Gordon's WebLog

I've been converted !

No, not to a new religion, but to Firefox

Yes, I've heard about it for a long time, even used it a couple of times, but until recently I had never given it very much thought. Until, that is, I heard that Microsoft, in their wisdom, will make IE 7 the default browser when it has finally gone through all of its testing stages, and that automatic updates will install it whether the user wants it or not. Now I don't like IE7 very much at all, so I started looking round for an alternative browser.

Having used Maxthon for some time (see this posting and this posting), I was naturally drawn to a browser which allowed me to have tabbed browsing. Enter (once again) Firefox.

The latest version as at the time of writing (20th September 2006) is 1.5.0.7, and it is really quite remarkable. Free, slim, fast, tabbed, auto updates to latest version, extensible - what more could I ask ?

So after just a few days of intensive testing I am now going to standardize on using Firefox.

So, what do you get ? Well, first of all read the Mozilla blurb on their web site. It's really quite good and accurately describes the functions and operation of the browser - and (a refreshing change) for once a web site doesn't make false claims - everything on the page is actually quite true. Firefox does what they claim.

And in actual use ?

My favourite feature - apart from safe, fast browsing - is the extensibility. Addons include plugins such as Adobe Acrobat Reader and Macromedia Flash Player among others, but it is the extensions that grabbed my attention, and I want to use the remainder of this post to pass on details of some of my favourites - all of them available from the Firefox web site, and very easily installed.

FIRST OF ALL A WARNING. BADLY WRITTEN EXTENSIONS CAN MAKE FIREFOX UNSTABLE. AN EXAMPLE OF A VERY BADLY WRITTEN EXTENSION IS "REEL NEW MEDIA TOOLBAR" BY ROULA EATRIDES, DETAILS OF WHICH CAN BE FOUND HERE. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES INSTALL IT ! READ THE COMMENTS OF MANY PEOPLE IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME !

Print/Print Preview replaces the default print button giving much more flexibility.

RSS Ticker scrolls RSS feeds in a tool bar Alternatively there is also Wizz RSS News Reader and Sage, which are more standard news reader applications.

Menu Editor allows you to edit the right-click menu entries.

Tab Mix Plus boosts the tabbed browsing capabilities with many new features.

ColorZilla. Developing a web page ? See a nice new color you would like to use ? Enter ColorZilla. Click the icon at the lower left of your screen and then pass it over the color. RGB and Hex information can be viewed and stored. Great ! Not so good as the independent ColorPic application but very usable.

StumbleUpon is a very novel idea. When first entered you can choose categories of web pages that you are interested in. Then, every time you click the Stumble button a random new site is displayed - and it's AMAZING what you can get. Well worth getting Firefox just for this alone.

And finally, but by no means least, among my favourites is ScrapBook. See a web page and want to come back to it without bookmarking it ? Select some text to save ? Want ot download an entire web site ? Use ScrapBook. A simple right-click and choose what to save. Open the ScrapBook side panel, click the entry and its there ready to use. Want to open the actual web page (rather than just the image) ? Right click the title and select Open URL and away you go. SIMPLE, VERY FAST, VERY EFFECTIVE, ABSOLUTELY GREAT.

September 16th 2006, Connie Fisher's life changed forever.

It was the night she won BBC Television's "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" contest, securing her life-long dream - to play the lead role in a West End Musical.

From thousands of hopeful singers, just ten young ladies (Connie, Helena, Siobham, Abi, Aoife, Belinda, Laura, Leanne, Meliz and Simona) were selected to appear in the televised knockout competition in front of judges David Ian (co-producer of "The Sound of Music") John Barrowman (ex Doctor Who), Zoe Tyler (vocal coach) and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber (writer of the show and co-producer). Each week the ten hopefuls sang live on air, but each week one was eliminated until only four remained for the final, with bubbly Connie finally winning.

And so Connie was off to the London Paladium to start a hectic round of rehearsals as Maria in "The Sound of Music". Not everything went according to plan during the rehearsals as her understudy resigned, and her leading man was replaced with just one week to go before the opening night.

Connie was delighted to win the competition. "I feel on top of the world, thanks very much. I won't let you down. Every night will be an opening night. Thanks for making my dreams come true." And certainly the audience and theatre critics acclaimed her performance

Just what does a visitor do when your carefully designed web site first appears before their eyes ? What part of the page do they look at first ? How far down do they scroll before leaving your home page. What are the important areas of your page ? How about the text size ? And what about graphics ?

These and many other questions were used in experiments on web users by Eyetrack and their web site makes very, very interesting reading.

It seems that there are certain patterns which visitors eyes tend to follow when looking at a web page. There are a couple of interesting graphics (reproduced below - click the image to view the original larger version) which show "heat maps" of the most important areas of the page, and the track visitors eyes tend to follow.

One very interesting thing that came out of the research was that smaller text tends to be read more then large text, which tends just to be scanned.

Although the research was carried out a couple of years ago, I think it makes very interesting reading and may provide clues to web masters and bloggers when designing web pages. Do have a look at the site - you can even download a 300 page pdf file of all the results to keep as a reference.

Related to this subject, but on a different web site, there is a posting here which may shed more light on the subject.

Once again the web site is at Eyetrack.