Ever wanted to test your website on every version of Internet Explorer (IE)?

If you develop websites then you will be well aware of the browser incompatibilities that cause a whole world of pain when you are trying to get something to look the same in all browsers.

Normally you will be testing against IE 6 or 7, Firefox and Safari. Due to IE 7 introducing a load of new behaviour you would also want to test it on IE 6 but you can't have two different versions of IE installed on any one PC. You could turn to a number of virtualised Windows instances with different versions of IE installed but that sounds like a lot of work to me ;-)

What if you could install a simple program and then have the following versions of IE available?:

• Internet Explorer 3.0
  
• Internet Explorer 4.01
  
• Internet Explorer 5.01
  
• Internet Explorer 5.5
  
• Internet Explorer 6.0
  

Here you go then: MultipleIEs

A blog post about installing multiple versions of IE on your PC by TredoSoft was the source of my information and it's got a lot more information about how it works and what doesn't.

Technorati Tags: TredoSoft, Website, Testing, Internet Explorer, Andrew Beacock

How to open Firefox Google searches in a new tab

I'm always using the built-in Google search box in Firefox to do my research. I used to click the 'New Tab' button (or CTRL-T) to open a fresh tab, then type in the box and hit return to open the results in my newly created tab.

I then found that it will open in a new tab automatically if you use Ctrl-Return rather than just Return when searching. That was a great improvement but if I forgot to hold down Ctrl I would wipe out my current tab with the Google search results.

Well I've found the ultimate solution from an 'Hacking Firefox' article on Computer World found via the excellent LifeHacker blog. It's an about:config value that makes the search results open in a new tab (in the same way that Ctrl-Return did).

To enable it, enter about:config in the location bar. Enter browser.search.openintab in the "Filter" text box and then double click the listed browser.search.openintab to change it's value from false to true:



Oh, and if you want the results to open in the current tab rather than a new tab for a particular search then you simply use Ctrl-Return instead of just Return! Joy!

Technorati Tags: Tab, Search, Configuration, Firefox, LifeHacker, Andrew Beacock

Firefox hack to display "accesskey" keyboard shortcuts

I'm a big fan of using accesskeys in Firefox as I just love keyboard shortcuts! One problem is that most websites don't advertise the fact that they have accesskeys and what those shortcuts are.

After a little searching I found this forum post from back in 2004 with a hack to Firefox's UserContent.css file. I changed it slightly to show a nice purple "[shortcut key]" when it finds a keyboard shortcut. This is what it looks like when viewing the Wikipedia site:



To install this hack create a file in your profile's chrome directory called 'userContent.css' and add the following:

/* Display [] by the item with the accesskey */
a[accesskey]:after,
button[accesskey]:after,
input[accesskey]:after,
label[accesskey]:after,
legend[accesskey]:after,
textarea[accesskey]:after {
    margin-left: 0.3em;
    color: Plum;
    content: "[" attr(accesskey) "]";
}

One other thing to remember is the accesskey enabler changed from Alt to Alt-Shift in Firefox2 (release notes):

Access key definitions provided by web pages can now be triggered using Alt+Shift+key on Windows, Ctrl+key on Mac OS X, and Ctrl+Shift+key on Unix.

Technorati Tags: Firefox, AccessKey, UserContent, Accessibility, Andrew Beacock

Some useful Ruby & Rails firefox search plugins

I've found the following two Firefox search plugins useful and thought
I'd pass then on:

RubyInside

This plugin searches a massive list of sites (scroll to the comments for more details) maintained by Peter Cooper, a UK Rails developer who runs the excellent RailsInside website.

RailsHelp

This plugin was developed by Nick Cody to search the RailsHelp.com website.
Update - railshelp.com seems to be down at the moment...

My Scan UK Search Plugin for Firefox 2 & IE 7

When I was researching PC components back in September I spent a lot of time on Scan's excellent website looking up prices, specs, etc. A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a page describing how to create OpenSearch plugins for Firefox (which can also work in IE7).

It didn't look that hard so I picked Scan's website as my target. Here is the result:



This has been tested on Firefox2 and IE7 on WinXP and Firefox2 on Ubuntu. I would be very interested to know if it works on any other browsers or platforms...

More search engines can also be found at on the Firefox Search Engines page and at searchplugins.net.

Technorati Tags: OpenSearch, Firefox, IE7, Scan, Search, Plugins, Andrew Beacock

A combined Stop/Reload button for Firefox 2.0

I can't stand 'desktop clutter' and my Firefox toolbar is one such place that I try to keep as minimalistic as possible. I often wondered why there was a 'Stop' and a 'Reload' button when only one of them is active at a time.

I've been using Firefox for quite some time and found an extension called Stop-or-Reload Button that merged the two buttons together therefore reducing the screen real-estate that the navigation toolbar took up.

I upgraded to Firefox 2.0 this week and found that the extension was disabled as it wasn't compatible. After a little searching on the web I found an old but still valid blog post by Erik Arvidsson entitled "Stop-Reload-Button in Firefox" that not only solves my problem but does so in a very minimalistic way! Ignore his references to IE7 he really means Firefox (he mentions this in the comments).

Now I need to try and get rid of those annoying "GO" buttons from the Address and Search bars...

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Extension, Erik Arvidsson, Andrew Beacock

Reduce Firefox's memory usage

This month's CustomPC has a great tip for reducing the amount of memory that Firefox consumes when it's running in the background.

If you've ever watched your process list when firefox is in use you won't be surprised to hear that it can consume vast amounts of memory - multiple open tabs or windows is the major culprit.

To force Firefox to trim it's footprint when minimised do the following:

• Type "about:config" in the URL address bar
  
• Right-click in the window and choose "New" and then "Boolean"
  
• Enter "config.trim_on_minimize" as the preference name
  
• Select "True" as the default value
  
• Restart Firefox
  

That's it! Now watch the amount of memory it uses rapidly drop when Firefox is minimised...

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Memory, CustomPC, Andrew Beacock

Resize web form text areas on the fly

Sorry that I've been very quiet lately, been doing some major DIY and preparing for a new kitchen to be fitted! :(

Found this little gem over on The Man in Blue blog, looks like it could be really useful...

FormTextResizer: Bookmarklet for resizing textareas and text fields

Technorati Tags: Andrew Beacock, The Man In Blue

Time Management Tracker extension for Firefox

Sorry for not blogging for over a month it's a bit crazy in my life at the moment! Been doing tons of DIY, trying to choose and order a new kitchen plus a short break to Paris.

Hope to be doing something soon that is worth blogging but for now how about a rather clever little timer that records how long to spend surfing the net when you are meant to be working...

TimeTracker Firefox Extension

Technorati Tags: Time Management, WorkHappy, Firefox, Extension, Andrew Beacock

Restricting Firefox's memory leak usage

There has been a lot written recently about the "memory leaks" of Firefox 1.5. The lead engineer for Mozilla Firefox, Ben Goodger posted about this over on the Inside Firefox blog.

Apparently one possible "leak" is actually a feature - Firefox caches a number of the previously viewed pages in memory so that should you want to go "back" they don't have to be downloaded again.

Obviously this can be a tremendous performance boost when going back but the default rules that Ben posts abouts got me a little concerned. Here is a table of the system ram size and the default number of cached pages:

RAM	Number of Cached Pages
32MB	0
64MB	1
128MB	2
256MB	3
512MB	5
1GB	8
2GB	8
4GB	8

As you can see if you have 1GB of RAM or above it will cache 8 pages by default, but if you have 512MB then it will only cache 5. I have 1GB in my machine but will be caching the same about in memory as a 4GB machine - so I changed this setting to only cache 6 pages.

Here's how I did it:

• On a new tab type about:config (this displays all the configuration values)
  
• type browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers in the "Filter" box
  
• By default it will be showing the value of -1 (meaning use the default value from the above table)
  
• Double-click the -1, a popup box will appear, replace the -1 with 6 and click OK
  
• Restart Firefox
  

You will now have changed the in-memory cache setting from 8 pages down to 6. If you want to cache more pages in memory then you can also make this value greater than 8 - I'm not sure of how much memory each page takes up...

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Mozilla, Memory Leak, Ben Goodger, Andrew Beacock

Webapp design hints & tips from the del.icio.us founder

Joshua Schachter presented at the The Future of Web Apps summit in London this week and both Peter Cooper & Simon Willison have posted some excellent notes from that session.

The key findings from these notes for me are:

• Keep URLs simple. Leave all the framework invisible, it doesn't help the user, keep URLs clean. "Nobody cares" about complex URLs.


• Some latency in the system is OK - work out where you have leeway, e.g. RSS
  feeds can fall a few minutes behind without anyone minding.


• Keep API simple - REST, etc.


• When people ask for features, get to the bottom of why they are asking for
  that exact thing. Solve the problem, rather than doing exactly what your asked
  for.


• The features you put in are as important as the ones you leave out.


• Don't waste time building features nobody uses.

These cover similar points to the ones I raised in yesterday's post about stripping requirements down to the bare-bones.

Technorati Tags: del.icio.us, Joshua Schachter, Peter Cooper, Simon Willison, Andrew Beacock

del.icio.us search to replace Google?

Well maybe I've blown the title up a bit to big but I wanted to share an interesting experience I had this afternoon with search.

A number of months ago I came across a website that helps you organise an event. You enter your name & email address and a title for the event. Then you add possible dates for that event along with a list of email addresses to send the invites to.

I used it a couple of times and then forgot about it, deleted it from my (del.icio.us) bookmarks and removed all trace of it from my memory. This afternoon I wanted to find that site again, so I turned to Google. No matter what keywords I typed in be it "event", "meeting", "invite" or "plan a party", it couldn't find it.

I turned to del.icio.us and entered 'event' in the search box, the second result from "Everyone's items" was the one I was looking for, a site called MeetWithApproval.com.

It's a very cool service and now that I've found a real need for it, I've got it safely tagged in del.icio.us.

Technorati Tags: Search, del.icio.us, Google, Events, MeetWithApproval, Andrew Beacock

Missed your bookmarks when del.icio.us was down? Not if you've got Foxylicious!

If you are a regular del.icio.us user you will most probably know that they have had some server & database troubles over the past couple of days that caused the whole system to be unavailable for a considerable number of hours.

What you might not know is that you could have had access to them (if you are a Firefox user) if you had the Foxylicious extension installed. It maintains a copy of your del.icio.us links as normal Firefox bookmarks and I blogged about it back in April.

I find the del.icio.us Firefox extension better for posting to del.icio.us, but nothing beats Foxylicious for ensuring that you have fast local access to all your bookmarks should del.icio.us every have problems in the future.

Technorati Tags: del.icio.us, Foxylicious, Firefox, Extension, Andrew Beacock

DevBoi - the Ruby on Rails & web development quick reference sidebar for Firefox

If you use Firefox and develop either websites in HTML/XHTML, CSS & JavaScript or web applications in Ruby on Rails (or PHP) then the DevBoi sidebar written by Martin Cohen is a pretty handy extension to have.

Rob Sanheim has a great post introducing the new features and the offline version comes highly recommended if you ever want to develop whilst not connected to the net.

Technorati Tags: DevBoi, Firefox, Extension, Development, Programming, Ruby on Rails, Martin Cohen, Rob Sanheim, Andrew Beacock

Firefox 1.5 is out!

The best browser has just got better, go get it now and check out their new look website as well!

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Andrew Beacock

Firefox Greasemonkey script for Yahoo! Mail

I've had a Yahoo! Mail account for years now, but I've never really been a fan of webmail, mainly due to the clunky slow interface that so many web-based email clients exhibit. Then everything changed when Google came along with GMail, I signed up for an account and love the interface, but still liked my Yahoo email address.

My main grip with Yahoo Mail is the time it takes to browse between multiple 'new' emails, I hate the page reloads for each one. Imagine my delight when I happened across a post on the Quick Online Tips blog talking about Ajax Enabled Yahoo Mail.

It mentions two ways to get a better Yahoo Mail experience, one is a firefox extension and the other is a firefox greasemonkey script. I'm a big fan of greasemonkey so I've opted for that version of AJAX Yahoo! mail by Viamatic Softwares.

Just install it like all the other Greasemonkey scripts and now in Yahoo Mail you get a little arrow at the side of each mail in the Inbox which when clicked expands to show the full email without doing a full page reload. Top one!

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Extension, Greasemonkey, Yahoo Mail, Viamatic Softwares, Andrew Beacock

I've fixed my Bloglines Shrinker - and so soon I hear you shout!

Thought I'd take a quick look into the issue of my broken Bloglines Greasemonkey script and spotted the issue straight away. It's a pretty simple thing really...

They've changed the title of their site from "Bloglines | My Blogs" to "Bloglines | My Feeds". So all I had to do was update the little bit of code in the script that checks the title to read "if (document.title == "Bloglines | My Feeds")" and upload the script to my website.

The script is available here, or through my original post which covered installing Greasemonkey as well as details of installing the script.

UPDATE: I've moved some files around on my server, I've not changed any of the content of this post.

Technorati Tags: Bloglines, Greasemonkey, Andrew Beacock

Bloglines breaks my Bloglines Shrinker GreaseMonkey script

Back in May I blogged about modifying a Greasemonkey script written by Matthew Gertner over on the Peer Pressure blog.

Well the recent additions to Bloglines has stopped my script from working, all the icons and text are back to their rather large size. I wish there was an option to set the feed list text to be small but the blog post text to be big. As that's the main reason this script exists.

I'll have to see if I can figure out what's breaking it, but don't hold your breath, I'm no Javascript wizard!

Technorati Tags: Bloglines, Greasemonkey, Matthew Gertner, Andrew Beacock

Firefox Greasemonkey security update

Just wanted to let anyone know that uses Greasemonkey that a security flaw has been found in version 0.3.3 and so it's been updated to version 0.3.5. Make sure you update your Greasemonkey as soon as possible to keep you safe.

Technorati Tags: firefox, greasemonkey, Andrew Beacock

del.icio.us adds tagging bookmarks for other users

This post on the del.icio.us blog caught my eye recently, a new
feature has been added that allows tagging a bookmark for someone that you think might be interested in that webpage.

You tag the bookmark 'for' someone else by using the 'tag:<username>' syntax, for example to tag a bookmark that you think I might be interested in use 'tag:abeacock'. To see the bookmarks that other people have tagged for your interest, go to http://del.icio.us/for/.

An RSS feed is provided on that page so that if you subscribe to it, it will keep you informed if anyone is tagging bookmarks 'for' you.

By using this feature you can pass around bookmarks that you think your friends and colleagues would find interesting and/or useful.

Now I just need to wait for my mate Robert Baillie to become a del.icio.us user (if he's not one already!) so that I can pass relevant bookmarks his way...

UPDATE: Just visited Rob's blog and found that he is already a del.icio.us member!
He'd better get ready, the bookmarks are going to start flooding in...

UPDATE: 'for:<username>' is only valid in the 'tags' field.

Technorati Tags: del.icio.us, tagging, bookmarks, Robert Baillie, Andrew Beacock