web browsers · Grey Nicholson

Actually-Free Opera

2005-09-20T22:29:00+00:00

I wonder how long it is before it's just plain free? The correct answer was three weeks.

It's still closed-source though. And it doesn't have Firefox's extension system. But its use of tabs is far better than Firefox's.

Also, Captain Opera seems to have been fired. Damn - I quite enjoyed taking the piss out of him.

Free Opera

2005-08-31T23:30:00+00:00

Yesterday, Opera gave itself away for free. That sounds odd... Opera the company gave Opera the browser away for free. Or, perhaps, Captain Opera mightily morphed the in-chrome adverts into oblivion. Yes, by the way, you've missed it.

But don't despair - you can still get Opera for free by joining our affiliate program. Just put an Opera-button on your webpage, get 250 people to click it, and you're home free!

I wonder how long it is before it's just plain free? This would, of course, be a Good Thing™ - any more alternatives to Internet Explorer 6 are generally good.

But also, Opera is quite a good browser. Seriously. Their implementation of tabs is better than Firefox's; everything opens in a tab - including history, bookmarks and downloads.

And I don't care whether an “old-fashioned multiple-document interface isn't tabs” - it's better; one can view two pages side-by-side more easily than in Firefox.

Of course, I'm still using Firefox, for its extensions, particularly Adblock (with Filterset.G Updater). And its layout engine (Gecko) seems less prone to hiccups than Opera's (Presto). And it doesn't have Captain Opera.

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.

Jukefox

2004-09-13T16:43:00+00:00

It'd be nice if more extension authors read the documentation all extension authors must read and learned about the Firefox Version Format. A lot of extension authors seem to think 1.5 > 1.45. This would be true if Firefox version numbers were decimal numbers... but they're not - they're a string of integers, each separated by “.”. So 1.5 is indeed “one point five”, but 1.45 is “one point forty-five”, forty-five is greater than five (no, really), so 1.45 > 1.5. Of course, 1.5 > 1.4.5...

I suppose it was smart to market Firefox 0.10 (whose release is imminent) as “Firefox 1.0 Preview Release”, even though some folk seem to think it's not a milestone... which it is.

Meanwhile, with crazy autohiding controls and drag-'n'-drop placement - FoxyTunes 0.61 turns out to be a highly polished extension.

Still, they should've called it “Jukefox”.

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.

Firefox extension wackiness

2004-08-24T22:29:00+00:00

BlockXXX is a new extension for Firefox that blocks pornographic content (the anti-Pornzilla, if you will). According to its release notes: This seems to work pretty well, although there are definitely some holes (large and gaping). Definitely not working well then.

Until about a month ago, all Firefoxen contained the legend Cookies are delicious delicacies. to describe cookies. Then Mike Connor decided that Cookies are pieces of information stored by web pages on your computer. They are used to remember login information and other data.. Distraught, I incited the creation of an extension to restore the legend.

A month passed and the world had all but forgotten about our delicious delicacies... until Jesse Ruderman published the Delicious Delicacies extension, dramatically subtitled Restore the legend. The world rested in peace once more.

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.

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.