- IE Tester - Test your sites against IE8, IE7, IE6, and IE5.5
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Posted by oVan on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 | PermaLink | 0 comments
IETester is a free tool to test your websites against all major versions of Internet Explorer. It has the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 2, IE7, IE6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP.
Download: IETester v0.2.3 (24Mb)
Labels: browser, CSS, developer, IE, IE6, IE7, IE8, Microsoft, Vista, Windows, Windows Vista, XP
- FIX: GoogleBot produces "Cannot use a leading .. to exit above the top directory" in ASP.NET
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Posted by oVan on Sunday, April 06, 2008 | PermaLink | 0 comments
I found numerous "Cannot use a leading .. to exit above the top directory" errors in my Elmah-logs lately, all of them generated by the ASP.NET engine after a visit from GoogleBot. It is caused by using URL rewriting in your aspx-pages in order to have more readable URL's and better search engine rankings.
Funnily, this only started after I submitted dynamically generated sitemaps to the Google Webmaster Tools for my clients websites. Instead of improved ranking and indexing, however it resulted in exclusion of all failing URL's.
For more background information about this error, which is generated only for certain user agents including GoogleBot and Yahoo! Slurp, you can do a simple Google search. There are a few solutions to fix this, but most involve using a custom base page class or creating different .browser files for each problematic user-agent in the App_Browser directory. Having done custom browser.ini solutions with Browserhawk years ago, I did not feel like starting all over again with googlebot.browser, yahooslurp.browser etc.
By far the easiest solution is a simple change in your web.config:
Find the <authentication> section, then change the <forms> line by adding:cookieless="UseCookies"
Voila, the problem is fixed. Note that this disables cookieless functionality for forms, so if you really need that you should use a different solution.
Labels: .NET, asp.net, browser, bug, Google, Microsoft, problem, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studion 2008, vs2005, vs2008
- 22 Reasons Why Safari 3 is Unusable (and counting)
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Posted by oVan on Tuesday, June 12, 2007 | PermaLink | 9 commentsAs indicated in my previous post, I had high hopes for Safari on Windows and I've played with it for about an hour.
Although I didn't intend to use it as my daily browser, I did want to keep it for testing purposes. The following list of problems and bugs will explain why I will uninstall it immediately, as it won't be of any use to me anymore:
Update: I've added some more problems posted by visitors
Update 2: Added related articles at the bottom- The interface does not adhere to Aero or XP Windows UI standards (same problem as iTunes and QuickTime (and is subjectively ugly)
- No ClearType support, only font smoothing that looks terribly fuzzy on flat panels
- In Vista, the window has no drop shadow like other applications, making it very hard to see what application is focused (unless you keep checking the status bar)
- Clicking on the Safari icon in the Windows taskbar doesn't Minimize or Restore its window
- You can't resize the window with its borders, only by using the small grip in the bottom right corner (provided it is not off screen).
- You can't close a tab with the middle button of your mouse
- Alt-Enter does not open an address in a new tab
- Typing Ctrl-Enter does not add "www" and ".com" in the address bar
- Escape key doesn't close the Print Preview window.
- Buttons for Minimize, Maximize and Close are too small
- Clicking on Bookmarks button or using Show All Bookmarks function (Ctrl-Alt-B) crashes Safari
- Viewing installed plugins gives error message: Safari is missing important resources and should be reinstalled.
- While typing my email address in the edit box on this page, Safari just crashes!
- The toolbar buttons have no tooltips. I have no idea what that spider button will do...
- Moving the Print Preview window around the desktop is very slow
- Left edge of toolbar on Print Preview window has transparent part
- Loading a different website in the main Safari window while the Print Preview window is still open, renders the new site also in Print Preview mode. I can't see the use of that, and the Print Preview should probably be a modal box.
- Safari doesn't maximize properly on a second monitor.
- Side-scrolling with the mouse does not work
- Using Back & Forward buttons on my Logitech mouse doesn't work either
- Not only does it use a lot of memory, it also leaks memory fast! Reloading this blog post a few times will eat up a few megabytes extra.
- And finally... it does not uninstall gracefully. It leaves a lot of orphaned registry entries, including for the Bonjour technology.
- Submitted by Tamir: Choose Language description in Hebrew is shown in reverse.
- Submitted by Philip: It's impossible to change the proxy settings.
- Submitted by anonymous: Preferences do not persist between sessions, nor is there a save button!
Okay, I agree that some bugs mentioned will be fixed, as this is a beta version after all. What will not be fixed however, is the fact that although Apple has the reputation of building user friendly devices and software, it actually fails totally in the User Experience! They have the arrogance to ignore de facto UI standards on the Windows platform, and by doing so they confirm what I've always thought about their products: they're (most of the time) beautiful but not practical. Sure, a lot of people benefit from a simple user interface, but not if it makes it harder to use the product: you can't easily resize the window, the font rendering looks horrible, buttons have no tooltips, the top header panel is huge, the removal of the status bar makes you wonder if your webpage stops at the bottom of your screen or continues under the taskbar, etc.
Apple might think that they'll gain some market share back from FireFox or Internet Explorer, but as it is now it just might backfire...
What are your thoughts? What problems did you encounter, or maybe you really like it? Let us know!
Here are some related articles on other blogs:- View from W6th: Mac browser on the pc
- Phun-ky.net: Safari on Windows bugs
- 456 berea street: Safari now officially available for Windows
Relocate documents to excel with pdf converter software. This pdf to excel converter will save you so much time. Here you can check out a great guide to purchasing this software. If you are using all Microsoft applications then you can convert pdf to word as well. Get the details of pdf to text docs and how it was created.Labels: Apple, browser, bug, crash, problem, problems, Safari, usability
- Apple Safari 3 for Windows (beta)
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Posted by oVan on Tuesday, June 12, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 commentsApple has released a public beta of their Safari browser version 3, including a Windows-version.
Here are the top reasons Apple wants you to know:- Blazing Performance
- Elegant User Interface
- Easy Bookmarks
- Pop-up Blocking
- Inline Find
- Tabbed Browsing
- SnapBack
- Forms AutoFill
- Built-in RSS
- Resizable Text Fields
- Private Browsing
- Security
That list looks pretty compelling! I might add another reason, especially for web developers: it is the easiest way to know how your website might look on an Apple. If you install it together with Firefox 1.5 in the free Microsoft VirtualPC with IE6, you can easily test IE6, IE7, Safari 3, Firefox 1.5 and Firefox 2.0 on a single Vista or XP machine without much trouble.
Update: In my follow-up post, I list no less than 22 problems with Safari on Windows that I've encountered in the first hour of usage. Suffice to say that I have uninstalled it now, and I'll revert to my previously reported method of cross-platform checking.
- Test your website on all browsers for free!
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Posted by oVan on Monday, June 11, 2007 | PermaLink | 1 commentsThis is an excellent tip for developers who want to test their website on all major browsers and platforms, without having to buy a Mac, Windows and Linux pc at the same time.
On browsershots.org you can get a screenshot of your website from a whole list of available browsers. It does take a while before you get all screenshots (from 15 minutes to a few hours sometimes), probably due to its large success so far. However, since this is a free service, there's no need to complain I suppose.
Here are some screenshot from browsershots.org that shows this very blog as it is displayed in Opera 9.20 on Linux and Firefox 2.0.0.4 also on Linux:
When you click on the image of the Opera screenshot, you'll see a close-up like this:
And finally when you click again, you'll get a 1:1 view on the screenshot, so you can examine every pixel of your layout.
If you need a faster solution, you can try BrowserCam which has affordable prices and gives you near instant results and much more options.Labels: Apple, browser, Firefox, free, Internet Explorer, linux, Opera, screen capture, Web Designer, web develoment
