Firefox 4 release candidate was released
Last week Firefox 4 RC (release candidate) was released. Mozilla has created a special page for installing and getting feedback, but also for spreading the word about it over Twitter and Facebook.
Firefox 4 release candidate is derived out of Firefox 4.0b13pre – which is still being released and available as a nightly. It will probably evolve into another RC. Probably there will be one or two more release candidates, RC1 and RC2.
Firefox 4RC brings all the features we’ve seen in the beta versions plus better stability. The special FF4 page lists these main features:
- A new look
- New tab location
- Synchronization with other computers
- Organizing your tabs with Panorama
- Easier way of managing add-ons
- “Huge performance enhancements” aiming mainly on Javascript speed
- WebM and HD Video
- 3D
- HTML5
- CSS3
- Full hardware acceleration
- HSTS
- Multi touch support
- Audio API
- XPCOM
- SVG as images
- Crash protection
Filed under: Saving the web | Comments Off
Internet Explorer 6 official countdown
Internet Explorer 6, that was released in 2001 by Microsoft, is still used by many users. Microsoft is estimating that at the end of this February 12% of all internet users were still browsing with the outdated Internet Explorer 6. True, the majority of Europe and USA already upgraded or switched browsers, but there are many IE6 users in China, India, japan and other countries with mayn internet users.
Anyway, even Microsoft has decided to put an end to IE6. They have created a special web site that encourages users to upgrade to IE7 or IE8 or even change browsers to something more secure.
They have even published that “Friends don’t let friends use Internet Explorer 6″ and are inviting everyone to let people know this. I’m not a fan of Internet Explorer and it was never my primary browser, but I have had quite some trouble with it as a web developer and also as a project manager. So I guess I’m happy to do what Microsoft says and am advising you on changing the browser now!
Using Analytics I have extracted some interesting data from the visitors of my software pages. On my main software site There are still 3.36% visitors that use IE6, on my Image Resizer site there are 2.52%, on my Picture Downloader site there are 2.26% and on this Best resizer blog there are only 1.17% visitors with IE6.
Incoming search terms for this article:
Filed under: Saving the web | Comments Off
Link destination URL in Firefox 4 beta 13 pre
I have carefully watched how the link URL display in beta versions of Firefox 4 changed through time. First, it was like we were used from Firefox 3.6: it was a part of the status bar at the bottom of the screen and it was displayed when the user hoovered over the link.
Later, around beta7, it changed. There was no more status bar and the link display was moved to the address bar. When a user hoovered over a link the link destination was shown right to the current page address in the address (URL) bar. This was not very useful, because the link was shortened and even if Mozilla used some algorithms to display the most relevant part of the link it didn’t really work.
Many people, including me, started to install add-ons like Status-4-Evar or Firefox 4 UI Fixer. They solved the problem to some degree, but this still wasn’t a very elegant solution.
The newer beta versions of Firefox 4 (like beta13pre) bring another solution to this. The link destination URL is now either shown in status bar nor in address bar – it’s shown in the content of the web page. Just above the status bar on the left side a new line of text appears with a white background and in a length of a link URL and it contains the URL.
This feature is most similar to how Google Chrome shows links – it’s basically the same. There is, however, one interesting behaviour. If your mouse cursor is on the left and the new line of text with URL would be covered with the cursor, then the URL is displayed on the right side of the content instead on the default left side.
I found it irritable that the link display was slow. In did, there was a delay and I have found an about:config preference for it:
browser.overlink-delay
I have changed it to zero (’0′) and this feature now works as expected. I like it, so I have disabled all add-ons that have changed the default behaviours of URL link display.
As I’ve read this feature isn’t supposed to change any more and will stay this way for the final Firefox 4.
Incoming search terms for this article:
- browser overlink-delay
- overlink-delay
- firefox overlink-delay
- firefox 4 status bar delay
- firefox 4 link url
- firefox 4 overlink
- firefox 4 link destination
- firefox status bar delay
- firefox overlink delay
- firefox 4 url left right
Filed under: Saving the web | Comments Off