News items and other various tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share with his friends.
Web designers have long known better than to use the annoying tag (or even its CSS counterpart). But there are some not-so-good designers who seem to consider the <BLINK> tag to be an elegant and forceful statement. Fortunately the linked article tells how to configure Firefox such that blinking text is disabled.
Link: http://lifehacker.com/…
With the release of Firefox 3 yesterday, the linked article has some tips for the power user.
Link: http://lifehacker.com/…
The linked article performs various speed tests on four different browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. There wasn’t really a clear winner, but Internet Explorer was definitely the loser.
Link: http://lifehacker.com/…
Mozilla has announced that Firefox 3 will be released on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008. They’re attempting to set the world record for most software downloads in a 24-hour period. Personally I like to wait a bit so that most of my extensions get ported.
Link: http://developer.mozilla.org/…
(via Lifehacker)
Version 2.0 of the Firefox browser has been released. Download it here, and slightly more detailed release notes available here. As far as I’m can tell, there aren’t any major, must-have changes—the session save and tabbed browsing enhancements were already available via extensions. I’m going to wait a month or so before upgrading , so for those who update now, please let me know what you think.
Regular readers of Chad’s News know that I use and recommend the Firefox browser. BusinessWeek has an interesting article about Firefox and its parent company Mozilla, giving a bit of background as well as future expectations. Make the switch today—it’s worth it.
Given that Microsoft is coming out with version 7 of Internet Explorer, what would you expect to find at www.ie7.com? Think again…
A while back, I lost the ability to play Windows Media Player (WMP) videos with my Firefox browser. The WMP controls wouldn’t show up, and there was just a blank space where the media was supposed to be playing. I downloaded and reinstalled the latest WMP version, to no avail. Eventually I just bit the bullet and opened WMP content in Internet Explorer.
Thanks to MozillaZine, however, I have identified and fixed the problem. Turns out there is a conflict between the VLC plugin and the WMP plugin. The solution is to remove the VLC plugin (accomplished by deleting the npvlc.dll file from the Firefox ‘plugins’ directory). I exited Firefox, deleted the file, restarted Firefox, and voila! I could watch Windows Media files.
If you have Firefox and VLC installed, there is a test page where you can check to see if you have this problem.
If you’re using the Firefox browser (and if you aren’t, why not?), here is a list of 50 “power” extensions. Note there is some overlap between the extensions, especially for tabbed browsing. You can also check out my extensions, a good number of which appear on the “power” list.
For those unwilling or unable to make the switch, you can now have the advantages of Firefox while still using Internet Explorer. (Tabbed browsing has become an essential part of my web experience—I’ll never go without it again—but adblock and flashblock are a close second.)
Link: http://www.getfoxie.com/
Chad Cloman
Denver, CO USA
