Recently Google Announced a new exciting product called Google Chrome Frame. Which is an add-on for Internet Explorer which offers Internet Explorer users all the features of other browsers without having to install a different browser (When a certain Meta tag is used on a web page)? The video Google released explains the product in a little more detail.
Create forms on a web page is relatively simple, however what most developers forget is the golden rule of usability, “Users are Idiots”. In a large number of websites they fail to provide a clear indication of how a form field needs to be formatted. Some even seem to even forget to clear the field when the user clicks into, which is really useful if your website has users with motor skills.
Here is a really neat piece of jQuery I use to make forms a little easier for users which takes little work to integrate (Just copy and paste before the tag).
JQuery is a JavaScript Framework intends to decrease the time it takes to code the user enhancements; a website should always be able to work without JavaScript. JavaScript is just to improve the user experience.
Unfortunately there is one disadvantage with jQuery. If a developer incorrectly utilizes it, the page loading times will drastically increase. This is mostly down to a developer adding lots of plugins without considering the total bandwidth required to send the data.
Building a website is not difficulty, but making it look perfect in very browser is almost impossible. Here are a few essential tools to make cross browser testing a little easier.
IETester – Internet Explorer is a pain to build a website on, mainly because standalone versions are difficult to run on Windows Vista and Mac. This little tool makes testing your website on multiple versions of Internet Explorer a breeze.
IETester allows you to compare you website in Internet Explorer Versions 5 to 8. Its interface is easy to understand and while there is still work needed to be done on it, I would be surprised not to see it on every web developer/designer’s desktop.
iPhoney – Lots of users are now browsing the internet on their iPhone. It makes sense for webmasters to make sure their website works correctly on the small screen.
BrowserShots – BrowserShots is quite famous for allowing designers to see their websites is lots of browser (in the region of 93) on major OS’s. The main disadvantage though is that you have to wait over an hour to see the screen shots.
IE NetRender – Similar to BrowerShots, in terms of a web based screen grab service. But this website does not require a wait of up to an hour to see a screen shot. However, it does only support Internet Explorer.
Most of you may have noticed that Firefox 3.5 has just been released. Here is a quick overview of what new features and improvements it has:
If you want to read in a bit more detail the new features of Mozilla FireFox 3.5, take a look at Firefox 3.5 for developers.