Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with browsers

I can't stay logged in to any websites

peep — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:17:42 -0800

Suddenly today, I can't stay logged into anything - Google, Facebook, Metafilter, Twitter, Flickr, etc. I've run through a bunch of possibilities, but could the power cutting out last night have done something? I'm using Firefox, and I've already uninstalled and reinstalled it. Privacy settings allow cookies and I don't have it set to clear history when closing a window. And obviously I've tried many times to log into different sites, making sure I click "remember me." I've never had this problem before today. Last night the power went out for about 20 seconds and my computer shut down, but all was otherwise fine this morning. I've restarted and it's in regular (not safe) mode. Any ideas?

Can I make Chrome appear Firefoxy?

bluefly — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 07:16:20 -0800

I like to watch a lot of streaming video especially for sports games. I usually use the Google Chrome browser. But some sites' media players say they only work with Firefox or IE and won't even give me the chance of trying it out in Chrome. Is there a way to trick the sites into thinking Chrome is really one of the approved browsers? Or is there really some fundamental difference that makes the players break in Chrome? I am especially looking to watch sports on NBC. I recently uninstalled Firefox because I didn't like the new version. But I can reinstall it if that's the only solution. I am on a Windows Vista computer. Thanks.

Really Big iPhones Are Not in Budget

rokusan — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:36:20 -0800

Cheap touchscreens + Linux (?) + full-screen browser? A colleague is looking at building a semi-public art installation that requires about 20 small touchscreens (14-19 inches) that are running web browsers and nothing else. She has not much budget, but will be applying for some small grants. So I'm thinking about this...

(1) What's the cheap/easiest touchscreen monitor or all-in-one low-end PC? They'll be mounted in (new-build) walls, so they can be laptoppy or industrial or even small CRTs.
(2) I assume Linux for cost reasons, but it doesn't matter really. If Linux, which distro is the best bet for (which?) touch support?
(3) How to boot into a full-screen browser (Chrome?) without any window-manager type other apps visible/available?

I'll take ideas on any 1-2-3 item! I'm sort of stymied for starting points.

OS Font issues... Need HELP!

Vanna79 — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:55:08 -0800

HELP! I am going nutty. Some of my MAC OS fonts and some web page fonts display as Black with a white outline which makes it very difficult to read. It happens in all browsers as well. I assume it is a font issue but have no idea how to fix it or which font it is affecting.

How can I fix my weirdly rendering navigation tabs?

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:30:19 -0800

What's wrong with my CSS that makes top the nav render like this or this on some browsers, and how can I fix it? This is an example of a desired rendering, and here's is the CSS. Thanks in advance, guys & gals!

Can firefox mimic the Windows integration of IE?

stupidsexyFlanders — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:26:16 -0800

If throw an address like c:\my documents into an IE address bar, it opens up the folder in windows explorer. If I put the same thing in a firefox address bar, I get an html page that displays the folder/files as a series of links down the page. Anyway to get firefox to replicate the IE behavior on this type of address?

Why are my wife's browsers messed up?

strangeleftydoublethink — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 21:44:20 -0800

All my wife's browsers are messed up. Please help. We have an Intel iMac at home. I'm the admin. My wife is a user. The latest versions of Camino, Safari, and Firefox are installed. When I'm logged in, all browsers work fine. When my wife is logged in, all the browsers display pages very funky, usually in a narrow strip, centered, with only a bit of the top of the page showing and a looooong scroll down to any content. For example, on Flickr, you see the logo and nothing else unless you scroll down.

With the exception of Safari, which displays pages well but all login boxes are thin horizontal strips, so she can't log in to anything.

Ideas anyone?

I want my Firefox!

trip and a half — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 08:35:36 -0800

Why is Firefox so sluggish on my laptop? I love Firefox. I use it at work. I used to use it at home on my old desktop (which died).

In September of last year, I bought a shiny new Asus laptop which I absolutely love. But every time I've tried to download and use Firefox on it, the response time has been frustrating to the point where I've uninstalled it.

What's going on? I have to wait ten seconds or more each time I click anything before the browser will respond. Often the title bar has the Windows "not responding" message in it.

Any ideas? I'm running Windows XP Home. Save me from IE!

How can I open a specific web shortcut (from the desktop) in a specific web browser?

covert7 — Sat, 05 May 2007 13:34:01 -0800

How can I open a specific web shortcut (from the desktop) in a specific web browser? I can't believe this is as hard as I'm finding it to be so perhaps I'm missing something very very simple.

I have created a shortcut to a website that will only work in IE. I also have Firefox setup on this machine so that it is the default web browser. I want the user to use Firefox for almost everything web related they do, expect for this one site.

To make things simple on them, I put a copy of this shortcut on their desktop. I know if they open the shortcut from within IE's Favorites, they can go there no problem. But from the desktop, Firefox is the browser that gets launched and the site won't work in it. I'm really trying to make things as dead simple as I can for this lady.

So is this possible, or is she just going to have to go into IE and then launch it from there?

Thanks for any help you can provide folks!

How do i go all the way back?

JohnnyGunn — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 19:22:56 -0800

With Firefox 2.0 (did not happen on 1.5.) when I return to the previous page via the back button, I am always sent to the top of the previous page regardless of how far I had scrolled down prior to jumping to the next page. Can I set it to go back to the spot I had scrolled to and not to the top or am I stuck? (My current workaround is to use the add on script that creates a duplicate tab)

Firefox Issues

spicynuts — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 09:01:17 -0800

Firefox 1.5.0.7 weirdness. Please help. Two days ago Firefox started behaving oddly at work for me - everytime I tried to access gmail or hotmail I would get an error message saying "Unable to access this site because site requires SSL to be enabled". I had no problem accessing both of those sites through IE.

Today I come in and fire up the browser and it immediately asks me if I want to transfer all of my bookmarks, cookies, passwords etc from IE. WTF?? I go through that and the browser opens and of course none of the bookmarks and cookies etc that had been in Firefox for the past year or so are gone. However, now I have no SSL error messages and can access gmail/hotmail no problem. What the hell is going on? Is it possible that our IT group moved the network drive that Firefox writes its profile data to? If so, why the SSL error message earlier?

NO, I would not like to open the link in a new tab

pornucopia — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 10:07:47 -0800

Can I get rid of the "open in new tab" option on the right-click menu in firefox? I hate opening things in a new tab. I don't use tabs, tabs don't work for me. That's just how it is. So I basically NEVER want to open a link in a new tab.

"Open in new tab" is right next to "Open in new window" on the right-click menu in Firefox, so I'm constantly accidentally opening something in a new tab. I would like this option completely removed from the menu, if possible. I guess if it were removed, "Bookmark this link" would then be the new accidental target, so if you could tell me how to add a blank slot to that menu that would be cool too.

Thanks!

A concatenated and transportable list of bookmarks

seawallrunner — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 11:11:54 -0800

I have four browsers and want one portable list of bookmarks This was almost addressed here and here - but neither of these discussion threads quite answer my current situation.

I run IE, Opera, Firefox and Flock on one machine at home for four non-concurrent interests (work, photography, outdoors, a shared schedule) and have accumulated scads of bookmarks on each of these browsers over the years.

I am keeping these browsers and interests separate so that I am not distracted by "the other three" when I am at work. This approach helps keep me focused on the task at hand.

How do I easily concatenate the bookmarks into a master list at the end of a month? I would like to continue keeping each browser's bookmarks' list independent of the interests contained in the other three browsers.

I would then use this master list of bookmarks on one browser on another machine (say, my laptop) where the segregation of bookmarks is not important. Keeping the bookmarks in their respective folders is not important either - it can be one long list of bookmarks, I don't mind.

Where to get older version of MS Explorer?

lometogo — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 07:48:54 -0800

I need to download version 6.X of MS Explorer but can't seem to find it on the Web. Can anyone pont me to a site that keeps older versions? Thanks

Re-installed WinXP Won't Show CSS Images

ao4047 — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 20:09:32 -0800

Re-installed Windows XP on my old laptop (Sony PCG-SRX87). Let it run through all the updates. Now neither IE nor Firefox will show CSS background images. Example: when I view Gmail or Google Spreadsheets, there's no background images for any of the rows. Searching Google for css, background images, service pack 2, firefox, internet explorer, troubelshooting, etc... checked Internet Options, Windows Firewall, turned off firewall, turned off virus scanner. Any ideas?

Bonus and maybe related: text sizes in IE are huge. I go to View > Text Size and it is set to Medium but if I got to AOL.com homepage the headlines are massive.

So long Safari?

gwint — Wed, 10 May 2006 11:46:49 -0800

Has Safari become a second class browser? Does it have a future? More and more I'm encountering sites that are not compatible with Safari and ask me to switch to Firefox (or claim that Safari support is coming "soon") or that certain features in webapps only appear in Firefox (e.g. gmail). It's like that bad old days when sites were IE/PC-only except that now there is a viable choice for Mac users in form of Firefox. My question is: With so much developer momentum focused on Firefox compatibility, will Safari be put out to pasture? And if not, will it fade into obscurity?

Is there a perfect OSX web browser out there for me?

bruceyeah — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 03:26:22 -0800

I'm trying to find a (stable) OSX web browser that... A) allows you to select text and right-click to search for that text in Google, AND B) displays bookmarks in the bookmarks toolbar as favicons (not just plain text buttons). Firefox and Safari seem to do A, Camino has B, Shiira does both but it's hella unstable on my Intel Mac mini.

Or alternately... is there a way to customise Safari, Firefox or Camino so that they do both? I've searched high and low for relevant extensions with no success.

Camino is close to perfect, but not being able to right-click and Google something thing is annoying. Or am I just in need of a good bookmarklet script that does this?

Previewing across platforms?

j.p. Hung — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 11:00:50 -0800

Knowing Explorer is no longer being upgraded for macs, how can I best assure browser compatibility across platforms (from a previewing standpoint)? I was over a friends and noticed a website I had done (in Dreamweaver mx) looked a bit funky. I had previewed it in three browsers on my mac (os 10.3.9) but the same browser (explorer) in a PC (xp) reacted a bit differently. Nothing major; mainly not reading prefs I set for a table correctly but now it has me wondering how I can preview my sites across platforms and browsers. Right now, I don't have the scratch for PC and was curious if there were other ways to ensure compatability.

How to change my webpage so as to get Explorer to not shuffle my columns.

dances_with_sneetches — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 07:39:56 -0800

Okay, so I used Nvu to put together my first web page. Now it seems that IE 6 scrambles it. I had been regularly previewing my product with Netscape and Firefox and it looked fine. The style sheet that I based my page on has a column (I'm a little unclear on the semantics, but the equivalent of frames, although frames may be the Explorer term). I've tried to rundown the problem at Nvu user forums and it looks like "Internet Explorer simply doesn't support the 'fixed' positioning type," or otherwise put, IE doesn't support CSS2 protocols, or even all of CSS1 protocols.

So, am I screwed? I'm tempted to post the page as is (and this is about 20 linked pages of material) and tell people to grow up and get Firefox. Is there an easy fix? Or do I have to abandon my style sheet and redo the whole set of pages?

The page is informational in type, not my business life depends on it sort of thing.

Is the new IE broswer, Beta 2 as good as Firefox?

Postroad — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 07:36:33 -0800

Is the beta2 Internet Explorer broswer as good as or a replacement for Firefox? Microsoft has released Beta2 browser for IE browser and claims it is much more secure and makes amends for shortcmings of previous browser, the one that got so many to switch to Firefox. Is it as good as Firefox now?

User agent simulators?

bradn — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 14:56:14 -0800

Does anyone know of any "browser simulators" for testing web sites on different user agents? I came across this Opera Mini simulator.
Has anyone seen anything like this for other user agents, for example older IE and Netscape versions, as well as other handheld browsers?

Firefox stalls on certain sites and Opera 8 font-rendering bug

Frankieist — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 02:28:34 -0800

I'm having major problems with both Firefox (my browser of choice) and Opera 8. Firefox stalls consistently for a considerable amount of time (1 min - 5 mins) on specific sites (for instance del.icio.us/popular/) and Opera has a font-rendering bug on most sites (for instance, again, del.icio.us/popular/). Regarding the firefox problem (screenshot):
- oddly, during the time that firefox is not responding, the CPU usage is only between 0% and 2%.
- if, in the same session, I visit the site again or refresh it, it loads just fine. However, the problem can present itself for different sites multiple times in one session.
- I have Firefox 1.5, though I've had the problem since at least 1.0.4
- I've tried deleting my profile and creating a new one. No luck.
- I don't have any extensions installed, other than the Talkbalk one that comes with firefox.
- I've tried uninstalling the current version and reinstalling to a different directory. Again, no luck.

As far as the Opera 8 rendering bug is concerned (screenshot) , even when the website's css specifies a font that it should use to render the page, it will instead render the page with regular Bauer Bodoni LT in some instances and Bauer Bodoni LT RomanSC in others. It makes Opera completely unusable, since I can't tolerate reading long amounts of text in small caps. Maybe this will provide a clue: about a month ago wikipedia used to be displayed in Bauer Bodoni LT RomanSC, but now it shows up with a sans-serif font. Please help!

Green screen dilemma

zardoz — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 04:05:44 -0800

When I play movie files in Firefox --qt, Windows Media, whatever--it will often play for a minute or so just fine, and then suddenly the screen goes green, thought the audio will still continue to play. I have to reboot to solve it but it always crops up again eventually. Anyone know why this is and what I can do about it?

Firefox back-button speed issues

jikel_morten — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 18:57:34 -0800

So I downloaded Flock and became instantly indifferent, until I noticed it's near Opera-like rendering speed via the back-button. Sluggish back button (again, compared to Opera) action is my least favorite thing about Firefox. Given that Flock is based on Firefox, can I mimic Flock's speedy rendering on already visited pages in Firefox sans digging into code? I so miss this from my Opera days. I'm also too attached to my customized Firefox setup to abandon it, and Flock didn't really do enough for me to justify another browser switch. tia

Mac browser stats?

jca — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 09:54:16 -0800

Where can I find updated statistics on Mac browser usage? I'd really like to know the precentage of users of Safari versus IE versus Firefox on the Mac platform. It would be nice to know when I can start ignoring Mac IE when developing sites. ;)