pelago

Just had to do this and thought I’d post it for anyone who might find it helpful. Here is how you enable the Debug menu if you’re running windows:

1. Navigate to the folder below (replace USERNAME with your user account).
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari

2. open up Preferences.plist and add the following two lines anywhere before the line “</dict>”

<key>IncludeDebugMenu</key>
<true />

3. Restart Safari and you should now have a Debug menu.

Is Microsoft quietly phasing out IE6? I think could mean the beginning of the end for IE6 installs and support.

Internet Explorer 7 now available for pirated version of Windows XP

We recently launched some items into an SSL environment and an IE7 JS bug appeared when deleting a DIV. The bug is slightly difficult to debug in that all versions of IE are especially “blind” when it comes to JavaScript error handling. Here’s the criteria:

• page is being requested in SSL mode
• div has a background image in the form url(/path/to/image.extension)
• the use of the removeChild function

 
Any time the specific div gets removeChild’d AND it contains a background css style, IE will prompt the user the page contains non-secure elements right before it gets removed.

To get around this, delete the background css style before calling the removeChild function. Microsoft has also released two alternate fixes.

I stumbled across this news alert on Yahoo! News today that describes Mozilla’s mobile browser efforts with Firefox. This is very encouraging news for web developers. The current lot of browsers that work on handhelds are not that exciting (Opera and Safari on the iPhone respectfully excluded from the list - those two work great). Better and more compliant browsers for handhelds = a better Internet experience for all.

With Intervals we have developing a handheld version on our development roadmap, but we are longing for better browsers that allow the functionality to work as intended without having to make a separate user experience for handhelds.

Just stumbled upon this CSS bugfix and thought I’d post my findings. I was trying to figure out why Firefox wouldn’t completely render page background-color on pages without scrollbars. For example:

Switching between different tabs would restore the background to its intended CSS value (#887D75), but nothing else seemed to work ( even tried <div class="clear"></div> at the bottom of the page ) until I tried this CSS:

body { position:absolute; top:0px; bottom:0px; left:0px; right:0px; }

The thing is getting swamped at the moment, but I hadn’t seen this option before but theres “Clean up Markup with HTML Tidy” available.

http://validator.w3.org/

I am currently writing this post on Safari on XP. The first thing I did was to check the navigator.userAgent js property.

I don’t know about everyone else out there, but seeing “Windows NT” and “Safari” in a userAgent property is something that I didn’t expect. It gives me both the creeps as well as a little excitement on what’s to come. Excitement would be more users submitting bugs to apple on this browsers crappy editable html javascript implementation, maybe this will get AppleWebKit to fix the bugs faster. What gives me the creeps is it gives me another platform our websites should run under… bittter sweet.

You can download the public beta here.

Update: It seems like most of the showstopper bugs are fixed with this version. With just a little push this very might well be a very good release.

UPDATE II: So I can’t maximize Safari on my RIGHT MONITOR… it just dissapears. Is that Apple trying to send a political subliminal message? ;)

Customize Google

They say Google is Your Friend, but if you use this extension it will make it your slave. I could just go on with features but I’m not. Some of my favorites are position counter, ad removal and rival search engine links.

Localtionbar,²

This extension arranges the location bar for better readability and usability. The URL hierarchy is divided up into three parts, protocol (http, ftp, etc), domain and requested document. Click functionality allows you to navigate up the document structure with ease.

Split Browser

Split the screen into multiple views. Useful when working with large documents or an alternative to switching between tabs.

Stumble Upon

Take a breather from coding and hit the stumble button on this great toolbar to be magically redirected to a cool website of your liking. Once you return you’ll find yourself magically solving the pesky bug you were trying to fix in the first place.

IE View

Add a right click context menu entry allowing you to open the current page on Internet Explorer. I use this a lot when doing cross browser testing. Sure there’s the IE Tab, but this one is much faster.

Other more popular extensions I use that everyone probably already knows but are still worth mentioning are:

Firebug - Javascript/CSS/DOM debugging behemoth.
Greasemonkey - Customize any webpage.
Live HTTP Headers - View all headers an HTTP request creates. Useful for debugging cookies and sessions.
Web Developer Toolbar - Nuff said.

From description:

Inline Search is an add-on for Internet Explorer that mimics Firefox’s search behavior, it turns searching into a Web page into a non modal research experience coupled with a search as you type facility. It integrates into IE, giving it that little extra that makes you a lot more efficient when you are looking for a specific piece of information. Version 1.3 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

Details

I just installed this extension, it works pretty good when browsing ad-heavy sites.

The way it works is it overlays a clickable icon where ever there’s a flash movie. Installing is easy, just download and install this file.

Jaime