Could this be the answer to the prayers of web developers fed up with trying to accommodate IE 6's CSS rendering quirks and bugs? A way to hide your stylesheet from Internet Explorer 6. We have been able to hide styles from older browsers such as IE 4 and Netscape using the @import declaration (and IE 5 using the filter /**/), but this won't work for ... Read full entry

Does the secret of Microsoft's domination of the web browser market lie in its use of Internet Explorer's user agent string? And so Microsoft made their own web browser, which they called Internet Explorer, hoping for it to be a "Netscape Killer". And Internet Explorer supported frames, and yet was not Mozilla, and so was not given frames. And Microsoft grew impatient, and did not wish to wait for ... Read full entry

While it's early days yet, a quick look at browser usage stats shows Google's Chrome browser appears to have dented Firefox market share rather than that of Internet Explorer. Industry feeling is Chrome was intended to compete with the Microsoft browser, rather than Firefox or Opera, et al. You live by the early adopters, you die by the early adopters?

I have a confession to make. I have not yet downloaded and installed Google's Chrome browser. Shame on me. I've been tuning into the excited babble coming out of various discussions forums and Twitter in recent days, but I still can't motivate myself to "make the switch". I realise that this stance places my reputation as an "early adopter", such that it is, on the line, but my question is ... Read full entry

Jeffrey Zeldman asks: how will the Google browser, Chrome, compete with other, better established alternatives? In other words, how will web users be enticed to make the switch to Chrome? By offering a fast and responsive user experience? Or possibly some yet to be seen bells and whistles that can only be brought about by way of proprietary technology? To compete with Microsoft, the new browser must offer what other ... Read full entry

An explanation of the so-called "white screen of death", something I see a bit of while logged in to Facebook, to name one example. Especially common to websites, or applications, that are PHP powered... which, hmm, includes disassociated. A web application powered by the scripting language PHP will display an empty white page in the browser under certain conditions. If the PHP installation suppresses ... Read full entry

Web application producer 37signals will shortly cease offering support for legacy browser Internet Explorer 6. That's certainly one way to get people to try something just a little bit newer. The Internet Explorer 6 browser was released back in 2001, and Internet Explorer 7, the replacement, was released nearly two years ago in 2006. Modern web browsers such as IE 7, Firefox, and Safari provide significantly better online ... Read full entry

Despite being downloaded in record breaking numbers on Download Day, not everyone is overjoyed with the latest release of Firefox. Andrew Brown for one has decided to adopt the latest Opera browser as his default, and draws some interesting distinctions between open and closed source software development when comparing the browsers. The contrast between Opera and Firefox is an interesting example of the contrasting strengths of open and closed ... Read full entry

Here's an idea to make everyone's computers a little more secure, assign web browsers a use-by-date, in the same way as food, and other perishable goods, are. Security researchers have suggested that like food, browsers should have a best-before or expiry date. This comes after revealing that 637 million internet users are surfing with outdated and unpatched browsers, which puts them at risk from web-based attacks. This is an area ... Read full entry

Aside from the minor matter that Internet Explorer is installed, by default, on 90 per cent (or some such figure) of PCs worldwide, much of the reporting I saw on Download Day, and the release of Firefox 3, saw IE relegated to the sidelines. It's faster than Microsoft Internet Explorer, but it’s not the fastest browser in the world - depending on who you ask, ... Read full entry