Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with internet and browser

Why are browser-based videos so slow on my computer?

dephlogisticated — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:22:11 -0800

Why are browser-based videos so slow on my computer? I can play high-quality video files off of my hard drive without any difficulty. But watching a video a fraction of the size and resolution in my browser (such as a Youtube video) results in constant skipping and stuttering, even after the video has loaded completely. Why is this? Is there anything I can do to fix it, short of a hardware upgrade?

Why-Fi?

Rhaomi — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:17:19 -0800

What's killing my wi-fi connection? The last few days I've been having some odd problems with my wireless network. I'll be browsing on my laptop when all of a sudden things get really slow, as if I lost the connection. But instead of being sent to "This page is not available" or "server not found" pages like when there really is no connection, I just get stuck loading forever. So if I open a tab and go to Google, it will sit and load saying "Waiting for www.google.com" in the status bar for a minute or two, then eventually say "Done" -- even though the only thing that has loaded is a completely blank tab (even the source code of the page is empty) with the raw URL in the title bar.

But throughout all this, there's no indication that I've lost my connection. The wifi icon in the system tray doesn't change, and says I'm connected if I hover over it. When I open up the Command Prompt and enter ipconfig /all, it says all my internet connection stats are normal. The subnet mask, DHCP server, DNS, etc. are all there. The IP address doesn't start with 169. It's all okay.

Weirdest of all, despite the fact that I can see that all the connection info is normal, if I enter my router's IP address into the address bar (which usually takes me to the router's settings page), it just does the same thing. Load... load... load... blank tab. I understand not being able to connect to the internet, but if I can see all my connection and router info in Command Prompt, why can't I connect to the same router with my browser?

The only way to fix it, I've found, is to disconnect from the wireless network and reconnect. It'll then work fine for anywhere from one minute to fifteen, at which point the connection drops again. This is only affecting my laptop, by the way -- iPods and other laptops connect fine.

I've tried restarting my computer, restarting the router, and repairing the connection -- nothing works. It seems that getting closer to the router improves things, but I'm not sure since the problem comes and goes randomly. And besides, the router is in the same place as it's always been, so unless it's suddenly lost broadcasting power I don't see what would cause the problem. And in the "View Wireless Networks" window, it says the network has an Excellent signal when I'm not connected (though that decreases a bar or two once I do).

The only incident I can think of is that a power surge recently burnt out the power supply, and I had to buy a universal one with an adapter to get the router up and running again. But this was a week or two before the trouble started, so that's probably not the source.

Is there anything that would cause a wireless router to lose signal strength like that? Is there something I can do to fix it, or should I just spring for a new one?

Details: I have a Dell laptop running Windows XP SP3. I have a Bellsouth Fast Access DSL internet connection. The router is a 2Wire HomePortal 1700HW. The loading problem happens on Firefox, Chrome, and IE7.

One more detail I remembered: For awhile when the problem first started, ipconfig /all was giving me some weird info. For instance, it said that the "lease" for the connection expired one second after it was obtained. But it's not doing that anymore.

Alternative Browsers

bluelight — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:59:11 -0800

What superior/alternative web browsers to Firefox do you use? I have been using firefox with NoScript and most cookies disabled. When it gets too annoying to enable scripts and cookies, I switch over to Internet Explorer (non-updated version). I really dislike using IE but lately, Firefox has been crashing a LOT.

I was wondering if you had any good experiences with other web browsers such as Safari, Chrome, etc. I plan on keeping firefox but I'd like to explore other options.

I use a PC running Windows XP.

Thanks!

Chrome clone that isn't made of Chrome?

doublehappy — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:35:55 -0800

Are there any browsers that are essentially Chrome clones in function and appearance, but aren't Chrome and don't share any common code? I really like it and find it easy to use, but it kills my computer when I use it (we're talking forcing hard reboots, etc.). So does firefox, incidentally (but less often for some reason).

I tried Iron, but it is the same code, just with the 'send data to google' removed.

Help me help my browser to go back to completing missing URL endings even though my ISP is jerky

Your Time Machine Sucks — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:39:57 -0800

My ISP's new "feature" of rerouting incomplete URLs to their own custom (awful) search page is hijacking my normal browser behavior of completing URLs with .com. Anything I can do to reassert normalcy? My ISP is T-Online, which like a few other ISPs has started to hijack malformed URLs and send me to an awful "did you mean...?" page, which coincidentally happens to contain advertisements.

Until this started happening a week ago, if I typed "something" into my Safari 3.2.1 (OS X 10.5.x) location field, Safari would complete the URL as "something.com" and go there, but no longer (at least, I was under the impression that this was a Safari thing and not a DNS thing, since Internet Explorer always manifested the re-route-to-a-search-page behavior).

T-Online claims that it is possible to opt out from their new "Navigationshilfe" ("Navigation Help") program, but when I followed their instructions to opt out, nothing changed. Is there a technical solution for this? My router runs dd-wrt so if there is anything I can do there or on my local machine with DNS or hosts settings, that would be ideal.

T-Online's customer support is pretty dumb, so I will consider calling them if there is no workaround, but it is improbable that they will a) know what I'm talking about, b) know if it is possible to turn it off, c) take the correct steps to turn it off, d) not somehow find a way to increase the cost of my plan in the process, so that is definitely a last resort.

Thanks for any advice!

What add-ons to Firefox do you find useful?

melodykramer — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:39:47 -0800

I just learned about Firefox add-ons and grease monkey scripts (I know, I know....) There are literally thousands of these things and I was wondering which ones you find useful and how you use them. Any recommendations? I'm really open to anything, from easy to complex -- so I'm not going to write how I use the internet -- because I'm interested in varied responses. What streamlines your browsing? What do you have now that makes life simpler or that you find yourself glad you have?

Thank you in advance. :)

Help me with my internet annoyance.

zardoz — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:37:04 -0800

I sometimes have trouble with downloading via torrent: surfing becomes a slow crawl/not an option. I have a broadband DSL connection and I'll often download torrents via Transmission on my iMac.

The problem is with torrents: with either Transmission, or uTorrent I can go for several days, even longer than a week, but then suddenly surfing pages on a browser will slow to a crawl and then stop. Torrent downloading may or may not stop at that point, but eventually it stops too.

When this happens I unplug my DSL modem, plug it back in, wait a minute or two, and then I'm firing on all cylinders, torrent downloading and surfing are good for another week or so.

So how can I avoid this step? Settings in Transmission? Hack the modem?

Browser stats of developing countries

charmston — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 08:14:31 -0800

I'm looking for statistics on web usage in developing countries...specifically I'd like to look at flash penetration and browser version usage. Does anybody know where I can find such numbers? I've already seen Adobe's take, but they do not provide enough depth. I would like to examine numbers of specific countries, especially those that receive the most humanitarian aid.

Clicked something random, now I can't view a site in FF3?

SputnikSweetheart — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:35:48 -0800

Help! I clicked something without realizing, now I can't view one of my favorite websites. What did I do? For starters:
I use Firefox 3.
The website in question is qwantz.com, a webcomic, but I doubt it matters.

Anyway, the other night, I was looking for a specific strip in the archives. I think this is what happened:

I opened a new strip and accidentally right-clicked and then left-clicked in rapid succession, thus selecting something from the dropdown menu that appeared. Now, none of the strips will load, leaving me with white space between the top menu and the bottom columns. As a test, I opened it in Safari - no problems there.

So, first, I can't figure out what I clicked, and second, I have no idea how to go about fixing it.

The right-click menu's options are:
Back
Forward
Reload
Stop
_
Add to Kaboodle ((firefox add-on, don't think that's what I clicked))
Bookmark this Page
Save Page As...
Send Link...
Shareaholic ((also an add-on, not one I'm used to/familiar with yet, though))
_
View Background Image
Select All
_
View Page Source
View Page Info
_
Community Links

I'm not very technical - but it doesn't seem like any of those would cause that to happen. Am I wrong?

It's not exactly an emergency... as I said before, I can open it in Safari, but as I don't use Safari very frequently, I'd rather be able to open it with all of my other daily comics without opening another browser.

Any help will be appreciated! Thank you.

Opening multiple links at once?

auralcoral — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:14:35 -0800

Are there any browsers that will allow me to open multiple links in one click? I'm using Firefox now and I can only open one link in a new tab at a time. My ideal browser would have a tabbed interface and also allow me to highlight a list of links and then be able to open all of them in new, separate tabs with one click. Does this exist/is this possible?

Does IE7-like RSS Reader exist for FireFox?

karizma — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:35:49 -0800

I love IE7's built-in RSS/feed reader. I hate, hate, hate IE7's slowness and general, overal crapiness. I would love to use FireFox, but I want the same kind of RSS reader functionality. Is there is a plugin or extension for Firefox that exists and works just like IE7's RSS reader? I am looking for the exact same or as close as possible functionality for an RSS reader in FireFox as found build-in in IE7. I'd like it to integrate into the browser. I can't stand FireFox's live bookmarks.

Things I'm not looking for: Web-based RSS readers, desktop RSS clients, or FireFox extensions/plugins that don't work like how IE7's functionality does.

Does this kind of tool/functionality/plugin/extension exist for Firefox?

(btw, I'm running the current version of Firefox).

Thanks.

float, padding, margins, wrappers, %0px1.2em!11!! oh my!

iamkimiam — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:03:55 -0800

I'm going crazy trying to adjust my blog template. It seems that when I change the browser window size, the body, sidebar, and header all move independently. If I make the window wider, the right edges of the sidebar and header do not align. If I make the window less wide, the whole sidebar crunches into body text (fine) and eventually gets kicked off the side by the body (not fine). Ideally, I'd like them all to line up, move/scale together side-to-side, and not get kicked around. I know this has to do with adjusting float, padding, margins, wrappers, percentages, and pixels. I've been tweaking with the variables, hitting preview, observing changes, for way too long. If somebody could please help me fix this, or point me towards an easy tutorial that won't take up too much of my time to decipher, I'd be forever grateful. Thanks!

Blog is in my profile, but I would be really appreciative if it were NOT linked to in this thread. Thanks!

How to surf discretely at work?

m2002 — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 00:55:41 -0800

How to surf discretely at work? Looking for a replacement for WorkFriendly and Ghostzilla... For the next few weeks I'll be working at a client's office. This client is a bit of a jerk about allowing us to use the Internet. I used to rely on WorkFriendly, but I see that's no longer online. Ghostzilla is no longer being supported, and GhostFox is filled with problems.

Any suggestions on how I can find a good browser that can visually hide my browsing would be awesome!

Need an alternative to MyHQ for my homepage(s).

iamkimiam — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:30:17 -0800

Need to find an alternative to MyHQ.com. MyHQ is a web-based homepage that is simply lists of links that you can add to, customize, and organize into categories. You set it as your homepage, and voila!, every place you regularly visit on the internet is right in front of you. Their site is currently down, which has happened before, but this time I fear its for reals. I am literally lost without it (not to mention the 100+ organized links that I no longer have access to). This is different from social bookmarking (please do not recommend delicious.com; its a wonderful site, but won't suffice for this purpose). This would be like if you had access to your computer's bookmarks list as a homepage, from any computer, anywhere. There has GOT to be another website that is comparable to MyHQ. Anybody know what that is?

Thanks. I'm staring at the blank browser window and am completely clueless without my handy homepage! (I actually had to TYPE "ask.metafilter.com" into the URL bar...oh, the horror!)

Connected to Ask.Me ... Waiting for reply

Gyan — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 03:50:21 -0800

I can't connect to a couple of sites from any browser. One of them being Wikipedia. In FF3, I type "en.wikipedia.org" and press go. The status bar gets stuck on "Waiting for en.wiki.....". It never actually times out (at least, not within the first couple of minutes before my patience runs out). Similar outcome in IE6. This occasionally happens with Metafilter as well. The first time this happened was 6 months ago. It soon got back to normal and remained that way till mid-June. Oddly, when Wikipedia is OK, Metafilter doesn't load, and vice versa. But mostly it's Wikipedia which is down for the past 2-3 days. I can ping both sites successfully. My hosts file has no entries besides localhost. I'm using OpenDNS alongwith my ISP's.

I'm in Mumbai, India on Metro Ethernet and my (local) ISP techs know squat except their script. OS is XP SP2. No other site gives me problems, except for one, but that seems a server-side issue.

How do I get my browser to work?

MrMulan — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 10:39:23 -0800

How do I get an Internet browser to work in Vista? Trying to troubleshoot a Lenovo T61 laptop for somebody. Here are the facts:
- Running Vista Home Premium 32Bit, Lenovo T61, dual core 1.8Mgz, 2GB RAM
-IE7 and Firefox display their respective page cannot be displayed message
- User says, unprompted, "It just stopped working for no reason", and "I did not do anything to the machine"
-Would rather not reinstall the OS
-Both the wired and wireless network adapters give me the same problem
-I can pull an IP address from the DHCP servers
-I can ping the gateways
-I flushed the DNS
-I set up the DHCP addresses as statics
-Made sure the proxy setting was off
-Disabled AV, and Windows firewall
-I am able to use network resources
-I am able to use remote access software (remote desktop, VNC)
-AOL Instant Messenger does not work
-I have scoured forums without any luck
-This is the first time I have actually used Vista
-I have tried different networks at work and home

Have I missed something?
And just for my own knowledge, why do over 10 network adapters display when I do an ipconfig?
I have gotten the go ahead to install WinXP, but wanted to give AskMF a shot.
Lenovo tech support was not helpful, since it is a software issue. The offered OS support for $99, that might solve the issue.

Browser makes incorrect requests.

Yogurt — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 07:57:07 -0800

My browsers frequently try to load the wrong page. They invent web addresses based on other open pages. What's happening? I don't think it's spyware. For example, in trying to load Ask.Mefi, Firefox tried to load http://www.metafilter.com/content/themes/onion/style/tabber.css (I had recently closed The Onion). I'll sometimes get CSS templates or favicos instead of the page I'm looking for. Generally, the third refresh loads the page properly.

This happens in Firefox 2.0.0.9 (safe mode and normal) and IE 6. I haven't noticed problems with other Internet programs. Multiple spyware scans reveal nothing. Other computers connected to the same router are fine. I've reinstalled Firefox. My system is Windows XP SP2.

Better Browser for the Mac

jdroth — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:59:14 -0800

I need a better browser for my Mac. I use a MacBook Pro 17". For the past year, I've been using Safari as my default browser. I like it swell except that it crashes all the frickin' time. I've installed SAFT, which allows me to restore my browsing sessions, but still -- it's a pain. Last weekend, I moved over to Firefox in the hopes that things would be improved. That's not going to work. What's with the delays for nearly every action? Ugh. (No extensions installed.) I don't yet have Leopard, but am willing to upgrade if Safari 3 offers a marked improvement in performance. What can I do to improve my web browsing experience? (Session restore is a must. Undo closed tabs is nice.) As a tag-on, I would love to know if there's anyway to restore sessions in BBEdit. Though my MBP is fairly stable, it does freeze sometimes. Worse, it has a bizarre habit of restarting itself sometimes when the lid is closed. I typically have 20-30 BBEdit documents open at once, including some that have not been saved.

Favored method for inserting a live browser window into a PowerPoint slide?

AngerBoy — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:18:59 -0800

I'm looking for a way to place a browser window into a PowerPoint slide so that I can access web pages during my presentation and have them updated in real time. I've played around a bit with LiveWeb, which has behaved a bit erratically, and am hesitating before plunking down money for something like T-Dog's PowerPoint Web Browser. It doesn't need to have terribly robust browser capabilities - an address bar, forward/backward buttons and a "refresh" button should suffice. Anyway, I'd love to hear people's advice - the simpler, the better; I am a confirmed non-geek. If it matters (and I assume it does), I'm running Windows XP and PowerPoint 2003. Thanks in advance for your answers to my first-ever Ask MeFi question!

How does one commission a Firefox Extension/ Greasemonkey script?

Smarson — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 10:04:11 -0800

How does one go about hiring someone to create a specific Greasemonkey script or Firefox extension for them? As per a previous post, I'm in the market for a web browser with gray-scaling abilities (a la ghostzilla). Ghostfox wasn't the answer and searching through numerous Greasemonkey scripts and Firefox extensions yielded nada. So how does one go about commissioning a script or extension from the developer community? Anyone have experience contracting or being contracted to work on a such a project? What kind of fee is associated with this kind of labor? Does it matter that I would want this script/extension to be available to everyone?

Gray is the Color of the Day

Smarson — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 06:42:06 -0800

Looking for a Firefox extension or alternative browser that allows for web pages to be grayed out (specifically images) a la Ghostzilla. My daily work load comes and goes in cycles and so I often find myself with any where from 5 to 20 minutes of free time to do what cube monkeys do best, surf the web. I'm pretty active on Flickr as are many of my friends and so I'd love to be able to be editing image tags, descriptions, etc. during these intermittent periods of lulled labor. Unfortunately the way the desks are arranged in my office more than a few people have a clear view of my monitor. Clearly nothing x-rated going on in my web meanderings, but it still doesn't scream productivity to those that see my monitor from 20 ft. away on a regular basis.

Thought about using Ghostzilla purely for the grayed out image capability, but am worried about incurring the wrath of IT since that would be using an unsecure browser. I'm not worried about IT tracking what I do since I'm pretty sure they don't care as long I'm not posing any kind of security threat. I mainly just want to be able to browse knowing that the images of my friends doing stupid stuff aren't crystal clear to my bosses/co-workers who sit behind me.

Any ideas?

Drag and drop across browser windows?

shortfuse — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 10:02:26 -0800

Web dev Q: Is there a way to figure out what has been dragged and dropped from one browser window to another? Suppose I have 2 Firefox windows. Window 1 contains an HTML page with an image on it. If I drag+drop the image from window 1 to window 2, Firefox knows that it should open the image in window 2. If the image was linked to a webpage, then it instead opens the linked page in window 2.

I'd like to be able to do the "window 2" part in my own web app. The user could drag and drop any image from any website onto my web app's page. My web app would then figure out what has just been dropped (image URL or linked page URL) and act on it, without the event propagating to Firefox's default behavior.

Is this possible? I've looked online, and it looks like the only way to do it is to have a signed Java applet, as box.net does. Any other way you can think of, using Javascript, Flash, etc.? Would a Firefox extension perhaps be an answer? Thanks for your help.

Links won't link

rumbles — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 17:24:49 -0800

Why won't my browser open from links embedded in programs? When I click on links to the web (e.g. "check for updates") in, say, Skype chat, or Zone Alarm, or CCleaner, or DeepBurner nothing happens -- no browser or tab pops open to the corresponding site. Firefox is my default browser and works fine on its own.... Thoughts or suggestions?

I don't think they want to help me

Tixylix — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 19:26:16 -0800

network management filter: I'm working for a local government education department. My team is meant to be maintaining/improving several large websites. The IT support people refuse to install a web browser that isn't IE 6, citing network security as the reason.... are their fears reasonable? One of the replies I got for my request for the installation of one other internet browser:

I have again spoken to Xxx Xxxx today about the problem which is being presented. Xxx has advised that as we currently have a working and maintainable internet explorer, at this stage would not go down the path of testing a new product due to the fact they do not have the resources to maintain keeping the product up to date and working on the xxx environment. Xxx did however advise that Netscape has been tested and approved for the govt COE and should this suit your requirement, we can arrange a quote for the cost of the licence. I am unsure if using alternate internet explorers will be an option as we roll over to the XP SOE,

please note that the Netscape installation will not be configured to be able to connect to the internet. Is it really such an ordeal to configure a web browser to run on a network? Are other browsers inherently less "secure" than MSIE? Cost of the licence... wtf? Is what I'm asking for unreasonable?

Is it possible make a browser window go full screen?

josh.ev9 — Tue, 30 May 2006 16:31:23 -0800

Is it possible make a browser window go full screen? Not "fake full screen," but full-on, PowerPoint style full screen mode? I'm trying to make a web-based presentation tool a la PowerPoint (except it won't encourage boring presentations), but I want to be able to have a full screen mode when the slide show is viewed.

I'd like to be able to do it in all the major browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, etc.), and be enabled at the click of a link or submit button.

Is it possible? If so, how?