Tag Archives: Firefox

IE 8.1 will support Firefox extensions

Published Mar 31, 2009 | In Web Programming

Update: Well guys, it’s time to reveal that the following post was my entry to April fool’s day. This post has been a hit and atleast a handful of people believed it. So guys, happy April Fool’s day to everyone 🙂

Yes, you read it correctly. IE 8.1 (code named Eagle Eyes) is going to support Firefox extensions. Smashing Magazine has a screenshot to prove it. The first time I came to know about it, I got goosebumps. (Yes really)

If this is true (and I believe it is), then this is the final nail in Firefox’s coffin. The only reason why I continue to use Firefox is because of it’s extensions.
Firefox has become too bloated due to it’s monolithic architecture and had become a huge memory hog. I checked my task manager as I am writing this post and you get the proof. This is with just 5 tabs open.

The major advantage Firefox had over other browsers is it’s huge list of third-party addons. But it cannot rest on it for long. Unless Firefox solves the issue with memory leaks, and comes up with some cool innovation, they cannot retain their market share. Let’s see how Firefox overcomes this new threat from IE.

firefox-memory-leaks

In addition to supporting Firefox Addons, IE 8.1 also has other cool features like Multiple Browser Rendering Engine Options, Server-side code decompiler, Website Skins etc.

On a related note, even Google’s chrome is going to support third-party extentions. Matt cutts has a tutorial which explains that steps that you need to follow to create extentions for Chrome.

Posted in Web Programming | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

How to keep my Bookmarks in Sync?

Published Nov 25, 2006 | In Random/Personal

At last I found time to install the latest version of the major browsers (Firefox 2.0, IE 7.0 and Opera 9.02). I know I am missing Safari but I am on PC and am not talking about MAC here.

Well you may ask me why all three, but being a web developer you need to test your web pages not in your favorite browser alone but in all browsers (in major browsers at least)

Firefox was my favorite browser for at least a year now and have been using only that for my browsing. I have all my bookmarks in that. But after seeing IE 7 I have decided to use it as well. (Ok Yuvi, I could see a spark in your eyes. 😉 ) But now the real question is where should I store my bookmarks? I am not yet ready to dump Firefox totally so I need to share my bookmarks across both of them.

So right now I have two problems with my bookmarks:

First, I need a solution so that I can share my bookmarks with IE and Firefox (and with Opera if possible). Let me be clear here, I specifically don’t want to use a web based (social) book marking service like del.icio.us. What I need is a simple solution/software which runs in my local system and syncs my bookmarks with the different browser.

Second, once I find a solution to sync my bookmarks in my personal computer I then need to keep it sync with my work computer (Am I expecting too much?). I need something like Google Browser Sync, but I will be happy if I could store them in my own server instead of their servers.

So guys if you have a solution / suggestion / software to my above two problems then do let me know. I am still googling and if I come up with a solution I will share it here.

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Firefox 1.5.0.4 crashes (too often)

Published Jun 4, 2006 | In Web Programming

I updated to Firefox 1.5.0.4 only to find that it is very unstable in my system. It is crashing almost every 20 minutes and has already crashed a couple of times. It just reminds me the problems that I had with Firefox 1.0.4 almost a year back and I think the same bug has creped in again. May be it is getting replicated in all versions that end with xxx.0.4 😉

I am just wondering whether it is happening only to me or even others are also facing the same problem. But anyway this has made me to use IE after a very long time and I am composing this post in IE after a very long time.

Posted in Web Programming | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

ICICI Bank now supports Firefox

Published Feb 4, 2006 | In Random/Personal

It’s been nearly a year since I moved from IE to Firefox and I never returned back, expect for certain sites that have the “IE Only” tag. Once such website is ICICIBank.com. They used ActiveX heavily and it was rendering only in IE. I installed the IEView Firefox extension to automatically load it in IE, whenever I type the url.

But recently I have noticed that they have started to support Firefox too. That’s really great news for me and for Firefox too. The other day Asa was saying how Korea’s largest portal/search site Naver.com started to support Firefox. Probably he should even ICICIBank.com to that list.

I would be really happy if even the BSNL broadband site also starts to support Firefox, as it is the only site that I view in IE.

PS: BTW have you ever wondered what is the full form of ICICI, it is actually Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India. Thank Sushhubh.

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Major Security Threat in IE

Published Sep 10, 2005 | In Windows/.NET

Recently I came to know about a major security threat in Internet Explorer from Lifehacker tips. Any website can read the text present in your clipboard with out your knowledge and can even replace the text present in your clipboard. I went to the article present in the tip and they mentioned that you can use ASP, PHP or Perl together with Javascript to retrieve the text.

This interested me much and I tried to figure out how to do it and to my surprise I was able to retrieve the clipboard text with just two lines of javascript code alone without even using any server side script like ASP or PHP. I have written more about it and you can find it out in this url (www.clipboard.googlemyway.com).

After retrieving the text I was thinking what a website can do by knowing your clipboard text and then an idea struck me what if it is combined with AJAX. The website can get the contents of the user

Posted in Windows/.NET | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Is FireFox 1.0.4 unstable?

Published Jun 23, 2005 | In Random/Personal

Towards the end of last year I came to know about Firefox and soon it became my default browser. I use IE only for Microsoft site and my company’s intranet sites. I updated it to 1.0.4 about a month ago.

Recently I saw Swaroop saying that Firefox 1.0.4 is frequently crashing in his system. It was only after reading his blog and the comments I began to notice that even I have a similar problem, particularly when I keep it open for long time without using it. (I have the habit of not shutting down my system for weeks together).

The problem that I am facing is that Firefox freezes whenever I try to open it after keeping it idle for some time (say 30 minutes). It takes about 5 minutes for it to come back to life and sometimes it doesn’t. I am having this behavior only in 1.0.4.

But I cannot blame Firefox completely for this because I have installed the famous (?) Window XP Service Pack 2 around the same time I updated Firefox and also I have recently installed some extensions.

I was googling for around 2 days to find out the reason for this problem or at least someone with a similar problem. And I came across some good articles by Joel Webber. He talks about a serious flaw in IE by which memory leak occurs when the JavaScript in the webpage contains closures. He also claims that even other browses apart from IE have this flaw.

Asa can you throw some light on this issue. (Probably after you are back from your vacation)

I would be really happy if this is not the problem with Firefox. Does any one else face the same issue? Please leave a comment or an email

While searching I found this page which contains pics of earlier versions of IE. What was more interesting than the pictures was the title – History of Err – Internet Explorer 😉

Here is my System Configuration

Pentium 4 (1.8 GHz)
512 MB Ram
Window XP SP 2 with all latest updates and patches
Firefox 1.0.4 with the following extensions
Tabbrowser Preferrences 1.2.6
Web Developer 0.9.3
Greasemonkey 0.3.3
All-in-One Gestures 0.15.2
Inspect Element 0.3

Posted in Random/Personal | Tagged | 13 Comments