Nikoport

Apple has announced a big bomb during this year WWDC keynote - they are implementing a version of their flagship browser Safari for Windows. I know that this sound crazy, because we have already got 3 major browsers in the market - IE, Firefox and Opera, so now the last of the Mohicans is coming to Windows platform !!! What is even more surprising, is that beta version is already available for download. The beta version of Safari browser for windows, which is available for download, is just a first step, because Apple is promising to deliver the final version in October, together with a release for all OS X versions that matter (included in Leopard, as well as a free download for the Tiger - OS X 10.4). Thism i hope will help bringing web designers to care more about OS X, since they will not have any excuses about not being able to test how it looks there: Firefox is already available for both platforms, and Safari will be as well. May be this is one of the main ideas about bringing Safari to Windows, because besides iTunes (which is a cash cow for Apple), i do not remember much Apple applications available for Windows. This also may help the future iPhone users to feel at home even on Windows platform, and web designers test their applications for it, because iPhone is going to run on OS X, and the only browser available there at the time of release will be Safari.

Entering a market, which is about to be filled almost to its maximum capacity (i would say about 95% wont easily change their browser), it takes a lot of strength and confidence. These are hot times for the browsers, and what i hope, is that Safari is going to make this entrance a strong commitment.

I am taking a look at Safari right at this very moment, and even if it would be one of the worst browser on the market, even if it would be source of jokes, Apple deserve such a big credit for not being afraid and for trying. I am taking my hat and taking a big bow.

Guys, you won a great deal of respect for me once again, and even if you are not nr 1 on the market, for me you are.

p.s. but sincerely, i am not an Apple fan-boy. =O) hehe

Microsoft has finally release the final version (1.0) of the infamous Internet Explorer Developer Tooolbar, which works exactly copies the functionality of the Web Developer Toolbar extension for Firefox. After 2 years of development, the first (1.0) version has arrived and is available for every web developer. Microsoft has promised to release a couple of free tools for web developers, and as a matter of a fact, i consider they are doing nice job (even when copying efforts of others) of fulfilling their promise.

Developer Toolbar simplifies a lot of functions for web developers, such as selectively disables some of the Internet Explorer functionalities, validates the content of xHTML and CSS, DOM handling, window resolution resizing, between others. My favorite and most useful functionality for Internet Explorer 6.0 is a ruler - for measuring size and distance of the xHTML elements. Having a lot of bugs, IE6 needs this functionality desperately, especially for the pages, with a lot of content. The other very useful functionality of this toolbar is the object id outlining - when editing CSS it is extremely useful to be able to consult the name of the specific object or objects, without digging into the HTML code.

If you don’t have, then get it as soon as you can, and if you are a beta user, then it is a time to upgrade, since it should bring some of the bug fixes.

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar 1.0 download

I have to say that i am very positively surprised by the new firefox - i just cant get enough out of the Session Restore feature, as well as from the dictionary feature. Having had some crashes over the last days, i am not worrying anymore about finding those sites i was browsing at that moment, as well as when i go home, i dont need to bookmark everything in a temporary folder, i just switch my computer off, and when i get back early in the morning, i will simply continue at the places where i have stopped yesterday.

There are a lot of voices around, blaming mozilla for a poor release, let me not agree with them. I think that at least those 2 features (Session Restore and Dictionary) are already deserving enough publicity. What on earth of groundbreaking and new have Internet Explorer 7 brought to the users ? Which feature that we have not seen in other browsers, which standards are supported, that are not in the most other browsers on the market, yet everyone is so pleased with it, just because microsoft finally started fixing the bugs. Yet Mozilla releases a browsers with several new useful features and it is blamed to be nothing more then publicity.

Then we have voices around saying something like “how could a modern browser not pass an ACID2 test?”, forgetting that only a few browsers on the market already are (Opera, Safari among others). We have to wait just something like 9-10 months for a new release which as was promised will pass the test. Its aint nothing in compare to those 5 years, passed since the last release of Internet Explorer…

Yeah, I am ranting … =O)

Just in the current “trends” of the web, mozilla, after long testing, has released a new version of firefox. It seems, that everyone is going 2.0 (my work’s application, skype and even “web”), so probably mozilla decided to follow it … just kidding … =OP. Also a week ago, after 5 long years we have finally enjoyed getting a better version of internet explorer 7 (waiting for Safari 3.0 and Opera 9.1 to compare them all). There are pretty exciting times around ! A lot of work and testing - i like it this way =O)

I have to confess that i was pretty skeptical about this new release, cause it seemed to me, that increasing the 0.5 of a number was not really justificated, in the practical terms - boy i was wrong… From the marketing point of view it was a very well planned step - a big number difference, 1 week after IE7 release to help to compare the browsers and to make some news. =O) Well it is already making a lot of news, with 3 or more slashdot postings in just a one or two days… Well done, marketing !

• Stability and Speed - from the very first moment are the things to notice. Much less memory, better garbage collection, Lightning bolt startup. Amazing !
• Dictionary - fantastic !!! even while writing this article i was using it. Extremely useful and very well implemented
• Improved usability - no doubt, good job and well done. I am still analyzing some of the improvements, but with no doubt some things were really necessary. Addons, Options, Tabs all deserving a very good notes
• Visual Redesign - very nice, good icons, a kind of a “modern silver” look - not really much to write about =O)
• Anti-fishing - every home user favorite and following the trends of the market( see IE7 Opera and Safari )

From the things i am going to try out tomorrow are:

• Feeds
• Javascript 1.7 - having a lot of interest in it - this little =O) is going to be viewed with a lot of care in the following days
• Session Restore - never tried plugins for elder firefox version, but going to try it out
• SVG text - sounds good, i am a fan of SVG … Was badly disappointed that IE7 has no support for it
• Client-side session and persistent storage - sounds exciting

A big bow once again to Mozilla developers, you have made a beautiful job !

Now it is the time to start the adoptation of the IE7, good or bad, true or false, we have the announcement that it should arrive this month, October, via updates to the millions of the computres with Windows XP SP2. If this anouncement is true, then starting from November the 7th Explorer is going to be a serious issue to consider, when creating a website.

Microsoft has given us enough time and information to begin the transition, so there are not much excuses, so lets get it started. I have allready started changing several things for adopting the “hacks” to be separated and included as an external IE conditioned stylesheet. I know that some of the work i did before, especially one site that i made at the beginning of the year, is going to have troubles displaying correctly in IE7 without some serious adoptations.

I have to confess that i am pretty excited about the fact, that finally some changes are going to happend, as well as to see the process of the conversion from the IE6 (to firefox, opera and IE7, i hope). So for me it is for sure going to be the month of adopting the websites to be compatible with Internet Explorer 7.

I think that it is becoming easier to make websites… It reminds me now about the end of the 90’s with the world-famous browser’s war between IE vs Netscape, but right now its becoming more webstandards compliant browsers vs IE.

What am i writing about ? In the sense of creating 2 versions of the same page: one - for standards compliant browsers and the other one for everyone’s bashing favourite - IE. In the old days people were doing 2 versions for Netscape and IE, and as of now we just have changed Netscape (which is powered by both Gecko and Trident) for the standards compiant browsers. With all the hacks that one have to use to adapt a design model for IE i do not hesitate to call it “a different version of the website”, though it largely depends on the design and its implementation. In the case of table-based design not much things needed to be changed especially for the IE, though if we are talking about fluid tableless design - the things are a bit complicated.

With the introduction of the 7th version of the Internet Explorer, it seems that some things are going to be easier, there are a lot of bug-fixes to see in the 1st RC of the Explorer, this way i have allready started to adapt the websites i am making (and have made) to include its support as early as now. No, its still far from being perfect, but i am considering it a nice step into the future, but it is turning the state of the 2 website versions of the into the 2.1 versions =O). By 0.1 version i consider including all those hacks and fixes that IE6 requires into the conditional commentary and separate CSS file, but its an important pass for decreasing the number of webdesigns per page which should happend exactly by the time IE6 is going to disappear from the website statistics.

Some days ago, Microsoft has announced, that the new IE7 is going to be “injected” via updates into the Windows XP Service Pack 2 systems.

I think that it is a very good and important move from microsoft. No doubt, that the most part of webdesigners are welcoming a new Internet Explorer with all the changes that it is going to bring (CSS, xHTML etc). The seventh version is going naturally and with the time replace the buggy IE6 and i believe that as soon as it is going to happend, as better for all of us. There are some pages over the net (mostly technical) which are allready showing between 0.5% and 1.1% percentage of their traffic belonging to the seventh version of the Internet Explorer, so even with the last beta3 version it is allready on the market, starting taking away the percentage from the sixth version. This all means that there is no point of ignoring it and we better start adapting our sites to the latest microsoft product.

No, i dont think that the IE6 is going to disappear in the next couple of years completely (No upgrade for anything bellow WinXP SP2 - that includes WinXP SP1, Win2000 etc), but i would say that if microsoft is going to deliver a Windows Vista in the beginning of the next year, then in about a year we are going to deal with a respectable percentage of the IE7 browsers.

It makes me happy to think that the progress is finally coming to the mainstream part of the Windows platform. =O)