Microsoft offers browser choice to users in Europe

It's good that 10 other browsers except IE and Firefox are getting exposure as well. To be honest I haven't heard of 3 names from this list and they are SRWare IRON, Lunascape and FlashPeak.

So willingly or unwillingly Microsoft is giving the open choice to users...:)

Similar to what Google Chrome does now a days, asks users for making a choice from Google, Yahoo! or Bing as the default search engine..!

Google Chrome - asking user choice of search engine after installation

Anyway as long as browsers and their browsers are concerned users will usually stick to one once they are happy with it with basics (the normal users which are less technical). While developers and specially web-developers need to deal with various breed of them. I consider desktop-applications and their developers little lucky in this area. (Though the fact is  - for many software vendors it's difficult to make and test their software even in various flavors of Windows only.)

So it would be great if you would vote for your favorite browser and please also mention whether you're a web-geek, web-developer or end user.

Thank You for reading my posts, share it if you like it.

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Firefox vs Chrome? Yes or No..!

Friends, the War of browsers has always been very exciting. I have been using Flock at my home PC for quite sometime now (probably since version 0.8 or earlier while it was using Mozilla Firefox at it's core..!).

Yes, the NEWS is Flock - The Social Networking Browser showed it's love towards Chrome by selecting Google's Chromium project as base to build their next-generation browsing experience. Yes, Flock said bye to Mozilla Firefox.

Using Chromium as a base has given a decent boost to Flock and the sidebar gives even better social networking experience with integration with services like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube and I am sure more and more services will be added as new Flock gets mature.

You as a User win with Flock

To me the old Firefox based Flock had better User Interface or theme, it was a sparkling theme with silver and light blue shades (default one). But now it has obviously decent theme and better and faster performance, which is what finally matters. So here we as users win along with Flock, those who choose to flock on social web with Flock. If you want to see the glimpse of old Mozilla-core based Flock see my previous post back in July 2009 introducing some exciting features of Flock - The Social Browser.

Here is the quoted paragraph from the Clayton Stark's blog post on official Flock Beta Blog about why Chromium was inevitable as a platform of choice for The Social Networking Browser.

We had already pushed the technologies we were using about as far as we could, and we needed to make things much faster. Enter chromium.org, the next step in the evolution of the Web browser. The technologies that make up Chromium let us push much farther than before, and package our vision into rocketship-fast software. There isn't a limit to what we can do on this platform (which is fantastic, as we have a lot of things we still want to do!)

I also want to take this opportunity to mention Mozilla, and basically take my hat off while I'm at it. Most of the Flock team started building browsers on Mozilla in late 2004, before Firefox 1.0 was released (we built Netscape 8.x together, which was Firefox-based, before working on Flock 1.x). As we start this new chapter with Chromium, it seems important to mention that I believe chromium.org would not even exist had mozilla.org not come before it. We didn't choose Chromium over Mozilla as much as we chose Chromium after Mozilla. It was a natural evolution. I see Mozilla as a venerable deity in the space, and I feel thankful for everything its enabled.

The road ahead for the new Flock is tremendously exciting to us; we have a more innovative and promising road-map than we've ever had before. I hope you like this first incarnation and I look forward to learning more from you as we keep innovating so we can all get more from the social Web.

So are you using Flock? or what is your experience about your favorite browser and how's your social networking experience with your favorite browser?Similar Posts:

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Firefox 4: Preview

Firefox 4 features and talk abouts:

• Complete Multi-process architecture to take advantage of multi-core processors.
• New add-on framework Jetpack instead of current XUL, which will make addon/plugin developers life easy along with New add-on manager.
• New JägerMonkey JavaScript Engine
• TaskFox: see live demo in action
  
• Major UI Redesign: with design inspiration from Opera 10 and Chrome.
• More Standard Compliant: Major support coming in with Firefox 4 are:
  - CSS Transition
  - CSS touch properties
  - Forms in HTML5
  - HTML5 Sections
  - Support for WebM video
  - WebGL
  Check out complete list of features and standards support at Firefox 4 for Developers.

What others are talking about? (Formally Firefox 3.7 now Firefox 4):

Mashable, CNet and Geek Technica. What's your vote for Firefox 4?Similar Posts:

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Firefox 3.6 with Personas

I love to update my computer with every new release Firefox comes up with and this time it has lovely Personas. Previewing a theme is so easy with it..! Just like Google Chrome and it's fast as well.

I liked the fact that almost all majorly used Firefox extensions were working with this update except "Microsoft .NET Framework Assistance" which is probably not compatible since Firefox 3.5.6 version.

What's new in Firefox 3.6? (as per release notes from Mozilla)

Firefox 3.6  is built on Mozilla's Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering platform, which has been under development since early 2009 and contains many improvements for web developers, add-on developers, and users. This version is also faster and more responsive than previous versions and has been optimized to run on small device operating systems such as Maemo.

New & Notable Firefox 3.6 features include:

• Available in more than 70 languages - get your local version.
• Support for a new type of theme called Personas, which allow users to change Firefox's appearance with a single click.
• Protection from out-of-date plugins to keep users safer as they browse.
• Open, native video can now be displayed full screen and supports poster frames.
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time.
• The ability for web developers to indicate that scripts should run asynchronously to speed up page load times.
• Continued support for downloadable web fonts using the new WOFF font format.
• Support for new CSS attributes such as gradients, background sizing, and pointer events.
• Support for new DOM and HTML5 specifications including the Drag & Drop API and the File API, which allow for more interactive web pages.
• Changes to how third-party software can integrate with Firefox in order to prevent crashes.

Here is what builderau.com.au has to say on Firefox 3.6 release

Mozilla debuted Firefox 3.6 on Thursday, introducing significant under-the-hood changes that make it faster, help it render content better and a few visual tweaks, as well.

Available for Windows, Mac and Linux, the most apparent changes in Firefox 3.6 are improvements made to the TraceMonkey JavaScript rendering engine, making it about 20 per cent faster than when it debuted in Firefox 3.5, according to Mozilla. Although this makes it more competitive with Google Chrome, but not faster, there's more to Firefox 3.6 than speed.

Firefox maintains its reputation as the most customisable browser around, introducing default support for the next generation of Themes, called Personas. Users will no longer have to download the Personas add-on to get its on-the-fly skinning power. However, Windows 7 interface support, including tab previews using the Ctrl+Tab hot key, jump lists and multiple tab previews in Aero Peek will have to wait for another revision. Currently, these can only be activated by changing settings in about:config.

Several notable improvements keep Firefox abreast of current browsing tech. Significant under-the-hood changes include blocking third-party software from encroaching on Firefox's file system turf to increase stability; support for the Web Open Font Format, which means users viewing pages in other languages should see faster load times via downloadable fonts; and support for the File interface, which can help with tasks such as uploading multiple photos and is part of the draft HTML5-standard effort. Open, native video can be displayed full screen and supports poster frames, which is the preview image you see before a video begins, and the new CSS attributes gradients, background sizing and pointer events will work in Firefox 3.6.

HTML5 support debuted in Firefox 3.5, and Firefox remains the leading web browser that supports it. This is not insignificant, because even with Google Chrome grabbing more than 4 per cent of the browser market in its first 16 months, Firefox maintains a commanding 24 per cent that hasn't stopped growing, second only to Internet Explorer.

A deeper change to the browser is that it is now running scripts asynchronously, which can help to load a web page faster by putting off some work until the high-priority chores are complete. Firefox 3.6 also isolates out-of-date plug-ins so they do not become a security risk.

Unlike Firefox 3.5, which was more about keeping the browser current rather than blazing new trails, Firefox 3.6 is once again taking some small but innovative steps. Expect more new features to debut in minor-point updates as the browser works towards Firefox 3.7.

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So I got my Firefox 3.x alert claiming that newer and better version 3.5 is available and it's a recommended upgrade. Just now before couple of hours I have updated to Firefox 3.5 using it's auto-updater feature and when it restored previously open tabs and I noticed first change in this blogs title fonts.

Here, in below image you can see blog post title which has taken "Lucida Grande" as Font to render and it was same for rest of the browsers as well. Because Internet Explorer, Safari and Chrome all display it in the same manner.

Blog Title in FireFox-3.x with Font-Family: "Union","Lucida Grande","Lucida Sans Unicode",Arial,Helvetica

Blog Title in FireFox-3.5 with Font-Family: "Union","Lucida Grande","Lucida Sans Unicode",Arial,Helvetica

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Flock - Social Web Browser

Flock is a Social Web Browser. Currently Flock 2.5 is available for download as latest version of it. Under the hood it uses Mozilla core and Flock developer team has build-up a great Social Web Browser on top of it.

When we say social it has default integration with lots of Web 2.0 services and social websites, to name a few twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Digg are some of them as there are lot of many. Other great feature which will catch the eye of blogger is that you can integrate it with many of online blogs hosting including your own WordPress blog.

Flock Integration with Social and Web 2.0 Websites and Services

You can see the Flock Integration with range of Web 2.0 services and Social Web sharing networks.

Flock Startup

Another cool feature is Media Stream from Flickr or YouTube. You can browser through media streams like never before..!

Flock Media Stream

Almost most of the Mozilla Firefox extension would work with it, so developers will be able to plug-in their favorite Add-Ones too. Yes it comes with default Flash support.

It's a cool Web 2.0 browser and you will love to give it a try by downloading it here. It's worth giving a try if you love web socializing or blogging or even cool browsing..!Similar Posts:

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Recently I was deploying one of my project on client end. Basically it was a Web Application but unlike other setups they were going to use that by terminal access. Meaning that all Users of the Portal will be having unique login into their(client's) Windows Network Domain and users will be logging into the Portal by logging into the Server machine first with given Windows domain credentials and then to the Portal.

This setup seems to be easy and no worry as whole portal will be accessed via LOCALHOST only..! Looks odd for any web-application though but that was the requirement for the client (keeping their security concerns in mind).

I have been given Administrative User to login to the server machine and setup everything. I did setup and did my post implementation testing on the machine with my user. Everything seems to be working as expected and I gave green flag to my superior.

Later on I have been buzzed with 2 issues from the Client.

1. Portal is not working in Internet Explorer at all.
2. Users are not able to download files from my Portal.

I asked for login details they used for testing and which they were actually going to give to their Users.

Problems & their Solutions:

1. Portal is not working in Internet Explorer at all.

I got the test account into their Windows domain and logged in to portal. Due to some domain may be set via Active Directory on Windows server users are having limited rights. I have tried modifying security settings on IE but of no use. I can't override them with my given windows credentials. The reason behind not working in IE was that given Windows User was not having enough rights to create ActiveX object and due to that we were not able to create ActiveX object for Ajax call from the browser..! This was the serious issue. I downloaded and installed Firefox 3 which was the latest available that time on the client machine. Portal was working flawless on the Firefox and there can't be any ActiveX issue for Firefox and so not with Ajax.

I demonstrated things working well with Firefox and explained Client's Network guy to deal with the issue for security settings.

2. Users are not able to download files from my Portal.

Firefox Download Blocked

Here goes another issue to be solved. File downloads were not working neither from Firefox nor from IE. I was hopping that with Firefox windows security policy should not matter much and I will get things done. They were using Internet Explorer 6 on Windows Server 2003 and I have already uninstalled Enhanced Internet Security settings. Even with Firefox 3 I was getting this error "This download has been blocked by your security zone policy". I thought that at least Firefox should not worry about Security Zone Policy. But with Firefox3 it inherits Windows/IE security settings. I did some goggling and found that this was supposed to happen with Firefox 3 for executable files, but it was happening in my case even for RTF files.

There is way to modify some parameter of Mozilla Firefox using "about:config". In case you came up to this post in google by searching same problem following links could help you out.

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=673575&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=0
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Unable_to_save_or_download_files#Reset_system_Internet_security_settings_-_Windows
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Image:Fx3exeBlocked.png
http://support.mozilla.com/sq/kb/unable+to+download+or+save+files

But things didn't worked out fast enough for me after changing some settings in Firefox Config but any way mean while I did un-installation of Firefox 3 and installed Firefox 2.X and here I go..! Things were working like breeze again.

Firefox 3 respects the Windows setting for downloads, you need to adjust the Windows settings. For details see the Reset system Internet security settings section of unable to download or save files.

I know it's not a permanent solution but I needed quick fix that time.

Let me know if you have faced such problem and have any different solution for this kind of problem.Similar Posts:

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And war of browsers is continue with added competitor. End users are going to benefit from this as they will get better user experience as an end result of all these browser competition. So as the outcome we as end users will get feature rich, friendly, fast and secure browsing experience from most of the browsers as all of them will try to raise the bar.

Yes, Web Developers have one more browser in the list to be tested for their application or web site compatibility. Chrome is in it's beta and didn't passed ACID test yet.

There are some really nice features like:

• In-build Task manager for ending process of each tab or viewing details of each tab.
• Incognito mode. (Don't leave any trails when you browse).
• Separate process running for each tab, so that one bad page won't crash rest of the tabs.
• Ability to drag tabs out of the browser window. (That's fantastic..!)
• Great space saving and clean look and design giving maximum viewing area for a web page.
• Ominibox as smart Addressbar

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Now when it comes to Thickbox it gives nice functionality but many a times it leaves us hungry for more. For example here are the few situations where it will be difficult to use Thickbox without further modification.

• It let's open window in a IFRAME and close that but what if you can't give 'class="Thickbox"' to any of your link?
• What if you are not loading those links with page load? (If the links from which you are willing to open Thickbox windows is not available at the time of page load then Thickbox won't work. As Thickbox internally works in a way that it will search for all links with class = "Thickbox" at the time of page load and then customize their onclick events.)
• What if you want to open second Thickbox window as someone close first one and that too without any user interaction?
• What if you want to call any javascript function from the parent window? (parent window is the window from which parent window is getting opened.)

jQuery Thickbox is a great solution for many of our requirement but we don't have any option but to modify actual code to use them with complicated and advance situations which we come across.

I have done some modification in Thickbox.js to achive all above 4 points using Thickbox by adding 2 more functions into this great utility and modifying tb_remove function.

Here are 2 functions I have added, you can understand what they do once you read comments.

// To close one thickbox and then open another, this is quite handy
// when you want to open another response modal window on the action of current modal window.
// Opening more then one thickbox window is not possible on the same page,
// so closing one and opening another could be quite handy and we can change height
// and width as well for another window.
var jThickboxNewLink;
function tb_remove_open(reloadLink){
jThickboxReloadLink	=	reloadLink;
tb_remove();
setTimeout("jThickboxNewLink();",500);
return false;
}
// This function will let you open new thickbox window without specifying
// class="Thickbox" and any href="http://web.com" attribute
// It will be helpful when you are dynamically loading any content and
// from those content you would like to open Thickbox windows.
// As basically the nature of thickbox is such that it scans all links (..) tags
// on load using jQuery's $(document).ready function so if your link is loaded using ajex
// or using any dynamic javascript and was not on page at the time of load then this thickbox
// setup won't work and you have to use this function.
function tb_open_new(jThickboxNewLink){
tb_show(null,jThickboxNewLink,null);
}

And here is the tb_remove function with minor modification which will let us call any function of the parent window passed as an argument.

// Modified to provide parent window's function callback
function tb_remove(parent_func_callback) {
$("#TB_imageOff").unbind("click");
$("#TB_closeWindowButton").unbind("click");
$("#TB_window").fadeOut("fast",function(){$('#TB_window,#TB_overlay,#TB_HideSelect').trigger("unload").unbind().remove();});
$("#TB_load").remove();
if (typeof document.body.style.maxHeight == "undefined") {//if IE 6
$("body","html").css({height: "auto", width: "auto"});
$("html").css("overflow","");
}
if(parent_func_callback != undefined)
eval("window."+parent_func_callback);
document.onkeydown = "";
document.onkeyup = "";
return false;
}

See Demo live in action or download zip with examples and modified javascript file.

Let me know if there are any other mods you have done with jQuery thickbox..! or if this post has helped you achieve what you wanted to do with jQuery Thickbox.
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Screenshot below displays list of all browsers we can have screen-shot from.

Visit http://browsershots.org
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