Recently in Web Browsers Category

I downloaded greenborder this evening as it sounds like a good tool - the catchy name is because each browser/directory that is protected by the software has a green border around the window - a nice simple, catchy name. It is worth architecture page gives a little more information on what it does, although I'm not really sure how you can virtualise a web browser. Anyway, the software is incompatible with encryption, Windows One Care, needs a slight hack to work with firefox and needs some funky registry permission changes in some circumstances.
Sorry guys if I sound like I'm bashing the product without trying it, but some of the marketing details need to be ironed out before I'm going to try it out.

Now this is the only kind of opera that I like - Opera 8.02 is available with a free registration for today only where you need to provide an email address. As you might expect this web site is incredibly slow at responding.
Actually, to save the initial loading of the screen, go to http://my.opera.com/community/party/reg.dml?email=your.email%40domain.com replacing your email address and the @ with the %40
Thanks Download squad

Follow the simple instructions at Jon Galloways page to run ie7 without installing it. I'm off to see what all the fuss is about......
Update The screenshot below shows it running on the computer and its not actually too bad apart from the tabs being in the wrong place and a confusing message about popups.

Scriptx has an activex control you can use to enable you to automatically print pages but NOT display the dialog box. Might be handy in a kiosk environment where you don't want users fiddling with the print settings....actually make that ALL environments :-)

After reading a blog entry on Fiddler, Internet Explorer Developer Center: Fiddler PowerToy - Part 1: HTTP Debugging gives a rundown on how to use this proxy tool to troubleshoot and edit web traffic. Might be useful in debugging my web pages at work.

Not that I'm up to anything dodgy but artisolve's anonymous proxy looks quite handy.

Looks like I'm not the only one to have the problem where ie shows large fonts and screws up the backgrounds of webpages. There are several posts in google on this, (example) dating back 2 years or more but i've not found a fix yet .
Here's google and msn. The pictures are large as I don't have a decent editor on the machine.

One of the blokes at work called me over with a problem where clicking on a link in IE with a target="_blank" didn't open a new window in his webpage he was developing. The browser seemed to redraw itself/flicker (the *whole* browser as opposed to the web page content) but nothing else happened. Then Microsoft support article 281679 points to a article a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281679/EN-US/">You cannot open a new Internet Explorer window or nothing occurs after you click a link. I followed the instructions and it all started working again after reregistering shdocvw.dll. No idea why this had failed to work in the first place, but he was using our customised version of ie, which claims can be the culprit. However it works ok on other machines on our network.

Web design postcards | Home page is a good site with postcards you can send to people who break the unwritten rules of website design. Thanks Daisy

I sent an email to one site after mentioning that a link which was coded as <a href="http:\\www.sitename.co.uk"> didn't work. After the initial response of "it works on my pc" I was told that 98% of browser users are Internet Explorer, which accepts the slashes in the wrong direction. Fortunately they changed the link. What they don't understand is that the original code is plain and simply wrong, a basic bit of code that is almost the first thing you learn when coding html - but then again if you code a web page using frontpage........

Fiddler looks like a nice proxy server that lets you debug http traffic. Will be useful to try and troubleshoot web applications such as getting my bookmarklet from geocaching to take me to the correct streetmap.co.uk webpage.

BugMeNot has a great bookmarklet that will popup a list of user supplied usernames and passwords for sites such as the NewYorkTimes and the Washington Post so you don't have to go through their (pointless) registration process. I wouldn't try this on sites where you give your credit card details out though!

Installed the latest patch for IE which breaks the http://username:password@sitename protocol. The interesting thing is that they break it in more than just the browser. Now if you run the above url from the start/run menu or from the quick launch address bar, the system strips off the username:password@ of the url and takes you direct to the main site. This way it breaks Firebird/Firefox which would work with the username:password option and was not vulnerable to the spoofing flaw. I guess they had to do it this way because of all the intergration with the OS that IE does not do (end sarcasm) Apart from that its not that big a deal anyway. It doesn't break wget though (which is a relief as that would break a lot of my scripts)

Yes I know some people might ask why you would want multiple Internet Explorer versions but it is useful when testing webpages for compatibility. More information also at A Whole Lotta Nothing

With the combination of at least 6 browsers that I need my bookmarks kept in sync, NetSignet might do the trick - I'll play with it later.

Yes I know its not *my* browser of choice anymore, but it is what corporate users need to use and rather than download the files each time I wanted to save a copy to my hard disk. Unfortunately this option is not available from the main Microsoft web site but following the instructions at ZenVendor.com did the trick.

now that Mozdev is back I downloaded the following extensions (in extended entry). I've yet to try all of them, but most of them look pretty useful for my everyday browser/developer work. Its also worth installing in the profile directory if prompted, that way they stay installed when firebird is upgraded and I don't have to repeat this process again. Incidentally the extensions are now at extensionroom.mozdev.org

I downloaded the latest nightly build of Firebird yesterday as it kept nagging me that the version I was using was more than 2 weeks old (Although nagging after 2 weeks is a bit much!). Naturally after installing it, all (or most) of the extensions that I had downloaded for the previous version were no longer working (as I had moved the directory to another name). The annoying thing is that the extension download page is broken and says there are no extensions available - mainly because they point to part of mozdev which is unavailable at the moment. I'll have to see if I can work out how to migrate the already downloaded extensions onto the new browser (as its a pain having to download each time). It's certainly not something you would want to do on a dialup connection.
Mozdev.org is down, and has been since Friday.
Update 2To install from a local download, just point to the directory within the address bar such as file:///c:/installs/mozilla