Top Reasons to Firefox even better than Chrome for web development

Some time ago, some of us, web developers, we changed the Firefox Google Chrome because of the important features such as speed.

With the release of Firefox 4, it solved some of the problems we had in past versions, leaving it better, at least when it comes to web development.

This article, divided into two parts, explains some of the reasons why the Firefox browser is still a better than Google Chrome for your web development work.

Evolution of the market share of browsers

About a year ago, I talked about something most of us already knew, that PHP developers are switching to Google Chrome as its web browser access.

As you can see in the table below, this trend continues to be true this year. These numbers were taken from statistics developers PHP Classes logged in to the site .

Browser	May 2009	May 2010	May 2011	Change
Mozilla Firefox	68.0%	63.5%	57.3%	-6.2%
Microsoft IE	18.5%	13.6%	8.9%	-4.7%
Google Chrome	6.0%	15.7%	28.1%	+12.4%

As you can see, Chrome almost doubled its share in a year, while Internet Explorer has lost a little more than half. Firefox also fell slightly.

The gain of Chrome is greater than the loss of the Firefox and Internet Explorer. This means that Chrome also gained share lost to other browsers.

Reasons to Firefox even better than Chrome for web development

Given the fact that the participation of Google Chrome continues to grow enough, you may wonder why on this article. The fact that Chrome will continue to become increasingly popular for web browsing does not mean that web developers are also working with him in his projects. For me, this is not the case. Often when I'm doing development work, I feel I need to switch to Firefox, for reasons which I will list below.

I wish they had in mind that this article is not a rant against Google, which gave us web developers a lot to be grateful to him, but when we speak of Chrome, there is still much to be improved.

I decided to write this article now in the hope that maybe someone at Google to read, and do something to resolve these issues, most of the time, really bother most of us, since we do not keep changing all the time browsers .

1. View HTML

When the code of our sites have bugs, it usually generates an HTML code that is incorrect or invalid. So we need to analyze the HTML code to understand what's wrong. Firefox has an amazing feature that allows you to select a portion of the page and it shows the exact HTML that corresponds to that portion of the selected page. This feature does not exist in Chrome.

The best you have is the Inspect Element feature, which allows you to find the HTML code for the page element below the cursor of your mouse. Not the same thing. If I select a region of the page, I want to see the full HTML of that region, not a single element.

Another annoying thing is that Chrome tries to make the HTML pretty. This means that if you have a malformed HTML, you will not see where he is malformed because Chrome will show an embellished version of the HTML code after it has been repaired. I wish they had an option to disable.

2. Validation of HTML

Another great feature of Firefox is the ability to display any validation errors of HTML that you may have. In fact, this feature is provided by the extension HTML Validator .

I tested several extensions with the same goal in Chrome, but nothing that was really good. Some just used the W3C validation service through the page's URL, which is not good, because when you are developing a page that is not public service W3C can not access it, and any user logged into the site you is developing can not access it.

Other extensions have tried to copy the currently loaded page and pass it to the validation service, but none showed any invalid HTML code that the Firefox extension HTML Validator shows.

It also does not rely on an external validation service. That means you can validate pages even if you do not have internet access. So for all these reasons, an equivalent version of the HTML Validator extension is sorely needed for Chrome.

3. Disable JavaScript

Sometimes you need to test your site with JavaScript disabled. The only way to disable it in Chrome is going to preferences and disable. This is truly annoying. In Firefox, you can use the extension Web Developer by Chris Pederick to add a button to the browser to quickly disable and re-enable JavaScript when you want.

In Chrome, there is also the extension Web Developer the same developer, but it provides no means to disable JavaScript. The problem is due to the limitation of the API exposed to Chrome extensions. It does not allow a way to disable JavaScript from extensions.

There is a request for funding for the project Chromium to implement the necessary support to disable JavaScript. Implementing this feature was actually given a year ago, but it never happened. Oddly, users have been banned from posting future comments on the application of this feature.

4. Empty the browser cache

Sometimes you need to force the cleanup of the browser cache, so that new content can be recovered from the site server you are developing.

It is the same limitation to disable JavaScript. You can not do this through an extension. You need to go in the preferences of Chrome.

There is also a feature request to enable support for clearing the cache from an extension. It was made more than two years, but only a few months ago was released for implementation.

5. Changing the agent identifier of the browser

Sometimes you need to access your site pretending to be developing using another browser, so you can see if it fits to that browser the way you expect.

For example, if you are serving an RSS feed to be handled by Feedburner, all you need to redirect browsers to the URL of the Feedburner feed, unless the current agent is checking if your Feedburner feed has been updated. Therefore, it would be helpful if you could cause the browser to pretend to be the Feedburner, so you could check if he was working as it should.

In Firefox, you can use the extension User Agent Switcher also Chris Pederick. In Chrome, there is also an extension called User Agent Switcher . The problem is that it does not work. Good works, but not the way you want. The extension can only change the browser identification exposed to JavaScript. This means that HTTP requests sent to the server will not use the string identifying the agent that you need to be sent.

I suspect that an application for resource to be implemented in Chromium, but not found. Until this feature is implemented, we will always have to go back to Firefox, which works well with the User Agent Switcher extension.

Picnik is better with friends

Posted by Thomas Kang, Software Engineer

Picasa Web Albums has expanded the collaborative albums feature to support collaborative editing using Picnik. Now you can invite friends and family to contribute to an album either by uploading photos of their own or by editing any existing photos in that album.

Your original always stays safe and sound as your collaborators make edits to add funny speech bubbles, give you pointers on editing techniques, or pitch in to help you touch up your hundreds of vacation photos. If they edit one of your photos in Picnik and save the changes, it will save back to your album as a new image, and their name will show in the sidebar to give them credit for the new version.

To enable collaborative editing, simply share an album with your friends, and be sure to click on the checkbox to let the people you share with contribute to your album. Soon you’ll start seeing all the cool new images they create from your photos.

We're sure that there are many fun uses for this new feature, so if you discover something that was helpful to you, we'd love to hear about it. Happy editing!

Top Reasons to Firefox even better than Chrome for web development

Some time ago, some of us, web developers, we changed the Firefox Google Chrome because of the important features such as speed.

With the release of Firefox 4, it solved some of the problems we had in past versions, leaving it better, at least when it comes to web development.

This article, divided into two parts, explains some of the reasons why the Firefox browser is still a better than Google Chrome for your web development work.

Evolution of the market share of browsers

About a year ago, I talked about something most of us already knew, that PHP developers are switching to Google Chrome as its web browser access.

As you can see in the table below, this trend continues to be true this year. These numbers were taken from statistics developers PHP Classes logged in to the site .

Browser	May 2009	May 2010	May 2011	Change
Mozilla Firefox	68.0%	63.5%	57.3%	-6.2%
Microsoft IE	18.5%	13.6%	8.9%	-4.7%
Google Chrome	6.0%	15.7%	28.1%	+12.4%

As you can see, Chrome almost doubled its share in a year, while Internet Explorer has lost a little more than half. Firefox also fell slightly.

The gain of Chrome is greater than the loss of the Firefox and Internet Explorer. This means that Chrome also gained share lost to other browsers.

Reasons to Firefox even better than Chrome for web development

Given the fact that the participation of Google Chrome continues to grow enough, you may wonder why on this article. The fact that Chrome will continue to become increasingly popular for web browsing does not mean that web developers are also working with him in his projects. For me, this is not the case. Often when I'm doing development work, I feel I need to switch to Firefox, for reasons which I will list below.

I wish they had in mind that this article is not a rant against Google, which gave us web developers a lot to be grateful to him, but when we speak of Chrome, there is still much to be improved.

I decided to write this article now in the hope that maybe someone at Google to read, and do something to resolve these issues, most of the time, really bother most of us, since we do not keep changing all the time browsers .

1. View HTML

When the code of our sites have bugs, it usually generates an HTML code that is incorrect or invalid. So we need to analyze the HTML code to understand what's wrong. Firefox has an amazing feature that allows you to select a portion of the page and it shows the exact HTML that corresponds to that portion of the selected page. This feature does not exist in Chrome.

The best you have is the Inspect Element feature, which allows you to find the HTML code for the page element below the cursor of your mouse. Not the same thing. If I select a region of the page, I want to see the full HTML of that region, not a single element.

Another annoying thing is that Chrome tries to make the HTML pretty. This means that if you have a malformed HTML, you will not see where he is malformed because Chrome will show an embellished version of the HTML code after it has been repaired. I wish they had an option to disable.

2. Validation of HTML

Another great feature of Firefox is the ability to display any validation errors of HTML that you may have. In fact, this feature is provided by the extension HTML Validator .

I tested several extensions with the same goal in Chrome, but nothing that was really good. Some just used the W3C validation service through the page's URL, which is not good, because when you are developing a page that is not public service W3C can not access it, and any user logged into the site you is developing can not access it.

Other extensions have tried to copy the currently loaded page and pass it to the validation service, but none showed any invalid HTML code that the Firefox extension HTML Validator shows.

It also does not rely on an external validation service. That means you can validate pages even if you do not have internet access. So for all these reasons, an equivalent version of the HTML Validator extension is sorely needed for Chrome.

3. Disable JavaScript

Sometimes you need to test your site with JavaScript disabled. The only way to disable it in Chrome is going to preferences and disable. This is truly annoying. In Firefox, you can use the extension Web Developer by Chris Pederick to add a button to the browser to quickly disable and re-enable JavaScript when you want.

In Chrome, there is also the extension Web Developer the same developer, but it provides no means to disable JavaScript. The problem is due to the limitation of the API exposed to Chrome extensions. It does not allow a way to disable JavaScript from extensions.

There is a request for funding for the project Chromium to implement the necessary support to disable JavaScript. Implementing this feature was actually given a year ago, but it never happened. Oddly, users have been banned from posting future comments on the application of this feature.

4. Empty the browser cache

Sometimes you need to force the cleanup of the browser cache, so that new content can be recovered from the site server you are developing.

It is the same limitation to disable JavaScript. You can not do this through an extension. You need to go in the preferences of Chrome.

There is also a feature request to enable support for clearing the cache from an extension. It was made more than two years, but only a few months ago was released for implementation.

5. Changing the agent identifier of the browser

Sometimes you need to access your site pretending to be developing using another browser, so you can see if it fits to that browser the way you expect.

For example, if you are serving an RSS feed to be handled by Feedburner, all you need to redirect browsers to the URL of the Feedburner feed, unless the current agent is checking if your Feedburner feed has been updated. Therefore, it would be helpful if you could cause the browser to pretend to be the Feedburner, so you could check if he was working as it should.

In Firefox, you can use the extension User Agent Switcher also Chris Pederick. In Chrome, there is also an extension called User Agent Switcher . The problem is that it does not work. Good works, but not the way you want. The extension can only change the browser identification exposed to JavaScript. This means that HTTP requests sent to the server will not use the string identifying the agent that you need to be sent.

I suspect that an application for resource to be implemented in Chromium, but not found. Until this feature is implemented, we will always have to go back to Firefox, which works well with the User Agent Switcher extension.

Better Impression Than a Click

Ad revenue from blog is very interesting for many blogger. But what's in it for you, if you use ads that just get a little revenue from ads that you install it. You need to know what advertising media better, and deliver more profits. Surely you would think to register your blog to the famous advertising media such as, Advertising, Tribal Fusion, Z5X, Ads4game, Google Adsense, Chitika, viral media, and Infolinks. In my opinion, is the eighth media advertising is the best advertising media and your willing to pay a high price. But all of that useless if your impression of the blog is still low, whereas if you get a lot of clicks but the impression you are low on the revenue from advertising would not be maximal.

Why do I dare to assume that the impression is better than the click? Because in my opinion, the impression is things that affect click on ads and influence the level of your income from advertisements posted on your blog. The higher your impressions, the more expensive it will also pay per click. You need not expect to get clicks, because there are not many people who are interested to click on ads that are installed on your blog (maybe visitors know it's advertising). I think the impression remains ahead, because the impression gained influence clicks as well. Here is the calculation as well as evidence that a impression better than click.

If you put an ad on your blog, and suppose that the cost for one click (per click) is priced at $ 1. So the publisher will get $ 1 per click.
In the ads you put on your blog / website, for example you get 200,000 impressions and 50 clicks. Then the calculation like this.

($ 50/200000) * 1000 = $ 0.25

So in other words, you get an eCPM of $ 0.25

Then with eCPM is $ 0.25 you will earn how many dollars? Here's the math.

(200000/1000) * $ 0.25 = $ 50

So your income in a single day's worth $ 50.

But if you only have a few impressions, suppose you only had 200 impressions in one day and not get a single click. For one click your ad to get $ 1. But you do not get clicks, then it is just a click ads generate $ 0. Then the calculation will be like this.

($ 0 / 200) * 1000 = $ 0

So in other words the eCPM you only have $ 0, and the results you can know. You will not be earning any income in a single day.

Above calculation is a calculation that is associated with a click, but you must know that advertising is not just using clicks but also utilize the payment per thousand impressions. Suppose that you attach ads pay you $ 1 for 1000 impressions. And one day you have 200,000 impressions. Then the calculation is like this (different formula).

(200000/1000) * 1 = $ 200

So your income in one day is $ 200.

But if you only have a few impressions, for example you only have 200 impressions in a single day and every 1000 impressions get $ 1 then ...

(200/1000) * 1 = $ 0.2

So your income in a day just to get $ 0.2 only, and even then if you paid $ 1 per 1000 impressions.

Maybe you are a little confused premises click and CPM calculations, because I was a little confused. Because ads like Google Adsense, using clicks and impressions to pay the publisher. I think calculations to determine the payment, using both of these calculations. Perhaps the formula would be like this.

The number of calculations per impression payment plus the amount paid per click. So we have to go back to the initial calculations to find the number of each.

Suppose you get 50 clicks and get paid $ 1 per click. And you have the impression of 200 000.

($ 50/200000) * 1000 = $ 0.25

So in other words, you get an eCPM of $ 0.25

Here's the calculation for total revenue from clicks.
(200000/1000) * $ 0.25 = $ 50

So your income in a single day's worth $ 50.

Then we proceed to calculate the total earnings from impressions. Suppose that you attach ads pay you $ 1 for 1000 impressions. And one day you have 200,000 impressions. Then the calculation is like this (different formula).

(200000/1000) * 1 = $ 200

So your income in one day is $ 200.
So the total income dai your impressions and click add, look like this.

$ 200 + $ 50 = $ 250

So, you will get a payment of $ 250 per day. Ok, I think enough for comparison clicks and impressions. The point is to increase impression of your blog if you want to get more results than ads that you install.

6 Deleted Scenes That Prove The Book Isn't Always Better

Ah, Cracked.  Sometimes you provide some nice information that the inattentive masses on the internet wouldn't otherwise be aware of, and other times you're saying Sauron was an alright guy.  And now you turn your daft eye towards The Lord of the Rings and Starship Troopers.

And, naturally, they bring up Tom Goddamn Bombadil as evidence that The Book Isn't Always Better.  Because, as we all know, there isn't a single second, nary a frame, of stupid belief-suspension-failure comedy in Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy, right?

A fake language dictionary disguised as an epic fantasy novel, as you can imagine, doesn't exactly lend itself to the big screen. So, for the sake of streamlining the story, a lot of elements had to be tweaked or outright abandoned. For example, the book version drags on for six chapters after Gollum takes his swan-dive into the volcano, and before it's over, we see Saruman acting like a small-time mafioso in the Shire before ending up on the wrong end of a shiv. So, yeah -- the infuriating multiple endings in Return of the King: That's real.

Except no, it isn't, because the "infuriating multiple endings" in Return of the King weren't spaced one after the other in an endless procession in the books.  Not to mention they weren't padded out with slow motion that tripled their length.

But what they left out was much weirder, such as the part where Merry and Pippin almost get eaten alive by an angry tree but are saved by a dancing, prancing forest-dweller who calms down the tree by singing to it and then lures the bewildered hobbits back to his secluded shack in the woods.

Coming soon on The Blog That Time Forgot: Twenty Things from The Lord of the Rings I loved that weren't adapted. Not featured: the part where Merry and Pippin almost get eaten alive by an angry tree but are saved by a dancing, prancing forest-dweller who calms down the tree by singing to it and then lures the bewildered hobbits back to his secluded shack in the woods.*

You can read Lord of the Rings as an allegory for World War II

Or not, being as Tolkien hated allegory - you can read it as applicable, though.

in which case Tom Bombadil represents the spirit of pacifism and noninvolvement. Which, as we all know, makes for bitching action movies.

I can think of plenty of bitching action movies that involve pacifism and noninvolvement.  The idea of a man of peace who doesn't want to fight, only to be pushed into taking up his weapons when his family/friends/country/beliefs/turtles are threatened, describes half of all bitching action movies.  Hell, even Commando had pacifism and noninvolvement! Feckin' Commando!

In any case, it's perhaps understandable that Cracked would focus on Bombadil, since it's obviously harder to make a case for the the films leaving out great stuff like the Barrow Downs, Glorfindel, Beregond and the Knights of Dol Amroth: let's just take the one really stupid, goofy element of the book, and represent it like there are plenty more like it.  Yeah.  Good one, Cracked.

But then, they bring up Starship Troopers, the most vigorously misunderstood science fiction story I've ever heard of.

When fanboys complain about the soldiers-vs.-insect-monsters, intentionally over-the-top sci-fi action flick Starship Troopers, it's usually about how director Paul Verhoeven left out the giant, awesome, robot-armor death-suits that featured heavily in the novel. (When nonfanboys complain about it, it's usually about how awful it is as, like, a movie.) A complaint you don't hear so often is that Verhoeven also left out the fact that the insect monsters are meant to be stand-ins for the soulless, hive-minded Chinese.

I blame "Starship Stormtroopers," the "Epic Pooh" of science fiction criticism.  Also by Michael Moorcock, as it happens.  Anyone know of a rebuttal to SS like Brian Murphy's rebuttal of "Epic Pooh"?

Now, Verhoeven's Starship Troopers is interesting, for I view it much as I view Conan the Barbarian: a flawed, but ambitious story that is very different and often directly contradictory to the source material.  As an adaptation, it's a disaster: as an independent creation that takes one or two names and ideas from earlier material and runs with it, though, I think it's very misunderstood, almost as misunderstood as the novel in the first place.

Of course, Conan the Barbarian and Starship Troopers differ in that while Milius and Stone started the project explicitly as a Conan film and honestly believe they were being true to Howard's creation, Verhoeven started this project as something else, and after reading through part of Heinlein's novel, decided to satirise it.

The problem is that most of the accusations made towards Starship Troopers are completely inaccurate.  Chris W's Starship Troopers page is what I'm trying to do with my Filmgoer's Guide, albeit perhaps Howard didn't hallucinate the ghost of Conan and write down his biography, Tolkien didn't glorify war,

All I can say is that if people can read the likes of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and come to the conclusion that Heinlein was fascist and militaristic because of Starship Troopers... then you might as well say that Tolkien was a rabid secular transhumanist based on The Children of Hurin.

*And to complement that, "Twenty Things from Jackson's Lord of the Rings Films I Loved That Aren't In The Books," itself complemented by "The 20 Worst Things about Jackson's Lord of the Rings Films," finally offset by "The 20 Best Things about Jackson's Lord of the Rings Films."

When leasing a car is better than buying

I would like to start this article with a famous quote from oil baron Paul Getty "if it appreciates, buy it. If it depreciates, lease it". Many would say that is money management 101 or simply think it is common sense. So why buy a new car when you can lease it.

Mr. Getty's saying is a perfect fit for fleet managers and business owners alike who are building or renewing their fleets. In this article I'll point out key benefits to why leasing can be a real money saver from a business perspective.

When you buy a new car, be it privately or for a business, the minute you drive it off the forecourt it starts to depreciate, in other words you are loosing money the moment you drive your new car out of the garage you bought it from. This brings another subject into play, car depreciation, but that is content for another article.

Even though I won't discuss car depreciation in detail here, that is something you have to take for granted when leasing or contract hiring a car or a whole fleet. I recommend German cars as they depreciate far less than other brands. More on this later.

First of all let us understand the concepts of car leasing. The concepts of leasing a car are fairly simply, yet many business owners and fleet managers are often sceptical about it. First of all car leasing is not renting as many people mistakenly believe.

That said, leasing is a financial method, similar to a loan. When you lease a car you will be paying a set amount a month to purchase a new vehicle, but this vehicle won't be yours. At this point you might be asking yourself, what is the point in all this, paying for something that won't be mine?

If you asked yourself this question, I have to agree with you to a certain extent, but there other benefits that make car leasing more attractive than buying a new car. First, monthly payments are on average 30% to 60% cheaper than the ordinary car loan and there isn't the need for a huge upfront deposit. In general the majority of car leasing companies will only ask for a deposit of 3 monthly payments.

Second, you can renew your fleet every 2 to 4 years depending on your leasing contract. Not to mention that road taxes are usually included in the lease price and as they are brand new vehicles, warranty covers most of the maintenance costs.

Third, as afore mentioned maintenance costs are little to none specially because when you lease you will always have new car in hand and you do not need to worry about it breaking down unless it is a manufacturers problem. In those cases maintenance is also free of charge.

Fourth, no used car hassles, Lease and eliminate the headaches of trying to sell used cars. With leasing you simply return it to the leasing company and choose a new one. Imagine renewing your whole fleet of vehicles by simply ringing your leasing company and scheduling it, no hassles, no time off work hopping from dealer to dealer after the best deals.

As you can see there are countless benefits that make car leasing better than buying from a business standpoint. A recent study revealed that 20% to 25% of all new cars, trucks, SUVs, and vans are leased. In the premium segment numbers are even higher, approximately 75% of luxury cars purchased in the UK are leased.

Determining the lease price of a car

To determine the lease price of a given car, a series of factors are to be considered. First we have the initial purchase price, it is brand new, millage and condition are disregarded, if it is a used car these three factors are brought into the equation.

But the two most important factors that will influence your monthly payments are residual value and depreciation. Residual value is an estimate of the value a given vehicle will have when it reaches the end of the lease.

As afore mentioned depreciation has a great influence in the final price of your monthly payments. In short, it refers to the reduction in the car's value caused by age. Brand and model are closely related to depreciation, as some brand depreciate less than others.

Reason why I recommend German cars is their depreciation factor is way better than other brands like some Asian brands like KIA and Hyundai. For instance, you can lease an Audi for less than £240 a month, way less than what you will pay a loan on the same car.
(ArticlesBase SC #3108552)