On FireFox and the new Browser Wars
Well, did you join the multitudes (somewhere round the 8.2m mark) that took part in “Download Day”, the amazingly successful marketing angle that’s helped get FireFox 3 onto even more computers across the world?
As could be expected, initially download day was a bit of a bust - when several million people try to download something at the exact same minute, you’re bound to get some problems. On the whole, though, it looked like Mozilla managed to get it fairly right.
I’ve used FireFox (and variants like Flock) for a while now because I like it’s functionality, the fact that it’s quick and all the add-on extras that you can get for it. For the past few months, though, its been my secondary browser while Safari has been my primary one. But I started using FF3 when the last Release Candidate was published and since the official release I’ve gone over to FireFox as my only browser.
I was reading a post by Rory Cellan-Jones on the BBC blog dot.life asking whether FireFox 3 was a triumph or a disaster. While his post doesn’t really answer the question he asks in the title (although he does make reference to broken add-ons, server crashes and security holes), it was the debate that it sparked in the comments that really sparked my interest. Whilst I’d always assumed that most computer users would use the browser that came with their system, so it would only be the nerds and the geeks that would get excited about a new browser, I didn’t realise that they could get so heated over such an innocuous subject.
Most people seem to be firmly in favour of one browser or another - most commonly Firefox or Opera (Internet Explorer doesn’t really get a look in, except to get roundly criticised) - although a bunch of developers have commented that they use as many browsers as they can, so that they can make sure the sites they author look and work the same across all the different models.
And that’s where another bugbear comes in - standards compliance. I’m not much of web historian; I don’t know when the HTML standards were first written or how much they’ve changed over the years. I don’t know whether the standards existed before IE or whether they came after. What I do know is that standards compliance seems to be the new Holy Grail - unless you’re Microsoft. But, as has been pointed out to me on a number of occasions, if the majority of web users are browsing with IE, doesn’t that create a standard in itself? Yes, IE is not standards compliant but if your site doesn’t work properly in IE you’ll miss out on the vast majority of visitors. Because as much as FireFox, Opera, et al would like us to believe, most ordinary users still use IE to do their web browsing.
Someone even went so far as to suggest that by refusing to render things in the way IE does, other browsers were being bullheaded. That might, on the face of it, seem to be a bit a stupid statement but most people’s first experience of a browser is IE: when they start to use one of the others that is more standards compliant and their favourite sites don’t look or work right, they get put off. And go back to IE.
It was interesting to see, as well, the way the debate opened up from being a discussion of FireFox and whether the new version was any good, to being an argument about Windows vs The Rest. One commentator made several references to Linux / FireFox (seemingly unaware that FireFox, while Open Source, is not limited to Linux) and how they don’t stand a chance when the world is dominated by Windows. Someone else suggested that public sector businesses should be forced to at least trial Open Source software, rather than paying money to Bill Gates. The two problems with the large scale uptake of Open Source are legacy and compatibility. As Microsoft has been so dominant for so many years, there’s a lot of stuff out there that needs to be accessible and needs to be able to be shared properly. I love Open Office, but from my experience it doesn’t play well with Microsoft Office files and I wouldn’t want to have to convert all the documents I use on a daily basis to .odt or .ods so they worked; I don’t have the time. Likewise, I’d love to get away from Windows, but the other (non-Office) software I need to use every day isn’t available on another platform. And even if there are alternatives, you’ve got more file conversions and a steep learning curve. It just isn’t possible. And that’s in a small business; think about the scale of the task for a public sector company.
The final issue that got everyone riled up was that of security. Apparently, a security hole has been found in FireFox 3 already - although, technically, it was there in FF2 so isn’t new - and that was seen as very bad by those in support of IE. Who then got trounced when it was pointed out that IE has more holes than a Swiss cheese colander. It’s a web browser - to my mind that means it’s an inherently insecure piece of software and you should treat it as such.
I think FireFox 3 is a good step forward; it is faster than the previous version, I’ve always liked the extensibility of it, it seems to be fairly easy on system resources and it does everything I need and want it to do. If you haven’t tried it, I’d recommend it but if you don’t like it… well, there’s plenty more out there.
[Just as an aside: in one of the comments on the BBC piece, someone used the phrase "large minority". They need to be shot.]
Going to back to Safari
For several months now I’ve been using Flock as my browser of choice. Built on the Mozilla engine, it is a very good browser - lots of new things (in built Facebook integration, for example) and quite fast. The in-built blog editor has also been a major plus point for it.
But I’ve found that it does like to lock up quite a lot which I don’t like. Every now and again, it just vapour locks itself and I’m left with no option but to Force Quit. Only takes a few moments, but it is annoying.
In addition to this, I’ve not been 100% satisfied with the way it deals with tags when posting blog entries to a Wordpress blog; this may be a limitation of Wordpress rather than Flock, but Ecto has no problems dealing with them properly. And that’s what I’m using for my blog entries at the moment. I overcame my reservations with it and am actually really happy with Ecto as a blogging client.
The final nail in the coffin for Flock (at least at the moment, I may go back to it in the future) is the WebKit version of Safari. Whilst this is development software, it is very fast (by far the fastest browser I’ve used on this machine) and it somehow feels right to be using Safari on an iMac. Even though it’s development software, I’m not having the lock-ups that I’ve been getting with Flock, and I prefer the way it presents drop-down lists and buttons (a small thing, I know, but it’s the small things that you live with on a day-to-day basis and they are important).
If you’re on a Windows system and aren’t already using a Mozilla-based browser (and even if you are), I’d recommend giving Flock a go; it’s the best of the Mozilla browsers and waaayy better than whichever flavour of IE you might be using. If you’re on OS X and you haven’t tried it, give it a go and see if you have the same lock-up issues I did. I’d also recommend you give the WebKit version of Safari a go - so far it does not seem to have any extra features, but it does absolutely fly!
Calling all Wordpress Safari users
OK, we all hate the way that Safari 3.0.x strips out line / paragraph breaks when we use the Visual Editor. As we all know, this is a limitation of Wordpress / TinyMCE / Safari, which is (hopefully) under development for a fix.In the meantime, there is a way round it - for Mac users anyway - that means you don’t have to change browsers just to post to Wordpress.
I’ve done some limited testing on this process and it seems to work, but I’ve not had a chance to use it extensively so don’t know yet if it breaks anything else. As always, if you’re going to try this, take precautions!
1. If it’s open, close down Safari.
2. Open Terminal
3. At the prompt, type this: defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
4. Start Safari.
5. If you’ve done it right, you’ll see that you have a new “Debug” menu item. Click this.
6. Select “user agent”
7. Select a browser that isn’t Safari. I chose “Firefox 2.0.0.2″
That’s it.
I’ve only tested this fix on Safari 3.0.x - but then Safari 2 never had the same problem - but it has allowed me to write and edit posts using the Visual Editor and without losing line breaks.
If someone out there can hack the Windows version in a similar way, then this problem might finally be solved.
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