Sonĝotera Vojaĝo

More Browsers

2005-12-01T16:36:24Z

This article is the fifth in a series on making use of the Internet adapted adult-education Internet course given at the Saugus Senior Center through Saugus.net. Today we'll actually step out of our regular routine a little and consider alternative browsers.

When the Saugus Senior Center course was first given, there really weren't too many choices for free, modern, standards-compliant web browsers. Out of the handful I settled on just two to cover fully: Firefox and Safari. With all the recent interest though in browsers, security, and (amazingly) even web standards, I thought it would be worthwhile to mention both some of the browsers that I didn't cover before and ones that have been created since I first created this course.

Opera

Opera is a standards-compliant browser with a long independent history. Up until recently it had been available only for a fee or via a free (but advertising encumbered) version. Now however it is fully free for download, and it offers a slightly different take on things that many users prefer. It prides itself on rendering pages not just accurately but very quickly, and many swear that it is the fastest graphical browser around. It is available for several versions of MS-Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Solaris, etc.
Camino

Camino is built around the same rendering engine as Firefox, and thus displays pages with the same attention to standards-compliance. The key difference between Camino and Firefox though is that Camino is optimized for Mac OS X. If you've got a Mac and like Firefox, it's worth your while trying out Camino. You may find that you prefer it. Camino is not available for MS-Windows, Linux, Solaris, or anything else besides Mac OS X.
Flock

Flock is a new browser built around the same rendering engine as Firefox and Camino and thus shares the key benefit of standards-compliant display of web pages. Flock however has some interesting additions to better take advantage of today's interactive Web, and in particular has built-in support for both shared bookmarks and blog composition. It's currently available for Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Konqueror

Konqueror is built around the same rendering engine as Safari (or actually it'd be more fair to say that Safari is built around the same rendering engine as Konqueror, as Konqueror predates Safari by quite a bit) and is thus standards-compliant. While it currently runs only on Linux machines that have KDE installed, curious rumors persist that it has also been ported to Mac OS X. I've not personally seen a copy running under OS X, so I'm certainly not going to confirm such rumors.
Netscape

All old Internet hands remember Netscape. It wasn't the first browser or even the first graphical browser, but it was the first hugely successful browser. Then it was left to rot. Believe it or not it's now back, and mostly standards-compliant as it is more or less built around the same rendering engine as Firefox. I use the "mostly" and "more or less" here as it actually has two separate rendering engines under the hood, and in addition to the standards-compliant one it also has a non-standards-compliant one. In a curious twist of fate, it also can render pages in the non-standard way of MSIE. Of course all old Internet hands remember MSIE; it was the second hugely successful browser. Then it was left to rot...

Obviously I'm half joking with my comments above about Netscape and MSIE, but I'm also half serious. Both browsers got market dominance and then sat on their laurels for a prolonged period of time, ignoring the standards of their own day (let alone anything newer), and allowing others to climb up the hill and topple them down to insignificance. The Web is an evolving medium; browsers that don't adapt don't survive indefinitely.

Anyone interested in trying out any of the browsers mentioned above can do so via the links provided. The installation process for them is not too different from the procedure described before for Firefox.

Actually, on the topic of Firefox, it's just had a major update. If you're using an older version, you should upgrade as soon as possible (you can use this procedure). You won't be disappointed.

Searching and Finding

2005-08-24T21:29:20Z

This article is the fourth in a series on making use of the Internet adapted adult-education Internet course given at the Saugus Senior Center through Saugus.net. The topic for today is finding information on the Web.

There are really two parts to this topic: searching the Web to find a relevant page, and finding information within that page. To make an analogy with a brick-and-morter library search, the first part is finding a relevant book, and the second part is finding information within that book.

The second part is an easier problem, so we'll deal with it first. With a physical book, one can usually locate information via an index, a table of contents, or (in the worst case) by skimming through sequentially. While information within a web page can also be found by the sequential skimming method, there's a much more efficient technique available: finding within a page. With Firefox, one can use the Edit / Find in This Page... menu item and within Safari one can use Edit / Find / Find.... Both do approximately the same thing (and both have handy keyboard shortcuts that you'll probably want to learn: ctrl-f on MS-Windows and cmd-f on the Mac). The two variations are both pictured. Firefox prompts for text in a box within its main window, starts searching while you type, and generally lays out the page so that the found item is at the bottom. Safari prompts for text in a separate dialog box, waits to search until you press return, and generally lays out the page so that the found item is at the top. Both also feature buttons to find additional matches within the page in both forward and backward directions. Firefox has a slight advantage in that it also has a checkbox allowing one to search by matching case. This is great when one is trying to find (for one somewhat contrived example) instances of the name Bob and not the verb bob.

While finding text within a page is great (it sure beats sequentially skimming) it of course can only be used once one has already found a page. Last time we discussed bookmarks, and of course (just as with a physical library) it is possible to find pages by simply browsing and/or returning to earlier bookmarks, it's not an efficient approach to find information about a topic that one has not already researched. A library has a card catalog to help one find new books. The Web has search engines and search indexes.

A search engine is a little like the index in a book extended to cover multiple books. A search index by contrast is a bit more like a book's table of contents extended to cover multiple books. The engine tends to be more complete and comprehensive, but it can sometimes be a little too complete and comprehensive. Engines and indexes are run by independent companies and organizations and have no official status relative to the Web at large, and debates ensue about which ones are the best. Generally search engines add pages automatically via special software programs called spiders; a couple of popular ones include Google and All the Web. Indexes on the other hand tend to be more selective and usually have pages added manually; a couple of popular ones include DMOZ and Zeal. Larger sites often also have their own dedicated search facilities; for example, the Saugus.net Search will only return results from Saugus pages. These localized searches can be very handy for finding information on topics when one has already drilled down to a particular site of interest. The difference between using a general Web search like Google and a targeted one like the Saugus search (as shown above) will usually be huge, and each is useful in different circumstances.

Both Firefox and Safari have the ability to perform Google searches built-in without having to first browse to Google, and they both support this facility via a text box in the upper right corner of their main screens.

Firefox has an advantage over Safari however in that it allows one to add additional search engine and search index resources that can be selected in lieu of Google on a case-by-case basis. Just to the left of the search text box is a pull-down menu showing icons for search resources. Different engines or indexes can be chosen for the search simply by selecting different icons. What's more, many search engines and indexes provide their own search plug-ins for Firefox, making this list not just customizable but also extendable. For example, if you wanted to add the Saugus search facility to your copy of Firefox, you could browse to the Saugus Mozilla Firefox Plug-In page and click the link labeled "this link". A dialog box will appear asking whether or not you want to add the search engine to your search bar, and clicking OK will add the Saugus search facility. The next time the search menu is pulled down, the Saugus search facility will be available.

While it's not possible (at this time, anyway) to add different search engines and indexes directly to Safari, Safari has a companion application called Sherlock that does have this capability. To perform the analogous operation to Sherlock that was performed above to Firefox, all one has to do is browse to the Saugus Sherlock Plug-In page and follow the instructions provided for one's particular version of Sherlock (or equivalent program -- it should be noted that both Hemlock on the Newton and Glooton on MS-Windows will also work directly with Sherlock plug-ins).

While the details for each specific version of Sherlock (or equivalent program) will differ slightly, one should get some sort of dialog box asking for confirmation. Clicking Proceed (or something similar) will result in the installation of the Saugus channel to Sherlock.

Next time we'll look as the basics of Internet syndication and how to freely subscribe to syndicated resources.

Updating Firefox

2005-04-09T03:51:22Z

This article continues a series on making use of the Internet adapted from an adult-education Internet course given at the Saugus Senior Center through Saugus.net.

I know in the last article I said in this article we'd start looking at Firefox's features and how to make use of them, but I think that since a new version of Firefox has been released since then it's fortuitous to quickly cover instead how to upgrade Firefox (or by extension pretty much any application) on Windows XP. While various techniques work, the most reliable is the one we'll follow here; the quick summary is:

Deinstall the old version
Install the new version

Users of other versions of Microsoft Windows can use the same general technique but will see some slight differences (don't expect the screenshots to match), and users of the Macintosh won't have to worry about this type of thing at all as the Mac has drag and drop installations and deinstallations.

The first step is to deinstall the old version of Firefox. This can be achieved by activating the Control Panel option from the start menu. From here you'll be able to select the Add or Remove Programs option.

The resulting window will show you all the well-behaved software currently installed on your computer. Locate the version of Firefox you'd like to remove and click it. It'll get highlighed and its entry will expand to show more information. Click the Change/Remove button to start its removal.

You'll be hit with a typical "Are you sure" prompt. Click the "Yes" button and the deinstall will happen.

Finally, you can download and install the new version (1.0.2 as of this writing) as covered in the first article.

Update

As of version 1.0.3, it's no longer necessary to go through the above mentioned procedure to upgrade Firefox. There's a simpler built-in facility for upgrading that can be used instead. Of course, the above mentioned procedure generally works with all applications in an MS-Windows environment, not just Firefox.

Sonĝotera Vojaĝo

More Browsers

Opera

Camino

Flock

Konqueror

Netscape

Searching and Finding

Updating Firefox

Update