Molecular Voices » Stella Ubaha

Stella Ubaha

Posts written by Stella Ubaha

March 17

A better way to test your pages on different Browsers

I have had the opportunity to test several websites on multiple browsers over the years. My biggest problem was testing all my pages on the different browsers without having to download and install the different browsers onto my machine. Most clients will request for their web pages be tested on at least 3 of the following browsers:

1. Internet Explorer (IE)

2. Firefox (FF)

3. Safari

4. Opera

5. Chrome

Although some browsers like FF tend to be consistent even when there is an upgrade to the latest version, others like IE have proven to be a real pain when upgraded to the next version. For a long time IE6 dominated the browser market, but recently, FF have overtaken IE6, IE7, and IE8 combined together. Never the less a lot of clients still want their pages tested properly on IE6 since it is still being used by approximately 17% of customers. Even testing IE6 pages when you have upgraded to IE7 is not very easy because the portable or stand-alone IE6 plug-ins are not very good and often crash your computer. I have used two of the more popular IE6 testing tools and they are: multiple IEs and IE tester. But they have fallen short of expectations and have proven unreliable especially IE tester.

For a while now, I have being looking for a tool that I can use to test my pages error free and came across a new browser testing Webapp know as Xenocode. Xenocode browser sandbox can run any browser from the web and it is especially easy to run and install. It does a really good job of displaying your web pages as if you were running the real version on your machine. The browsers supported are IE8, IE7, IE6, FF3, FF2, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Opera. This webapp makes it so easy to test your pages against the browsers mentioned above quickly and efficiently. I have also provided a link to the website where you can download the apps. Try it on your project and comment on your experience.

http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/

posted to: Experience Design, Molecular News, Technology | 3 Comments »

April 21

AT&T launches its own browser, Pogo

by Stella Ubaha

Image of Pogo browser from pogobrowser.com I am sure some people are probably wondering what AT&T is doing in the browser market. Do we need another web browser? What is the logic behind them creating a new web browser instead of extending or adding-on to an existing browser?

These are all valid questions to ask but while reading the comments individuals wrote about the article I came across one that actually makes a lot of sense for me. Therefore quoting from Hemmeter’s comment on April 18, 2008 12:06 PM:

“Their ideas are quite creative. The only part of it that bothers me a bit is that it’s a decision to install a whole new browser, rather than extending an existing one. Why couldn’t something like this be done as a add-on to existing browsers? Also, coming from AT&T, I am suspicious of a phone home feature built into it. It isn’t completely clear in the post. Are they taking an approach like Flock where it is the Firefox code and then its added onto with other features? In other words, it will install Firefox updates as they come out and may have some updates of its own for its unique features. If it leverages the Forefox code, but doesn’t allow that code to be patched on the same timeline as Firefox, I think it will fail due to security vulnerabilities. If it acts like a Flock browser, then it has a better chance. I’d still much rather see these features as extensions to Firefox/IE7 than a new application to install”.

On the other hand I will also love a new browser with all the capabilities mentioned in the article, but with a solid code base in Mozilla. Some of Pogo’s charm will be its multi-home-page feature, browser bookmarks or history rendering in Slick 3D snapshot images, support for mouse gestures for navigation, and remembering the pages visited from its integrated search engine by saving them as cells. I am sure we will discover a lot more about Pogo when it is ready to hit the market, for now we can probably email them with good suggestions.

http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9922165-2.html?tag=frontdoor

posted to: Technology, Web 2.0 & Social Media | 2 Comments »