Tag: Firefox

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Sometimes you want to know exactly what software people (or bots) are using to view your website. Sometimes all you want to know is which rendering engine’s quirks you need to cater to. To that end, I have here the ultra-simple browser detection algorithm. Just check the User-Agent string for each of the following words, in order:

  1. Opera — they spoof IE by default, so check here first. If they ever change this to something else, you’ll be glad you started here.
  2. KHTML — this will catch Safari, Omniweb and Konqueror. They mention Gecko, so if you need to treat them differently, check for KHTML first.
  3. Gecko — this will catch Mozilla, Firefox, Camino, Netscape 6+, etc.
  4. MSIE — this should Internet Explorer and anything else that uses its engine.
  5. bot, spider, crawler, or compatible — filter out robots and anything unknown.
  6. Mozilla — just about everyone uses Mozilla in their UA string these days, but the rules above should filter most of them out and leave only old-school Netscape.

Of course, Mozilla, Opera and Safari have put much more effort than IE into following the standards, so most of the time you can write your code using the spec and just build in work-arounds. The way I look at it, there are three main categories:

  1. Standards-compliant(ish) browsers: Gecko, Opera, KHTML
  2. MSIE
  3. Everything else

I write for group 1, work-around for group 2 (and sometimes other browsers in group 1), and figure that group 3 (with the exception of Netscape 4, which has a tendency to do things like make links unclickable or hide entire chunks of the page if it doesn’t like your CSS) should at least be able to figure out how the text and graphics break down. It may not look perfect in randombrowser, but it should at least be comprehensible.

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Talk about convoluted. Someone has developed a Java applet that will use one browser to install spyware on another. The applet runs in any browser using the Sun Java Runtime Environment—Firefox, Opera, Mozilla, etc.—and if it can convince you to run the installer, it will install spyware on Internet Explorer. And since you can’t remove Internet Explorer from Windows (you can hide it, but it’s always there…waiting), just using an alternative browser isn’t enough to protect you.

Of course, the obvious solution here is don’t let it install anything. That’s what the Java sandbox is for, after all: applets run in their own little world and can’t touch the rest of your system unless you let them (or they find a hole in the sandbox, which is why you need to keep Java up to date—just like everything else).

Time to emphasize the fact that while Firefox is still safer than IE, it’s not a magic bullet. There is no magic bullet. You can minimize risk, but never eliminate it.

(via SANS Internet Storm Center)

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I installed the just-released Netscape 8 Beta. It imported most of my settings from Firefox, including bookmarks, cookies and even history. One of the first things I always check with a new browser is how it identifies itself, which in this case is as Firefox 0.9.6. (Presumably they’ll get on this by the time the final version is out.)

First impressions: importing was clean and worked well. UI is a bit freaky, as things are spread all over the place—like the main menu, which is in the upper right and in line with the title bar instead of where the menus are on every other Windows application. The multiple toolbars seem confusing at first (it took a while to dig up my bookmark bar, for instance). Then I looked at the site trust/rendering choices, the big exciting feature of this release. And I’m not impressed. Or rather I am, but not favorably.

The current tab shows a shield icon indicating the trust level of the site: Green if it’s been verified by a “Netscape Security Partner,” yellow if not, and I would presume red if it’s a known phishing/virus/etc. site. There’s also an icon indicating the trust level: a check mark if it’s trusted, an ellipsis for “not sure” and an exclamation point for not trusted. Unverified sites are, by default, in the “not sure” category. So far this makes sense.

Clicking on the shield icon opens a site controls dialog box enabling you to choose to what extent you trust the website, and below that, whether to display the site using the Mozilla Netscape or Internet Explorer engine: Continue reading →

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Firefox – Switch [archive.org] is the first of these sites I noticed. Based on Apple’s “Switch” campaign, it’s aimed at raising awareness of Firefox and convincing people to switch from IE. It has stories of people who have switched, a top 10 list of reasons to switch, and answers to questions about just how you go about this switching thing, anyway.

Stop IE [archive.org] is, as its name implies, a negative campaign. It focuses on the security risks inherent in using Internet Explorer and provides a list of alternatives, though Firefox is the only one it deals with in any depth.

Browse Happy is my favorite of the bunch, because it’s an inclusive campaign. It’s run by the Web Standards Project, so the goal isn’t to promote Firefox or eliminate Internet Explorer, it’s to promote choice and get people away from today’s Internet Explorer. The WaSP’s ultimate goal is to encourage people to build a vendor-neutral web in which you can use whatever browser you want—including IE—and get the same high-quality experience. That’s a goal I can agree with, and that’s why Browse Happy is the one I promote. The meat of the site is stories of people who have switched away from IE, with profiles of four browsers: Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, and Safari.

Firefox. Take Back the Web Stop IE Browse Happy

Update (June 2007): Stop IE is long dead. I’ve updated the links to point to the Internet Archive of the site.

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CNET has posted a write-up of AOL’s new Netscape prototype based on Firefox, as well as a screenshot. It seems to be a combination of Firefox + theme + bundled extensions… plus a mode that embeds Internet Explorer for compatibility.

There are some nice ideas: adapting Firefox’s RSS capabilities to create a headline ticker, for instance, and the Firefox team has been talking about bundling extensions since it was called Phoenix. As for the embedded IE mode… on one hand it provides a convenient solution to the biggest criticism laid on all non-IE browsers: they don’t render pages exactly the way IE does. But it comes at the cost of all the security risks inherent in IE itself. It does remind me of the “View with Gecko” option Konqueror used to have (and probably still does on some systems).

But the clutter… The sheer number of buttons, icons, widgets etc. in that screenshot is staggering. Even after installing the web developer extension I don’t think I have that many buttons on Firefox. 3+ buttons on the tab bar, 3 icons on each tab…. I hope that CNET was just enabling every feature they could find to get them all in one screenshot, but if AOL is trying to bill it as “easier” than Firefox (which was created with a simple user interface as a design goal), they’ve got to try another approach.

Update (via WaSP): It seems BetaNews has more information on the dual-engine setup. Apparently they do have security settings to mitigate the IE issues… but then so does IE, and we all know how well that’s worked. Also, another screenshot, which looks even more cluttered than CNET’s. I think this will be a browser that requires you to run it maximized at 2000×1500. (Also of note: Firefox developer Blake Ross’ Open Letter to Netscape and Henrik Gemal’s collection of screenshots.)

Further Update: MozillaZine has posted a more thorough review.