The browser wars just got interesting again…

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 16 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 8 logoIt’s well known that, after Microsoft won the “browser wars”, development of Internet Explorer (IE) all but stopped at a time when use of the Internet was exploding and new features were required to keep up to date with the emerging technologies (and standards). That’s why, a few years ago, I was only too happy to promote a viable alternative (i.e. Mozilla Firefox) and Firefox has come a long way since then. Mozilla Firefox logoUnfortunately, it’s not been a bed of roses. I lost too many open tabs to Firefox 1.5 and 2 crashes so these days I only use Firefox when I’m testing new code on my website – Safari (with all its faults) is the default browser on my Mac and IE7 is my normal browser on Windows.

Even so, if it hadn’t been for Firefox, it’s unlikely that Microsoft would have made the huge step forward that IE7 represents when compared with its predecessor. And, aside from the controversy over the various modes in which IE8 can work (I think that Microsoft made the right decision in allowing standards mode to be the default), it seems to be shaping up as another significant step forward for Microsoft (just as Firefox 3 is reported to have been for those who wish to use an alternative browser).

From my point of view, it can only be good that for the last few years there have been two major competitors for our web browsing – choice promotes competition – and competition generally leads to an improved user experience. The need to develop for multiple platforms encourages web developers to adopt standards (at least in part) and the days of “this site is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4 or later at 800×600 resolution” are, thankfully, a distant memory (as I write this in a maximised browser on a 1680×1050 display).

Last week, Microsoft released a new beta of IE8 (beta 2), together with a fact sheet providing an overview of the new features and there is some really good stuff in there (the IEBlog post about IE8 beta 2 availability is worth a read too). Whereas beta 1 was targeted at developers, beta 2 is for anyone to look at. I’ll be installing it on my system (just as soon as I have worked through the seemingly never-ending list of tabs that I’m doing something with…).

Google Chrome logoThen yesterday, out of the blue came a new twist – it seems that, after much speculation, Google is to launch a beta of it’s own web browser today. Whereas IE 8 carries forward a legacy of backwards compatibility, and Firefox is struggling to win back the hearts and minds of those who were burned by buggy releases with poor memory management, Google Chrome is concentrating on serving the requirements that today’s rich Internet applications require, whilst remaining stable, fast, secure, and simple to use (see the Comic book for more information). Sounds like a tall order but, if anyone can do it, Google probably can.

It looks to me as though this just became a three horse race.

Surfing with server core

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

The whole point of the server core installation mode for Windows Server 2008 is a reduced attack surface – no Windows Explorer, no Internet Explorer, no .NET Framework. That’s all well and good but sometimes it’s useful to download a file over HTTP to a server core machine.

No problem – just download a version of GNU wget that has been compiled for Windows and use that to download the file. It needed a couple of configuration items to get past my corporate proxy server but worked flawlessly:

set http_proxy=http://proxyserver:portnumber
wget --proxy-user=domainname\username --proxy-passwd=password http://uri/

That’s probably as far as most people need to go – adding a simple command line utility to a command-line Windows installation – but I wanted to take things a step further (purely out of curiosity) and I installed Mozilla Firefox (v2.0.0.13). It worked, so I decided to try Apple Safari (v3.1) and Opera (v9.26). Safari installed (except the Bonjour component) but has a dependency on the Internet Options control panel applet (which is not present in server core) so I couldn’t define any proxy server settings. Meanwhile, Opera had no noticeable issues installing and loading a few test web pages. Next, I tried Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 and, as I expected, the installation failed. Bizarrely, it didn’t detect that I was trying to install it on server core but did attempt the installation, before failing and advising a restart followed by visit a web page (presumably using a competitor’s browser!) which redirects to Microsoft knowledge base article 949220.

Finally, I decided to go to the other extreme and try a text-mode browser. I found a version of Lynx that has been compiled for Windows but in order to get past my proxy server it needed the same environment variable as wget:

set http_proxy=http://proxyserver:portnumber

Even with this, it is incapable of performing authenticated proxy operations so I kept getting an HTTP 407 response. The workaround is to use the NTLM Authorization Proxy Server (NTLMAPS), which depends on Python (for which I found a 64-bit MSI package for Windows). Basically, NTLMAPS acts as a local proxy, configured to add the authentication headers and pass the request to the upstream server.

By editing the server.cfg file to include the following entries (all other configuration items were left at their defaults) and running the start runserver.bat command to launch the NTLMAPS server I was able to get NTLMAPS to prompt me for my password at startup and listen for HTTP requests (but not HTTPS) on port 5865:

[GENERAL]
PARENT_PROXY:proxyserver
PARENT_PROXY_PORT:portnumber

[NTLM_AUTH]
NT_DOMAIN:domainname
USER:username
PASSWORD:

Then, I ran the following:

set http_proxy=http://localhost:5865/
lynx

and was able to successfully browse the Internet through my corporate proxy server.

In all seriousness, I can’t really think of a good reason to install a full browser on server core but the wget command is probably useful. Even so, it’s still good to know that there are a few options for emergency surfing from a server core installation.

Internet Explorer search provider for markwilson.it

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Earlier today I had a go at creating a new search provider for Internet Explorer (IE) 7.0 so that I can search the markwilson.it website for information. It’s not of much practical use to anyone except to me but it is incredibly easy to achieve and works well. This is the resulting OpenSearch XML that IE generated for me:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
- <OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
  <ShortName>markwilson.it</ShortName>
  <Description>markwilson.it provider</Description>
  <InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
  <Url type="text/html" template="http://www.markwilson.co.uk/blog/index.php?s={searchTerms}" />
  </OpenSearchDescription>

There’s more information on adding search providers to IE 7 using OpenSearch 1.1 at the IEBlog.

A few Live Meeting tips

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’ve just spent the last couple of hours listening/watching a Live Meeting webcast. In recent weeks I’ve found that I’m attending more and more of these as part of the various Microsoft beta and technology adoption programmes that I’m participating in and frequently I need to take notes using Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 on the same PC that I’m using to view the slides and listen to the audio. Today I decided to try and connect to the webcast simultaneously from my Mac (i.e. using a second computer to view the slides whilst I write notes on the first) and I’m pleased to say that it worked using Microsoft Office Live Meeting Web Access (unfortunately the full Live Meeting client is required for VOIP audio but all I needed to do in this case was view the slides).

Although Live Meeting supports a pretty wide selection of browser and Java VM combinations, Firefox 2.0 on Mac OS X is not a supported browser/platform combination – the workaround is to use Safari and Apple Java (at least v1.4.1).

Here’s some of the advice and guidance that I’ve accumulated as I’ve been working on local (via Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007) and hosted Live Meeting calls over recent weeks (this is just what I’ve found and is not a comprehensive list):

  • The Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 Client can be downloaded from Microsoft Office Online.
    If the link in the meeting invitation doesn’t work, try launching the client and entering the details manually.
  • If colleagues can’t hear you on the meeting, check that your microphone is unmuted (the default is muted), that (if you are using a webcam) the microphone is close enough to pick up your voice and don’t assume that your notebook computer has a built-in microphone (this one stumped me for a while until I plugged in a microphone and everything jumped into life)!
  • (Microsoft Connect users may find the Live Meeting audio issues FAQ useful.)
  • The Live Meeting support website features a knowledge base for troubleshooting issues with Live Meeting.

Low cost SSL certificates from Go Daddy

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I have a number of web services running at home, some of which are SSL secured; however, they are only used by me (and a few select friends and colleagues) so, in theory, I could generate certificates by creating my own public key infrastructure (PKI) and add my certificate authority (CA) to the Trusted Root Certificate Authorities store. The trouble is that I’m lazy, and a CA is just another infrastructure service to run (it really is a bit geeky to have as many computers as I do), so I use a public certificate instead.

Because I don’t require the highest levels of validation, I don’t need an expensive certificate from a class 1 CA like Verisign so last year I used a free certificate from Ascertia. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t complete the certification path or get clients to trust the Ascertia root certificate, but last night, Scotty McLeod mentioned low-cost certificates from and, crucially, Go Daddy is one of the trusted CAs in most web browsers (certainly recent versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari).

Of course, there are other (more expensive) options available from Go Daddy and other CAs for longer certificate life, multiple top level domains, domain wildcards or higher levels of validation (hence trust) etc. but for $19.99, I bought a 12 month SSL certificate that will work with both servername.markwilson.co.uk and www.servername.markwilson.co.uk.

SSL certificate from Go Daddy


Go Daddy $14.99 SSL Sale!

Apple WWDC ’07 highlights

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

So, this week is Apple’s worldwide developer conference (WWDC) and I’ve been waiting to see if:

  • Apple will finally update the iPod (no… unless you count the iPhone… and I don’t want an iPhone – well, never say never, but it won’t be available over here for a while yet).
  • Apple will launch new MacBook Pros so I can pick up one of the outgoing models at a discount (yes… they actually updated the MacBook Pro just before WWDC but that new LCD display sounds so good I might have to save up for one of the new ones instead).

The video below features some of the highlights from the conference keynote including something that I personally find interesting – Apple’s decision to release Safari for Windows. Whilst this cannot be a bad thing (hey, look what competition from Firefox did to wake up Microsoft and get them to update Internet Explorer), I don’t use Safari on my Mac because so many websites don’t work with it… I can’t see that being any different under Windows; on the flip side, it may wake developers up to the presence of Safari and they might actually develop standards-compliant sites that work across all platforms (meanwhile Apple gets the advertising revenue from the search box and a foothold for application development on the Windows desktop). Regardless of the reasoning behind producing Safari for Windows, it does kind of disprove the whole “we’re really strapped for resources getting the iPhone out and that’s why we’re delaying Leopard” argument. Then again, maybe it was a rush job, as they certainly don’t look to have spent much time making sure it was secure – beta product or not, using known tools to find a flaw inside three minutes is something that Apple should have done before they released it.

I waited to publish this post in case there were some extra items to get excited about later in the week but there doesn’t seem to have been much more to shout about. A million people downloaded Safari for Windows in the first couple of days (that’s pretty good) but I heard anecdotal reports that developers felt patronised by the whole approach to third party application development for the iPhone – John Gruber sums it up on his Daring Fireball blog when he paraphrases the Apple message as “you can write great apps for the iPhone: they’re called ‘web sites'” (he also links to Michael Tsai’s interesting observation about what Steve Jobs said on iPhone application development at D5 and what he said a week or so later at WWDC). According to the MarketWatch video below, analysts and others affiliated with Apple described the keynote as disappointing.

I’ll admit that the finder needs some tweaks and that using Coverflow for documents looks very cool but as for Steve Jobs’ statement that Tiger is already better than the competition and that Leopard will further increase that lead – I just don’t get it.

Corrupt Firefox profile preventing access to the WordPress visual editor

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

For the last few weeks (ever since one of the all-to-frequent Firefox crashes that I experience) I’ve been unable to use the WordPress visual editor to write my posts.  If I switched to another machine then everything was fine – the problem only existed in Firefox on one machine.  After seeking help on the WordPress support forums, someone tactfully suggested that I ask for help on the Mozilla forums… I wasn’t hopeful (as this problem seemed to be specific to WordPress); however the advice I was given was spot-on – it turns out that my issue was a corrupted Firefox profile.

After creating a new profile and copying key settings from my old profile (I copied bookmarks.html, certs8.db, cookies.txt, formhistory.dat, history.dat, hostperm.1, key3.db, mimeTypes.rdf and signons2.txt), I was able to relaunch Firefox and everything was back to the way it should be, complete with browser history, bookmarks, cookies, stored password, etc.  It should also be possible to copy items such as user preferences, search plugins and extensions but that’s not recommended if there were problems with the previous profile, so I reinstalled the couple of Firefox add-ons that I do use (the British English Dictionary and Web Developer extensions).

Running multiple versions of Internet Explorer side-by-side

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’ve written previously about using user agent spoofing to make Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 7 and Mozilla Firefox behave like legacy versions of IE but I just stumbled across this nifty method of running multiple versions of IE side-by-side. I haven’t tried it out yet and it’s unsupported by Microsoft but it sounds like an interesting idea for next time I’m doing some website development work.

Firefox needs to raise its game before IE 7 goes mainstream

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

At the risk of offending almost 27% of the people who visited my website this month, I think Mozilla Firefox has lost its way. The last couple of times it has updated itself on my Windows XP SP2 machine, it’s crashed (taking with it all of the tabs that I have open – possibly representing a couple of days worth of work in progress or things to look at further when I get a few minutes).

Add to that the fact that too many developers are still producing badly-written websites that are not standards-compliant (not the fault of the Mozilla developers, but still hindering me as a Firefox user) and we have a very unhappy user who keeps on having to go back to using Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). It’s not just people like me who write bad sites either – according to SiteMorse, the worst site belongs to Tesco (the biggest retailer in the UK, which now accounts for more than £1 in every £8 spent on the high street). If I have to use two browsers I might as well stick with the one that works with every site I go to, and unfortunately, that’s the one produced by everyone’s favourite monopolistic software company.

It doesn’t get better when you look at vulnerabilities either. James O’Neill (who, admittedly, works for Microsoft), highlighted a report by Bit9 that lists the top applications with critical vulnerabilities. Surprisingly for me (and for many others, I presume) IE is nowhere to be seen and Firefox (v1.0.7) tops the list (although v1.5.0.4 is the latest release as I write this).

Open source had its chance to take back the web. If the Firefox reliability doesn’t get better, then we’ll just see Internet Explorer 7 take it back (IE 7 seems very good, although despite Microsoft pledging a commitment to web standards it still seems to be lacking in the standards compliance department – the version in Windows Vista beta 2 fails the ACID 2 test, but so does Firefox v1.5.0.4 on Windows XP SP2).

Even if Windows Vista encounters further delays, IE 7+ (and IE 7 for Windows XP users) will hit the streets soon (beta 3 of Internet Explorer 7 was released yesterday).

Mozilla needs to raise its game and further increase its share of the market before Microsoft wins the latest battle in the browser wars (ownership of the ie7.com domain name is not going to be enough).

Opening multiple browser home pages in Firefox

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 19 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’ve not been that bothered with Internet Explorer (IE) 7 up to now – I use Firefox 1.5 on my Windows XP machines and Mozilla 1.7 on Solaris, so I already have the most significant new IE 7 feature (tabbed browsing); however, during his Windows Vista overview and roadmap session at last week’s IT Forum ’05 highlights (part 2) event, Thomas Lee mentioned an IE7 feature that does interest me – multiple home pages. This works by opening a number of home pages at startup, each in a separate tab (e.g. corporate intranet, Google, BBC News, etc.).

It’s not as obvious as entering each on on a separate line in IE 7, but Firefox also supports this feature – in Options, General, Home Page, Location(s), enter a list of home pages separated using the pipe (|) symbol.