Hacked to Death iii

While testing Krugle for my pending review I was able to find a Safari hack that works.

You may already have heard of the Safari Stokely Hack. It’s not as straight forward as most IE hacks but it works on even the latest versions of Safari and can be a real life saver.

View details on the Stormdetector website.

Now IE7 is here hacks have to be more specific in their targeting. Some Beta versions of IE7 ignore * html hacks and some apply them (The final release ignores them).

To be sure which browser will be affected by your styles you can use conditional comments.

e.g.
<!--[if lte IE 6]>
(html for IE 6 or older goes here)
<![endif]–>

This goes into your html not your css file. The version(s) of IE you specify will read the code you enter within the comments while other browsers will ignore it. This means you can link to a seperate style sheet with your IE hacks in and it will not affect other browsers.

Selecting versions to affect:
To affect just one version of a browser (e.g. IE7) simply start your conditional comment with <!–[if IE 7]> replacing 7 with whatever browser version you want to target. If you want to target a range of browsers you can insert an extra word before IE.

• lte - less than or equal to
• lt - less than

Because you have targeted a specific set of IE browsers future releases should be happy viewing your page without the hacks getting in the way.

These conditional comments can be used to hide any other html from non-IE browsers too, such as an IE only feature you may have on your page.

Firefox 2 review

Seems every tech blog in the land has picked up on the hot release of the week - Firefox 2.0. I heard a lot of good things about it while still in Beta and I finally got round to giving it a spin today.

IE7 also saw a new release this week but got a lot less attention/praise (unless you work for Microsoft) as it didn’t offer much extra compared to RC1 which I already had installed. Opera’s latest release has impressed as it’s the first browser to pass the Acid2 test.

So is FF2.0 worth the download. Well if you haven’t got Firefox at all it’s an obvious yes. Once you’ve tried Firefox for a couple of weeks you’ll find it a frustrating experience to try and browse the web with anything less. However, I am sure I’m preaching to the converted so I’ll focus on What’s New in 2.0.
Continue reading »

Extension/Plugin of the month (POTM): September

POTM (Plugin Of The Month) is a new feature that I plan to post every month to promote the plugin/extension that has made the biggest impact on either the way I browse or assisted me in producing web pages.

For the month of September the Extension I’ve been loving most has been Google’s Browser Sync.

What this Firefox extension does is enable you to synchronize your bookmarks, history, cookies, saved passwords and even open tabs with your Google account. This means when you use any computer (with FF and web access) you will be able add this extension and carry on browsing where you left off!

All the tabs you had open when you last had Firefox open, whether on that computer or another one can be restored or you can start a new session. Your bookmarks, history, cookies, passwords, auto complete etc. can all be restored.

I say “can” because everything is optional. You can choose to sync as much or as little as you want and you can ask Google Browser Sync to encrypt all you info (this means the first time you use it on a new PC you will be asked for a password/pin).

A word of warning! If you use this feature in an internet café be sure to logout of Google sync before leaving.

This month so far I’ve been loving WebDeveloper Toolbar. I’ll let you know in next month if it is still my number 1 extension for October.

=Dave Long=

Test, Test and Test again

If like me you like to have the latest updates or try beta releases of new products you may already have IE7 installed.Although it is important to ensure your website will work on IE7 is released the price you have to pay may be too high. IE7 upgrade is irreversible. Since it renders pages differently to previous versions you will no longer have a way of testing your work in the current IE release (IE6). Also IE7 will not let you view pages on your local machine. You have to upload the pages to a webhost or setup a local webserver on that machine or network.

The solution?
A company called tredosoft has come up with an installer that will enable you to run multiple versions of IE at the same time. This means you can have IE3 all the way through to 7 all on 1 machine - a testers dream.
http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

I choose not to ever support anything older than IE5 so I installed IE5.01, 5.5 and 6.0 in addtion to my existing IE7 setup. The install couldn’t have been easier and I soon had my websites open in 4 browser versions at the same time.

I only use FireFox for browsing and viewing my designs but when it comes to testing I can now ensure IE6 AND IE7 support

Dave Long