Microsoft.com is Not Compatible with IE8 Standards View

I got a good kick over this: Microsoft.com is on the list of sites that is incompatible with IE8’s standards view. As mentioned there, the list can be obtained by typing res://iecompat.dll/iecompatdata.xml in IE8’s address bar.

Filed in Browsers, Web Design, Software.

The Return of the Crash-Prone Opera: 9.6

Opera 9.6 is even more crash prone as its previous version 9.52, if that’s possible. It even twice froze my machine solid. I had to power down to solve it.

I wish the Opera developers will fix their unstable browser. I was on the verge of switching to Firefox back when I was using 9.50 and 9.51. I hope that I won’t have to spend half my surfing time in Firefox again.

Hmm… I wonder if there’s a Firefox add-on so that I can configure the keyboard in Firefox.

Filed in Software, Browsers.

Opera 9.6 released

Opera 9.6 has been released. Hopefully it’s more stable than the crash-prone 9.52. It’s a recommended upgrade, because it contains security fixes.

Filed in Browsers, News, Software.

Will WordPress.com Please Provide Us Better Web Statistics?

Yesterday, when I looked at the HTML code for my blog on WordPress.com, I noticed that WordPress.com put some Google Analytics tracking code into the blog. As a blogger, I have no access to that data. Instead, I have the smidgen of information WordPress deigns to reveal in its half-baked, brain-dead stats report. And I can’t even put my own Google Analytics code, because JavaScript is not allowed.

Come on, guys, since you have the data, make it available to us.

For example, after posting my review of Chrome, I’m curious to know what percentage of my readers use Chrome. Ars Technica wrote that Chrome has a 7% browser share on their site. I want to know the Chrome browser share for my blog too.

I also want other details. Mouth-watering details provided by other software. As it is, I can only drool.

So can we have better stats? Please? Pretty please?

Filed in WordPress, Web Design, Browsers.

Security and Administrative Problems with Google Chrome

My Review of Google Chrome

As implied in my previous post, I was going to try Chrome when it was released. Well I just did.

Impressions

1. As a browser, it’s okay. I didn’t try many sites, but those I did rendered okay. I didn’t try to log into my account at Gmail or other AJAX intensive sites, but I guess Gmail should work fine, since it comes from the same company. But its JavaScript execution is supposed to be faster than the other browsers.

2. There’s nothing ground-breaking about Chrome. Its features have been in Opera for a long time, so I guess I don’t have much to say about it. It doesn’t seem as configurable as Opera. Its options dialog box are sort of limited. And some options are scattered all over the place. For example, the only way you can configure the search engine list is to right click the address bar. You can’t find it in the Options dialog. Not very organized.

3. I couldn’t test out the search box addition thing, mentioned in the Chrome tips for webmasters, on my blog, because (*sob*) I don’t have a search box on my blog. Now that I know about that, I’ll add the search widget to my blog when I have more time although I don’t even know if Chrome is going to be popular enough to warrant the effort.

Problems

1. What I find interesting is that Gmail installs into “c:\Documents and Settings\YOUR-USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data”. Yeah. The program, data, and everything. Look into “Program Files” and you’ll see nothing. Weirdest place for the installation of a program I ever saw. I’m sure Windows administrators will have something to grumble about. Imagine a shared office machine with 100 users. You’ll have to install 100 copies of Chrome just for each of them to use. Not to mention that installing in that directory circumvents the “Deny write” policies that administrators have for the “Program Files” directory, to protect the machine and users from themselves.

2. Others have been saying that Chrome lends itself to the same carpet bombing security hole that plagues Safari. I’ve not tested it myself, but the basic idea is that websites can code their websites so as to make Chrome download any executable they want onto your system. Since the default download directory is the desktop, if they name an executable “My Computer” with the explorer icon, unsuspecting users may double-click it and install the virus on their system.

3. Do you know that the installer sets up a Windows schedule so that Google Updater runs every 10 minutes? It runs whether or not Chrome is running. Every 10 minutes! Don’t believe me? Check your Windows scheduler.

4. When I got tired of playing, I tried uninstalling it. Well, guess what. The Google Updater cannot be uninstalled. Or maybe it just got overlooked by the uninstaller. So even when Chrome is gone, the Updater still runs every 10 minutes.

Verdict

Chrome is good if all you’ve ever experienced is Internet Explorer and the default Firefox install. It probably won’t convert anyone using a Firefox with lots of extensions installed, or anyone using Opera. Those people are probably hard-core browser users with lots of customizations and depend heavily on the features of those browsers.

Chrome also has its flaws, but I guess Google is still new to the desktop application business, so I suppose the kinks will be worked out eventually.

Filed in Browsers, Software, Opinion.

Google to Launch Own Browser on Sep 3: Google Chrome

Everybody’s talking about it. Google is about to launch their new open source web browser, called Google Chrome. The link doesn’t work yet, but it will when the browser is launched.

Since it hasn’t been launched, there isn’t very much information about it yet. There’s supposed to be a comic on it, but the server hosting it is down. All I know is that the browser will open a separate process for every tab, so that if a particular site crashes the browser, only that tab will close. And when the user closes the tab, the process will terminate and all the resources consumed by the browser for the site will be released. Apart from that, I don’t know anything.

Stay tuned.

Filed in News, Browsers, Software, Web Design.

Opera 9.52 is Still Crash-Prone

In the last 5 minutes, Opera has crashed 4 times. And this was just normal surfing. It’s really very irritating. It often occurs while I’m either typing, or Alt+Tabbing to/away from the browser, Ctrl+Tabbing within the browser or otherwise using the keyboard. I notice that this was the case in the previous x.0 and x.01 releases of Opera as well. Are they doing something weird with their keyboard handler?

And now the Opera team are working on a 9.60 development version instead of fixing the unstable 9.52.

I have blogged about Opera 9.52’s crashes before, as well as its other shortcomings.

If not for the fact that Firefox is slow and lacks the many useful features of Opera, I would have migrated to it long ago, after facing 9.50 and 9.51’s bugs for so long. As it stands, I still need to find a lot of plugins for Firefox before it is even remotely comparable to Opera. And some of the things I need just don’t exist. But quite frankly, the temptation to switch is very strong, and I’ve been playing around with Firefox a lot more.

Filed in Opinion, Software, Browsers.

Missing Features in Opera: Lessons From My Brief Sojourn with Firefox

As mentioned before, Opera is my primary browser. However, since 9.50 and 9.51 had been so buggy, I used Firefox for a lot of my surfing. As a result, I had to get a number of extensions or plugins to give it some of the functionality that Opera has. One of these plugins was FlashBlock. And now I’m spoilt.

In Opera, I used to disable all plugins when surfing. It’s really easy to do this in Opera, just hit F12 and uncheck “Enable plugins”. For the sites that I want plugins enabled, like youtube.com, I add youtube.com to my site preferences in Opera, and allow plugins for that site. I can thus whitelist on a site-by-site basis, not just for Flash, but JavaScript, cookies, and so on.

FlashBlock on the other hand blocks all Flash from playing. If you click a button, the flash will run. It’s also possible to add a site like YouTube to the whitelist. If a site is not in the whitelist, you can still play a flash object by clicking the button.

I miss this facility of being able to click a button to play a specific flash object in sites that are not whitelisted. I wish Opera will add this to their feature list. The third party FlashBlock for Opera just doesn’t cut it. It works for some sites, but for others, clicking the button doesn’t work. Very irritating.

Filed in Software, Opinion, Browsers.

Opera 9.52 Released: Slightly More Usable than 9.51

Opera has never been good with major new versions of its browsers. All the x.0 releases are bug-ridden. x.01 aren’t much better. It takes numerous versions before it is stable and usable.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m an Opera user. I’ve used it since 5.0. Hell, I even paid for the software back when you could buy it.

I thought when 9.5 was released, what could go wrong? After all, it’s not a x.0 release, but a x.5. WRONG. It was buggy as hell. Secure sites could not be opened. Opera crashed frequently.

With 9.52, some of the bigger bugs have been crushed. I can now surf to the secure sites that previously hung in Opera. But the browser is still not very stable. In fact, it crashed on me while I was making this post and googling in another tab.

I should never have upgraded from 9.27, but wait till 9.53 or 9.54. Oh well.

Filed in Software, Browsers.

Apple: Carpet Bombing Bug in Safari is not a Security Hazard

Apple has declared that the carpet bombing bug in Safari is not a security hazard. If you use Safari, anyone can create a website that will automatically download programs or anything at all onto your computer. If you use Windows, the programs and whatever will be placed on your desktop, giving you hundreds or maybe thousands of icons on your desktop. If you use a Mac, the downloads will be placed in your Downloads folder. Whether you suddenly get hundreds or thousands of such downloads on your system, without your doing even a single thing, depends on how malicious that website is.

You don’t have to do anything for this to take place. You won’t even be notified when it happens. It just works.

I guess Apple doesn’t think this carpet-bombing-automatic-downloads is a problem, since they themselves automatically download Safari onto your system when you update Itunes. It will be too hypocritical, I imagine, to say that other websites doing the same thing are wrong when they do it themselves.

Filed in Software, Outraged, Security, Browsers.

It’s Not Safe to Install Safari After All: Major Security Vulnerabilities

After wondering whether to trust Apple enough to install Safari for Windows, I’ve come across a security advisory describing two serious holes in Safari that will allow a malicious site to compromise your machine and execute malicious code on it. So I guess I got my answer as to whether or not to install Safari.

Besides, it seems like Apple’s release of Safari for Windows is a bit of a fiasco.

• They put it as a default update to Itunes. Yup, Safari is considered an update to Itunes. And the installation of Safari is checked by default in the Apple Updater. After my experience with the obnoxious QuickTime for Windows, this behavior alone has made me hesitate about installing Safari.
• Because it is an update to Itunes, some sites are making fun of Apple’s EULA. The updater says that the software is governed by the EULA of the software it’s updating. Unfortunately, that EULA says that you can only install the software on Apple PCs, not the sort of PCs that are used by the majority of people running Windows. I’m sure this is just a silly mistake, but it’s pretty funny. Sneaking in a Safari install and giving a EULA that forbids the running of Safari on Windows machines!

Filed in Software, Outraged, Security, Browsers.

Can We Trust Apple Enough to Install Safari?

With my ongoing struggles getting QuickTime to respect my file associations – which continues right up to QuickTime 7.4.1 by the way – as well as the problems others have of uninstalling QuickTime – you can’t; not successfully anyway – I wonder whether I dare to install Safari for Windows.

It’s not like I love to dabble in danger. I just want to see what my site looks like in Safari, as recommended by one reviewer. Besides, I want to see what this new-fangled font rendering thingie looks like.

But I don’t know if I dare to trust Apple again. After all, I installed QuickTime, and look what I got. Version 7.4.1 now respects (I think) the MIME settings. But it still refuses to allow my file settings to stick. And what with others’ problems with getting rid of QuickTime – the uninstaller apparently only uninstalls the entry in the Control Panel and does not actually uninstall anything else – I don’t know if I’m getting another nuisance-ware or idiotware onto my machine if I install Safari.

Filed in Software, Browsers.

Why Does Microsoft Love to Be Cryptic? What is IS7-VIS3.rar? Or IE7-VIS1.exe? Or IE7-VIS2.rar?

In a sudden urge to test my site in as many browsers as possible, I came across a link to Microsoft’s free distribution of virtual machines with various versions of IE. And there I ran into a roadblock. Remember when I grumbled about their use of cryptic acronyms in one of their announcements? Well, it’s not just their announcements. Even their download links are cryptic.

The web page tells you that you can download Virtual PC images with IE 6 and IE 7. Then it proceeds to list the various files that you can download – by shortened filenames. Take a look at this. What do you make of them?

• IE6_VPC.EXE – okay, I can figure this out. It’s IE 6 in a Virtual PC image. That’s okay so far.
• IE7_VPC.EXE – this must be IE 7 in a Virtual PC image.
• IE7-VIS1.exe – is this IE 7 running on Vista? If so, then what’s the next one?
• IE7-VIS2.rar – IE 7 running on Vista? Again? Or perhaps it’s because it’s packaged in a RAR archive. But wait – there’s more…
• IS7-VIS3.rar – IE 7 running on Vista! Again! In a RAR archive! Again! Will wonders never cease?
• IE8_VPC.EXE – IE 8 (huh?) in a Virtual PC image.

What good are all these filenames to the downloader? Why give the filenames at all? Don’t these wizards at Microsoft realize that you can give a link a different text from the actual filename? Not everyone in the world automatically knows what you mean when you give these cryptic filenames from the MSDOS era. They should at least give a description if they feel compelled to write the filename.

Anyway, if you can tell the difference between those VIS filenames, let me know in the comments. I’m just gonna download the IE6 image for now.

Yeah. And I noticed the IE 8 thing too. I think it’s probably just a beta. I’ll investigate and post again when I find out more. Update: it’s true – IE 8 beta 1 is out. Update 2: I just noticed that it’s not three IE7 links, but 2. The third one is IS7 not IE7. But what is IS7?

Filed in Web Design, Software, Windows, Browsers.

Sanity Strikes: Microsoft Decides to Support Standards for IE8’s Standards Mode

My post title may seem like a “duh” statement if you don’t know the story of IE8’s dubious new meta tag, where Microsoft intended not to support the standards in IE8 but required web developers to add a special tag in their web pages to opt into the standards.

It looks now like Microsoft has reversed its decision, thankfully, so that those who want the non-standard IE7 rendering have to specifically opt for it. Developers who simply create pages to comply with web standards will automatically have IE8 render those pages correctly. Sanity at last. This style is in keeping with the web browser and standards traditions that have been established since the dawn of the Internet – where browsers automatically opt to render the page as compliant with the standards as it can. This sane method is also in line with the IE detection code that Microsoft developed in IE6 and later, where developers can target code designed for specific IE versions. Now you can target code for IE6 and IE7, and know that the standard compliant code of the rest of the page will be used in IE8. That’s the way it’s meant to be.

Filed in Web Design, News, Opinion, Browsers.

Microsoft Should Get Out of the Web Browser Business

The more I think of it, the more I believe that Microsoft should get out of the web browser business. This latest mess with a new tag to render web pages correctly illustrates the point very well.

The other web browsers like Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, etc, all have no trouble keeping up with the web standards. As a result, when web designers create a page, it is a simple task to get their page render correctly in all non-IE browsers – just follow the standards. Then they have to add a lot of hacks to check if the user is using IE, and to use all sorts of workarounds so that the page will render correctly in IE.

Now, as IE tries to be more standards-compliant, it is umpteen years late in the task, and has to contend with the plethora of websites with these hacks. So it introduces another non-standard hack.

If IE cannot keep up with the web standards, which incidentally has been around for innumerable years now (what is it, 8 years now?), then Microsoft should really get out of the web browser business. Just install Firefox or license Opera to place on Windows machines. I’m sure these free modern browser vendors would be delighted to have it as the new default Windows browser.

In other words: shape up or ship out.

Filed in: Opinion, Web Design, Browsers.