bookmark_borderFirefox Experience

It’s been a while since I posted about Firefox but as it’s just crashed through the 24 million downloads mark, and has increased it’s browser share AGAIN I thought it was reasonable time to look back over the past year of using Firefox and see how, if at all, it has changed my browsing habits.

Blimey, I’ve been using Firefox for an entire year, how time flies!

The main and most obvious change to my browsing habits has been my ready adoptation of tabbed browsing. It’s now an integral part of my browsing technique (for want of a better term) and, coupled with an extension that remembers what tabs were open the last time I closed the browser, I find I rarely have to bookmark anything of interest any more. Instead I can open the sites in a new browser tab, and if I don’t get around to checking them out they will be re-opened the next time I start Firefox. Note that this cycle may repeat for up to a week, and has certainly been a key factor in improving my online information management.

Whether it’s articles of note, to do (Ta Da) lists, or just silly email links, I just open them in a new tab and get to them when I’m ready. Did someone mention an interesting book at lunch? A quick Amazon search in a new tab and it’ll sit there until I either order it, or add it to my wishlist (which itself sits open in another tab, just in case). Ohh and that “quick Amazon search” is also something I should mention.

Continue reading “Firefox Experience”

bookmark_borderBrowser Stats

Prompted by the news that there have now been 16 million downloads of Firefox 1.0 in two months. I thought I’d check my stats and see what the browser share for this site is. Previously IE (5 & 6) was running at about 96% and that has dropped to around 82%.

Of course there is the small issue of the user agent used by Firefox which, it appears, is being picked up differently by different referrer statistic packages – it shows as Netscape 5 & 7 in my stats. Ohh and let’s not forget that you can also change the user agent if you want.

Anyway, the bottom line is that the browser share for Firefox is definitely growing, but you should always bear in mind that there are three untruths: lies, damned lies and statistics. Continue reading “Browser Stats”

bookmark_borderIT WORKS!!!

FINALLY.

Many many MANY thanks to Adrian and Jann for their sage advice and time.

I tried Jann’s advice first – as it was the simplest, namely adding <br style="clear: both;" /> right before the closing DIV tag. Whaddya know, it worked straight away. I’m not sure which I’m more relieved about, the fact it now works in IE AND Firefox (other browsers and versions still to be checked), or that it wasn’t anything I’d coded but a ‘gotcha’ with the Mozilla based browsers. Seemingly it’s “one of those things”, meaning it’s one of those things you learn once and never ever forget!

Now this does mean that my beloved Firefox browser is flawed slightly but it’s still a safer browser than IE – 12.5 million downloads can’t lie! (yes, I know that statistics ALWAYS lie but that’s not my point).

So, without further ado you can ALL have a gander at the 2005 version of this site. Comments welcomed and bear in mind it’s not completely finished yet.

UPDATE: Apologies to Shelagh, I posted this late last night (early this morning) and didn’t spot the code snippet wasn’t showing.

bookmark_borderCSS Woe

Can anyone spot what is wrong with this snippet of CSS?

Works fine in IE but not in Firefox – argh!! The background image (maincolumn.gif) won’t repeat vertical down the column in Firefox yet it works fine in IE.

.rigid-demo { margin: 0 auto; text-align: left; width: 790px; background: url(../images/maincolumn.gif) repeat-y; }

P.S. This is NOT a reason NOT to use Firefox! It’s my shoddy coding that’s to blame, and lack of l33t CSS skills, or however the kids are saying it these days.

UPDATE: OH ARSE. Still can’t get it to work. Sample page here, CSS here, background image here.

The CSS file validates OK.

Why oh why oh why… Works fine in IE, no background image in Firefox. Chuff chuff chuff.

bookmark_borderOh good grief

Microsoft are entering the fight against spyware and that’s fine. That’s their right of course.

However why would I want to pay for this when Ad-Aware and Spy-Bot do such a great job* as it is? Who WOULD pay for this? Well that’s obvious. A lot of people will, and I’ll venture that most will be people who are still wary of their computer and not entirely sure how it all works. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a dig at the ‘technically challenged’, far from it. I’m wondering how (who?) is protecting their needs. Owning a computer CAN be a very expensive business.

* YMMV and yes it’s a pain having to run TWO applications but hey, they’re free! Add in ZoneAlarm (free) and AVG AntiVirus (free) and most standalone computers are happy as Larry. Of course ditching IE in favour of Firefox helps too.

bookmark_borderHijacked

The timesheet application we use at work has a web based front end. Unfortunately it only works properly in (you guessed it!) Internet Explorer. So last night, as I’d done a wee bit of work when I got home, I fired up IE and what did I find? It had been hijacked (browser hijacking is a manifest of spyware = not good).

A quick scan using Ad-Aware soon cleaned things up but it’s annoyance. Something I don’t have to put up with whilst I use Firefox.

Which brings me to mention that I’ve updated my original post about Firefox extensions. I’ve added one (Tab Clicking Options) and checked/correct all the links. Ohh and if you have come across any other “must have” extensions, please let me know.

I should also point out that there is a new version of the Opera browser now available. It has been simplified a lot, and whilst I think it’s a huge improvement over the previous versions (previous UI was clunky) I still prefer Firefox. Internet Explorer – Come in, your time is up!