window - always; there have even been complaints that tabbed browsing is broken because this isn't the case.

Until Firefox does have the option for single window mode - which won't be until after version 1.0 - the developers should go easy on describing Firefox as a “tabbed browser”, to avoid disappointment.

Miscellanea

There are various other minor improvements that would easily and quickly make Firefox friendlier, and just plain better. The Windows installer should ask before creating Start Menu, Quick Launch and desktop shortcuts - it's only polite. The link toolbar present in Mozilla should be there in Firefox, too; perhaps then more people would start using <link>. And finally, MNG support. There's really no excuse for its absence - there's a patch waiting which only needs the thumbs up.

The Location Bar

The location bar is, in my opinion, Firefox's best feature, and the one thing that stops me from liking other browsers too much.

Any phrase typed into the location bar gets I'm-Feeling-Luckied, courtesy of Google UK, except for phrases which include dots. These are interpreted as URLs and invalid URLs generate an error page... but I can get around this using smart keywords.

Keywords

Firefox's bookmarks can be assigned keywords, which you then type into the location bar and - Hey, Presto! - the bookmark loads. This is great, but smart keywords are even greater.

If the URL of a bookmark contains %s, and the bookmark is assigned a keyword, anything you type into the location bar after the keyword (and a space), will replace the %s in the URL.

So, if I want to I'm Feeling Lucky some search terms (including ones with dots in them), I type goto followed by a space, and then the terms - simple. To enable this, all I had to do was create a bookmark whose URL is http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%s&btnI=I'm+Feeling+Lucky and assign it the keyword goto. When I type, for example, goto hell into the location bar, Firefox converts this to http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hell&btnI=I'm+Feeling+Lucky, which results in Google sending me to its first match for “hell”. The whole process takes less than a second.

I've also got other smart keywords set up for Google Image Search, Mozilla's Bugzilla database, Dictionary.com and IMDb.

All of this means I've practially done away with URLs. If I want the BBC's website, I just type BBC, and Firefox and Google do the rest. This ludicrous ease of use is, for me, Firefox's killer feature.

Google UK

By default, Firefox uses Google USA, but you can change this in about:config; it's pretty easy to do.

First, type about:config into Firefox's location bar and press Enter. You'll be presented with a plethora (or two) of settings. Into the box next to Filter:, toward the top of the window, type keyword and press Enter; this filters out the other settings we won't be using.

Double-click the line containing keyword.URL and enter http://www.google.co.uk/search?btnI=I'm+Feeling+Lucky&q= into the dialogue box that pops up. (I'd copy and paste it.) Finally, make sure keyword.enabled is set to true, and Bob's your uncle.

Brand New

As mentioned above, along with the new version came a new name and brand, Firefox. The previous plan was that “Mozilla Firebird” would be the project's code-name, and it would eventually be known simply as “Mozilla Browser”. Gladly, that's now changed, and we have a browser whose logo looks like this:

The new identity lays to rest previous dissent over the icon/logo Firebird was using - an image of red and orange flames, whose form was also reminiscent of a bird's feathers (this logo is still visible in Firefox 0.8's Help > About > Credits screen). While I always liked it, some felt it stood out too much from other Windows icons (which in my opinion is good), or that it became an amorphous red blob when shrunk to 16×16 pixels.

This name will stick - it's been thoroughly researched, and no-one else is using it for anything resembling a web browser. This means you can start posting your favourite Firefox propaganda about the web (and anywhere else), in good conscience that it'll still make sense in a few years' time. All of which is lovely, as the logo looks bloody brilliant!

Doing the Job

The purpose of a web browser is to display web pages. Mozilla Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine, which displays pages more properly than, say, Internet Explorer. By “more properly”, I mean Gecko better conforms to web standards, as described by the World Wide Web Consortium. Firefox displays web pages better than many other browsers - it does the job better.

Incidentally, Mooquackwooftweetmeow conforms to these web standards (as should all websites), with no regard for how Internet Explorer mangles its pages, so Mooquackwooftweetmeow looks better (i.e. decent) in Firefox.