Firefox 3: The Webmasters Portal to the Internet

So now, you have absolutely no excuse! Firefox’s newest release, version 3, takes everyone’s favorite open source web browser to a level unparalleled by any of the competition. While Firefox has always been the browser of choice for most web developers, designers, and internet geeks, the new features have taken it to a completely different level for user experience. So you’re a web developer or graphic designer and don’t use Firefox? Why not? Firefox makes being a webmaster much less of a chore. With hundreds of useful extensions, Firefox allows webmasters to customize their browser to meet their needs. Need some examples? Here’s a few I use on a daily basis.

Robbins, Kyle. ReEncoded (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

Omniweb and Standards

How does Omniweb fare when it comes to web standards? Earlier versions, while highly praised for an elegant user interface and strong support of international character sets, fell drastically short in CSS and W3C DOM support.

Waferbaby. List Apart, A (2002). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

Same DOM Errors, Different Browser Interpretations

Have you ever looked at how the different browsers handle the same DOM errors? As this article from Opera JS guru Hallvord R. M. Steen points out, their different interpretations can be surprising.

Steen, Hallvord R.M. Vitamin (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

They Shoot Browsers, Don't They?

Standards-aware developers, by their very nature, will object to adding a line of unnecessary markup to their documents just to get one single browser to behave as it should by default.

Keith, Jeremy. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

Toward a More Standards-Compliant Internet Explorer

Reveals a major flaw in Internet Explorer when dealing with floats. If you are serious about moving from a table layout to a CSS layout, you must read this article first.

Gallant, John P. Digital Web Magazine (2003). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

Version Targeting: Threat or Menace?

Real DOM support is a game changer. Enabled by default, it would bring many sites to their knees. That would break the web, and not in quotes. Providing IE8's greater compliance on an opt-in basis is the only way to get everyone over the scripting hump.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

Why Gecko Matters: What Netscape’s Upcoming Browser Will Mean to the Web

Netscape is about to unleash its new browser, built around the Gecko rendering engine. Theoretically the first completely standards-compliant web browser, Gecko enters a world where most people use IE5 (which is not completely standards-compliant). Is Netscape’s effort too little, too late? Or is it the beginning of a new and better way to create websites? Zeldman articulates The Web Standards Project's position and explains what Netscape’s browser will mean to the web.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. List Apart, A (2000). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

The W3C Process May Be Slow, But Browser Vendors are Slower

Don’t blame the W3C for being slow when the real problem is browser vendors not implementing existing specifications fully and properly.

Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

When Good Browsers Go Bad -- And They All Do

Jeffrey Zeldman must have thought he'd never live to see the day. Ten years after he co-founded the Web Standards Project, all of the major browser vendors have shown renewed commitment to supporting World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards in the last few years -- and they're following through. Those who lived through the browser wars of the '90s might think that hell has frozen over, were it not for one, small problem: Users still experience plenty of problems on the Web.

Mitchell, Robert L. Computerworld (2009). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

Why People Still Use IE 6 

Internet Explorer 6 is always a hot subject of debate. We’ve talked about it here many many times. The forums are full of folks trying to troubleshoot it. The CSS support is problematic and the JavaScript support is proprietary nonsense. The conversation is heating up a little hotter than usual lately, as major companies are starting to pull support for it. I thought I would start the conversation by covering the reasons I think people still use this browser.

Coyier, Chris. CSS Tricks (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers