Mozilla Foundation has released version 1.0.1 of its most popular browser, Firefox. The new version consists of security updates.
“Regular security updates are essential for maintaining a safe browsing experience for our users,” said Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for the Mozilla Foundation.
Download here.
Microsoft released Windows XP Service Pack 2 yesterday. Part of the service pack includes updates to Internet Explorer.
On the plus side, IE now comes with a native pop-up blocker. It also requires user authentication for drive-by downloads. Another cool feature is the “Add-On Mangerâ€, which is similar to Firefox’s extensions manager.
On the minus side, these improvements are only for Windows XP users. As well, there appears to be no change in its level of compliance with web standards. Of course, there is still no tabbed browsing.
The changes are welcome, but I do not know why IE is so intent on letting the competition slowly gain market share. Microsoft seems unusually content in its current market share of the web browser market, but its failure at innovation and adoption of web standards and consumer-drive conventions is causing a slow but steady exodus to better products.
I will stick with Firefox at home.
I downloaded Firefox two days ago. What a cool browser.
I ditched Internet Explorer at home a few moths ago for Netscape. Every time I opened IE for the first time, it would take nearly a minute to load the first page. That was simply unacceptable and since I could not find the problem, I simply switched to another browser.
While I was using Netscape, I became addicted to tabbed browsing. It has come to the point where I detest using IE at work because I always have to open new windows instead of new tabs. There were some other cool features as well.
I heard a lot about Firefox and decided to try it. It was a nice download; less than a minute on DSL. It automatically imported my Netscape bookmarks, favourites, links and passwords. Very cool.
After I installed it, I checked out all the extensions that were available. Wowee. What a find. Now, not only do I have tabbed browsing, but I have the following:
Some other cool features include GMail notification, spell check (similar to IESpell), web developer toolbar, auto search by typing words, view source for a selection of text, mailto links open in the e-mail application I indicated as my system’s default application. The list goes on.
I am never going to another browser.
As a website developer who specialises in CSS-based designs, I obviously hang around (i.e. read blogs of, participate in mailing lists with) other like developers. One of the legitimate concerns many—if not all—of them have is the relatively less support Internet Explorer has for CSS 2.1. Part of the reason for this is the fact that the current version of IE is nearly three years old, while every other popular, standards-compliant browser has had a major release within the past year.
A common issue such designers have is users having the ability to resize webpage text to meet their level of reading comfort. All modern browsers have resizing capabilities; however, some have more powerful capabilities than others do. For example, IE can only size text to five sizes (smallest, smaller, medium, larger, and largest) while Opera can resize text and images from 20% to 1000% of the original size. As well, IE can only resize relatively sized text (i.e. em, pt, cm, in, %), while other browsers can resize even absolutely sized text (i.e. px, pt, cm, in).
Given the common and predominant disapproval of IE’s relatively low support for CSS 2.1, many people often attribute IE’s inability to resize absolutely sized text as a bug. Some even go as far as saying IE is broken in this regard. I strongly disagree with this notion.
IE is not broken. It does exactly what the designer tells it to do. If a designer specifies s/he wants a font sized based on 12 pixels then it renders the fonts based on 12 pixels. In actuality, it is the other browsers that are “broken†since they incorrectly render the text in an effort to allow users to resize text.
I repeat, IE is not broken.
That being said, pixel-based text is a bad practise for copy. Any user coming to your website should be able to resize at least the copy text. This ability should not be hampered at all, and should be independent of what browser s/he uses. Ideally, all text should be resizable, and images should not be used to solely present text.
In conclusion, the inability to resize text in Internet Explorer is not the fault of Microsoft engineers; it’s the fault of inconsiderate website developers.