Gordon's WebLog

Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox for short, is a free Internet browser.

"What's wrong with Internet Explorer?" you say - well despite being a good browser, Microsoft was getting complacent. Internet Explorer's vulnerability to numerous security breaches was growing by the day, yet many simple things MS could do to patch these up were left undone. Internet Explorer lacked many convenience features often requested. And Internet Explorer did not adhere completely to web standards; it pretty much set its own standards. Internet Explorer lacked competition.

However all that has changed since Firefox became a legitimate challenger. Firefox has forced Microsoft to incorporate many much needed security and customization features into the latest version of the world's most used Internet browser, Internet Explorer 7. All of this has been spurred on solely by Firefox's existence and growing popularity.

Aside from helping improve Internet Explorer, what else makes Firefox great? An easy to answer is that it has all the useful and familiar features of Internet Explorer, yet provides additional features, better security, adherence to web standards, less of Internet Explorer's quirky behavior, and most important of all greater potential for customization. In releasing Firefox 2.0 in October 2006 the Mozilla Foundation has further improved Firefox, adding useful new features and tightening its code base to prevent new security vulnerabilities. Now more than ever, Firefox stands as a true competitor to Internet Explorer, and has massive customization potential with add-ons, extensions and themes.

Find out for yourself just what Firefox can do for you. Believe me. Once you have used Firefox you won't want to return to any other browser. Visit the download site by clicking the following graphic. And if you want a great guide to the new version click here.

Internet Explorer version 7

Finally Microsoft has released Internet Explorer version 7 for download. This follows extensive testing of beta 1 and beta 2 versions.

The download is stated to be available from the Microsoft web site but I have to say that the link on the site does NOT seem to allow download ! Even Microsoft make mistakes. As and when the link is corrected this post will be updated.

Well, well, well. One day later and Microsoft have removed the link from their home page (wonder why), but I have tracked it down HERE.

It is also rumoured that as from 1st November 2006 Microsoft will add IE7 to the automatic update program.

Windows Vista

Vista is now in an advanced state and should be available fairly soon.

In the meantime, there is an upgrade adviser program available from the Microsoft web site here which will analise your system and point out any problem drivers, cards and programs.

Having run the adviser on my PC I was advised that it would run Vista OK, but several drivers, graphic card and other programs (interestingly enough including my Anti Virus software) may cause problems. However, Microsoft do give fairly good advice as to how to overcome problems and download new drivers etc.

If you read this post you will see that I am now hooked on using the Firefox browser. In that post I mentioned an extension called StumbleUpon. This is a great little extension which adds a toolbar to Firefox. Clicking on the "Stumble!" button will display random pages from the web. You can log onto the main StumbleUpon web site and set up a range of topics in which you are interested. It really is amazing what you can come up with. I never cease to be amazed at the scope and variety of sites.

One site I came across recently is DeGraeve.com and here you will find several little routines that you may find useful. One I especially like is the Colour Palette Generator. It's a simple little routine, but very useful in web or blog design.

Let's say you have a nice graphic on your site and you want to ensure that the colour of the other elements of the page(s) do not clash. Enter the URL of the graphic into the web page, click the button, and the page will not only display the graphic (sometimes just a little bit distorted as it is displayed as a square), but also extract a set of matching colours with their hex values. These may then be used in your web or blog pages, probably via the css file.

As a matter of interest, here is the display of this blog's header image and corresponding colours.