The War On IE 6

Recently Google openly declared that it would be dropping support for IE6 for most of its applications such as Google Docs and GMail. That is a bold step I side with. In the recent times, for all the web development work I do, I do not even bother to test in IE6 because I do not care for the user experience in that browser. Most of my work has been to develop content management related products for my websites, and I know most of my users are developers who are up to date with all the recent browser trends so they are well equipped for my products.

However, recently I got bitten in the ass by this lack of support for IE6 when a client viewed a website I created in it, and the result was terrible. I viewed the site myself and I was shocked by the horrors I came face to face with. See below for expected results and what IE6 renders;

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Why Doesn’t Opera Support JavaFX?

UPDATE 05/02/2010

The following article has been updated to be more concise with respect to the way JavaFX is implemented in the various browsers. Opera does not support the Java Plugin in general.

I’ve been a serious Opera user since the first version of the Opera 9 series, and I’m currently running Opera 10.5 pre-alpha. It is a great product and it indeed does make web development fun. I do almost all my web development in Opera and only test in other browsers when I need to. I know for a fact, that since Opera supports standards, almost all my CSS layout and Javascript code will work in Firefox, Safari, Chrome and most often IE 8 (IE 6 and 7 are my back case), right out of the IDE. Most often, if I have to do some code refactoring, it would be for some IE specific quirk (I know most of you know of this pain).

However, I’ve been meaning to try out JavaFX for a while now, but I’ve not made the switch to it yet, simply because Opera does not support it, which is very frustrating.

Java vs Flash File Uploaders

I was using my Yahoo mail today and had to spend of most of the day attaching and sending some moderately large files to some colleagues, and I was seriously having a terrible time with it.

Java Applets Are Still Alive

Over the past year or so, I have been wondering about the state of Java Applets with respect to the whole web2.0 transformation and the current RIA war that is going on between the major RIA players. I kept wondering whether or not Applets could compete. Basically with the release of Java 6 update 10, some semblance of hope was brought back into applet development.

Another Microsoft Mistake – Browser Rant

Through out the whole beta test period I used IE 8 and rather enojoyed it. However, I expected there to be another 3-4 months before the release of the browser, but it came so so much earlier, and as I expected, “the browser is still was tooooo buggy to be on the market”. As I have said in earlier rants, it is slow, although is does a great job at rendering the pages. And it tends to hang a bit too often.

Microsoft, you need to pick up the pieces.

Another Browser Rant – Opera

Just to re-echo why I love Opera so much, especially the current alpha release of 10:

1. It is fast to start up (about four times faster that IE, twice faster than Firefox and Safari)
2. t’s almost always reloads your last session from cache. Even if you closed the browser by accident, you never loose the vital information you were looking at or reading. I think it only fails to reload dynamic content when offline i.e. flash videos, applets and AJAX Content.
3. Page load is faster (truely) than all other browsers with the same Internet connection speed (i.e. not glitches or breaks in connection). It is even especially faster with asynchronous calls (AJAX) compared to IE, FF or Safari.
4. Lastly, it has spell-checking, very useful for what I’m doing now.

Perhaps I should start developing some widgets for it. My only beef so far is that I have not got its developer tools to work. Don’t know why, but I want to blame it on my connection speed, which is extremely terrible at times

Trust Apple To Make A Mark

I recently downloaded and installed Safari 4 beta and once again I was reminded of why Apple is Apple. Trust them to put in all the UI goodness that is imaginably possibly at the time of coding.

With their new Top Sites section, we users are bound to have some fun with graphics along side functionality. The use of ITunes type page flips for their History section makes browsing through visited pages a fun task. It even has search functionality. Way Cool! I can see Safari 4 winning back a few of its lost followers with these new additions. And on top of it all, Safari 4 hits a cool 100/100 on the Acid3 Test.

I guess I can safely say for now that in order of preference, my favourite browsers are Opera 10, Safari 4, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3. You can hate me for placing Firefox last, but I think on the usuabilty side, plus raw aesthetics with plugins, all the other browser beat Firefox hands downs.

So now I dare you, download Safari 4 beta and dont look back!