http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Web-Browsers A listing of the most recently indexed works about Web Browsers in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Web-Browsers http://tc.eserver.org/35761.html http://tc.eserver.org/35761.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/35474.html http://tc.eserver.org/35474.html Generates screenshots of how websites appear at 800x600 and 1024x768 resolution in six commonly used web browsers. http://tc.eserver.org/34760.html http://tc.eserver.org/34760.html A list of various CSS rules and their compatibility with common browsers and operating systems. With a quick glance, the designer or developer can note which CSS properties should be used or avoided. The table also offers an interactive feature that highlights the row your cursor is on. This makes pinpointing the compatibility of a specific CSS property much easier. http://tc.eserver.org/34632.html http://tc.eserver.org/34632.html This article is designed to help users who are new to NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) - external link learn the basic controls for testing web content, and to serve as a reference for the occasional NVDA user. NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free and open source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It supports over 20 languages and can run on any computer entirely from a USB drive with no installation. http://tc.eserver.org/34216.html http://tc.eserver.org/34216.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/34003.html http://tc.eserver.org/34003.html Any effort on the part of web authors to add accessibility features is rendered useless if browsers and assistive technologies don’t take advantage of them. User agent developers need to ensure that their products support these features and, most crucially, make them available to users in an accessible and obvious manner. What follows is a quick run-down of most of UAAG’s guidelines and checkpoints, annotated with comments, suggestions, personal gripes about current levels of implementation, and wishlists for future browser versions. http://tc.eserver.org/33548.html http://tc.eserver.org/33548.html Hi, my name is JP Gonzalez-Castellan and I’m the Accessibility Program Manager for IE8. The IE team has been working towards making IE8 the most accessible browser possible, and we wanted to detail some of the work we’ve done toward this end. In this post I will provide you with some background on Accessibility, I’ll cover new UI features (Caret Browsing, Find on Page, Adaptive Zoom, High DPI, etc) and also platform features (support for ARIA, support for IAccessibleEx, and support for additional WinEvents) that improve the Accessibility of the browser. http://tc.eserver.org/33170.html http://tc.eserver.org/33170.html Internet Explorer does not respect the height and width properties of block-level, absolutely positioned anchor tags if they contain no content (or if that content has been moved or removed). So what’s the workaround? Well, there are several. http://tc.eserver.org/32731.html http://tc.eserver.org/32731.html Recently, there has been a lot of buzz going around about Internet Explorer 8 and plans to include in it a feature called "version targeting." You can scour the net for blog posts and articles about version targeting, but you'll get a lot of debate and several different views on this topic, and it's difficult to pinpoint just the facts. What is version targeting? Version targeting is a way to tell Internet Explorer how it should render a page. http://tc.eserver.org/32424.html http://tc.eserver.org/32424.html One of the differences between Internet Explorer and standards compliant Web browsers that cause a lot of trouble for CSS beginners is the CSS box model. Since the box model is what browsers use to calculate an element’s total width and height, it is quite understandable that different browsers producing different results can be both confusing and frustrating. http://tc.eserver.org/32456.html http://tc.eserver.org/32456.html Don’t blame the W3C for being slow when the real problem is browser vendors not implementing existing specifications fully and properly. http://tc.eserver.org/32417.html http://tc.eserver.org/32417.html The double-margin float bug -- an Internet Explorer-exclusive bug wherein an element that is floated – and given a margin in the same direction as the float – ends up with twice the specified margin size -- has been a source of irritation for CSS-loving web designers for years. While an easy (if mysterious) fix has been known for quite some time now, it occurs to me that perhaps not everyone knows about it. So I thought it couldn’t hurt to toss another explanation out there. http://tc.eserver.org/32268.html http://tc.eserver.org/32268.html The Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (ATRC), University of Toronto coordinated efforts with the Diversity Management Directorate (DMD), Public Services Commission of Canada to systematically evaluate how commercial World Wide Web (WWW) browsers functioned with various types of adaptive technology under different operating systems. The types of adaptive technology examined include screen magnifiers, scanning / switch access systems, alternative keyboards, screen readers, Morse code input devices and voice recognition systems. http://tc.eserver.org/32172.html http://tc.eserver.org/32172.html I'm amazed with the Google project, because the lack of narrative seems like a basic omission from such a high profile project. http://tc.eserver.org/32075.html http://tc.eserver.org/32075.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31948.html http://tc.eserver.org/31948.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/30886.html http://tc.eserver.org/30886.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/30885.html http://tc.eserver.org/30885.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/30708.html http://tc.eserver.org/30708.html Since it's been a decade since Netscape was relevant, I guess it was overdue. But that doesn't make it any easier to say goodbye to an old friend, no matter how long it's been since you had any fun together. http://tc.eserver.org/30670.html http://tc.eserver.org/30670.html XUL is a surprisingly easy way to build cross-platform browser extensions or even stand-alone applications. Discover how to build powerful, flexible Mozilla browser extensions that go beyond the capabilities of other tools like embedded scripting languages or CGI--because they're built right into the user's browser. http://tc.eserver.org/30675.html http://tc.eserver.org/30675.html Web 2.0 is well known for the fact that it's not built on breathtaking new inventions, but rather on renewed emphasis on age-old Web technologies. One of those age-old technologies that is enjoying a revival in Web 2.0 is bookmarklets. A bookmarklet is essentially a Web application shoehorned into a regular browser bookmark. This article includes a fully functioning bookmarklet and installation instructions you can use to highlight text on any Web page and search IBM developerWorks for that text. http://tc.eserver.org/30102.html http://tc.eserver.org/30102.html Mobile Safari--unlike other browsers--does not maintain a constant size for content viewing. Because of the small screen, the content area is constantly adjusted to maximize the space available for the task at hand. http://tc.eserver.org/29978.html http://tc.eserver.org/29978.html XML became an integral part of Microsoft's strategy around the time of Internet Explorer 4. IE4 was an XML-aware browser. As well as displaying HTML documents, it could also display XML documents through an inbuilt XML parser. Another part of IE4 was something known as the XML DSO (Data Source Object). The XML DSO allows you to manipulate primitive XML 'data islands' by binding (or attaching) the XML data to HTML presentation elements. The XML elements within Internet Explorer continue to be improved and added to with every new IE release. http://tc.eserver.org/29953.html http://tc.eserver.org/29953.html Firefox 2.0 brought several important changes in its XML support. It's currently reaching its peak in user deployment. Learn about updated XML features in Firefox 2.0, including a controversial change to the handling of RSS Web feeds. http://tc.eserver.org/29355.html http://tc.eserver.org/29355.html Describes the effect of bookmark naming on bookmark recognition. The purpose is to provide empirically-determined guidelines for web producers on how to title pages in order to optimise the recognition of bookmarks by users, and increase the rate of revisitation to their websites. http://tc.eserver.org/29357.html http://tc.eserver.org/29357.html Describes the effect of bookmark naming on bookmark recognition. The purpose was to provide empirically-determined guidelines for web producers on how to title pages in order to optimise the recognition of bookmarks by users, and to increase the rate of revisitation as a result. http://tc.eserver.org/29014.html http://tc.eserver.org/29014.html The ongoing antitrust battle between the U.S. Department of Justice and Microsoft Corporation presents technical communicators with two ethical questions: 1) Is it right, good, or fair for Microsoft to give away its Internet Explorer browser? 2) If Microsoft gains monopoly control over the PC browser market, will this be good for us? This article examines these questions using traditional rights-based ethical theory (Kant), utilitarianism, and John Rawls principles of justice, concluding that it is neither good nor fair for a company having a near-monopoly over a market to sell products below fair market value, nor is it good that one company stands to gain monopoly control over the PC browser market. When the discussion turned to Netscape, one Intel executive, who asked not to be identified, recalled Martiz [Paul Martiz, Microsoft Group Vice President, Platforms & Application] saying: "We are going to cut off their air supply. Everything they re selling, we re going to give away for free" [1]. "We re giving away a pretty good browser as part of the operating system. How long can they survive selling it?"--Statement by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft President and CEO [2]. "Our business model works even if all Internet software is free," says Mr. Gates. "We are still selling operating systems." <em>Netscape</em>, in contrast, is dependent upon its Internet software for profits, he points out.--Statements by Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman [3]. Only a monopolist could study a competitor and destroy its business by giving away products--Statement by Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems Chairman [4]. http://tc.eserver.org/28705.html http://tc.eserver.org/28705.html While building a browser slideshow object for a demonstration on dynamically pulling image information from a web server, I ran into difficulty with the DOM-compliant approach I had envisioned. A two-day journey into the world of XML DOM support for web browsers lay between me and a satisfactory solution. http://tc.eserver.org/27860.html http://tc.eserver.org/27860.html Now you should know what XML is for and how to write a basic XML document. In this part I will show you how to create a full XML document and load it in a browser, as well and the different ways it can be displayed. http://tc.eserver.org/27315.html http://tc.eserver.org/27315.html Most developers are happy to follow the W3C guidelines and have their pages 'just work,' with no need for browser-specific HTML. Safari has the features you'd expect of a modern browser plus a few unique ones; understanding these, as well as a few Safari development tricks, will ensure your pages work exactly the way you and your users expect. http://tc.eserver.org/26915.html http://tc.eserver.org/26915.html Web browsers are funny things. On the one hand, they’re supposed to be lightweight little programs that just let you view websites, and on the other, they carry the same burdens as operating systems and application suites, trying to provide everything to everyone. Here in this little essay I explain what I know about designing browsers. I’m in the lucky minority of people that have actually designed successful browsers, or parts of them, for any length of time, and with Firefox and Opera in the headlines, and the art of browser design becomes important again, I thought I’d write down some of what I know. Its been years since I was a program manager on the Internet Explorer project, but I’ve maintained interests in the design of navigation and searching systems of all kinds: what follows is a rough summary of what I’ve learned. http://tc.eserver.org/26374.html http://tc.eserver.org/26374.html The phrase User agent or user-agent or UA or browser or client or client application or client software program...all pretty much refer to the same thing. Or maybe not. http://tc.eserver.org/26220.html http://tc.eserver.org/26220.html The accessibility toolbar is to aid the manual process in validating web sites. Developed by AIS and provided in Europe and the UK by Southbourne Internet Ltd. http://tc.eserver.org/25521.html http://tc.eserver.org/25521.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/25511.html http://tc.eserver.org/25511.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/23264.html http://tc.eserver.org/23264.html Turning 'help' systems and 'browsers' into robust structured-document viewers: the DocBrowser. http://tc.eserver.org/23271.html http://tc.eserver.org/23271.html With Netscape, when you first load this page, none of the following links are marked as 'already seen'. IE is very bad on this point: when you load this page, all the links below (internal page A NAME links) are marked as 'already seen'. That is, Netscape tracks internal page jumps; IE doesn't recognize them; in its history tracking, it lumps together all the links for a page as being identical with the overall page as a destination. This is a great example of a basic feature that is very much needed. http://tc.eserver.org/23178.html http://tc.eserver.org/23178.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/23129.html http://tc.eserver.org/23129.html Uno studio comparativo di 5 prodotti evidenzia come Jaws di Freedom Scientific e Home Page Reader di IBM siano gli strumenti che meglio interpretano le linee guida per l'accessibilità web. http://tc.eserver.org/23121.html http://tc.eserver.org/23121.html The purpose of this experiment is to determine the effect of screen size on the speed of navigating common web pages. We performed the experiment on 12 students and concluded that the larger the screen size, the faster a typical web page is browsed. http://tc.eserver.org/22935.html http://tc.eserver.org/22935.html When Apple released Safari on to the unsuspecting world in 2003, it caught a lot of people off guard. The ripples are still being felt - Mozilla's source code was rejected in favour of the smaller code base of KHTML, and more recently Opera has suggested that it may no longer make a version of its browser for the Macintosh platform. And then, of course, there's the whole issue of how web developers can keep up with yet another browser foisted upon them - does it support agreed web standards? Or does it break standards-compliant sites in horrible new inventive ways? http://tc.eserver.org/21219.html http://tc.eserver.org/21219.html One of the biggest pains about making Web pages is having to keep track of which browsers support what features. Wouldn't it be nice if there were some way to keep track of it all? Well, we've whipped up a few articles and charts to make things easier for you. http://tc.eserver.org/20861.html http://tc.eserver.org/20861.html Statistics on browser popularity, as of December 1996. http://tc.eserver.org/20863.html http://tc.eserver.org/20863.html WebTV is the first Web user interface for which I have discovered a serious need for navigational aids within the page. http://tc.eserver.org/20864.html http://tc.eserver.org/20864.html Maybe Web-access through television sets doesn't need to be as usable as a normal computer if it can provide other benefits. http://tc.eserver.org/20862.html http://tc.eserver.org/20862.html WebTV achieves a very high level of usability given its design constraints. Unfortunately, the constraints are so severe that even this great design ultimately fails to provide an optimal Web user experience. WebTV's usability engineers have done a good job at making it very easy to install and as easy as possible to use, and WebTV's imaging engineers have done an incredible job at high-quality character rendering in an NTSC video signal. In fact, the screenshots in this column do not look as good as WebTV does when displayed on a good television set: you have to see it to believe that it's possible to achieve WebTV's level of text readability on a television screen. http://tc.eserver.org/20830.html http://tc.eserver.org/20830.html The future is not what it used to be, especially regarding WWW browsers. They used to come in two flavors: text and Mosaic, but now there is a profusion of choices. Netscape has shown that it is possible to dominate the Internet almost overnight, going from less than one percent to about 70% market share during the last two months of 1994. Such rapid changes may be a unique characteristic of the Internet since most other markets award more permanence and slower erosion of market share to their leaders. On the Internet, news and customer testimonials spread immediately world-wide and 'shelf space' is limited only by the vendor's server capacity and connection bandwidth (indeed, Netscape would probably have spread faster if only people could get through to their FTP site!). http://tc.eserver.org/20254.html http://tc.eserver.org/20254.html The Internet is not the World Wide Web. So what exactly lies beyond the browser? Eisenberg fearlessly predicts technologies to watch. http://tc.eserver.org/20218.html http://tc.eserver.org/20218.html Why does ALA look like @#$ in your 4.0 browser? Read this now. http://tc.eserver.org/20228.html http://tc.eserver.org/20228.html Long considered the Holy Grail of web design, 'backward compatibility' has its place; but at this point in web development history, shouldn’t we be more concerned about forward compatibility? ALA makes the case for authoring to web standards instead of browser quirks. http://tc.eserver.org/19317.html http://tc.eserver.org/19317.html The convergence of the web and television throws up numerous challenges for usability engineers. As more and more of the population choose to access the Internet through their television (usually via set-top boxes and with the assistance of television remote controls), optimizing web pages for use on these devices becomes a priority. These issues tend to be exacerbated by inherent differences between the two technologies. For instance, television is usually thought of as 'lean-back' technology, whereas the computer is seen as 'lean-forward' technology. Television viewers on average sit more than 9 feet away from their sets, whereas computer users are usually within 13 inches of their monitors. Television viewers are accustomed to being passive and having information presented to them. Computer use requires more active interaction and maximizes user initiative. It is possible that the fundamental conflict between these modes of operation will mean that web-on-television is doomed to failure. But, in the meantime, what can be done to ensure high quality user-experience when viewing the web on TV? http://tc.eserver.org/10172.html http://tc.eserver.org/10172.html There has been no progress in client software for the last seven years: Mosaic defined the Web feature set in 1993, and since then there has only been more fancy page layouts, no better user interfaces. This sorry picture is finally changing. Several recent software products have introduced specialized applications with better user interfaces for special-purpose use. And there is even a new browser out with improved user control.