Mozilla, the makers of Firefox, just announced that they are looking to block in-page popups (also known as overlays). These are the kind of things that commonly interrupt you to ask you to sign up to newsletters or to 'Like on Facebook'. In-page popups are very different to the traditional (and much more intrusive) popups which all popular browsers now all block, something that isn't at all controversial.
Perhaps Mozilla is finally seeing the light. There is a story circulating around that Mozilla will be providing better tools to deploy and manage Firefox within the enterprise. According to a PC World article that sources Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox at Mozilla Corp:
Through the program, which will start sometime soon after Firefox 3.5 is released at the end of June, companies can use a Web application provided by Mozilla to specify certain customizations for the browser -- such as bookmarks to certain sites or corporate intranets or portals, he said.
I found a great list on the blog/news section for the ocPortal CMS, 10 IE compatibility problems that you might not have realized. While the post is related to ocPortal, the Internet Explorer compatibility issues likely will apply to any CMS viewed by the browser.
I'm just not sure my boss would ever be convinced in the results of this story. I personally have a difficult time accepting that up to 20% of the time in the office is acceptable for surfing the Internet for fun. However, I do agree that visiting non-work sites between tasks does help recharge the brain.
Although Firefox is my choice for Internet browsers, I do use Microsoft's Internet Explorer from time to time. Yesterday, I installed the release candidate of Internet Explorer 8.
I can't say I'm a big fan of their "Web slice" approach as it feels like I'm ramming Google Desktop via RSS feeds down the browser's favorites bar. Who know though, perhaps the slice approach will grow on me. However, I am a big fan of Microsoft creating a more compliant and less buggy browser and IE8 seems to fit the bill. If IE7 was a good step in the right direction then IE8 gets Microsoft's users pretty close to the destination.
Meanwhile, my rant to all the IE6 users. I can't believe that about a third of Microsoft Windows users are still using IE6. Shame on you if you are still using that insecure, buggy, and non-compliant browser. Microsoft doesn't even want you to use that browser...and yet you're still stuck in the stone ages. I have a theory that IE6 is symbolic of the problems of complacency at Microsoft and those companies/users that are still on that browser. IE8 arriving on a modern Windows desktop near you and you're still on IE6? Give me a break!
A recent blog post from Sarah Parez tries to answer some "want-to-know" questions on the upcoming Microsoft Office Web Applications. With software as a service becoming more popular, Google has quickly become a competitor of Microsoft's Office Suite with its Google Docs. Microsoft is aggressively fighting back by making its Office software available via the Web browser.
Mozzila released the final version of Firefox 3.0 today and you can download it at Mozilla.
Available today in approximately 50 languages, Firefox 3 is two to three times faster than its predecessor and offers more than 15,000 improvements, including the revolutionary smart location bar, malware protection, and extensive under the hood work to improve the speed and performance of the browser.
While I've been talking about Firefox 3 since late 2006, I have to admit that I haven't been into Firefox 3's development as much as I did with Firefox 2. While there were some bumps on the way with the alphas and betas, Firefox 3.0 is definately a well polished product (I'm using it as I write in this post). My first two impressions of Firefox 3 is that it is fast and that I don't quite get the awesome bar.
Microsoft has never said that they would drop support for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) after the release of Windows XP Service Pack 3. However, I've often wondered if it would be to Microsoft's advantage, as well as beneficial to their customers, if they did drop the IE6 support. With Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) now the status quo for most non-Enterprise users of Windows and IE8 development underway, what better opportunity is there to end support for IE6 than now?
There is no question that Microsoft is supporting IE6 in the next service pack. Jane Maliouta, Microsoft's Deployment Project Manager for IE8, addressed IE6 support with XP SP3 in an IEBlog post on IE and Windows XP SP3.
XPSP3 will continue to ship with IE6 and contains a roll-up of the latest security updates for IE6. If you are still running Internet Explorer 6, then XPSP3 will be offered to you via Windows Update as a high priority update. You can safely install XPSP3 and will have an updated version of IE6 with all your personal preferences, such as home pages and favorites, still intact.
So the question remains, just how long does Microsoft plan to support this 7 year old browser? From as near as I can tell, support for Internet Explorer 6 is tied to the life cycle of the Windows XP operating system. Mainstream support for Windows XP is currently dated to end in April 14, 2009. So that means Internet Explorer 6 will have been on the desktop for more than eight years! While enterprises may take comfort that product support for Windows XP and IE6 has lasted so long, consumers and the rest of the world have since moved on with the changing world.
Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.14 is now available. The update is a security and stability release and this explains why Firefox users might have been seeing more crashes than usual.
Fixes for security problems in the JavaScript engine described in MFSA 2008-15 (CVE-2008-1237) introduced a stability problem, where some users experienced crashes during JavaScript garbage collection. This is being fixed primarily to address stability concerns.
I knew something wasn't right with my favorite Web browser. You can download the latest Firefox (and Thunderbird) at Mozilla.
On Monday, Microsoft announced from their IEBlog that they were reversing their decision for how Internet Explorer 8 would be compatible with Web pages designed for Internet Explorer 7 as well as Internet standards. You may recall that earlier this year Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer 8 in "Standards Mode" would actually be rendering pages in Internet Explorer 7's "Standards Mode". If you really wanted to have IE8 follow the latest standards then you would need to insert a special tag to your pages.
