Webdesign, CSS, Social Media, Tech & Geek Stuff » browser

Various Links

mr-mojo-risin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:56:43 +0000

Best Artwork of Superheroes from the Most Talented Comic Artists
Superman, Batman, Spider Man, Wolverine, Capitain America and more visualized by great artists
Top Browser Share Trend
Detailed, monthly stats of browser usage
Cool Flickr Set of Steampunk jewelery and art
Nice set with Steampunk sculptures
Pop-Culture Cyborgs Through The Ages
Gallery featuring the coolest cybernetic beeings from 1960…
Office 2010 Beta goes public
Microsoft announced on Wednesday that the beta of Office 2010 is now publicly available from the company’s Web site and from CNET Download.com.
Illustrations by Francois Baranger
Five Inexpensive Gifts Every Serious Photographer Will Love
Retweet Beta for a limited number of accounts released
Seems to be a nice feature…
Overlooked ’80s Sci-Fi Flicks
Photogallery and revisions on wired.com
KeePass savely store all your passwords

CSS Mouse Over Opacity Effect

mr-mojo-risin — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:15:23 +0000

Generally this is no rocket science, using the CSS3 attribute “opacity”, unfortunately CSS3 is not supported by many browsers. As an alternative one could use JavaScript, which also might not work everywhere (if disabled due to security measures). So the easy way only works in the latest versions of Firefox and Opera.

(Take a look at a live demo here)

In order to get this working in all the browsers (Ok, using IE6 we’ll have to trick a little bit, but we’ll discuss this later) we have to approach this in a sneaky way.
Here is a simple, fast, lean, cross browser functional and JavaScript free method, only using plain HTML, CSS and graphical elements:

First of all we need graphical elements, for this example only four are needed, five if including the IE6 hack:

2 images of your choice to be linked
one graphic with transparency and color of your choice in the same size as the linked images
one 1px x 1px full transparent GIF

You might want to download the whole demo here, there the graphics are included.

First create the div containers including the picture links in the html document, assign a class called “image” and determine the background image, which shall be linked, by using the “style” attribute.

[Integrating the images via "style" might be avoided by assigning "id" and referencing the image url in the css, but I needed the image to referenced in the html code for dynamic site and did not want to use the "img" tag for reasons]

After that add the links, define them using “class=”picture”, linkpath and further attributes like “title”. it should look somewhat like this:

Now the css, only two classes (+ one pseudo class) are needed:

.image:
It must at least contain “background-repeat: no-repeat; border: none;” or modifications if wanted.

a.picture
The size of the linked picture and the attribute “display:block;” must be indicated. The image-url for the non-active link is indicated as “background-image”, too

a.picture:hover
Here the image-url for the active link is defined.

Now the .css file should contain the following:

a.picture {
background: url(opacity_01.png) no-repeat;
width:183px;
height:146px;
display:block;}

a.picture:hover {
background: url(blank_01.gif) repeat;}

.image{
background-repeat: no-repeat;
border: none;}

Now you just need to align the two div containers properly as you like them to be.
In this example they are floating with a margin of 10 pixels, which is done by two additional classes “l” and “m”. Why it is separated from the “image” class is explained here.

Attention!

This works properly in every browser, but in not IE6, because here only full transparency is supported.
So here’s the IE6 hack:

First create a new .css file named “ie6.css”, then add the following lines between the tags of your html file:

After that you refer to an image using only full transparency in the “a.picture” class in the “ie6.css” file, somewhat like that:

a.picture {background: url(opacity_ie6_01.gif) no-repeat;}

…and you are done!

Mozilla releases mobile Browser Fennec

mr-mojo-risin — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:57:48 +0000

Mozilla.org offers an early developer release of the mobile version of their web browser Firefox called Fennec. A fennec (Vulpes zerda) is a fox subspecie, which can be found in North-African Sahara and the Sinai. It features huge ears and a extra large tail, making that little night active critter look extremly cute. Thus, so far for the donator of the name, let’s go technical.

The features are:

Bookmarks, including tags
Smart URL bar (“awesome bar”)
Tabbed browsing with thumbnail images
Integrated Web search – built into the URL bar
Easy access to multiple search engines
Maximize content by auto-hiding controls and URL bar
Zoom in and out
Instant Web site ID (“Larry“)
Password manager
Popup blocker
Clear private data
Click on a phone number to initiate a call
JavaScript API to get device location
Popup blocker
Clear private data
Searchable download manager
Preferences pane

The mobile desert fox now only runs on OS2008 (“chinook” or “diablo”), like the Nokia Internet-Handheld N810, but there are versions for Windows and Mac OS X available, too.
Mozilla now wants to gather feedback and plans “further alpha releases which focus on performance, including projects like TraceMonkey, speculative parsing, and many Fennec and Gecko optimizations.”

Google Browser “Chrome”

mr-mojo-risin — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:07:20 +0000

Google is passing the next logical milestone towards complete internet domination in a determined way, they are releasing their very own browser. Denied since years the gauntlet shall be slapped on Microsoft today at 20:00 GMT and Chrome should be available for download in over 100 countries.

The own browser closes an important gap in the Google web portfolio, offering already email and office applications, online advertisement, analysis tools, a feed reader, an instant messenger, blog software, online photo albums, translators and not to forget the different websearches.

So it’ll be interesting, what exactly they will deliver…

But as Michael Arrington from Techchrunch said, one should think about whether we really want Google to know everything we do online.

(Btw, Techchrunch.com seems to be offline, any coincidence with their critic…?)

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 released

mr-mojo-risin — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:17:40 +0000

Micro$oft presents the next generation of their browser compensatory Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, claiming as usual, having made is faster, better, easier and more secure…

One of the problably most discussed features is “InPrivate”, sarcastically baptised the “porn mode” due to is most striking operation field. But this function is simply an automatism for a standart procedure, which are already offered by several other competitors on the browser market, i.e. “Clear private data” function in Firefox.
By concealing the browsing behavior and thus avoiding the data mining by webpages, this function cuts off targeted advertising, which will not be appreciated by the marketing companies.

So this measure will be welcomed by the data privacy protectors, but certainly not by the greatest online advertiser, namely Google, who has by the lately swallowed DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, who are specialised in targeted marketing.

Hopefully the MS software engineers had been sticking a little bit closer to the standarts defined by the W3 consortium.

On the download page itself M$ only gives common talk:

Internet Explorer 8 is the latest version of the familiar web browser you are most comfortable using, helping you get everything you want from the web faster, easier, more privately and securely than ever before.

Faster Internet Explorer 8 is more responsive with new pages and tabs, opening up fast and reliably. You can now get to the information you care about most, in fewer steps; one click access to your webmail, favorite news sites or other online services.
Easier Reduce the steps to accomplish many common tasks, and automate your access to real time information updates. You can keep track of your favorite sports team, news, weather with a single click.
More Private Helps protect your privacy and confidential information where ever you go on the web.
More Secure Helps protect and stop malicious software from reaching your PC, and makes it easier to detect when a website is an imposter.