Old is no more Gold a.k.a Old vs New Browsers

Most of us don’t realize how much an old and out-of-date web browser can negatively impact our online lives, particularly our online safety. You wouldn’t drive an old car with bald tires, bad brakes, and an unreliable engine for years on end. It’s a bad idea to take the same chances with the web browser that you use daily to navigate to every page and application on the web.

Upgrading to a modern browser — like the latest version of Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, or Google Chrome — is important for three reasons:

First, old browsers are vulnerable to attacks, because they typically aren’t updated with the latest security fixes and features. Browser vulnerabilities can lead to stolen passwords, malicious software snuck secretly onto your computer, or worse. An up-to-date browser helps guard against security threats like phishing and malware.

Second, the web evolves quickly. Many of the latest features on today’s websites and web applications won't work with old browsers. Only up-to-date browsers have the speed improvements that let you run web pages and applications quickly, along with support for modern web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and fast JavaScript.

Third and last, old browsers slow down innovation on the web. If lots of Internet users cling to old browsers, web developers are forced to design websites that work with both old and new technologies. Facing limited time and resources, they end up developing for the lowest common denominator — and not building the next generation of useful, groundbreaking web applications. (Imagine if today’s highway engineers were required to design high-speed freeways that would still be perfectly safe for a Model T.) That’s why outdated browsers are bad for users overall and bad for innovation on the web.

Not that anyone blames you personally for staying loyal to your aging browser. In some cases, you may be unable to upgrade your browser. If you find that you’re blocked from upgrading your browser on your corporate computer, have a chat with your IT administrator. If you can’t upgrade an old version of Internet Explorer, the Google Chrome Frame plug-in can give you the benefits of some modern web app functionality by bringing in Google Chrome’s capabilities into Internet Explorer.

Old, outdated browsers are bad for us as users, and they hold back innovation all over the web. So take a moment to make sure that you’ve upgraded to the latest version of your favorite modern browser.

The Browser Wars! In the past two years, IE has gone from commanding a 61.45 percent of the global browser market to 53.6 percent. In that same time frame, Firefox has dropped from 23.69 percent to 20.05 percent, while Chrome has gained considerable ground, climbing from 8.24 percent to 19.13 percent. According to StatCounter, things shake out a little differently. StatCounter has Chrome leading all other browsers with a 33.59 percent of the market at the end of August 2012. IE is close behind at 32.85 percent, followed by Firefox at 22.85 percent. Despite the abuse it routinely takes in tech and media circles, Internet Explorer is staging a bit of a comeback based on recent usage data.

While browser use is a product of many factors, Microsoft is taking on its competitor directly on another front: marketing. In recent years, Google has put a lot of marketing muscle behind Chrome, including web campaigns such as The Web Is What You Make Of It, with spots from Lady Gaga and sex columnist Dan Savage, as well as "Dear Sophie." Its top four campaigns have accumulated nearly 45 million views since 2009, according to analytics firm Visible Measures, but some are several years old at this point, while Microsoft is hitting the market with fresh work on the web and TV.

Last month, Microsoft launched a new TV ad for Internet Explorer that extols the speed and slickness of IE9 with excerpts of favorable reviews, and a shortened version of what's been published on YouTube appears to be in heavy circulation. The TV version of "A More Beautiful Web" premiered March 4 during AMC's "The Walking Dead" and has subsequently aired on "Mad Men." A Microsoft spokesperson said it's had a "broader broadcast and cable run" and has also aired during movie previews, in addition to its digital placements. The Final Takeaway Use a modern browser, first and foremost. Or try a new one and see if it brings you happier browsing that’s better suited to your needs. The web will keep evolving — dramatically! Support cutting-edge web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and WebGL, because they’ll help the web community imagine and create a future of great, innovative web apps. Lastly, try new things. The web is a new and exciting place every day, so try tasks that you didn’t think could be done online -- such as researching your ancestry back ten generations, or viewing a real-time webcam image from a climbing basecamp in the Himalayas. You might be surprised by what you find!

 To check which browser you’re using, visit www.whatbrowser.org.

Detecting Space in Input Boxes - CSS3 vs jQuery

It's 1 A.M and my half brother Jack from Utah pings me. Hey Ric, I got a webdesign issue that's keeping me awake. I paused for 2 minutes..assuming he is going to tell me more about the issue. But it seemed he was expecting me to solve it, whatever the issue is. So I being the nicest guy, asked him to mail me.

Here's the deal.


Jack wanted to find a space character in an <input> but using CSS3 selectors.Well, if you want to create an actual CSS3 rule in your stylesheet, then input[value*=' ']{..} will work, but only for values in the actual attribute (in the source code) and not the value as modified inside the browser..

For eg:

<form>
    <input type="text" value="no-space-here" /><br/>
    <input type="text" value="" /><br/>
    <input type="text" value="space here" /><br/>
    <input type="text" value="" /><br/>
    <input type="submit" value="submit"> type a space and press Submit
</form>

CSS

input[value*=' ']{
    background-color:#fff5f5;
}
​
Run the code here and see for yourself. http://jsfiddle.net/8BdUV/

A good solution is to use jQuery here

$('form').submit(function(){
    return ($(':input[value*=" "]').addClass('warning').length > 0) ? false : true;
});​

CSS

.warning{
    background-color:#fff5f5;
}

Now run the solution http://jsfiddle.net/PHja9/

Bingo!

Horizontal Navigation Menus

Horizontal menus are suitable for pages with menus containing fifteen menu buttons or fewer per row. Obviously, this depends on the length of the labels and the size of the text used on the buttons. With very short labels, more buttons could fit across a page (for instance, if the labels were page numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). The horizontal tab menus on the BBC web site has fourteen tabs in one row and two other rows with seven links on each. This shows that many more links can be fitted into a page if you can accept several rows. The rows need to be distinctly separated by a divider or by using navigation bars with different colors.

Horizontal menus can be challenging because the commonly advocated inline or float methods each have their problems. Floated menus can be difficult to center on the page, inline menus traditionally could not have equal size buttons. However, now that all the browsers support the muchneglected attribute { display:inline-block; }, horizontal menus are no more difficult than vertical menus, and dimensions can be very easily applied to give equal size buttons, or buttons that automatically vary to accommodate the content. Recipes for horizontal menus often use { display:inline: }, but the resulting buttons are unsatisfactory. All browsers now support { display:inline-block; }.

The attribute { display:inline: } did not allow width, height, margins, or padding to be set. By using { display:inline-block; }, buttons can be displayed inline and have their dimensions set. This provides the best of both worlds, as shown by the second row of buttons in the basic menu below.

The top row of this basic menu shows the unsatisfactory appearance of display:inline. In the second row, the display:inline-block buttons can be given height, line-height, and padding.

The very basic menus shown above are not a rollover menus; that is, they do not change color when the cursor hovers over the buttons. Also, they use paragraphs instead of the traditional unordered lists.

The code below contains two rows of menu buttons. The top row is unaffected by the CSS style sheet. The CSS style sheet, is linked only to the bottom row of  buttons and the style gives the text plenty of horizontal space. This demonstrates the value of the display:inline-block code compared with the default display:inline;.

Creating the Structure for Two Rows of Menu buttons

<!doctype html>
<html lang=en>
<head>
<title>Inline-block content</title>
<meta charset=utf-8>
meta details go here
<link rel = "stylesheet" type = "text/css" href = "inline-block.css">
</head>
<body>
<div id="container">
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>inline content (default)</p>
<p>
<a href = "#">Page 1</a>
<a href = "#">Page 2</a>
<a href = "#">Page 3</a>
<a href = "#">Page 4</a>
<a href = "#">Page 5</a>
<a href = "#">Page 6</a>
<a href = "#">Page 7</a>
</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
<p class = "inline-block">inline-block content<br>
<a href = "#">Page 1</a>
<a href = "#">Page 2</a>
<a href = "#">Page 3</a>
<a href = "#">Page 4</a>
<a href = "#">Page 5</a>
<a href = "#">Page 6</a>
<a href = "#">Page 7</a>
</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>

The # symbol in the href items must be replaced by your own page URLs. The code here is the style sheet that targets the second row of menu buttons and applies the style display:inline-block; to enable the width of the buttons to be adjusted.

Applying the display:inline-block; Style to the Second Row of Buttons

/* Set styles to equalise the browser rendition*/
html, body, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, p, ol, ul, li { padding: 0; margin: 0;
}
body { font-size: 100%; font-weight: normal;
}
ul { padding-left: 0;}
/* end of style equalisation */
p { background:white margin:auto; text-align:center;
}
#container { margin:auto; text-align:center; width:97%; min-width:800px; 
max-width:1200px;
}
a { background: orange; color:navy;
}
.inline-block a { display:inline-block; width:110px; height:30px; 
line-height:30px; text-align:center;
}

Here's a Demo