In what will undoubtedly send ripples through the Web, IBM has announced that Mozilla Firefox will be its new official browser. All 400,000 IBM employees are expected to make the switch on their desktops and laptops. IBM believes Firefox is “enterprise ready”, and as more of their products are sold as web applications and cloud services, one can safely assume that IBM will recommend Firefox to their customers.

Since its creation, Firefox has gradually chipped away at the large browser market share held by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Over the past year, however, Google’s Chrome browser has stolen some of the spotlight. This move by IBM will certainly give Firefox a boost. For web hosting providers that use IBM’s services, it will make sense to use Firefox, if IBM optimizes their applications with the open source browser in mind.

Source: CNET
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Why am I ranting about this? The reason is simple. I do not want any of you who have websites or design sites for others to make the same mistake. Most HTML, CSS, and Javascript will function in any modern browser. If it does not for a particular user, they would be better off seeing what does not work and have a chance to fix it. Rather than making a site that may not work in some browsers, take the extra time to test your site, make it standards compliant, and ensure that it works in most browsers.

Browser detection fails because it usually relies on user agent data, which cannot be reliable. For example, a browser may be based on gecko (i.e. Firefox compatible) but may display a different name. The same may be true for any number of browsers, particularly those on mobile devices. You do not want to deny potential customers simply because their browser does not have a common name.

Photo Source: Flickr

At one time the only option was to download and install every browser, but since that is not even an option with multiple platforms, you would be forced to use virtual machines to test the plethora of operating systems. There is a relatively reasonable solution, however, called Browsershots.

Browsershots is a website that allows you to select the specific browsers and operating systems you want to test. Simply enter your site’s URL, check off the browsers to test, and click the submit button. It will take some time, depending on how many browsers you choose, but the site will queue your test and slowly churn out screenshots of your site on each platform/browser. You can then download the complete set of shots in a convenient zip file. Browsers include Firefox, Google Chrome, Iceweasel, Opera, Flock, MSIE, Safari, Konqueror, and many others.

Originally, HTML 5 video was supposed to support an open standard, such as Ogg Theora. Mozilla, Opera, and others were in favor of the standardization and began to support it. Apple and Google felt that the Theora codec was not mature enough and did not match the quality of H.264, a proprietary and patented codec. Mozilla, being a provider of a free and open source browser (Firefox), could not legally (or perhaps even ethically) support H.264, while Apple (in Safari) chose to only support it, and Google (in Chrome) supported both.

Not long ago, Google acquired On2 Technologies, the company that originally released the Theora format into the free software community. I speculated that it would be great if Google used On2 to improve Theora or create a new superior open format. Now it seems that Google is going to do just that, and Mozilla will support the new open codec.

According to Matthew Zeier from Mozilla Operations:

Since 2006, we’ve tripled the amount of data center floor space (and tripled our IT/Ops team), grew our user base 8.75 times and now push 18x the bandwidth. Sure, in comparison to other sites, this growth is small. It’s no Facebook. But it’s still a significant amount of infrastructure that supports 350 million users and the world’s most popular web browser (we’re at about one engineer to 43.7m users (or one to 800 servers).

The Phoenix servers are actually colocated in a much larger 538,000 square-foot (163,982 square meters) data center used by a number of other companies and organisations. The new systems are needed to keep up with Firefox’s phenomenal growth.

Source | Data Center Knowledge
Photo | Flickr

SSL certificates are supposed to provide users with a level of encryption they can trust for secure (HTTPS) sites. But when a window pops up telling a user the certificate is invalid or has a problem, what should the user do? Carnegie Mellon researchers conduct a study of 409 participants to determine just that. Of the 50 percent of Firefox 2 users who even knew they were being given a security warning, 71 percent said they would ignore it.

With Mozilla Firefox 3 makes it more difficult to ignore because users have to add an exception in order to allow access to the site, but the looming questions still remain. How do users know which sites to trust? Unless they are security experts, what safety protocols could they reasonably put in place? Website owners certainly bear the brunt of the responsibility to make sure their certificates are properly signed, and this is especially important for financial institutions. The complete findings of the study will be released August 14.

Source: ZDnet Asia
Photo: Flickr

They are calling the tool BrowserLab, and it will be available for preview for Macs and PCs running Adobe Flash 10. This appears to indicate that it will run inside of a web browser itself. Among its features is an “onion skin” mode that allows you to view the site in the browsers layered on top of one another in a virtual overlay. The initial offering will include Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. Web developers will undoubtedly request Opera and Google Chrome, among others, in the future.

BrowserLab will be available for preview for free, although the final version will eventually be a paid service. Adobe has not released a time line for the final release. They intend to test it with real web designers and then release a more polished, user-oriented version.

Source: ZDNet

Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner said that the new version of HTML will support rich media (audio and video), rendering Adobe Flash redundant. Those who wish to keep their websites in compliance with web standards will be able to provide users with the same rich media content and features currently only available with the proprietary Flash plugin.

“You can do most things with Web standards today,” von Tetzchner said. “In some ways, you may say you don’t need Flash.”

He believes people will continue to and should have a choice between Flash or the new HTML 5 integrated media, but those concerned with web standards and the closed nature of Flash will now have an alternative.

Source: ZDNet
Photo: Flickr