The Right Way

Google Chrome

As our gateways to the Internet, web browsers are the most important application that we have on our computers. We have said a lot of good things about Firefox on this blog, and while it’s still our favorite, Google Chrome is coming in a big way. Considering that Chrome was released in late 2008 and that many features are still being implemented, Chrome has done remarkably well to capture almost 5% of the worldwide user base.

Having just stolen this title from Apple’s Safari, Chrome is now the third most popular browser. Of course the first two are Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox with just under 63% and 25% usage share respectively. The gains among newer browsers like Safari and Firefox have up until now come at the expense of Internet Explorer – which has seen its usage decline rapidly over the past few years.

But this is not the case with Chrome. Google’s browser – especially with its recent beta releases for Mac and Linux systems – is pulling users away from Firefox. Internet Explorer remains the dominant browser because many users either don’t know how to switch or wouldn’t realize any benefits from it. There are also a significant number of web applications and some websites which still work only with Explorer. But for those who do want to switch, Chrome is starting to sound like a better choice than Firefox.

Mozilla Firefox

The main problem with Firefox is that the code base is ancient, and so far Mozilla has not made any large-scale changes that would get their browser as fast as Chrome or Opera. Google’s browser is at least twice as fast as Firefox (depending on the test), uses less memory, and offers greater stability by using a separate process for each tab. The only thing that’s keeping Firefox in the game is its great support for browser add-ons and the many excellent ones that are available.

Even without support for add-ons, Chrome has managed to get its 5% share, but this is going to change very soon. The beta version of 4.0 includes support for browser extensions, and many of our favorite Firefox add-ons are already available as Chrome extensions. However, we did notice a lot of bugs that need to be still need to be worked out.

Once version 4.0 is released and developers have finished porting our must-have add-ons over to Chrome, it will be hard for us to find a reason to keep using Firefox. This will be a decision many people will be faced with, and unless Mozilla does something truly amazing with Firefox, Chrome is sure to overtake it within a few years.

With over 24% of the global market share, there is no doubt that Mozilla Firefox is the leading alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. No small part of its success and the most important design goal behind Firefox was its minimal feature-set and strong support for extensibility. The intent was to eliminate the “bloat” found in other browsers at the time and allow the Mozilla community to add new features. In this article, we’ll talk about our favorite add-ons.

LastPass. This is an absolute must for anyone with more than a few website user accounts. LastPass can encrypt and store your account information on their servers, and you only have to enter one password (hence the name) to log on with LastPass and gain access to your collection of user accounts. It can then automatically enter your usernames and passwords when you visit a page with a login form.

We think you’ll probably want to change some of the default settings. LastPass should remember your email address, but not your password. This means you’ll need to log into LastPass every time you open Firefox, but it’s the best tradeoff between security and convenience. You’ll likely also want to turn off some of the LastPass notifications (“Save Site” is the most essential). We also recommend against using the “AutoLogon” feature as you won’t always want to log on when a login form is displayed.

Xmarks. This extension both backs up your bookmarks and synchronizes them with your user accounts on other computers. It’s great for syncing your home and work computers and for restoring your bookmarks when moving to a new user profile. Xmarks also offers to store your passwords, but it’s a relatively new feature which isn’t as good as LastPass.

Lazarus. Something that has always plagued web browsers is the loss of text entries due to a session timeout or other problem. Until Firefox incorporates some kind of recovery option, Lazarus is an extension every Firefox user should have. You no longer have to worry whether the website you’re using is saving draft copies of your work.

Web of Trust. Referred to as WOT, this extension allows its community to avoid visiting untrustworthy websites. It’s almost surprising that this service has become popular as a browser add-on and not as an offering from Google or Yahoo, but nevertheless WOT is very useful. Now you can readily tell which links are spam when you search for anti-virus products.

It’s worth pointing out that WOT is meant to help you avoid malware-ridden, fraudulent, and inappropriate sites. It isn’t meant for rating the organization behind the website, but you can sometimes get that information from the “scorecard” on mywot.com from users’ comments.

Summing Up. These four extensions are the best out there now, but there are certainly some very interesting developments coming in Firefox 4. Cloud computing is looming large in the future, and Mozilla’s Weave and Prism projects will likely cause a huge shift in our expectations of modern web browsers.

Although less common now than it used to be, I frequently see people run into problems when a web browser does not work well with a particular website. Most people assume the browser is at fault if the website works without problems in other browsers. It seems like good reasoning, but it’s often far from the truth. In this article, I’ll explain why these problems exist, what web developers are doing, and how standards compliance helps.

The Problem. Since the early 1990s, there have been many browsers to choose from. Because of the web’s rapid growth, there was high demand for browsers to add new features, to make it easier to write web pages, and even to allow mistakes. So browsers like Navigator and Internet Explorer added support for non-standard and improperly-used web page elements^[1]. This led many to develop websites which worked well in only one browser, and it was very common to see “best viewed with browser X” on a web page.

The situation has improved since then, and Internet Explorer is now the only major browser with poor standards compliance^[2]. The other major browsers, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, and Apple’s Safari, do a much better job adhering to standards. In particular, Firefox now has between 20 and 30% market share^[3][4][5] – which means web developers can no longer afford to build websites which work only in Internet Explorer.

Web Development. This conflict among major web browsers has made it difficult to create websites which work properly in all browsers. Many people developing websites for themselves simply do not have the time to test their site in other browsers. Additionally, as the web grows and the official standards become more complex, it’s harder for browsers to support new standards while maintaining backward compatibility with existing web pages.^[6]

So every major browser has exceptions in which it doesn’t follow the standard – known as “quirks.” And now that standards compliance has become more important, browsers generally have two ways of interpreting and displaying a web page – “standards mode” and “quirks mode.”^{[7][8][9][10]} When a web page specifies compliance with a newer standard, browsers generally use standards mode. When a page doesn’t specify a standard or when an older standard is used, browsers generally use quirks mode.^[11] However, even in standards mode, a browser may still have some quirks.^[12]

So what do web developers do now? A good website written today will specify compliance with a newer standard and implement browser-specific fixes for whatever quirks or bugs affect the site. Additionally, a good site’s code will be valid according to the standard it specified. The most common cause of website display issues is poorly written code.

Standards Compliance. The Word Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an organization which publishes official standards for web pages – which they call “recommendations.” Once a standard has been published, web browsers can begin to implement support for it. And once that happens, web developers can write websites which make use of the new functionality. The greatest benefit of having a standards compliant website is compatibility with every browser which supports the standard. Of course some browser-specific fixes may still be needed, but it usually takes relatively little effort to support other compliant browsers.

Something else that standards compliance creates is a guarantee that the website was developed properly. Many older, problematic techniques can still be used today even though their use is highly discouraged. If a website is compliant, you at least have some assurance that the website was well-written. And in some cases, visitors like to see compliance icons, and many websites publicly display the standard they comply with.

One of the tools you can use to test a website’s compliance is the W3C Validator. It can parse a web page and highlight any non-compliant elements. All you need to do is provide the URL of the page you want to check. While this tool can be useful, it’s worth noting that websites with frequent updates or dynamic content do have a harder time maintaining compliance.