Joseph - 2011-05-21 22:21:44
Interesting article, I'll have to try the new Firefox 4...
But on my older laptop (circa 2000) Mozilla's Firefox 3.5 is like a Brontosaurus out of water...
point 1: can't contend with this, Firefox has Opera beat.
point 2: I haven't tried the Firefox extensions, as it was slow enough already. Now with a new computer and a new Firefox...
Opera has a built in error-console that shows HTML errors (and all others). Don't know if it compares, but I do recall it showing missing tags. But as it will send the source to my editor (tsWebEditor) which highlights it the way --I-- like it, AND has a 'tidy' feature that validates the HTML, I don't use the browser's features.
point 3: the newest release of Opera, and maybe older ones, have this button as an option, built in, no extension necessary.
point 4: with Opera, you simply 'refresh' the page, and all images, CSS & JS files, etc are re-loaded. Or am I missing something here? What circumstances require a completely emptied cache?
point 5: you can switch user agent, from the toolbar, but only to limited browsers. You can't define your own agent string. I'll keep that in mind about Firefox if I ever need it, but I don't know how a browser would test my Feedburner checking code, I'd just run it from my developmental server. Or am I missing something again?
point 6: I keep my 'enable JS' and 'enable cookies' buttons in my Opera status bar at the page bottom.
point 7: I think Opera asks you if you want to resend the POSTed info.
point 8: on older versions of Opera, Flash crashed often, also. I blame the Flash people, not the browsers. But then I'm not an big fan of Apple and Adobe. When I installed Safari on my Windows system for developmental purposes, it ran through all my files on my hard drive and tied up my system for an hour. What it was doing snooping around my files, I can't say; I hope only looking for illegal copies of Apple's software. I won't be installing it on my new computer. Amazing how Apple sells computers built with 2-year-old processors and sells them for twice the cash...
point 9: haven't ever tired that. ever. on any browser. to my memory. but I'm a nerd that way.
point 10: I've sent several bug reports to Opera. They say simply use the forum for feedback. I've never used the forum.
The latest version of Opera seems to generate error-free pages, reading all the CSS correctly. Older versions had problems with absolutely positioned elements when their reference element was not static.
When I develop a site, Opera usually displays a page that either Firefox, IE, or webkit-based browsers choke on. I'll tweak the CSS to fix it with one, and another will choke. But Opera keeps on... usually.
The critical factor for me was using 'high contrast' on my Windows display. Most browsers screw this up, and make something unreadable, choosing black text, and leaving the background color to default, which I have set as black. Or put the green default text on the dark-blue window trim when displaying pop-up javascript alerts or login boxes, etc.
Over and over and over I stress to all front-end developers:
IF YOU SPECIFY A FOREGROUND COLOR, SPECIFY A BACKGROUND COLOR, and visa-versa. Leave nothing to chance, or use default colors in the default scheme.
Opera's browsers after 10.1 failed to handle 'high-contrast' properly, as they re-designed their interface. I'm giving up on 'high-contrast' with the new computer, because no developer (it seems except me) of any software, desktop or web-page, pays attention to the fact that not everyone uses black on white.
Green on black is SO much easier on your eyes, and uses less energy to power the monitor.
And editing code with a black background and multi-colored text is 1000 times better than a white background.
Gotta go ... Peace ya'll
