June 19th, 2008, posted in Computers, Downloads, Standards, Web Design
If you haven’t been paying attention to the interwebs lately, this has been a big week for the browser wars. Opera 9.5 launched as well as Firefox 3. I have been a fan of Firefox for a long time and recently have become a huge fan of the extension Firebug for it.
In my current work environment we are building Java web applications and while I can and do run them locally, it can take a while to put the build up, take it down, modify it and put it back up. Since most of my work is front end focused I spend a lot of time in Firebug testing things before taking the build down to update.
When Firefox 3 launched on Tuesday, I diligently downloaded and installed it. I played around with it a little and saw that Firebug wasn’t updated for it yet. So I packed it away and pulled out Firefox 2 and got back to work. Then I started having tabbing issues. I have had to restart my PC three times because my tab button on my keyboard stops working in Firefox 2. Additionally, if I am in Firebug’s CSS live editing window and highlight a property it automatically deletes the property when I tab out. Becoming increasingly frustrated I dug around and saw they now have Firebug updated for Firefox 3 but in a beta format (although is it beta 3). so like a good little boy, I installed the new extension and booted Firefox 2 back up.
One of the beautiful things about Firebug is the ability to turn on and off various properties. However in the new beta on Firefox 3 this is causing the entire browser to crash. So here I come Firefox 2, wait what is this…the new beta is incompatible with Firefox 2 BUT deletes the old version on install. Come on guys, if you are going to not be functional, you can at least not touch my previous install.
By the way, what is with Firefox 3 not importing all my bookmarks from Firefox 2 on install? It captured my IE and Opera ones, but ignored the ones I actually use.
June 12th, 2007, posted in Computers, Flash, Standards, Web Design
There seems to be a question as to why Apple would introduce Safari for Windows and why anyone on Windows would run it. I think people are missing the point that Apple is trying to acheive and what this could mean for the small developer.
By introducing Safari on Windows Apple has introduced the SDK (as they call it) for the iPhone. Developers won’t be able to make their apps run directly on the phone and must use AJAX instead(Flash is reportedly not going to be supported). Having Safari on Windows will allow the vast majority of developers to make sure their application will run on Safari’s JavaScript. Now hopefully a developer will make sure it works in all versions of JavaScript on all major browsers, but Apple doesn’t care about that.
In addition to this, Apple is showing that it is doing something Microsoft has decided to undo. Apple is opening more than iTunes to the other OS. I expect by the time Leopard launches we will see Windows versions of iWork and iLife. I don’t expect major applications like Final Cut or Apeture to show up, but remember Apple dropped “computer” from its name. Microsoft has restricted its applications to VMware and Office, but the deal on Office is only for 4 more years. Watch that go away by then.
Last but not least, this is a great opportunity for the small web designer/developer to now test their application and site on all the major browsers without having to shell out for an additional computer. Not everyone can afford a Mac, nor do they want to use a Mac. Now they don’t have to. They can install Safari and use it for testing purposes.
Now is it the best browser? I don’t think so. It has usability issues (I found another issue today in that you can’t use backspace to go back in browsing history like ALL other browsers). I personally prefer Firefox with its extensions and themes. but I would pick Safari over IE because I know the CSS I write will work.
Update: Issue number 4 and a reason to have it on Windows. Wordpress’s WYSIWYG editor for writing posts doesn’t seem to work properly. I only have Code version available to me while writing this post from inside Safari. It looks like Wordpress is one of those small teams that need to test their JavaScript to see that it is compatible with Safari.