Browser Swap
After many years of using Firefox I’ve recently found myself leaning towards the Google Chrome browser more and more, the “once alternative browser champion” has become rather slow and tiresome to use.
Yes I know you can tweak some settings in the config and download a extension that delivers 25% faster browsing but I really can’t be arsed if I’m honest.
I like that the Chrome browser just works quickly from the start just like the old versions of Firefox when it first appeared on the scene. Opening the browser and waiting for 2 minutes isn’t ideal and time is more of a managed resource in my day-to-day live now.
I’m not saying that Chrome is perfect but in my opinion the pros certainly outnumber the cons when I compare it to Firefox. For now I’m enjoying the change of scenery.
Perhaps I just need to wipe my Firefox install and give it another chance I know there are most likely files in my profile that date back to when it was branded Phoenix, I’ll keep notes on how it goes.
Ubiquity for Firefox
A very interesting tool that wraps Web 2.0 functionality up and houses it within the firefox browser. At first the thought of a command line driven tool in this interactive/Drag & Drop era is one that is set to generate a good ammount of interest.
So what is it about?
Well the phrase that this project is labelled with is “An experiment into connecting the Web with language”. This indicates what the application hopes to reach in terms of long term goals, using command keywords to perform various actions when the user needs it.
This experimental Firefox extension that could allow you to reclaim time spent looking up that address on Google Maps. I for one like the wikipedia functionality as it's a daily stop of mine. So will the time needed to perform online tasks be reduced overall? Hopefully, but I think there are some steps in learning that will need to be mastered before you'll see any benefit.
There are some dangerous with such a system becoming bloated and full of useful functionality that nobody wants or finds useful. I'll keep my fingers crossed that it remains that way, currently the functionality appears limited to a set of tools that I'd happily use on a daily basis.
There is a video here that displays the functionality:
http://www.vimeo.com/1561578
Some screenshots can be found one this tutorial:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Ubiquity_0.1_User_Tutorial
Browser-woes and Firefox 3 beta
Excuse my lack of updates this week, I have been quite busy creating themes.
I must admit that I haven't had quite as many problems in the past as I'm experencing now with IE6. Only my laptop has IE6 running now which makes for fun testing, yet I managed to get VirtualPC installed and using a hardrive image I have IE6 working on my desktop.
In addtion to having that resource for testing available I've also being using http://browsershots.org which is a free open-source service that takes screenshots of the website you specify on various browsers on windows/Mac or Linux operating systems. It cant take a little bit of time the screen capture to be returned as each request is placed in a queue.
Here is an example I created for my website http://browsershots.org/http://welshtroll.co.uk/ as you can see the results are interesting. I think you'll agree for those of use without access to a Mac or Linux operating systems it's interesting to see how a website renders for your non-microsoft visitors.
While on the topic of browsers I'll quickly mention the fact that Firefox version 3 is available for beta testing. I only managed to have a quick try of it last night and from what I've seen it's shaping up nicely.
Here is some of the functionality that you can expect to see : The ability to click the Favicon on the address bar and have infomration relating to the website pop up is a nice feature. That along side the warning for potential hazardous websites via a blacklist or google certainly brings security to the forefront again.
The MIME system appears to be greatly improved, which wasn't that difficult as previous versions weren't user friendly or intuitive.
A new feature that is quite far down the list but one of my favourites, is the save password functionality. New functionality aims to offer you the ability to save the username/password once you can see if you have logged on successfully.
I'm not sure how hopefully starring and tagging URL's will be in the overall big picture, but you never know it could become a common feature.
