browser Archive

Earlier this evening, I was reminded of just how primitive the HTML5 support was in Firefox 3.5/3.6. While we have seen three major version releases since 3.5, it was actually still the latest version of Firefox less than 6 months ago (and was that way for almost 2 years). Therefore, Firefox 3.5.x still holds a decent amount of market share (probably as much as, if not more than IE6 did a year or two ago). Looking at a handful of websites for which I have analytics data, versions of Firefox prior to 4 still accounted for anywhere between 2% and 15% of the total visits to those sites last month. With all of that information, it’s probably still important to make sure your sites work in versions of Firefox as far back as 3.5.

There are two somewhat major gotchas in the way Firefox 3.x handled HTML5. The first is easily fixed with a few lines of CSS. The second can only really be fixed if you rewrite some of your HTML. Continue reading “Firefox and HTML5 Compatibility” »

Flock, the first social media web browser has announced that it will be shutting down effective April 26, 2011. Found by Alexia Tsotsis at Techcrunch, the Flock team posted an, “official end of support notice” today. The Flock team was acquired by Zynga earlier this year. Flock is suggesting that users immediately download Google Chrome or Firefox to make sure they stay current with security patches and updates.

Here’s the posted notice, “Support for Flock browsers will be discontinued as of April 26th, 2011. We would like to thank our loyal users around the world for their support, and we encourage the Flock community to migrate in the coming weeks to one of the recommended web browsers listed below.”

I wrote about Flock many times, even offering some specific suggestions on how they could grow back in 2009. Flock targeted social media experts and ninjas and it seemed that group was never big enough to get Flock higher up in the sky. You can even read my 2nd interview on CN with Flock co-founder Geoffrey Arone from way back in late 2006.

I think Zynga picked up a bright team — I found all of my conversations with the Flock team to be educational and I always walked away learning something new about the industry.

It will be interesting to see what learnings new social media browser RockMelt takes from Flock’s history.

I’ve had a little bit of an opportunity to play around with Internet Explorer 9, and I’m still not sure if I like it or hate it. I am excited about the possibility of natively using some CSS3 and HTML5 in Internet Explorer, but I’m also disappointed by the lack of specific CSS3 elements.

On the plus side, IE9 does support almost all of the new CSS3 pseudo-classes (nth-child(), nth-of-type(), etc.), 2D transforms, almost the entire background module (multiple background images, background-clip, background-size, etc.), border-radius (rounded corners), box-shadow and RGBA colors. Continue reading “Internet Explorer 9 – Initial Comments” »

Yesterday I provided an overview of my experience creating an app for CloudContacts in the Google Chrome Web Store. Today I’d like to share three suggestions on how Google could easily improve the usability for Google Chrome Web Store customers. My focus on usability suggestions are from the average Internet user standpoint, not from the viewpoint of an early adopter. For the Google Chrome Web Store to gain traction and a mainstream audience, it’s critical that app discovery (both pre- and post-install) is the number one priority.

Web Store Categories page suggestions:

1. Make the links I point to in #1 (see screenshot below) clickable. Breadcrumbs should provide a way to navigate and these breadcrumbs should allow me to get back to the category page once I make a selection and click to the app page. Same goes for the left category link – once I select an app, this is no longer a link but it should be – this would allow me to get back to the utilities page. In the current setup, there’s no way to get back to the category page once I select an app.
2. There must be a way to easily be able to view all of the apps in a category. Currently the only way to get to this view is to click the “All” button under Popular as noted in #2 below. The issue is, from a usability perspective, a user may want to view all of the apps, not only those that Google has listed as popular.

Post-install Chrome browser suggestions:

After you install an app, an icon is placed on a page you may never see — the “new tab” page. I can’t seem to find any other way to find or load an app without clicking the new tab button.

Continue reading “Suggestions for Improving Usability in the Google Chrome Web Store” »

NYC will host the third annual Internet Week next week. There about 150 events across the city in a wide variety of content types and parties.

If you are a developer, one event worth registering for is the Chrome Extensions Hackathon. The event will be held at the Google offices in NYC on June 10th. If you are interested in building extensions for Chrome, this is the place to be. The last Google Hackathon in NYC was centered around maps and I found it to be extremely useful as you get to speak with Google developers one-on-one for help and advice. Google Developer Programs Engineer Arne Roomann-Kurrik will be flying in from the valley to lead the event.

Register here for the event (it’s free) – make sure to register soon as space is limited.

Earlier today, Allen posted a story about Microsoft releasing a chart comparing IE8, Firefox 3 and Chrome (who knows which version). Following is my response to that chart. I would say that I’m disappointed not to see Safari included in this comparison, but since much of the comparison is spin and misinformation, there wouldn’t be much point. Continue reading “My Response to the IE8 Comparison Chart” »

I nearly lost my lunch when I saw the chart below. It’s a comparison chart between Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), Firefox and Chrome. I should note that I am an IE user – I run different things in IE and Firefox.

Microsoft took an internal comparison look at the following categories: security, privacy, ease of use, web standards, developer tools, reliability, customizability, compatibility, manageability and performance.

I am using IE7 so I can’t comment on how good or bad IE8 is but it’s a bit odd that a company would show a chart that makes their browser look amazingly better than the competition. IE8 wins or ties in every category and some of the comments seem like an agency was involved. Here are a couple of examples, “Of course Internet Explorer 8 wins this one”  and “Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools. That’s just not nice.” Is there really not one area that Firefox or Chrome is better than IE8? (I have no idea so someone educate me plz)

My advice to Microsoft is to just sell us on why IE8 is great – don’t worry about comparisons – we will take care of those as users.

It looks like Microsoft is trying to come across as cutsie but it just didn’t work for me. Did it work for you? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Continue reading “Microsoft IE8 Comparison Chart – “Of course Internet Explorer 8 wins this one”” »