Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with web and browser

Web Browser Woes

mahoganyslide — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:39:23 -0800

What is the best Web Browser for an intel Mac in terms of low CPU and RAM usage? I currently have a Macbook Pro (2009 unibody) with 2GB of RAM. Everything runs fine otherwise, but I'm having trouble with the web browser.

I tend to open and close a lot of tabs in the course of a day (research, recreation, school, etc) and do not regularly restart my browser/computer. After a few days, the activity monitor will show that both Firefox and Safari have 40-50% CPU and 500-600MB of RAM usage. This of course slows my computer down considerably. Once I exit the browser and both the CPU and RAM are freed up, my computer starts to behave once again.

Are there other functional browsers out there that do not strain my computer as much? Or should I simply restart my browser/computer at the end of every day and recover all of my tabs?

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!

A mobile browser, but for a laptop

Petrot — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:43:11 -0800

I'm looking for a mobile browser (or similar solutions). But there's a catch. I want it for a laptop, not a phone. I'm travelling around a lot at the moment, away from cities and wifi-connected areas. But there's fairly good mobile network coverage, so I bought myself an O2 mobile dongle to connect my laptop to the mobile phone network.

I pay a set amount for a set amount of data for a month, and because I don't want to pay more money than I have to, I don't want to have to go over the data limit.

Also, looking at regular sized websites, with all their fancy stuff, in Firefox is almost dial-up slow, when accessed through my mobile dongle.

So, what I would like is to be able to view webpages to the best of the mobile dongle's ability - much like as if I were browsing the internet via a mobile phone.

Is this viable? Is there a browser that would work on a laptop as it would on a mobile phone? Or an add-on for Firefox? Or can I view webpages online using their mobile web addresses (m.something.com)?

The dongle I'm using (not that it matters, I think) is the Huawei e160, on the O2 network. I'm using Ubuntu 9.04 FWIW.

Thank you!

To Popup Or Not To Popup?

chocolatepeanutbuttercup — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:48:22 -0800

To Popup or Not to Popup? I have a blog website. It's a serious site with a lot of content. We've been working hard on it and it's beginning to gain a nice little readership.

Currently, I am setting up any links within a post to open in the same window, in other words, without a target attribute set.

However, a few friends have opined that I should set up my anchor tags to launch a new window so that my viewers don't get lured away from my site when they click on a link.

My first reaction to this idea is that I want to avoid opening a popup window but perhaps I'm wrong.
Web designers and blog viewers - what is your current thinking on this? Which do you prefer?

How do I find a flash gallery for my website that pulls from my Flickr account?

jnnla — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:46:52 -0800

Is there a fully customizable flash image gallery for my website that will pull photos from my Flickr sets? I need something like PictoBrowser but more customizable and without the "pictobrowser" link embedded in there. It is perfect in that it loads from Flickr sets, so I can have one particular set feed my website gallery and just worry about uploading my photos to Flickr and sorting there.

I have looked at dfgallery and it looks very close to what I need, but I am not knowledgeable enough to install it on my site. Also it doesn't look like it supports specific sets - and I need that capability.

I realize there are others that pull from flickr, but they tend to be gimmicky "postcard" galleries. I want the streamlined, simple "main image with thumbnails along the bottom" look.

Is there anything similar to Pictobrowser, free or not...that will pull from Flickr sets and create a Flash gallery that is completely customizable (in terms of colors, links etc)? I know this is a tall order, but any help would be appreciated.

how to customize web browser context menu keyboard shortcuts

randomstriker — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:01:03 -0800

How to change the keyboard shortcuts in the IE or Firefox context menus? Like many people, I use Firefox at home but am forced to use Internet Explorer at work. For the most part the two amicably co-exist in my universe. The one consistent annoyance, however, is this:

When you right click on a link in IE, the keyboard shortcut to open the link in a new tab is "w".

When you right click on a link in Firefox, the shortcut is "t".

I'm the sort who likes to open links in new tabs all in one go so that they load in the background, and then read them leisurely. How can I change the shortcut in either IE or Firefox so that they're the same in both?

My google-fu is failing me -- all the links I come across are for adding NEW context menu items, not for changing the keyboard shortcut on existing ones.

Firefox update hosed my No Squint

mikeand1 — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:52:36 -0800

[Firefox Filter] The latest Firefox update seems to have hosed my No Squint add on. How to repair? I rely heavily on the No Squint add on. Unfortunately, when I updated to Firefox 3.0.4 today, No Squint stopped working. In fact, trying to manage the add on from the Options window causes the window to freeze.

Is there any way I can revert to the previous version of Firefox, preferably without having to re-do everything?

Thanks

Retaining Firefox as default web browser

ozred — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:49:47 -0800

Firstly I am elderly,and not computer experienced..I have set Firefox as my default web browser,and yet I constantly receive messages from Firefox saying they are no longer my default. Please in simple terms could someone advise how I can set Firefox without interruption.Thank you

Javascript will not execute on one page on one machine

cimbrog — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:24:15 -0800

I am seriously stuck on a problem and I'm hoping to get some new leads on how to attack it. There is one website that one user cannot execute Javascript on no matter what browser he uses. What could be causing this? On one particular website, none of the Javascript functions will work for this user. When clicked, they do nothing - no error message or anything. This is mainly for opening a print-friendly version of the page and related case look-ups. The same thing happens in both IE6, IE7 and Firefox 3.03.

No one else is having this problem with the website.
I have set both web browsers to allow all scripting for the page.
I have completely disabled internet security (firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware).
It is happening on multiple user accounts on the same computer.
He isn't having trouble with Javascript on any other page.
His machine is XP SP3.

I and totally stuck and REALLY don't want to re-image his machine. Any suggestions on leads to follow?

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!)

CSS, JQuery, PHP and Caching: Best practices?

odinsdream — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:29:50 -0800

CSS, JQuery, PHP and Caching: What are the best practices for creating dynamic CSS with JQuery and PHP? Examples inside. I'm using PHP to dynamically create links and their associated CSS. I'm doing it dynamically because the number and positioning of these links is dependent on the selected month.

PHP inserts these CSS declarations into the HEAD tag. This seems to work fine on Firefox, but IE apparently caches the HEAD tag. This is a problem when navigating to pages for other months since the number of days will change.

Since I'm also using JQuery for the first time in this project, I wonder if I wouldn't be better off setting the CSS with that, rather than with PHP. The problem with this would be that I'm now mixing math and functions between the PHP sections of the site and the javascript sections. Is there a better way?

An example can be seen here. Source code for the same is available here.

The hover links over each day in each graph are created with a PHP loop based on the number of days in the month. The CSS to position them properly above each day is also created with a PHP loop.

The problem arises if a user selects an old month with a different number of days. Since IE caches the head tag the user only sees 20 day hover links, rather than 30 or 31.

Online documentation, tutorials or book references are very much welcome. Also, if I'm just completely going in the wrong direction please let me know.

Why does my web site show up for everyone but me?

bflora — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:56:28 -0800

I've got a web site that shows up just fine for everyone except me. I get a big fat "page not found" when I navigate to it even though it works fine in proxy browsers, I've used ipconfig/flushdns and cleared my browser cache. I'm sure it's a DNS issue of some sort, but have no idea what else to do. Help?

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!

Reload reload reload reload.

wastelands — Sat, 31 May 2008 12:04:55 -0800

Why on some web hosts do uploaded file changes not appear immediately? On some web hosts I've used in the past, like my university's, I can upload a changed file by FTP but not see the changes through a browser for several minutes. Clearing cache, reloading the page, even uploading a *completely* different file with the same name fails. I have to wait several minutes until the server finally believes it's a new file. I assume it is some setting on the server to conserve resources?

Local File Browsing and Viewing Via a Web Interface?

WCityMike — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 11:08:35 -0800

I'm looking for a file browsing and HTML- and media-viewing interface that can be set up on a Mac OS X machine locally and accessed through a web browser. Remote access not necessary; I'm just looking for a local interface. Basically, I have a number of files -- HTML files, ASCII files, images (mostly JPEGs), PDFs, and movies (I think mostly AVIs, although there's some MOVs, MP4s, SWFs, and RMs). These files are mostly bits and pieces of my life that have gone with me from computer to computer, and I tend to find myself referring to them fairly often.

Right now, I access and browse these files via Mac OS X's Finder (well, technically, via Cocoatech's Path Finder).

What I'd like is to be able to access and browse these files from within the Firefox browser, preferably by setting up some sort of localhost file browsing solution that also has the power to display images, movie files, and PDFs, and to detect the difference between a text file and an HTML file.

I tend to access these files while in a web situation, so the added steps of exiting the browser and navigating through directories is a tad annoying. Being able to browse through the files via a web interface -- even if not actually mounted in a publicly accessible "live" webspace but only on my machine -- would be useful to me.

Fairly idiotproof instructions would be greatly appreciated.

If there are a number of different packages out there that can do this (as I suspect), essentially the qualities I would be looking for would be slickness of interface; the power to display images, movie files, and PDFs, and to detect the difference between a text file and an HTML file; and ease of installation.

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?

What's the bet web conference system?

JpMaxMan — Tue, 22 May 2007 05:52:58 -0800

What is the best web conference: teleconference plus desktop / browser sharing system out there? I have tried meet me now, go to meeting, etc. All are just 'ok' but none is perfect. They are all a it cumbersome and everytime I've had at least one participant have some problems. So, I thought I'd query the hive mind, which one is best?

the best way in install and run Windows Vista on a Mac

eustacescrubb — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 13:42:04 -0800

I want to take advantage of mf my new MacBook Pro's Intel chip: what's the best way in install and run Windows Vista on it? I'm a web designer, and my primary reason for running Windows is to test for Windows browsers. I'd like Windows to have as little impact on my machine as possible. On the other hand, It'd be nice if I could run Windows like I use to run Classic -- as an application running while I run other OSX apps, instead of having reboot the computer to switch back and forst between OSX and Vista. Is this possible? Are there security risks? If so, how can I minimize/prevent them?

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.

Cache VS Unavailable Files

linklog — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 06:29:59 -0800

BrowserCacheFilter: I’m turning an unused XP box and big monitor into a full-screen browser based online digital sign. How do I replace web errors (ex: page not found) with cached versions of the page or file from when it was available? I’m turning an unused XP box and big monitor into a full-screen browser based online digital sign. No input just up-to-date on-line information.

I have an ASP page online with content from my online database and iframes and images from other sites that refreshes every 15 minutes.

I have turned off all of the pop-up alerts and warnings in the OS.

Now I need to eliminate the error pages in the browser when a file is not available because it has moved or I have lost my Internet connection.

I would like to get rid of the web errors by having the browser look for the content and cache it for display if it is available. If the files are not available-- because my internet connection is bad or the file has moved-- I want the old content to remain on screen: therefore eliminating those unsightly page errors on my digital sign.

What is the best way to do this Oh, Great Metafilter Collective?

Browser download without a Content-Length header?

joegester — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 09:47:31 -0800

How do I get the browser to prompt a user to save a huge file when I don't know it's size in advance? I'm generating a large file on the fly and streaming it to the user's browser. When the download starts I want them to be prompted to save the file. Usually you can just set the Content-Length header to make this happen but because I'm building the file as it's transmitted, I don't know the length ahead of time.

When Content-Length isn't set, the behavior of both IE and Firefox is to download the entire file, then prompt the user to save it. This means that the browser sits there a long time spinning it's little spinner and probably making the user think nothing is happening.

Currently I'm setting Content-Type and Content-Disposition. If I do Content-Length="2147483647" (eg. 232, the save prompt comes up properly but says it expects 2GB of data and will take 100s of hours to complete.

I know I've seen Firefox send a file to the download manager without knowing it's size. How do you do it?

Minor Safari inconsistency

yesno — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 09:38:27 -0800

Why this minor Safari inconsistency between machines with exact same build of Safari? I have two intel Macs, an iMac and a Macbook. They both are running Safari 2.0.3 and both are the same build--- 417.9.3. When trying to download the Universal Build of Fuzzy Clock (which isn't typed properly--- Safari sees it as a text file and adds a .txt extension on both machines), on the Macbook, I get a "Save linked file to inbox" option in the contextual menu, which does just that. The file doesn't show up in the download window. On the iMac, however, I get a "Download linked file" message, and it goes through the download window. (Also ends up in the "inbox" folder.) Why would the two machines be different? They have the same version of OS X, but different build numbers (the iMac is 8l1119 and the Macbook is 8l2025).

This is just a headscratcher for me. Maybe one of you wizards know the answer.

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?

Why won't my web pages load on the first try?

TedW — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 19:31:00 -0800

Why won't web pages load the first time I ask for them? I recently got a new computer and ever since I gave my ISP the MAC address of the new computer, my internet connection has become spotty. I have bundled cable/internet/phone with Knology and a tech has come out and insured I have a good signal, so the problem seems like it is on my end. The symptoms are as follows: the browser will often give me a time-out error when loading a page (even something as reliable as Google); hitting "try again" or "refresh" will often result in the page loading instantaneously, as if it were in the browser's cache. Why didn't it just load the first time?

Technical details: Webstar cable modem (from ISP) connected via ethernet to a Netgear WGR614 wireless router (with the latest firmware); Mac G5 running OSX 10.4 and Dell Running Windows XP connecting via wifi. Using Firefox on the Dell, and Firefox and Safari on the Mac, the behavior described above happens. I have confirmed that the router is sending the correct MAC address to the ISP. What is going on?