New Firefox and Opera Browsers Have Arrived

Regular readers will know how much I detest Internet Explorer. Unfortunately it is still the most-used browser simply because it exists on all Windows machines. Two of the biggest competitors have released new versions of their browsers this week and it is time you gave both of them a long look. Hey, they are free, so it doesn't cost you anything to get them!

Those of you who give the new browsers a try will find that they are faster, use less memory, have more features and are a much lower security risk than Internet Explorer. They also allow you to easily transfer your list of Favorites so there is really no downside at all to switching.

Opera 9.5 is considered a minor upgrade from Opera 9.2. The Opera folks claim that the new version is more than twice as fast at rendering HTML and JavaScript over the previous version. That's a huge jump! Downloading is also faster with the integrated BitTorrent distribution protocol. Sure there are tabs. You can block content you don't want. It handles newsfeeds. And did I mention it was free?

Firefox 3 was just released today and the folks from Mozilla are trying to set a world record for most downloads in a day. I will be switching to Firefox 3 as soon as the final version is available (I'm writing this a few hours before it is available for download). What will you find? It will be even more secure than Firefox 2.0. It does a better job of managing passwords and add-ons. Downloads can be resumed. Even easier to bookmark and organize your favorite pages. Throw in the much faster performance and much less memory used and you have quite a few new features. Oh yea, and it is free too! You might also be able to say you were involved in setting a world record.

Users who are developing for the Web will definitely want to download both new browsers so that they can test their sites in these new environments. The rest of you should want to download at least one of them because they are just plain better browsers than Internet Explorer. For most users it will take less than five minutes to download, install and convert your favorites. Give them a try, I think you'll like them!

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Internet Explorer, How Do I Hate Thee?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the problems that Internet Explorer caused with form filling. Today there is yet another incompatibility. Several people have reported a large white area at the top of pages when they print. This white area covers content and it extremely annoying.

This white area is where the Flash drop-down menus on our site would appear if they were dropped down. Unfortunately Internet Explorer is just flat out misinterpreting the data when it prints! If any other browser is used to view and print the site, the error doesn't occur.

Since Microsoft has the largest market share (and shrinking) for browsers, they have made their own rules for Web site coding. Unfortunately there are standards and Microsoft doesn't follow them. So incompatibilities like this are inevitable.

This is why I beg users to use a different browser. My suggestion is Firefox. It is faster, safer and has more features than Internet Explorer. You can still have Internet Explorer on your system. Firefox is free. Your "favorites" can be transferred. So there are absolutely no downsides. Please take the five minutes it takes to install Firefox if you don't already have it installed. You will certainly enjoy your browsing experience more than you do now!

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Form Filling and Internet Explorer Don't Mix

I've gotten a few e-mails in the past few weeks from users saying they couldn't fill out forms on the unleash.com or coreldrawunleashed.com Web site. We certainly know there is an issue for some users and I'll try to explain when the problem happens and several ways to work around the problem. We have tried to find a solution for the problem and would also be thrilled if anyone has a suggestion that would fix it.

First, the problem only occurs if you use Internet Explorer. If you use Firefox, Opera, Safari or pretty much any other browser you won't have any problems at all. I'm certainly a huge fan of Firefox. In my opinion it is much faster and more secure than Internet Explorer. It is my primary browser and I use it well over 90% of the time. So if you have the ability to use Firefox, it would help make your browsing experience better and this issue wouldn't be a problem.

I know that not everyone can or will switch browsers. Thus I have to suggest some workarounds. The problem is that users have trouble clicking on the form fields and inserting their cursor. We find that the form fields are indeed clickable, it is just that the clickable area is very small. Move your cursor to the top edge of the form field and it should change the cursor to indicate you can click. Once you've clicked in the first field, fill out the information and tab to the next field.

Another workaround is just to use the Tab key. It will Tab through all of the elements on the page. Don't be surprised if it takes 15 or more clicks to get to the first form field.

Again, we realize this is a bit of a hassle. We have spent hours researching the problem and testing potential solutions. None of them have worked so far. Since the problem only occurs in Internet Explorer and not in other browsers, we can only guess that there is a non-standard behavior in Internet Explorer causing the problem. Internet Explorer is full of non-standard behaviors so this wouldn't be a bit surprising. If that is the case, we hope Microsoft will get it fixed in the next release of Internet Explorer. If you have a solution that would fix the problem, please post a comment and let us know. We'll get the site fixed as soon as possible.

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