Happy birthday to you, happy birthday day to you, happy birthday to Firefoxxxxx. Happyy birthday to you!! Okay, your fifth birthday was actually on Monday; I’m late. Sorry. As a belated gift, I will continue to use you for the foreseeable future as my primary web browser. That is until something better comes out – Google’s Chrome is supposed to come out before Christmas on the Mac.

Can’t believe Firefox is five. Here is my journey. In early 2006 I only knew of Internet Explorer as the main web browser. In Spring 2006, I jumped onto Firefox on the recommendation from a close friend. He was using the fox and was zipping about the web, adding extensions and opening windows in TABS. Firefox was the only browser on the block to have tabbed browsing at the time. It changed the way I browsed. I never looked back. IE was archaic compared to FF.  At the end of August 2007, I bought a MacBook. With OS X 10.4 came Safari. Safa-what? I need my FF was what I thought. FF was slow as hell on my MB. It hoggged RAM like no other, spiked the CPU, heated up the computer…it was nightmare. I eloped with Safari. When Firefox 3.0 was set to go down on June 30, 2008, featuring major RAM reductions and faster page rendering, I joined the millions of people worldwide in downloading it on day one to help set the world record. Indeed, it was much improved. I abandoned Safari and switched back to the fox. I’ve been using FF 3.5 as my main browser ever since.

Whew. That was a mouthful wasn’t it? Even with Safari’s 4.0 being snappy, I can’t live without the plug-ins/extensions that can be installed for FF. Take one plug-in called “Ad-Block Plus.” It blocks advertisements on all web pages. I installed it earlier this year and I haven’t seen an advertisement on the web ever since. No wonder I’ve been so much more productive this past year!

Firefox is an open-source web browser. Because the code is not locked in a closet somewhere sealed beneath 10 layers bullet proof glass, anyone who wants to modify it to their liking can do so. Customization is key for a useful FF experience. No two installations of FF will be the same if each one is customized to the individual.

Here’s to many more years of Firefox! As a bonus, let’s see if the majority of people even know what a browser is.

Google’s Chrome will bring some competition to the web browser arena. It is already my web browser of choice on a Windows machine. The beauty of Chrome lies in the small application size, stripped down interface and FAST FAST page rendering like no other. Chrome is already for Windows and is expected to be released before Christmas on the Mac. Can’t wait!

I never liked the new Firefox 3.0

1) It crashes more frequently than the last 2.xx (which NEVER crashed)

2) It’s damn’ slow on my eeePC

3) My pictures loaded on flickr.com look almost completely DESATURATED with the new Firefox – not with Explorer, not with the old Firefox

Do I have to switch to Explorer? My flickr.com pictures look like if I left them on a sunny week in my car – only when I browse them with the new Firefox …

Any help?

Here’s a collection of browser specific configuration tips for customizing your cross-browser development environment:

Chromium
Chromium Nightly
Chrome User Guide
Chrome About Pages
Chromium Installation DLL
Chrome User Experience
Chromium FAQ
ClickToFlash Chromium Plugin Manager
Undocumented Chrome Execution Switches
Chrome Plugins
AdSweep
Chromium User Data Dictionary
Chromium User Scripts
Chrome Support
Chrome Hacks

Webkit
How to Grab and Thumbnail Websites using KHTML
Working with Webkit Nightly Releases

Opera
Opera Web Developer Toolbar
Cookie Revealer
Google Search Cookie Cleaner

Firefox
Cached URLs
Disabling Plugins in Firefox
Firefox Chrome URLs
Beef up the Find command in Firefox
How to ungrab Firefox hotkeys from Flash players
How to Disable the PDF Browser Plugin for Firefox
Issues related to Plugins
Firefox 2 and 3 side-by-side
Opening a New Instance of your Mozilla application with another profile
Mozilla Preferences Directory
Mozilla Preferences Glossary
Mozilla About:config Entries Matrix

Internet Explorer
Fixing Reliability Issues in IE8
More IE8 Extensibility Improvements
Play with IE8
Session Cookies, SessionStorage, and IE8
Personalize IE8 through Services
IE8 Features Developer Guide
Who Needs IE8 Accelerators

O Firefox 3.5 permite que você navegue mais rápido, com mais segurança e eficiência do que qualquer outro browser. Mude hoje mesmo — o Firefox importa seus favoritos e outras informações. E você ainda pode continuar usando outros navegadores junto com o Firefox.

http://br.mozdev.org/

Cách đây một tuần, bạn tôi không thể nào hát karaoke được vì khi mở tập tin swf (file karaok dạng flash) bằng firefox 3 nó hiện hộp thoại save chứ không chịu hiển thị nội dung. Tôi cũng chưa thử tìm cách khắc phục nhưng tôi nghĩ là có thể chỉnh được đâu đó trong Options. Thế rồi tôi nghĩ sao firefox-của-tui lại mở được ?
Thì ra tôi sài Firefox v2.x . Thế là lên google tìm firefox 2 nhưng chữ “o” thứ nhất, rồi thứ hai….–> nản, tìm không ra. Đành phải lục trong mấy cái USB mang theo và gửi cho bạn-của-tui qua YahooMessenger.
Đọc tiếp… »

As many of you already know, the latest version of Internet Explorer has just been released. It is the eighth release – IE8. We are supported HTML/XHTML code for IE8. Also we are supported IE6, IE7, Firefox 2+, Opera 9+, Safari etc. We code a well structure HTML/XHTML as per W3C Standard.

TestiPhone.com - iPhone Simulator

• This is a web browser based simulator for quickly testing your iPhone Applications. This tool has been so far tested and working using Internet Explorer 7, FireFox 2 and Safari 3 in Windows, but you need Safari to get the real experience.

Tips and Options

• Flip between vertical and horizontal views by pressing the button on the iPhone Simulator or press the spacebar on your keyboard.
• Pass the simulator request parameters to change the way it behaves. Here is a table of the options available.
  

  name	value(s)
  url	the url of any application you want to load by default
  view	default: ver for vertical, hor for horizontal
  scroll	default: off to hide scrollbars, on to show scrollbars
  address	default: on to show the address bar, off to hide the address bar NEW
  bg	default: 222 grey background, or any hex color like ffffff

[Sis? Why is your name showing up as the author of this post? I'm pretty sure I'm the one who wrote it. - Peng]

Yes, I’m still alive. Just busy over the last few days do I’ve collected a bunch of links I’d like to share with our readers.

• Mozilla Developer News: Firefox 3.05 and 2.0.0.19 security updates now available for download. Alas, the support updates for Firefox 2 are over, and the Windows version has seen a 2.0.0.20 release to deal with a “non-critical issue” specific to that OS but other than that they don’t expect to release any additional security and stability updates for the once top web browser. At the end they decided not to include the Phishing Protection service that Firefox 3 offers, but that doesn’t break my heart since I’m pretty observant when it comes to possible phishing links. That and Gmail filters those out for me anyway. Once the holidays are past I’ll be on a full court press to see if Epiphany can be my primary web browser and I still have no intention of taking Firefox 3.1 when it comes out unless I have clear evidence that they’re going to let the users decide where the New Tab button goes. I know Cat Thief has once again ridden to the rescue, but I’m tired of having to install remove-ons just to countermand the questionable usability choices that the Firefox devs shove down or throats. Even if that means I have to pass on Firefox 3.1’s support for the <video> tag and Ogg Vorbis/Theora files. Otherwise when will enough be enough?
• Linux Today: The Wrong Way To Sell Linux and More Tips For Documentation Writers (You Too, Ace Coders). Mackenzie Morgan (a GNU/Linux chick who flat out rocks) was kind enough to pass these articles along to me. The first article has some great thoughts on how we promote our favorite OS and the second one should be required reading for all documentation writers. The second one may also show a great way to help support those favored FOSS OSes and apps that we can’t live without. Thanks for the links, Mackenzie!
• Normand Bissonnette: The Diversity Of Linux Window Managers. In Windows you have a choice, 95, XP or Vista, for how your desktop looks and behaves. OSX users don’t have much choice, but they like it that way. Linux users have a veritable alphabet soup of desktop environments (GNOME, KDE, and xfce just to name the three that can come with *Ubuntu -flavored distros), and it can be pretty confusing. Normand wrote a nice, fairly short article with a number of links as he looked at the freedom that having so many desktop environments give us.
• Jun Auza: Extensive List of Keyboard Shortcuts for Ubuntu/GNOME Desktop. People who have used computers for a while know what a time saver keyboard shortcuts are, but there are a number of possible places to look up shortcut key possibilities. Jun has been kind enough to compile a list of keyboard shortcuts for GNOME-based GNU/Linux distros. You’ll definitely want to bookmark this page so you can refer back to it until you learn what all the time savers are.
• Siegfried Gevatter: Nautilus: File size below the icons. I don’t know about you but I usually use Nautilus in Icon View and it can be tedious when I have to find out how bug a file is (select the file, look at the status bar to see how big it is, then select any other files you previously had selected, …), but Siegfried has a great tip for us that he came up with after reading am Ubuntu Brainstorm idea. I have to say it’s one of the best bits of info I found last week.
• Mackenzie Morgan: Adobe Flash: Avoiding Checksum Errors. Yes, another link from the über Mackenzie, this time a tip to make updating Adobe Flash easier along with an explanation of why it can be such a pain in the rear.
• Sayak Banerjee: VLC Celebrates Christmas! I haven’t been able to get it working myself due to something borked on my end, but VLASIC has a delightful little way of helping you celebrate Chrismukkuh.
• Matthew Revell: Launchpad news: Exaile media player. A number of users are discovering the GTK-based Exaile media player, especially with it’s recent updated beta release, and Matthew was kind enough to talk with the project’s founder about Exaile and why they decided to use Launchpad.

I’ve got more links to share, as well as a response to a post by Jono Bacon, but they will have to wait until tomorrow as my time’s getting short. I don’t know why we’re getting so much traffic today (over a thousand hits today after usually staying in the 300-400 range), but if you’re new to our little blog then welcome! I hope Nanci and I have some content that will give you reasons to visit us again.

Si señores y señoras, Mozilla Fundation anuncio que dejará de proporcionar soporte tecnico a Firefox 2 y recomiendan pasarse a la versión más reciente, Firefox 3.0 (que aprobecho para decir que en poco tendremos a Firefox 3.1 y a Thunderbird 3.0)…

Si son nostalgicos, hay un theme en  addons.mozilla.org que cambia la apariencia de Firefox 3 a la de Fx 2…

Al probar Flock, el navegador social, lo primero que me di cuenta que tenía que arreglar eran los formularios. Pero no fue difícil encontrar una solución, enseguida recordé que Firefox 2 sufría del mismo problema y como Flock esta basado en dicho navegador, apliqué la misma solución. Primero tenemos que descargar el fichero firefox_widgets_2.7.tar.bz2 que aparece al final del primer post (recordad que tenéis que estar logueados para poder descargarlo). Después de descargarlo y desempaquetar el archivo, abrimos una terminal en el lugar donde hemos dejado todos los archivos y ejecutamos el siguiente comando:

# ./install

Seleccionamos la opción 3, para cambiar el directorio de instalación y escogemos en el que tenemos instalado Flock. En mi caso /opt/folck/. Ahora escogemos la opción 1 para instalar. Al volver a iniciar Flock tendremos los formularios más atractivos. El resultado es más que evidente:

Anwender, die noch Firefox 2.x einsetzen, sollten langsam einmal das Upgrade auf Version 3 ins Auge fassen, da der Support für Version 2 demnächst endet. Üblicherweise erreicht ein vorhergehender Zweig sechs Monate nach Veröffentlichung der neuen Fassung sein “End of Life” (EOL) – das wäre Mitte Dezember. Dann gibt es auch keine Sicherheits-Updates zum Schließen von Lücken mehr. Nach Angaben von Mike Betzner von Mozilla sind bereits zwei Drittel der Firefox-Nutzer auf Version 3 umgestiegen.

Allerdings diskutieren die Entwickler über eine mögliche Verlängerung des Support-Zeitraums und tragen Gründe für das “Für und Wider” zusammen. Insbesondere das Ende des Supports der in Version 2 enthaltenen Gecko-Engine 1.8 könnte nach Meinung einiger Entwickler Probleme aufwerfen, da diese auch in Thunderbird 2 Verwendung findet und dessen Nachfolger Thunderbird 3 noch einige Monate auf sich warten lässt. Lücken in Thunderbird 2 blieben so wahrscheinlich über einen längeren Zeitraum ungeschlossen. Das gleiche Problem dürften die Derivate SeaMonkey, Sunbird und Camino haben.

Siehe dazu auch:Firefox 2 End Of Life, Diskussion auf mozilla.dev.planning.

Quelle: heise.de/c´t

[Information Source]

To start with we are talking about “running” and not just “having” two different versions. Furthermore, we can have two different profiles of the same version wherein you can have useful but resource-heavy add ons in one profile and a lighter other profile. Here is a good link that can help us achieve it. For the record, I am just summarising what is there on the site:

1. Get FF Profile Manager: Close all FF instances. Start FF from command line using the following commands:

For Windows: <Firefox installation folder>/firefox.exe -ProfileManager

For Linux: <Firefox installation folder>/firefox -ProfileManager

2. Create profile: Once you start FF with the command above you will get a Profile Manager dialog. Create a new profile, assuming you are going to use the default one as the other profile.

3. Create shortcuts: for the new profile as well as for the default one.

For Windows: Right click on desktop and Create New Shortcut. Target field should look something like:

<FF installation folder>\firefox.exe -P  <profile name> -no-remote

For Linux: Create a new command and enter the following:

firefox -P  <profile name> -no-remote

Create one more shortcut  - this time the profile name being “Default”. 

Reproducing verbatim from the source link

What the -no-remote flag (vaguely) tells Firefox to do is start a completely new and segregated Firefox process

My two cents: A beautiful fact is you can use this approach to have FF2.x and FF3.x running on the same computer simultaneously. Just ensure your shortcuts point to those versions respectively.

Along with release of Apple’s “iphone 3G” in India Apple’s Biggest Competitor Microsoft today released “Microsoft Photosynth 3D” termed as a Photo stitching software its description begins with enthralling words “You can share or relive a vacation destination or explore a distant museum or landmark. With a nothing more than digital camera and some inspiration, one can use Photosynth to transform regular digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience.”

Photosynth is really two remarkable technical achievements in one product: a viewer for downloading and navigating complex visual spaces and a “synther” for creating them in the first place. Together they make something that seems impossible quite possible: reconstructing the 3D world for sets of flat photographs.

Photosynth exactly works like stitching your hundreds of photos together to reconstruct a 3D model of the place.

Photosynth installs two programs on your computer: a Web browser plug-in for viewing synths, and an application (called “Photosynth”) for creating them when installed your computer will be ready for both viewing and creating synths. Synths constitute an entirely new visual medium. Photosynth analyzes each photo for similarities to the others, and uses that data to build a model of where the photos were taken. It then re-creates the environment and uses that as a canvas on which to display the photos.

Minimum System Requirements

Important: Photosynth makes heavy use of your graphics hardware. Also, Photosynth requires that your graphics acceleration be set to full.

Operating System: Only Windows XP (SP2 or SP3) and Windows Vista are supported at this time. . Parallels and other VM software cannot run the viewer.

Web Browser: Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, and Firefox 3

Memory: 256 MB of memory is a bare minimum; 1GB is recommended.

Graphics: Minimum 32MB of graphics memory required, 64MB or more is recommended. Photosynth runs on some DirectX6 capable cards and all DirectX7 cards.

visit this link for an exciting experience with your photos and share them with your near and dear ones.

www.photosynth.net/install.aspx

Images:

how Photosynth does it

How many of you are still using Firefox 2? This week Mozilla will be rolling out and update which would prompt the users of Firefox 2 to update to version 3.0.1.

Firefox 3 offers a number of advantages over Firefox 2. First, and probably most importantly, it’s the most up to date version of the browser when it comes to security features. But it also has improved JavaScript support, faster page load speeds, and improved performance with web applications like Gmail, Google Docs, and Zoho Office. Firefox 3 also has a completely redesigned location bar that makes it much easier to find pages you’ve recently or frequently visited. You can read an extensive review here.

Firefox 2 users don’t have to update if they are happy with Firefox 2 you can either postpone the update or decline it. But I highly recommend updating to Firefox 3.

This has been a “thing” for most web designers and web developers. Every time you design a website, you’ve got to really consider its graphical output in major browsers if not to all of them. Basically, I believe that the most used browser nowadays are Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Firefox 2 and 3 and maybe Safari or Opera. How would one go about the issue on “browser compatibility”? One can use either javascript or maybe PHP, ASP or any scripting programs that can possibly do the trick.

Many of my previous website projects and in the current ones, I used a combination of javascript and PHP script to handle this issue. There are so many free javascripts or other scripting programs that are free in the net. You would just of course select what’s best for you or what is most applicable to your coding environment.

Why? How important is this? Maybe at first thought, this could not be as vital as the real output one can show in one of the major browsers. But the dilemma is, not all your viewers have the same browser that you or your company is using. This is practically important also most especially when the website you’re working on is an e-commerce site. You will loose potential customers when they see your website from their browser when it displays garbage output (visually). And when you’re doing for a client, it will a big plus for you or your company, naturally. Not only that, you will earn the positive effect of doing it in your projects.

Now, what comes with this issue is the proper adjustment of CSS files that you’ll be doing with the browsers that you have selected. Of course one browser is (kind of a) different from another. Even with a browser that has different versions, your CSS will still vary (in one way or another). This is particularly applicable when you’re using a TABLELESS coding style. But of course it will still possibly be applied in a code with TABLES.

As far as my experience is concern, Internet Explorer 6 and 7 has many differences in their output when a single CSS is being used. Take note, this are versions of the same browser. While with Firefox 2 and 3, I have observed only few differences in their requirements of CSS tags. Between Firefox and Safari (for Windows) they have also a few differences in their CSS tags. These statements may not be necessarily true with other designers or developers.

To conclude, BROWSER COMPATIBILITY issue should be addressed in your coding works for your website projects.