Google Chrome is starting to lose popularity.

Are you using more than one browser to surf the web? If you are, you are not alone, according to market research the number is rising. Why? Some websites simply perform better on one browser than the others. No one browser is a clear winner on every website.

The reason being is software developers design and test websites more with the browser they prefer. This results in less thorough optimization with other browsers. Some websites just simply will not work on all browsers.

The result is having to remember which site works best on a particular browser, this can cause pain (just like trying to remember all of your passwords). Why do this to yourself?

The solution is to have a smart application do it for you with a minimum effort. BookSmarts imports your favorites and bookmarks from the browsers you use, and remembers to which browser they belong.

Just remember, it’s okay to use more than one browser.

Take a look at some of these statistics.

Advertisement

Mozilla is Alienating Businesses and Education with Firefox

Downside of Firefox

Firefox has been really destroying its chances of being deployed to organizations. Why is that you might ask? Well Firefox was used widely back in the version 3.xx but now, they are up to version 12. Version 3 was released back in June of 2008, we are now in April 2012 and they are now up to version 12.

Frequent Updates are the Demise of Firefox

This rapid “major” update schedule means that organizations have to perform testing (for applications and penetration testing), develop new system images for workstations, create new virtual apps for shops that use that technology-such as BMW. I quote major because many of the updates could be considered by many to be minor. This results in a major amount of money to be spent every time Firefox gets updated.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is still supporting IE6 from years ago, Mozilla provides very limited support.

Is Firefox going away? Not any time soon, but they are going to lose market share. Institutions cannot support this behavior.

If someone from Mozilla is paying attention to me, how about acknowledging the operations people in the world exist and you might want to make them happy. After all, they recommend web browsers not just to the businesses but to friends and family. The users in the businesses are going to be biased to use the same web browser at home and at work. If the business is using Internet Explorer, more likely than not, the employees will be using that at home as well.

IE9 & Firefox 4 – Facebook & Flash Issues Continued

Are you having problems with Facebook games on Facebook using IE9 or Firefox 4? Another solution…

So I figured something out recently, if you need the hardware acceleration turned on (I have to admit it is a nice thing to have) in your web browser, the problem might be related to your graphics driver. Most laptops today use the Intel graphics drivers. Go to http://downloadcenter.intel.com/ to download the latest drivers (Microsoft’s Windows Update is a little behind on this) then follow the on-screen installation steps. If you are unsure which drivers you have on your system they have a utility that can help you, simply go to http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect.

If this is not the case for you I recommend going to my previous post, which is still very useful if you are not using an Intel chipset.

Subscribe to this blog if you like this tip.

Internet Explorer 9 / Firefox 4 – Facebook Flash Issues

Are you having problems with Facebook games on Facebook using IE9 or Firefox 4?

Here is what I found. These guys (Microsoft and Mozilla) got something right in their browsers; giving the browsers direct access to the graphics card.

So this is really good most of the time, pages will act more responsive.

And now…

Adobe has to get with it, Flash games aren’t displaying properly with the new browsers.

The solution in IE9 is to go into Internet Options (click on the gear icon on the right side of the window) > Advanced Tab. Then check the tab the Graphics Acceleration option to use software rendering.

In Firefox 4, go into Options > Advanced > General tab. Then uncheck the “Use hardware acceleration when available” box.

These solutions will allow the games to work a little better, but general web pages might not be as responsive.

I have an additional information on this topic here.

Subscribe to this blog if you like this tip.

WordPress Toolbar Extension for Firefox

WordPress Toolbar « Baris Derin. This is worth checking out, he has done a really good job of adding all the popular functionality from the WordPress administration page to Firefox. Definitely worth looking into, for me it definitely is making my life a little easier and I find myself blogging a little more with this tool.

Enjoy!

AddThis For Firefox Extension

So, I found this great Firefox Extension for sharing sites called AddThis. By default it is setup with just about every sharing site but excludes WordPress. Adding it is simple, just click on the plus sign and select WordPress. It will ask you for your WordPress account and that is it!

Give it a try, you might like it!

**Update**

This topic has been getting quite a response, I am going to be posting more detail very soon! Subscribe and keep up to date on the latest: https://refactoringself.wordpress.com/feed

Silent Install of Firefox 3.6

So if you are like me, I had trouble figuring out how to do a silent install of Firefox. This is how you do it:

Go to Run & type %temp%

Run the setup file that was downloaded from firefox.com, wait for the files to extract.

Once the files are extracted, look for a folder at the end of the list.

In the folder there should be a file named setup.exe, in its properties you will see that it is the Firefox installer.

Copy the contents of the folder to your scripting directory.

You can then run setup.exe -ms to run the silent install.

Have a great day!