Think Firefox 3 is fast? Try Firefox Minefield

A colleague today showed me a cool, new browser that he's been using to browse the web at blisteringly fast speeds. The browser? Minefield. The author of the code?

Mozilla.

Yes, that same Mozilla that makes the Firefox browser. Minefield is, in fact, a way to glimpse into the future of Firefox, as it's a pre-release/alpha version of the Firefox browser.

After spending some time with Minefield, one thing is clear: the future of Firefox is fast. Lightning fast.

How fast? Some claim that it has the fastest javascript engine on the planet, which means it leaves Google's Chrome browser in the dust. In my own unscientific tests, I'd say that this assertion is correct. Ars Technica pegs Minefield as 10 percent faster than Chrome.

You can download the latest nightly build for Mac OS X, Linux, or Windows, but be warned: it's alpha code. While a quick scan of the Web shows few complaints as to stability, Minefield may not be for you. It doesn't support some of my favorite Firefox extensions (like Adblock Plus), but it actually has surprisingly good support for extensions, given that it's a fast-moving project.

Feeling brave? Or simply feeling like your browser is too slow? Give Minefield a try. It's a separate install so it won't affect an existing Firefox install. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Article source: CNET

Opera: Just 4.13% of Web’s Code is Valid

A new study from Opera finds that the overwhelming majority of web sites don’t adequately support web standards. The good news is that compared to previous studies, more web sites are valid today than they were in previous years. The bad news is that just 4.13% of the URLs included in the studies sample size — which was over 3.5 million web pages — passed the W3C validator.

The results came from Opera’s “Metadata Analysis and Mining Application” (MAMA), a search engine that “indexes the markup, style, scripting and the technology used while creating Web pages.” Opera engineers and data miners can then ask the search engine questions like, “how many sites use CSS?” (the answer is 80.4%) or, “how many markup errors does the average site have?” (it’s 47).

Opera is vague about what they’ll do with this tool, other than continue to analyze the data and post additional finding, but a press release hints at the possibility of making it publicly available to web developers.

“MAMA will help Web developers find examples of usage of features and functions, look at trends and gather data to justify technology to their clients or managers,” wrote Opera. “This will also encourage standards bodies to take into account developers’ suggestions about what is happening on the Web in reality and will eventually raise the quality and interoperability of specifications, the Web and browsers.”

Ars Technica, which posted an analysis of the findings today, also seems to think that the search tool Opera writes about will be made public.

The MAMA study findings released today, also revealed that ~50% of pages sporting “W3C Valid” buttons aren’t actually valid. The reason, surmises Opera, is that keeping pages valid is not easy for many developers, and for many keeping up with evolving standards is difficult. The key takeaway, says Opera, “is that people are BAD at this ‘HTML thing.’ Improper tag nesting is rampant, and misspelled or misplaced element and attribute names happen all the time. It is very easy to make silly, casual mistakes — we all make them.”

One problem, though, is that the tools people are using to create web pages also turn out ugly, invalid code. MAMA also looked at validation as it related to web page editors and content management systems, and found that with the exception of Apple’s iWeb — for which an impressive 81.91% of URLs pass validation — the results were generally dismal. Just 0.55% of pages made with Microsoft Frontpage are valid, according to MAMA, just 3.44% for Adobe Dreamweaver.

For content management systems, the results weren’t much better. Wordpress pages were valid just 9.0% of the time, just 12.74% for Typo, and 6.45% for Joomla. Google’s Blogger fared the worst, with only a paltry 0.30% of URLs passing validation.

There is a lot of interesting information to dig through in the full results and Opera is promising to release more results as part of a planned “long, multi-part saga.”

article source: Sitepoint

Mozilla Firefox Going Mobile

For some time now, alongside Opera and even Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox has been one of the favorite Internet browsers used on most PCs. Unfortunately, until now, only Internet Explorer and Opera could be used on mobile phones, while Firefox remained available for PCs alone. So here is the good news for all Firefox fans: Mitchell Baker has revealed the long-term goals for Firefox, and they're aiming to have a proper mobile product out by 2010.

Also, Mike Schroepfer wrote on his blog that work on it was underway, so it wouldn’t be long until users were able to run Firefox on their mobiles. What we have been able to find out is that Mozilla is adding mobile devices to the list of “first-class” development platforms, and Mobile Firefox will be able to run Firefox extensions on mobiles, and allow third party development via XUL.

In the meanwhile, the Minimo will stop being developed, and Mobile Firefox will ship after Firefox 3. Mozilla didn't pick any platforms yet, so whether users will be able to run Firefox on Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian or other platforms is still uncertain. One thing is sure though and that is that it won't run on iPhone, since it's locked.

However, we can't help but wonder why Mozilla entered so late in the mobile world, especially since, until now, Opera and Internet Explorer have already grabbed almost 100% of the market, which means that space for Mobile Firefox is a bit tight.

Anyway, nothing is impossible, and sudden overturns are known to happen quite often. Just think about the fact that Nokia is working on installing Linux on its MID instead of Symbian, which it owns in a proportion of 47.9%. So, if Mozilla comes up with a reliable mobile version of Firefox, this might just become the default Internet browser in upcoming mobiles in the near future. Until then, Mozilla still has a long way to go, so only time will tell about that last statement.

From Softpedia News

Adding a Favicon or Favorites Icon

Have you ever noticed the little icon that shows up in your bookmarks and in the tab display of some Web browsers? That is called the favorites icon or favicon.
First Create Your Image

Using a graphics program, create an image that is 16 x 16 pixels. This is small, so try out many different versions until you create the image that will work for your site.

Save the image as a GIF or BMP file with 256 colors or less. Icon files, like Web images, have to display on computer monitors, so they can't reliably display millions of colors. However, since an icon file is for Windows displays only, it can be 256 colors, rather than the Web standard 216.
Converting it to an Icon

Once you have an acceptable image, you need to convert it to the icon format. There are many icon editors available, and Sue Chastain, the Graphics Software Guide, has a list of some good ones. I used IconForge by CursorArts. Be sure to save the file as favicon.ico.
Publishing the Icon

It is simple to publish the icon, simply upload it to the same directory as the file you want bookmarked. For example, for this page on the HTML site at About, I would place it at
http://webdesign.about.com/library/weekly/favicon.ico

You can also put a different icon on every page of your site (if you like), or point to one icon in many folders. To do this, you add a link reference to the head of every HTML document that you want the favorite icon associated with. e.g.[blockquote] [/blockquote]

Article Source: http://webdesign.about.com/od/advancedtutorials/a/aa070300a.htm