browsers

R.I.P. Netscape Navigator

RIP Netscape Navigator

Looks like it’s the end of the line for the Netscape web browser. Security patches for the latest version will continue to be released until February 1, 2008. After that, there will be no more product support for Navigator 9 or any previous version. What’s interesting to note is that, the Netscape engineering team even tried to create a skinned version of FireFox with a few extensions installed, and even that didn’t help them gain any market share. It’s been a very long time since I used Netscape Navigator but for the longest time, it was the preferred browser of choice for my mom, mostly because of Composer.

Honestly, I think what Netscape is doing makes complete sense. Stop wasting time with Navigator and invest those engineering dollars into the Mozilla foundation. Now Netscape can focus on other things such as Propeller.

At any rate, R.I.P. Netscape Navigator.

AOL’s focus on transitioning to an ad-supported web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be. Given AOL’s current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically-acclaimed products, we feel it’s the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reins fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.

Click here to read Netscape’s death certificate. Also read the comments that go along with the article, for once, there is an interesting conversation that takes place.

Mozilla Takes A Page Out Of MS Book

FireFox LogoIt wasn’t too long ago that FireFox 2.0.0.10 was released to the public. Now, just a few short days later, Mozilla releases 2.0.0.11 to what can only be described as (A Patch To Fix A Patch) I’ve spent some time browsing around to try and figure out what it is they changed and I simply can’t find it.

What’s New in Firefox 2.0.0.11

Release Date: November 30, 2007
Stability Update: This release corrects a problem that was found in the previous release, Firefox 2.0.0.10.
Does anybody know what caused 2.0.0.10 to be replaced by 2.0.0.11? You start doing things like this, and people begin to lose faith in your product real fast.

Stack Overflows Under Control

While listening to the Browns game today, I tried my hand at figuring out the stack overflow errors that were being generated by the MyAvatars plugin. No matter what I tried, the damn thing kept spitting out those errors. I tried deleting bits and pieces of the code, but each time I did so, the Gravatar function didn’t work or some part of the plugin would ruin the page.

So I opted to try out a few other Gravatar based plugins. The ones I tried are as follows:

The first one is more of a programmer’s type plugin. Unless you know how the code works with the various ARRAYS and configurable strings, you’ll have a hard time getting the block of code correct. The next two didn’t work out exactly as I wanted either. I also tried Doug’s EasyGravatars plugin. EasyGravatars worked well, except that it was hard to place it where I wanted in conjunction with everything else I have in comments.php. So after tinkering all day with this crap, I finally settled on something called MBLA.

MBLA stands for MyBlogLogAvatars. This is a newer version of the MyAvatars code base which hasn’t been updatd for over a year.

Use avatars from services like Gravatar and MyBlogLog in your posts, comments and pingbacks. Remember to change options at Options -> MBLA. By Jan Olsen.

After a bit of configuring, I’ve finally managed to display the Gravatar for anyone that has one. If you don’t have a Gravatar assigned to your email address you use to comment on the blog, head to http://www.gravatar.com and make one. It’s quick, easy and free. I’m gonna support Gravatars at the very least. Not sure about MyBlogLog avatars.

FireFox 2.0.0.9 Released

FireFoxLogoI feel like I’m the last to know about these software releases. Maybe I should look into my feed reader a little more often. At any rate, FireFox has released version 2.0.0.9 of it’s popular browser software. This version is in response to the unusual amount of large regressions that occurred in the previous version.

This latest release fixes these particular issues:

  • Bug 400406 – Firefox will ignore the “clear” CSS property when used beneath a box that is using the “float” property. There is a temporary workaround JS/CSS code available for web developers with affected layouts.
  • Bug 400467 – Windows Vista users will get “Java not found” or “Java not working” errors when trying to load Java applets after updating. To fix this, users can right-click the Firefox icon and “Run as administrator”, then browse to a page with a Java applet — doing this once will fix the problem and permanently restore Java functionality.
  • Bug 396695 – Add-ons are disabled after updating. Users can fix this problem by opening their profile folder and removing three files (extensions.rdf, extensions.ini and extensions.cache)
  • Bug 400421 – Removing a single area element from an image map will cause the entire map to disappear. There is no workaround available at this time.
  • Bug 400735 – Some Windows users may experience crashes at startup. There is no workaround available at this time.

I’m still running on FireFox 2.0.0.7 and have yet to receive an automatic update notification. I’ll continue to wait and see if 2.0.0.9 actually fixes more than it breaks. Let me know how your upgrade experience goes please!