Archive for January 2010
Firefox 3.6 released
I downloaded this latest version and I can say that so far I am happy with and I can see some of the improvements on the pages that I use the most.
One of the easiest to spot features is Personas. I think I quite like how easy it is to change from one Persona to the next without any restarting the browser required. I think its good to add a bit of colour to the browser.
This new release also comes protection for out of date plugins and so if a plugin is out of date you get a warning. You no longer need to go to a special page to check whether plugins are current or not.
From a developer perspective its good to see Firefox supporting new CSS attributes. This version will now support attributes such as gradients, background sizing, and pointer events.
I also think that the support for new DOM and HTML5 specifications including the Drag & Drop API and the File API is great.
One more new feature is faster Javascript rendering and faster startup time.
There are also some other small niceties like when you click a link in a page, it opens the new tab next to the originating tab and not place it as the last tab.
Its good to see these improvements as Firefox continue to get better and better with every minor release.
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Warning over IE use
According to the BBC, German and French governments have warned users to use alternative browsers instead of using IE to protect security.
But it seems that Microsoft thinks that this problem only affects users using IE6. In France the warning covers all versions of the browsers and not just IE6.
Although this problem may affect all versions of IE, I don't know why people are still using IE6 when IE8 has been available for some time now.
Sometime last year I got moved from IE7 to IE8 through a Windows update and I don't know why the same cannot be done for IE6 - move IE6 straight to IE8.
Getting rid of IE6 altogether will make life a whole lot easier for developers because its far much easier to deal with IE8 than with IE6 insofar as styling is concerned.
I hope Microsoft will issue whatever patch is necessary for this security threat but long term I think use of IE6 should be stopped.
