Esotropiart

Version 1.5 of the world's best web browser has been released. And, yes, even though this browser claims only 10% of the web browsing audience of the world, it beats out the quality and features of the leading browser 10 to 1. In case you thought I was speaking in riddles and avoiding using any names, think again. Mozilla Firefox 1.5 was released at the beginning of this month. It is by far the best browser in existence. Microsoft Internet Explorer is a horrible application by comparison. Everyone should switch to Firefox because it is so much better. Click here to visit Mozilla's site. If you are browsing using Internet Explorer, stop using it immediately. Find someone you know that uses Firefox and have them download Firefox on their computer, burn it to a CD and give it to you so you don't have to use IE for one more second! Okay, so I'm exaggerating.

The main reason Firefox is better in my opinion is that they are far quicker than anyone else to accept and implement web design standards. Hands down, Firefox displays CSS better than any mainstream web browser. Oh, did I mention it is absolutely free? It's absolutely free. With this new release, some are wondering if Firefox will remain free. There has been talk that the software will become a more profitable product for Mozilla. Well, per a statement on the Mozilla site, the superior browser will remain free. It would be pretty dumb - like Operadom - to start charging for something that everyone has always expected to be free.

The bane of every web designer is to look at the W3C CSS recommendations and see how no one seems to be able to (or cares enough to) keep up with and implement the recommendations. Microsoft is really bad because they actually create and interpret their own standards, trying to get everyone to fudge and adhere to their shallow way of thinking. I have heard that IE7 will fix some of this arrogance, but that remains to be seen. If Microsoft doesn't fix their browser, I can see Firefox's 10% worldwide audience growing exponentially.

The most exciting change in Firefox 1.5 for me is supposed increased CSS support. It is a thing of silliness (and patheticism) that the CSS 2 recommendation was released on May 18, 1998 - and is still not fully supported by any browser on the market. Here it is, seven years later, and no one gets it right! Seven years is an eternity in the world of technology and computers. Worse yet, CSS Level 1 was recommended December 17, 1996 and is not fully supported by Microsoft! IE6, the latest version to date, still has severe problems with the original CSS box model! Enough about Microsoft... this article is about Firefox. Firefox 1.5 boasts CSS 2 support (it's about time!) and partial CSS 3 support. CSS 3 is apparently still far from being released and will most likely be the biggest change in web design yet. By the time W3C is done with CSS 3, they may as well skip a few numbers and call it CSS10! If there were less than two years between CSS1 and CSS2, I think it's about time CSS3 gets finished! Oh well.

So I installed Firefox 1.5 at home and at work and am excited to see how some more advanced CSS selectors render. I can't wait until the day I can select elements based on context, rather than having to add extraneous classes just to make it possible to select something. CSS2 supports advanced selectors, but no one seems to see the power of such things because no browser supports them. Unfortunately, Firefox's CSS support is somewhat irrelevant. It is too little, too late. If Microsoft doesn't get up to speed, it will not be reasonable to design anything using new CSS rules. It is senseless and foolish to design a page that only five or ten percent of the world will be able to see. What a waste of valuable time in the web design industry... 1998 to 2005! If the browser companies would have gotten their acts together and kept up with the CSS recommendations as they were released or shortly after, we wouldn't still be in the adolescent age of design. Oh well, complaining gets one nowhere.

By the way, I'm not partial to Firefox just because it is hip and new. If Microsoft would get their nose in gear and make some decent updates, I'd easily go back to using it. Of course, now that Firefox has a building audience, I will always use both browsers until one or the other goes out of business. I currently use Firefox as my default browser. I only open IE when testing (with groans) or when viewing something proprietary that only IE can display (proprietary, as in Microsoft doing their own thing and not letting anyone else in on their little secrets).