Web Design Topic
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Browsers
An application used to view hypertext content, usually over the Web. The two most popular commercial versions are Netscape’s Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Other prominent ones include the open-source Firefox, Opera, and Apple’s Safari. Before the introduction of the Mosaic graphical browser in 1993, the common Web browser was the text-based lynx.
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Lessons from working with Web standards
During the past five months I’ve been working on a project that’s been alluded to on this site a few times, and it will very soon be done. Once things settle down, I’ll be going into a lot more detail, but for now I’ll tease out a few things I’ve discovered: -
Searching The Globe
Another item on this site about stuff at the globeandmail.com — one of these days that site will actually have a blog to deal with this kinda stuff. Until then, I’ve created three search plugins for Firefox (or Mozilla, or Netscape 6+, or MacOS’s Sherlock). -
A little help from a friend
Hey Chris, glad to hear your back and looking for advice Hope this helps -
Microsoft to release IE7
Wow. -
Ask Mozilla
The also-ran search company Ask Jeeves is making some interesting plays lately. First, it bought Bloglines *the Web-based RSS aggregator) and now it’s talking up the Mozilla Foundation. Ask Jeeves has suggested it might donate it’s desktop search product to Mozilla and making it open source; as well there’s talk of building a Ask Jeeves-branded Firefox browser this year. -
Firefox’s Monster: the Netscape Browser
The Netscape browser has been resurrected and the limited beta was released today. The good news: it still uses the Gecko rendering engine and is based on Firefox 0.9.3 — the final will be based on Firefox 1.0. The bad news: its interface is horrible, and has mangled everything usable and friendly about Firefox. -
Firefox 1.0
Mozilla is a marvel. Six years ago it was born. Eighteen months ago its browser suite roared across the Web. Today, Mozilla released its “tiny, perfect browser,” Firefox. -
What is the GBrowser?
Will they or won’t they? The GBrowser rumour mills are churning again with the CEO Eric Schmidt’s outright denial Google is building a browser. -
Mozilla’s multi-columns, and an IE7 update
There’s been a lot of news during the past week or so that has almost tempted me to break the posting silence, but only one managed to break the floodgates: the release of Mozilla 1.8 Alpha3. Forget the awkward name, this is, for me, the most important release since 1.0. -
Resurrection
Webmonkey, like the Netscape browser, looks to be back from the dead. I happened to hit the site today and noticed it was on the “wired.com” domain instead of a directory of “hotwired.lycos.com”. Plus there’s this note: “We’re totally back! Webmonkey is alive and kicking, serving up new articles all hot-n-fresh like a stack of banana pancakes. With syrup.” The site will has been publishing new articles every other Friday since the beginning of July: -
Clark on the Star on Firefox
Joe Clark dissects Richard Morochove’s Toronto Star column on alternatives to IE (which was teased with the Firefox logo on the @Biz front page). Joe’s piece is an erudite example of Firefox’ latest “grassroots” marketing initiative: talking back to the press. -
Fixing the All Music Guide
The buzz around the Web standards community last week was the awful All Music Guide redesign which exclusively targetted IE 5.5 and higher on Windows and used a mess of JavaScript. To help fix things, Adrian Holovaty has built a AMG-specific Firefox extension that brilliantly undoes much of the damage; his colleague, Simon Willison riffs on the idea of such site-specific extensions. -
Browser Wars II: an overview
The Guardian has published an extremely well-written overview of the new browser wars. Although the piece is targetted at a mainstream audience, but is comprehensive enough to provide a summary to those Web designers not up on the latest shenanigans (Firefox, Longhorn, Dashboard, WHATWG, etc.) -
Mutli-columns with Mozilla
One of my most desired CSS features is coming to a browser near you — Robert O’Callahan has checked a patch into Mozilla that implements the three-year-old CSS3 multi-columns working draft. -
Mozilla not perfect!
So, Mozilla had a security flaw — the browser’s not perfect after all. However, unlike some browsers, the patch was made within four-and-a-half hours. Eleven hours later, the vulnerability was reported and the codebase was fixed. Less than 24 hours later, updated versions of (or patches for) Mozilla’s software was available. (The timeline is summarized from sacarny’s own work.) -
New IE5/Mac filter
Doug Bowman tapped Tantek Çelik’s brain and out emerged the IE5/Mac Band Pass Filter. The result causes the former to eulogize the browser the latter helped build -
Internet Explorer evangelist
Apparently, Microsoft has quietly appointed an evangelist to the Internet Explorer development team. Dave Massy worked with IE prior to getting transferred over to Longhorn work. Although he claims it’s not big news he does say he’ll be fielding user requests to the Internet Explorer development team. -
Rewarding openess
Today Tim Berners-Lee receives €1 million from the world’s largest technology prize, the Millennium Technology Prize, for — in part — not patenting his most spectacular invention, the Web itself. -
New Mozilla releases
Two new release candidates from the Mozilla Foundation: Mozilla Suite 1.7 RC3 and Firebird 0.9 RC1 (the latter features a controversial new theme). -
Firefox 0.9 release date
Firefox 0.9 will be released in about ten days, a release candidate should be available next week. This version will essentially be 1.0; in other words, no new features will be added to 0.9 and only bug fixes will be applied to create 1.0. The more that use and test these versions, the better the final product -
New IE will be the same as the old
Ian Hickson is at the W3C’s Workshop on Web Applications and Compound Documents where he learned the version of Internet Explorer to be included with Longhorn — a.k.a, the next version of Windows — apparently still won’t support XHTML with a MIME type of “application/xhtml+xml” nor will it natively support SVG. As well, the Microsoft representatives said, according to Hickson, “significantly more comprehensive test suites” are needed before Microsoft will work on standards compliance again -
Mozilla and GNOME
UserFriendly tries to poke fun at the Mozilla browser. (The Mozilla Foundation recently met with the GNOME Foundation … I wonder what about?) -
Mozilla offering page-specific CSS hooks
Asa points to a great soon-to-be feature for Gecko based browsers: a means to apply custom CSS based on the URL of the page loaded in the browser (vote for it). This has been bandied about on the www-style list, and there have been a number of suggested workarounds, including CSS signatures. Until this gets implemented, try Chris Neale’s extension, URIid -
Quoting and adjusting font sizes
The latest version of Firefox now supports nested quoting via q, meaning this renders correctly: There was a pause. This won’t work in IE, he said. That being said, I do have a script for rendering quotes in Internet Explorer — it’s not really production quality yet, though. -
IE7 update
Dean Edwards has a released a major update to the still alpha IE7, including a way to make it, theoretically, future compatible. Dean’s also released the heart of the IE7, its CSS query engine, as a separate JavaScript file. -
Netscape resurrected?
Seems like Netscape as a browser may not be so dead after all. Rumours are swirling that sometime this summer will see a new version (likely dubbed 7.2 or 7.5) of the stalwart browser. The news has sparked some high-level in-fighting in the very public forums at MozillaZine about which version of Mozilla should be considered the stable, or gold-standard, for the next year or so. -
Singing with Opera
You can talk to your browser…or, at least, the next version of Opera. The Norwegian browser will use IBM’s Embedded ViaVoice to let users navigate and fill-in forms just by speaking. Using the proposed XHTML+Voice (X+V) specification, the voice-enabled — or multimodal — browser neatly hits three markets: -
Netscape for IE!
Now, for all those who love Netscape, but use Microsoft’s browser, get the new Netscape Toolbar for Internet Explorer! (thanks MikeyC) -
Eolas invalid
Missed this over the weekend, but the infamous Eolas patent — the one claiming ownership over plug-in technology — has been invalidated by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. This should mean the expected service pack for Internet Explorer 6 won’t include the “fixes” Microsoft released five months ago, which in turn, revealed how to install multiple versions of said browser -
IE7
I’ve been sitting on Dean Edwards’ incredible set of enhancements for Internet Explorer since last Wednesday. As you may be aware, word of his IE7 development is sweeping across the community, and it’s not surprising why. With a few lines of script, Edwards has found a way for Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6 to support complex CSS selectors. -
Introducing Firefox; Pixies back; validator fixed
At what point does it just become silly? -
Mozilla 1.6 released; mitigating media concentration
Mozilla 1.6 is out, and features the ability to refresh the source code window (great for debugging) as well as numerous bug fixes (including one that prevented me from using an experimental new design for this site). -
URL spoofing; liquid vs. fixed; digital junkyard; Mozilla 1.6 beta released
A disturbing new twist to an old trick (using URLs usernames that look like hostnames): Interent Explorer can be tricked to display a page that appears to be hosted from a different domain. -
Multiple IE browsers in Windows
One of the supposed truth’s about Web design is that unlike almost any other browser, you can’t run two versions Internet Explorer side-by-side. But Joe Maddalone has seemingly proved that false. He explains which files to remove, and which ones to add, to make testing Web pages that much easier. (via webgraphics) -
New Mozilla site, browsers, and mail client; Web design practices
Dave Shea has redesigned the Mozilla site in a gorgeous CSS treatment. There are some minor problems in IE 5.5 and Opera 7.x, but overall it’s a great example of how progressive enhancement can improve design (try rolling over the sell boxes on the right). Nice touch: headlines become standalone boxes on roll-over. -
Eolas forces IE update; HTMLDog; Izzy Asper has died
Eolas has forced Microsoft to release an new version of Internet Explorer that causes an alert box to appear whenever a plug-in loads on a page. To get around it, Microsoft is suggesting developers add a proprietary attribute to object or write the entire object to the page using JavaScript. -
Firebird extensions
As promised, Firebird 0.6.1 is out. I’m running it using the Firebird Modern theme with some added extensions designed to mimic or improve on the default Mozilla behaviours: -
Web development bookmarklets; Mozilla 1.5a, Firebird 0.6.1, and Thunderbird released; simple forms
Jesse Rudman has a collection of a dozen-half Mozilla-friendly Web development bookmarklets, many of which also work in IE and Opera. Three work in Netscape 4. -
Webstandards.TO meeting; Netscape goes quietly
The next Webstandards.TO is meeting tonight. I probably won’t be making it, but you should — this month it’s at the Duke of York. -
The future of Web browsers; CSS design variations
Never fails post a message saying it will be quiet, and then post a bunch of links a few days later. -
Netscape 7.1, Mozilla 1.4 released; media catfight
Blogger still won’t publish my posts…not happy. -
Mozilla news; AdsML; Usability 101
This post was delayed due to the Blogger upgrades that have now prevented me from even using this service. As a result, this has been posted manually and future posts may be sporadic until the problem is fixed. (Note to self: must hurry development on new site.) -
Safari 1.0; Hack HotBot winner losses; SARS concert webcast
Some quick hits: -
Mozilla 1.4 RC2 released with annoying bug
Mozilla 1.4 Release Candidate 2 is finally out, although the annoying ATI bug is still there -
MSN for Mac OS X the last IE for Macs
It’s official: no further versions of Internet Explorer for the Macintosh will be released. (Not sure if this also includes -
Alpha transparency fix; IE improvements?
Bob Osala has created a simple and clever fix to get alpha transparency in PNGs working in Internet Explorer using one JavaScript call. There’s some catches, but it looks to be a fairly elegant solution. This is the type of thing we need more of if Microsoft isn’t going to update the standalone version of its browser. -
Microsoft buys(-off) AOL
In case, for some reason, you haven’t heard: Microsoft paid AOL a bunch of money to forget about the “past” (i.e., Netscape) and embrace the “future” (i.e., Microsoft). -
Mozilla 1.4 RC 1 released
Mozilla 1.4, Release Candidate 1 is out. This version (once finalized) will be the last to have everything bundled together. -
Google News hits the world;XUL-based Internet desktop; Composer++
When Google News launched its latest beta, there was a lot of buzzing happening in the online news community. Today, the service localized, and has subsites for Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, the U.K., and of course, the U.S.. More prominence is given to local sources and stories, which is quite obvious in the non-North American editions. At Google News Canada—my new bookmark—there’s a “Canada” section, and a better focus on Canadian business news. -
Responding to JWZ; XUL for Web apps
Just read Simon Willison’s reposnse to JMZ’s rant about Cascading Style Sheets, and both prompted me to elucidate my own feelings about CSS-based design. However, given the rant is not even close to being ready for publication, go (re-)read Owen Briggs’ Design Rant and my own piece on using tables or CSS. (and this is too funny). -
Mozilla’s Midas and other browser tools
Tim Berners-Lee mentions in his book, Weaving the Web, that he had originally intended the Web-pages to be fully editable in one application. You load up a page and edit the document within the browser. Amaya does this by default. Internet Explorer has had a couple of proprietary extension for this since 4.0 (designMode and contentEditable). Mozilla introduced its version of “designMode” in 1.3. -
Slate makes money; 50+ Headings; the next IE
Slate has become one of the few online publications to make money, and is the only big one to do so that’s not related to a traditional media outlet. (Yes, it is owned by Microsoft, but many print financed by deep-pocketed organizations, too). -
Firebird fight; position: fixed; RSS; CSS for handhelds
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Ending the upgrades
Marking the end of the upgrade campaign for saila.com -
Web browser at 10
News.com is running a four-day series on the traditional Web browser’s 10th birthday. The report is a nice overview of the long and tumultuous history of a simple application and its far-reaching influences. -
PNH Developer Toolbar; Phoenix is Firebird
Chris Casciano (of the famed Daily CSS Fun redesigns) has released on the most useful Mozilla toolbars I’ve yet encountered: the PNH Developer Toolbar. Not only does it offer direct links to the W3C’s key Web recommendations (as well as a number of test suites and some Mozilla tools), it also has some hand bookmarklet-like tools. Among my favs: “Disable Styles,” “Apply External Styles,” “Show Window Size,” and “View Source” (which opens it in a new tab). -
Opera 7.10 and Safari beta 2 released
Two new browser releases: Opera 7.10 (featuring a fast-forward and rewind feature I just don’t get and a Linux build) and Safari beta 2 (featuring tabs and more) -
PPK’s busy; Mozilla as a Web development tool; weak Webby’s
Seems Peter-Paul Koch has been busy doing something I haven’t been doing lately: writing in-depth articles about Web design issues. His latest is about JavaScript and accessibility — a mysterious world with little known about it. His piece is an overview, for sure, but a good one that happens to reinforces some of the answers I gave to a reader about the accessibility of my navigation menu. -
Champeon interviewed; Mozilla 1.4a released amongst big changes
A massive (six-page) interview with Steve Champeon on just about everything is now available on the Meet the Makers site. Great insight into the worlds of both Champeon and the Web development community. -
getElementsByClassName; CSS tabs; Mozilla Mail
Via Simon Willison: Andrew Hayward’s document.getElementsByClassName. -
Post-boom job guide; Mozilla 1.3
Webmonkey has another good article, this time a seven-page post-boom job guide. Even those still employed should read it…just in case. -
Mozilla is five; a newspaper’s relationship with it’s Web site
Update: Kirk Franklin wrote to say moreCrayons now gets along with Mozilla completely, and it does. Go bookmark this great little resource. -
Opera 7 released
The final version of Opera 7 is now out. With that comes the need to rework some of the style sheet rules in this site, so I ask that Opera 7 (and 6.x) users extend me a bit of patience until this gets fixed. Unfortunately, it sounds like, thanks to Safari, Opera may stopping developing for the Macintosh. -
More on Safari and Mozilla
More on Safari: -
Vertical CSS play; introducing CSS
Talk about simple: Joe Gillespie has posted a clever way to vertically centre a block of a known height on a page (via Digital Web). -
Mozilla 1.3 alpha and Opera 7 beta 2; blogging and the mainstream press
Two new browsers for you to play around with: -
Specifying character sets; Netscape 7.0.1
A new series, the “WaSP Asks the W3C,” starts off with an informative little Q&A about setting the proper character set on documents. -
Email at work; meeting Mr. Clark; Ghostzilla
Admittedly, I’m one of the power users this survey on email overload mentions (given I receive in excess of 300 non-spam messages a day, a quarter of which are for me directly), but it confirms what I’ve long suspected. -
Mozilla 1.2 released; arguing the benefits of cross-ownership
Mozilla 1.2 is out. Although 1.2 beta was a bit flaky, this build is much improved and is much better than the latest nightlies. If you still don’t use this amazing browser, perhaps its worth (re)reading the “101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that IE cannot” as selected by fellow Torontonian Neil Deakin. -
DOM talk
DOM support in the new Opera 7 beta is not quite ready for prime time (that’s why its “beta”) so if you want to visit this site using that browser I highly recommend you turn-off JavaScript before arriving. CSS support seems excellent, though. (Opera has a full list of what’s supported.) If you do notice bugs, read the support documentation, and then — with a qualified test case — submit them. -
Star redesign results; Opera 7 beta
To match the new look of the paper, The Toronto Star redesigned its Web site, which had been less than pretty. The new site uses white space well, and is crisply and cleanly designed (the work of freelance designer Simone Paradisi). Unfortunately it still uses unreadable long CMS-generated URLs. Some quickly noted improvements: -
Mozilla 1.2 beta; Bowman’s blog
Mozilla 1.2 beta is out, featuring “link prefetching.” -
No Gecko for AOL
No Gecko for AOL. The new verision is out, but its Windows users are still stuck with IE’s rendering engine. Both the CompuServe and AOL Mac services use a Gecko-based browser. Both, though, have tiny audiences when compared to AOL for Windows -
CNN.com and Google News redesign
Had a good time celebrating with friends last night after a fantastic dinner, doubt the smiley will have the same today as it celebrates 20 years. -
Mozilla 1.2 and box-sizing
The alpha version of Mozilla 1.2 is now available, with some helpful keyboard-based navigation improvements. -
CBC at 50, interactive style, and detecting browsers
Fifty years ago today in Montreal, CBC Television debuted with an English-language children’s movie. Two days later, the Toronto station flickered to life with an upside-down logo and a newscast hosted by Lorne Greene — the National aired a bit of that first newscast last night. -
Netscape 7; Canadian net user’ database
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AOL and Mozilla, and IE updates
AOL’s latest version for the Macintosh, designed for OS X, uses a Gecko-based browser, let’s hope the next Windows version does the same. Follow the speculation in Mozillazine’s forums. -
The Distillery District; tabbed newspaper
The Gooderham and Worts Distillery has been closed to the public for almost 170 years. As part of the Toronto’s efforts to reclaim its waterfront, the complex is re-opening, and becoming the anchor for a new neighbourhood. -
Mozilla 1.1 beta; TIPS; working with Digital Web
Mozilla 1.1 beta has been released. -
Net access; Gecko DOCTYPE snifffing
Here’s a couple of administrative-type stories that could have a big effect on how we access and use the Net: -
No Mozilla AOL; Russell Mills was fired
AOL 8.0 beta is being tested and IE, not Mozilla, is the default browser. -
Mozilla; WaSP returns; writing for the Web
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More Mozilla
Scott Andrew LePera goes Mozilla mad, and points to some cool Mozilla-related resources, including: -
Banner ads; Mozilla 1.0 arrives
Somewhere, out there, there’s a group of people responsible for defining the size of ads that appear on Web pages. But that space doesn’t always have to be filled by a commercial message, it could display art. That’s the idea behind the Banner Art Collective. -
Netscape 4 is five
My most favourite browser in the whole world is hitting its fifth birthday on June 11 as rediscovered thanks to Matt Haughey and as detailed in a Netscape press release from the time. That’s like 35 Internet years. -
Browser updates; bombs
Some browser updates for you: -
Netscape 7 coming
Well, looks like Netscape 6 will have one of the shortest shelf lives of any recent browser (Netscape 4.x, released in 1997, is still kicking): version 7 is now in pre-release. This appears to be based on Mozilla 1.0 RC2. -
Mozilla-powered AOL
As long rumoured, AOL is making big moves toward ditching Internet Explorer in favour of its own Netscape browser. The latest Macintosh version of the software will be, according to Reuters, using Netscape-developed technology, i.e., the Gecko layout engine. -
Canadian New Media Awards finalists; CodZilla update
The 2002 Canadian New Media Awards finalists were announced today, and although I wasn’t a finalist for my nominated category of Best Educator, my buddies at ThinData were. The Toronto Web design firm is nominated, for the second year-in-a-row, in the Best Employer category; and CEO Chris Carder is a finalist for Best Volunteer. -
Codzilla
Is CodZilla for real? -
Media mergers, and paying for PDA browsers
The McKinsey Quarterly has republished an excellent article on media mergers an article from The Wall Street Journal. What makes the piece worthwhile is its clear, concise explanation of why these companies are really merging and what challenges they face. -
Salon’s former quality seen in Mozilla article
Salon.com was once the example of intelligent online journalism. In my mind, they slipped from that pedestal shortly after doing to the American Republicans exactly what they’d been criticizing that party of doing to the Clinton and his Democrats. -
Mozilla 0.9.9; increasing the copyright tariff
Mozilla 1.0 is almost—finally—here. Version 0.9.9 has been released and its a good one. Download and use it now. -
AOL offers Mozilla a boost; tabless layouts
Last May, I quoted a StatMarket survey showing Netscape would jump to a 20 percent marketshare if AOL switched to the Gecko-based browser. That 14 percent gain looks to become a reality: AOL version 8 will reportedly switch from IE to Netscape. As I said then: -
Get Opera 6 beta and Mozilla 0.9.6
Normally, I wholeheartedly recommend downloading the latest versions of browsers, but in two recent cases I can’t. -
MSN opens up
As predicted, Microsoft changed its MSN access policy. Opera and Mozilla will—in theory (but not yet in practice)—have access to the site, but there are no guarantees the content will look good. (For some good fun, read Opera's press release about it all, then view the XHTML-version of the release in Internet Explorer 5+ and in Opera or Mozilla.) -
saila.com at five, MSN blocks Mozilla
Sometime this fall—the date lost being memory—is the fifth anniversary of this site. Orginally hosted at the former Toronto-based ISP, Interlog, at http://www.interlog.com/~saila/, it moved to its own doman (this one), in August of 1997 (the dot-ca edition came last November). -
Flash stats
Some stats on the popularity of the different multimedia players as of September 2001 (caveat emptor: the study was commissioned by Macromedia—the makers of Flash and Shockwave): -
Internet Explorer 6.0 released
The new Internet Explorer has officially been released. If you’e using Windows 98 and up, I urge you to download the browser. You don’t even have to use it as your default browser (though if you’re not. I hope your using Netscape 6.1/Mozilla or Opera — if not, what are you waiting for?). -
Blocking pop-ups with Mozilla
On WebDesign-L, there’s been a passionate debate about "X10 ads" — those annoying ads for a Web camera company that a small window beneath the current window. Some argue that, like banner ads before, people will get used to pop-up and pop-under ads; most believe, to varying degrees, they are the work of the devil. -
Smart Tags and more IE fun
Been quiet here as I’ve been busy with the post-mortem of the Ontario Science Centre’s launch. One day there'll be an article about the differences between pushing out a corporate site and a media site. Over this past week or so there’s been a lot of very interesting sites, articles, and issues which have caught my eye, many of which are listed below for your enjoyment: -
Mozilla 0.9.1 tips and Netscape 6.1
A few things for anyone looking for a good Gecko-based browser: -
The next battle in the Browser Wars
I knew this would happen: declare I'm not going to write for a bit only to stumble across something noteworthy. -
Mozilla 0.9 released
Another reason for downloading, and developing to, the newest version Mozilla, the Gecko-based browser released today.... -
Text and lynx
I’ve got a borderline compulsive need to outfit my work computers with a core set of browsers, -
With a whimper
The underwhelming relase of the much-delayed Netscape 6.