Rapid Web Development and Testing with Mozilla Firefox

Although many of you won’t be a traditional “Web Developer” because you are using Word Press to develop your site and manage content- if you want to learn more about the code underlying a site- Firefox has development tools.
One of the great things about Firefox is that it’s modular. You can add extensions easily to do all kinds of things.
I couldn’t live without the Autofill extension or the Sage RSS reader- but, if you are interested in developing web sites- there are a ton of other useful tools- all covered in the above link to a presentation.

For the badly coded sites that require Internet Explorer- there are a couple of  extensions that can make viewing IE specific pages in Firefox simple:

• IE Tab allows you to launch the page you are visiting in IE in a new Firefox tab.
• IE View launches the current page in IE.

You can also load other search sites into your “google” window in the toolbar- a few that I can’t live without are Dictionary and Wikipedia- although the Urban Dictionary is fun and occasionally useful.

Adding extensions is often a simple one-click process- and then restarting Firefox- no download and install. The number of extensions is growing every day- but there are hundreds that are available- and one may help you do just what you need.

Microsoft Delays IE’s ActiveX D-Day

As if people don’t need another reason to switch to Open Source software solutions- Microsoft is now making their new browser require custom authoring so that it can run their own custom Active X controls. Internet Explorer is already known as “Microsoft Exploder” by coders who care to adhere to W3C standards- and now it may be even worse- not working with it’s own proprietary standard.
While it may be cheaper for Microsoft not to settle the lawsuit- for all the companies that trusted Microsoft to provide a platform for their business model- that now have to pay their developers to re-vamp existing work- this is an expensive proposition.

Having data standards that work on all platforms (Mac, Linux and Windows) is critical- why does Microsoft keep marching to their own drummer? Because they can. We test all sites on multiple operating systems- with multiple browsers- if they are W3C compliant- then they are good to go.

It’s time for a mass revolt against IE. Download Firefox today- and tell your friends. Friends don’t let friends use Microsoft Explorer.

Hackers Use BBC News as IE Attack Lure

The link above is to an article about another security flaw in the Microsoft web browser. Yet another reason to use Firefox– and get a Macintosh. It’s bad enough that Internet Explorer doesn’t understand RSS as it’s supplied now, and that it doesn’t follow W3C standards- it’s a portal for viruses and problems.

You can have both browsers on your computer- use Firefox as your main browser- and only if Firefox won’t work with a site- switch to IE.