Monday, October 03, 2005
Looking at webpages
You may have noticed a little warning on the left sidebar titled "Viewing Problems?" The problem may be the way you are looking at the Internet.
Most PCs come bundled with software called Internet Explorer (IE). Its icon is a little blue "e". When you click it you can look at webpages et al. Unfortunately there are dozens of problems with IE...too numerous to mention here. But one issue does effect this very site! [shock] [gasp].
Every browser attempts to make sense of a computer language called HTML ("how to make love"). The standard HTML can be found at the w3 website (here). IE doesn't comply to these standards, so pages can become distorted, like the centralising of text that often happens on this site.
I suggest using the browser called Firefox. It's open-source, more secure and features tabbed browsing, which saves a lot of time! It's a much smaller program than IE, so it loads quicker. You can add whatever functionality you want by adding 'extensions' which are easy to install. Find out more/download Firefox from here.
It's a good browser. It'll stop websites looking ugly -- except those ones that the developer has designed to only work in IE.
Break the cycle. Switch today.
3 Comments:
But now as Firefox gets more popular, the number of security updates for it just shot through the roof.
The more popular some bit of software it, the more exploits will appear against it :(
I think it will always be an ever escalating arms race. Even the smug Mac and Linux users amongst us are living on borrowed time...
If you're using Windows XP, you can consider using the RUNAS command to run your web browser under a Guest account. That adds an extra layer of safety so that the damage gets sandboxed when it's hacked.
As always I enjoy giving the monopoly a run for their money.
I use Firefox myself as I like its features, but my point was making sure people are not lulled into a false sense of security simply by changing browsers.