Peter Vatistas

“One issue we heard repeatedly during the IE7 beta concerned sites that looked fine in IE6 but looked bad in IE7. The reason was that the sites had worked around IE6 issues with content that – when viewed with IE7’s improved Standards mode – looked bad.

As we started work on IE8, we thought that the same thing would happen in the short term: when a site hands IE8 content and asks for Standards mode, that content would expect IE7’s Standards mode and not appear or function correctly.

In other words, the technical challenge here is how can IE determine whether a site’s content expects IE8’s Standards mode or IE7’s Standards mode? Given how many sites offer IE very different content today, which should IE8 default to?

Our initial thinking for IE8 involved showing pages requesting “Standards” mode in an IE7’s “Standards” mode, and requiring developers to ask for IE8’s actual “Standards” mode separately. We made this decision, informed by discussions with some leading web experts, with compatibility at the top of mind.

In light of the Interoperability Principles, as well as feedback from the community, we’re choosing differently. Now, IE8 will show pages requesting “Standards” mode in IE8’s Standards mode. Developers who want their pages shown using IE8’s “IE7 Standards mode” will need to request that explicitly (using the http header/meta tag approach described here).”

I think it is about time the Internet Explorer team over at Microsoft is listening, Mozilla has been listening for years. I still prefer Firefox over IE for two simple reasons:

1. Add-ons. Mozilla’s Firefox has a very strong following and there are a ton of awesome add-ons available.

2. Security. I’ve never had one issue with security using Mozilla Firefox. One of my websites was hacked some months ago and BS javascript was added. I never noticed it nor had any issues because I was using Firefox 2. One day I decided to check how my site looked in IE7 and WHAM - pop-ups, browser crashes, and a few new programs were installed on my computer (not to mention all the stupid viruses).

I am kind of excited to see what Microsoft pulls out of their hats on IE8 - they always seem to surprise me.

Read more here. 

More and more people are emailing me, annoyed at popup windows in Firefox that cannot resize and are the wrong dimension (this becomes an issue when you can’t see a damn thing!). It never really bothered me until today when I visited 2 websites where this issue occurred and I was forced to use IE7 to see the popup. So, here is the solution:

1. In Firefox, type about:config in the address bar.
2. Scroll down to dom.disable_window_open_feature.resizable and double-click it (changes to bold and value changes to true.)
3. Done. Just restart Firefox and have endless ability to resize all popup windows. Wow.

Social Media for Firefox has to be one of the best add-ons in my Firefox arsenal. The tool is placed at the bottom of my Firefox browser and gives me immediate access to my favorite social media accounts like Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, and Reddit.

For the people who know me - they know that I am a Firefox extension whore and I try everything out there and I keep only what I HAVE TO have. This is on my favorite list of extensions, get it.

Download Social Media for Firefox here and please pass it on - its a tool worthy of exposure (like my blog, LOL!)

Just wanted to let you guys know I installed Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon on my laptop and think it’s awesome. This is the first Linux OS that has worked perfectly on my laptop out of the box - Wifi, Video, Audio, EVERYTHING!!

Anyways, I’ve installed a bunch of neat apps and customized the heck out of it using Mac4Lin and Compiz-Fusion. Below you’ll find several screenshots of my desktop at the time I wrote this and I will make sure to post my app list and how too’s soon - till the please enjoy and post your comments!!

Updated Desktop Screenshot:

I love this tool and I am not sure why I haven’t written about it before. Instead of making changes to your site then refreshing to see the results, Firebug for Firefox allows you to make changes on the fly, in real time with the ability to see the results immediately - no more refresh button!!

I use this tool on my sites to edit, debug, and monitor changes to my HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I definitely thing you should give it a try and make sure to check out the sweet tutorials on YouTube.

Click here for the Firebug information & download page.