I downloaded Firefox 3 a while back, and have since then
suffered through an excruciatingly slow
response from the URL bar. It was so slow that I nearly
threw my computer out the window. The reason for this
slowness is that Firefox has developed a URL bar that is
smart enough to remember what you've typed in the past, and
presents you with matching, relevant options from which to
choose when typing strings into the URL/location bar. When
this works, this feature is phenomenal, as I've seen it work
on other computers. The response time is very fast, and the
options to choose from are always relevant. However, when
this feature is so slow that it forces you to wait for
results to appear as you type, and won't complete what you
are typing, it becomes a complete killer. Because this very
situation was happening to me, I tried turning this off in
the preferences section. The problem... The option to do
so isn't available. This was extremely frustrating. So
much so that it nearly drove me away from using the browser
ever again. After many failed attempts at finding a
solution, I finally came across a blog entry written by Dustin Diaz
explaining the features of the new Firefox 3 browser, which helped
fix my problem (thank you very much Mr. Diaz). Since the
solution to my problem took so long to figure out, I thought
I'd share the solution in hopes that it helps anyone else
who runs into this. Read the
rest of this entry »
YSlow,
which was created by the developers at Yahoo!, is a firefox plugin that
analyzes web pages and tells you why they're slow based on
the rules for high performance web sites. YSlow is a Firefox
add-on integrated with the popular Firebug web development
tool. Below is a google tech talk session explaining all
about it:
A great lesson to be learned by this video comes at the
20 minute mark with the discussion on "CSS Sprites". This is a brilliant idea, and
extremely simple to implement.
Apple announced today that they are releasing a public
BETA version of their "Safari" browser for
Windows. So, armed with this information, I've decided to
take it for a test drive. I must say, I like it very much.
I'm currently writing this entry using the new browser, in
fact. I haven't come across any bugs as of yet, however,
I'm sure there may be a few as it is still a beta version.
What I like the best is the displaying of fonts. They
look crisper and sharper. The load times seem to be quite a
bit faster than any of the other browsers as well -
something that apple proudly boasts as one of the
features:
Safari is the fastest browser running on Windows, based on
the industry standard iBench tests, rendering web pages up
to twice as fast as IE 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than
Firefox 2. Safari joins iTunes® in delivering Apple’s
legendary user experience to both Windows and Mac® users as
well as full support of open Internet standards. -- Apple.com
