PiRootOfPi Blog By: Dave Anderson Shreveport, LA

Related to my post yesterday, friends and family members often ask me why I recommend Firefox as their primary browser. I am frequently asked questions like, “What’s wrong with Internet Explorer?” Despite the fact that alternative browsers are gaining market share, the vast majority of users still use IE, simply because they don’t feel they are advanced enough to use something else.

In addition to the added security and features, I use Firefox for one other very important reason. Believe it or not, other programmers have actually asked me why I test webpages in multiple browsers! I know this is hard to believe, but the logic is that since the overwhelming majority still uses Internet Explorer, why worry about the last 10%. Obviously there are flaws in this logic which brings me to the other important reason I use Firefox. Standards Compliance.

While, no browser is fully standard compliant, Firefox and Opera are much closer than IE6. Microsoft promises that IE7 will be more standards compliant, actually stating that some pages hacked to work with IE6 will have to be rewritten/fixed to work with IE7. Thankfully, as an ASP.NET developer, I was delighted to hear that ASP.NET 2.0 produces standards compliant code!

The problem is, writing code for IE6 is a bit like Black Magic. It will cause a programmer to rip their hair out, which I will use as an excuse for my receding hairline :). Therefore supporting standards compliance is the battle cry of most web designers.

This brings me to this hilarious, yet truthful graph from Poisoned Minds which shows how web designers divide their time.

*Note: I have slightly modified the image to keep the site family-friendly.

Although I primarily use and recommend Mozilla Firefox due to its wonderful extension support, I thought I would take a moment to discuss other browsers.

Microsoft Internet Explorer Team has officially released Internet Explorer Beta 3 for Windows XP.
If you refuse to use any browser other than IE, or if you absolutely need IE specific technologies such as ActiveX, I highly recommend giving IE7 Beta 3 a try. Security has been greatly improved, and the interface is growing on me, although slowly. The tab support works well, and the browser seems quite speedy and responsive.

In other news Opera has released Version 9 of their web browser. I must say, I am really impressed with the newest version of Opera. Although it lacks the vast extension support of Firefox, the browser it self is very, very, good. It is speedy, lightweight, and stable. Version 9 sports an impressive list of features including support for the holy grail of CSS compliance: Acid2.

Although I will likely stick with Firefox on the desktop because of its extension and plug-in support, I think Opera is an excellent browser for alternative platforms. Opera Mini and Opera Mobile are available for mobile phones and PDAs. If you are still using Pocket Internet Explorer, give Opera a try. Also, Opera and Nintendo have announced that the Nintendo DS and the next-generation Nintendo Wii Console will use the Opera Web browser. I think this is an excellent move for both companies. Nintendo will get a very functional, light weight browser. Opera will gain a large chunk of market share. This is a win-win for not only the companies, but standards compliance and webpage compatibility.

Of course, I suggest all web developers have Opera, Internet Explorer 6 and 7, and Firefox installed for testing purposes.

This one has me reaching for the Advil.

Digital Trends is reporting that today, AT&T announced that they will be re-branding Cingular Wireless as… you guess it, AT&T Wireless. Again.

For those of you not keeping score at home, I decided to layout a basic history of events that lead us to this point. This list of events is surely not complete, and some of the events have been reordered for clarity, but this should give everyone a clear understanding of the lunacy that got us here.

So, without further ado….

1 ) AT&T creates a wireless division which they call, AT&T Wireless.
2 ) AT&T Wireless spins off of AT&T into a separate company.
3 ) Bellsouth and SBC roll their wireless companies together into a new company called “Cingular.”
4 ) Cingular buys AT&T Wireless for $41 Billion. They then spend an estimated $4 Billion advertising the merger.
5 ) SBC (60% owner of Cingular) purchases AT&T (parent company) for $16 Billion.
6 ) SBC renames themselves at&t (lowercase).
7 ) “at&t” (SBC) purchases co-owner of Cingular, BellSouth, for $67 Billion.
8 ) at&t (consisting of the former SBC, AT&T, Bellsouth, Cingular, and AT&T Wireless) renames Cingular Wireless “at&t Wireless” and spends another $2 Billion advertising the change

Let’s not forget this list doesn’t even cover the original antiturst split of “Ma Bell”, which led to the creation of companies like SBC and BellSouth in the first place.

That is a lot of zeros folks.
No wonder AT&T wants to create a tiered Internet, and charge companies like Google, Vonage, and Amazon to use “Their pipes.” Someone has to pay those bills, and my bets are on Joe Consumer.

Last week at the Mix ‘06 Conference, Microsoft announced WPF/E, or Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere.

From Mike Harsh’s Blog:

“So
what is WPF/E? It is a cross-platform, cross-browser web technology
that supports a subset of WPF XAML. WPF/E also has a friction-free
install model and the download size we’re targeting is very small. WPF/E supports programmability through javascript for tight browser
integration. The WPF/E package also contains a small, cross platform
subset of the CLR and .NET Framework that can run C# or VB.NET code. Yes, we are bringing C# programming to the Mac.”

I am absolutely thrilled by this news.
I can’t wait to write cross platform, firefox compatible rich applications in .NET!

Check out Mike Harsh’s Blog for more information.

The Ink Stained Banana has released a humorous list of bug fixes in the first “Web 2.0” patch.

Many of these bugs fixes are long overdue, and should resolve many complaints users had about Web 2.0.

Such as the following bug fix:

“Bug 84318192-b: We’ve addressed a
problem with the automatic product revision system that caused products
to be stuck at “beta” level. Please note that many of these projects
are actually Version 1.0 (with several at Version 2.0).”

That particular bug has been on top of my Web 2.0 annoyance list from day one.

For a good laugh, view the rest of the “Web 2.0.1″ release notes.

I found this humorous blog post today over at Virtual Karma.

The author raises the question of what we will tell our kids about the Internet, if the telephone companies are successful in creating a multiple tier internet.

Although this is humorous, it is also the very sad reality of what the major telephone companies want to achieve.

Bell South, AT&T, and Verizon have all shown interest in providing a multi-tier Internet, in order to extort money from website owners.

The telephone companies look ready to take their plan to Capital Hill.

Keep a watch out for bills regarding this and other Internet freedom issues at the Electronic Frontier Foundation website.

Dave

Firefox Extensions make my life easier in countless ways on a daily basis.
I believe extensions are the primary advantage firefox has over its competitors.

In this post, I will give you a list my favorite extensions, and a description of each.
The links I provided are to the extensions homepage; however most can be downloaded from Mozilla Update.

1 ) Image Zoom - This is my absolute favorite extension. It allows zooming in/out on image files via Right-Click menu. This is excellent when an image is too small or too large to be viewed easily on your monitor.

2 ) BugMeNot - This extension automatically grabs usernames and passwords from http://www.bugmenot.com. This saves countless hours when trying to read a quick article on a site that requires registration.

3 ) GMail Notifier - This extension is self explanatory. It will monitor your GMail account and notify you when new mail arrives.

4 ) PDF Download - Have you ever clicked on a link, only to realize that it is to a PDF when Adobe Reader freezes your browser while loading the document?
Fear no more with this handy extension. When a PDF link is clicked, a menu will be displayed asking how you want the file opened.

5 ) Session Saver - This extension will save your open tabs when the browser is closed. This is wonderful to reserve resources while not using Firefox. As an added bonus, Session Saver automatically saves your session in the event of a browser crash.

6 ) CustomizeGoogle - This extension customizes Google. It will add links to search your query on other search engines, adds preview images of search results, and adds Google Suggest functionality to the good search box.

7 ) IE Tab - This extension allows rendering webpages using the Internet Explorer engine inside of a Firefox tab. This one is really great when a page is not compatible with Firefox, or you need to run Microsoft Update.

8 ) ColorZilla - Eye dropper tool for Firefox. This extension allows you to grab the RGB and HEX color values for any pixel of a webpage. Essential for web development.

9 ) Web Developer - Excellent suite of tools designed to aid in the development of web pages. A similar, but less feature rich Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar is available from Microsoft.

10 ) Linky - Open a set of links in Tabs. Useful for link sites such as Reddit and Digg.

11 ) Menu Editor - As you can see I use a lot of extensions. Several of the extensions add extra entries to the Right-Click menu. Menu Editor allows you to reorder or delete items on the Right-Click Menu

12 ) Form History Manager - Firefox’s form history can be a life simplifier, by remembering your email address and other information that frequently need to be entered in forms. However, isn’t it annoying when the form history displays incorrect information, due that that time you accidentally mis-typed your email address? Form History Manger to the rescue! This handy little extension will allow you to remove unwanted elements from the form history.

13 ) StumbleUpon - The cure for internet boredom! Simply select categories that interest you. Press the Stumble! button on the stumbleupon toolbar, and be instantly sent to a webpage about one of your interests. Be sure to rate the sites thumbs up or thumbs down as this will help stumble upon weed out which types of pages interest you most.

14 ) ForecastFox - Weather forecast on firefox status bar.

15 ) Adblock Plus - Improved version of the popular Adblock Extension. This extension will allow you to block ads at a whim. It will also allow you to create white lists of allowed ads. Don’t forget to install the Adblock FilterSet.G Updater extension to automatically update your list of filtered ads.

Dave

Since the dawning of this new fangled Web 2.0 craze, I have been highly interested in AJAX programming.
In the coming weeks I am going to begin playing with Microsoft’s Atlas Library for ASP.NET 2.0.

I now have a copy of Visual Studio 2005 to begin testing, and I will be experimenting/exploring the possibilities of using ASP.NET 2.0 for AJAX applications.

Dave

Another software recommendation:

TugZip.

TugZip is a freeware File (de)compression application that supports all major compression formats.

From the TugZip Website:

• Supports ZIP, 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, BH,
  BZ2, CAB, CPIO, DEB, GCA, GZ, IMP, JAR, LHA (LZH), LIB, RAR,
  RPM, SQX, TAR, TGZ, TBZ, TAZ, YZ1 and ZOO archives.
• Supports BIN, C2D, IMG, ISO and NRG disc-images.
• Support for external plugins.
• Windows® shell integration, e.g. drag &
  drop, shell context menu and drop handlers.
• Create 7-ZIP, BH, BZ2, CAB, JAR, LHA (LZH),
  SQX, TAR, TGZ, YZ1 and ZIP archives.
• Script support which allows you to make automated
  backups.
• Basic features like: add, extract, delete,
  rename, run, view, checkout, install, test, comment, SFX, virus-scanning,
  disk-spanning and much more.
• Repair corrupted ZIP and SQX archives.
• Can extract multiple archives at once using
  Multi Extract.
• Encrypt archives using 6 different algorithms.
  Blowfish (128-bit), DES (56-bit), Triple DES (168-bit) and Rijndael
  (128-bit, 192-bit and 256-bit).
• Create self-extracting encrypted archives.
• Automatic updates using the “Web Update”
  function.

TugZip is a wonderful application that is not all free, but incredibly useful.

Kudos to Christian Kindahl for his excellent work.

Don’t forget to grab the ACE and RAR plugins from the plugin section!

Get TugZip Now!