AdvisorBits

I've mentioned Firefox before, now it's been officially released and you can get the latest version. It is not currently subject to any exploits, and I think this is one of the major reasons a lot of technical types like it.

If you want to know what I think AdvisorBits looks like most of the time, you would look at it in Firefox. ... even though I take great pains to know it renders on several platforms and browsers within a few pixels. You are free to use any browser at AdvisorBits.

(update 11/11: I saw it today in IE 5.0 Windows. I guess I was wrong about any browser.)

Mozilla's browsers global usage share is 7.35 percent according to OneStat.com

And it was just released a few weeks ago into a market dominated by a vendor who has been making browsers since around 1995. This statistic also makes Mozilla's Firefox the number 4 browser globally, with only various IE browser types being more used. Pay attention web designers! You'll not only need to understand the CSS box model, but also why MS browsers calculate width differently than most other browsers.

Firefox is more responsive to the needs of the web community than other browser vendors have been. Today's example: Type sizes are no longer fixed. It has been possible for some time to specify a fixed type size, such as "12 pixels" for the display of type in a browser window. Firefox allows the user to scale this type to the size that is best for the user, not the designer. (Yup, we're talking about you, you 9 pixel font using, two sandwitch eating... oops that's another post.)

Choice is good. It will make the other browser vendors take notice and try to catch up. (Or not... who cares as long as Firefox keeps being so darn good.)

Firefox Products page.

AdvisorBits' favorite browser, Firefox was updated on Friday.

Microsoft will be releasing IE 7 this summer. In truth and fairness, we should state that for many years IE was our favorite.

One hopes that in the fight for browser market share that everyone will continue to strive towards a common interpretation of the standards. In the end it is the consumers who will benefit from decreased costs of delivering web site projects to businesses because less time, energy and money will be spent on issues of cross browser compatibility.

Six Apart - ProNet - Make Makes Movable Type Better : Color me blown away by FireFox again... this article from MT ProNet Blog is really only a pointer to something much better, an article called "Make out with FireFox" over at Make: eZine, an O'Reilly Media property.

If you're wondering about the title of this post, read the article, it shows how to install SpellBound, a spell checker, into FireFox to spell check your forms.

When I first switched to Firefox, one of the things that made me crazy was trying to figure out why my own company home page didn't render exactly as it did in IE. I tried everything and just couldn't resolve some single pixel CSS issues. I decided that rasther than worry about the details, I would fix it in a future release of my site. Most users probably see it in IE, and the Firefox users haven't said anything to me in yet, so maybe they thought it was intentional.

As I write this from Deer Park Alpha 2, I am pleased to report the problem has been resolved. Unfortunately for me, this bit of fourtune comes a bit late as I am about to release a new site where the issue was "worked out". Which is to say, I used a whole different navigation system which doesn't suffer from the same issue.

In case you're wondering, alpha software is in theory even less stable than beta software. It is full of bugs and finding them is part of the purpose of using alpha software. Plus, some of us just like new toys. The weak of heart and those who don't back up their data shouldn't be trying alpha software.

Well, I didn't mention it until now, because my own home page broke when IE 7 was released last week. It really fries my chops, because I know of a couple 7 year old sites designed in tables that didn't break. My site is XHTML 1.0 Transitional and it validates, yet when I saw it in IE 7 I wanted to yell! It looked like some avant garde horizontal CSS layout.

The problem is discussed by guys who do this stuff more than I do, and so they should know. It didn't work for me, but I didn't try very hard to make it work either. (These things seem known.)