May 16, 2010
It’s a safe bet that your web browser uses at least one plugin, and probably several. Maybe it’s just Flash (the other one!) for viewing animations and video (think YouTube and Hulu). Maybe it’s Silverlight for watching Netflix, or Shockwave for playing games. You’ve probably got Java installed.
Just like your web browser, these plugins must be kept up to date or you’ll run into problems: missing features, instability, or (worst case) security vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, most plugins don’t update themselves.
Several months ago, Mozilla introduced a service called Plugin Check that will identify the plugins you have installed and tell you whether they need to be updated — and how to do it. At first it only worked on Firefox, but now it’s been expanded to all major browsers: Chrome, Safari, Opera, and even Internet Explorer.
It’s worth taking a few moments to check. Think of it as a pit stop for your computer’s web browser.
(Reposted from K-Squared Ramblings)
July 12, 2009
You’ve probably noticed the new header on this site. And depending on what web browser you use, you might have noticed some other changes.
With the release of Firefox 3.5, I decided to look into using embedded fonts. In the past, web designers have mostly been limited to the fonts pre-installed on most people’s computers, or creating an image. That’s fine for something where the text never changes, like a banner…but not so great for body text or headlines. There have been methods to work around it, but I always thought that using Flash animations for headlines was kind of overkill.
So I tried out some fonts, and along the way made some other adjustments to the site. Comment boxes should no longer push into the sidebar on multi-level replies, for instance. I added drop-shadows to headings on browsers that support it, and adjusted the main font size a bit for readability.
Embedded fonts are currently supported in Safari, Firefox 3.5 and Opera 10 beta. There is a way to embed fonts on Internet Explorer, but it uses another type of font file and the converter tools are a pain to use. It took me at least an hour and a half to figure out what I had to do. Then the result looked terrible, so I pulled it out.
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March 20, 2009
Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 yesterday, for Windows XP and Vista. So if you’re still running IE6 it’s once again time to think about upgrading. (Assuming, of course, that you’re not locked in by corporate policy or another piece of software.)
IE6 is now two versions behind the current release.
IE6 is almost 8 years old (it was released in 2001).
IE6 is lacking in many capabilities that all other modern web browsers have, in web technology, in security, and in features you can use.
You can read a review at Wired, a write-up from the IE team, or a summary of technical changes from WaSP.
Of course, Internet Explorer isn’t the only option out there. There’s Firefox, Opera, Chrome and a host of other alternative browsers that are worth checking out.
If you’re still running Windows 2000 or some other old version of Windows that can’t run IE7 or IE8, I’d absolutely recommend Firefox or Opera. Either will be much better than IE6, both will run on Windows 2000, and Opera will even run on Windows Me and Windows 98 (but you really ought to move to something more current than Windows Me.)
Reposted from K-Squared Ramblings
