Showing posts with label Internet Explorer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet Explorer. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

The URI schemes in Browsers

You must be very familiar with the page :

about:blank

So what do you think this " about: " is??? A protocol?? A URL?? Nopes... Actually its one of the URI Schemes(Uniform Resource Identifier).

Here are some more about about:

Browser : FIREFOX

about: See the info about firefox... (Same as clicking on Help>About Mozilla Firefox)
about:blank A beautiful white backgroung with the fox in pure white ashes... (some people call this as a blank page)
about:mozilla Verse from The Book Of Mozilla... Read it and you'll see.
about:plugins See info about all installed plugins
about:about Lists all the about: addresses. (Not in FF3 as far as I know)
about:logo See the Firefox Logo
about:cache One of my favourites... It lists the cache entries on disk and memory...
The reason it is my fave is because through this I can Download any song/video from ANY site... (Follow this link to read more)
  DOWNLOAD MUSIC/VIDEOS
about:license/about:licence See the Official Mozilla Public License (Licence in British English).
about:config The most useful about:, It lets you configure every inch in firefox... But just don't change anything without thought... It may crash the Browser.
about:blocked Shows you the page which comes up if FF considers a Web Forgery/ Attack site... But the about:blocked page itselt is harmless...
about:robots Added in FF3, try it yourself
about:credits See the FULL credits... See what a big thing this fox is...

Browser : OPERA

Most of the Firefox's URI Schemes are also supported in Opera, but you'll have to replace the about: with opera:

Like :

opera:plugins

One exception is about:blank which is universal.

Browser : IE7

about:tabs shows information about Tabbed browsing (which was MS added in IE7 for the first time)

about:NoAddons displayes list of disabled addons...

There are many more... Try searching for them yourself...

Monday, June 09, 2008

Firefox 3 RC2... One Step Closer

Mozilla has made the Release Candidate 2 of Firefox available to download. This RC sees over 40 bugs fixed which surfaced in RC1 (which was very stable in itself). By doing this, Mozilla further ensure that the end product is a high quality product, which will attract more users.

Firefox is much more faster, secure, reliable... there's malware protection, a web forgery protection page, checks for add-ons and plugins, protection against cross-site attacks, and the ability to see information about a particular web site simply by clicking on its icon in the location bar, and an intelligent "Most Visited" button. Firefox's JavaScript engine has been boosted significantly, and memory leaks are supposed to be tightened up. User data (such as bookmarks, cookies, and preferences) are stored in a more secure database format so that, even if the browser crashes (which is becoming rarer with every update) they'll be protected. Plus, a whole host of features have been added which are supposed to make FF3 easier to use, including better password management, simplified add-on installation, full page zooming, tab scrolling, and better integration with Windows and Mac.

All-in-all, Firefox is much better than IE7, even IE8 beta, which I checked out a month or so ago. And even slightly better than Apple's Safari. It's ease of installation and use, combined with the myriad options provided by add-ons and extensions make it the best choice on the net. I use firefox nearly all the time (unless there's a site which says it just won't work if I don't use IE 5.5 or better... dumb demand), and the memory footprint, though not low, is satisfying, as FF uses a greatly improved memory allocation technique, which makes it's memory footprint stable. Even multiple tabs (10 or above) don't hog too much memory even on my lowly 384 MB RAM-system.

Though FF isn't the most-used browser (in fact many people haven't even heard of it), there is no particular reason for it to stay so. I think Firefox may soon take over the majority of the Browser market.
I still remember when I first used Firefox (maybe it was 1.5 or something), it had an option like Rander the Page as viewed in IE/Opera... And now, in IE8 beta, there was an option to Render the page as viewed in Firefox!!! Changes are in the air...