Firefox

Note — 3 April 2012 — 68 words

I have a problem with cutesy copy, particularly when it comes to error messages. I understand that they are trying to be friendly and personable, but it’s usually not what the user wants or needs. Often, a friendly error message just leads to more confusion.

Dialogue box: "Well, this is embarrassing. Firefox is having trouble recovering your windows and tabs. This is usually caused by a recently opened webpage."

Take Firefox’s “well, this is embarrassing”.

I was once asked for advice about this error message.

“Should I be embarrassed?”, I was asked.

Article — 19 July 2010 — 636 words

Why are web browser logos all circular?

Web

Work: University of St Andrews

A thought suddenly occurred to me last week when I was attending a presentation at IWMW about HTML5 and friends. One of the slides contained the logos of the five major browsers. It suddenly occurred to me that they are all round! It is almost as if the circle or sphere has, by stealth, become […]

Article — 17 July 2008 — 1,381 words

Why is technology news not news?

Current affairs — Media — Technology — Web

I’ve been wondering a bit about the way technology news is still ghettoised. I don’t mean news about the latest rubbish web 2.0 start-up with a ridiculous name. I mean quite important stuff. Security problems and the like. Take what happened last week. A patch to fix a major flaw in the DNS was released. […]

Article — 13 November 2007 — 298 words

Blocking Beacon

Current affairs — Personal — Technology

I am usually a defender of Facebook. But this time I think they have overstepped the line and have introduced a ‘feature’ that makes me personally uncomfortable. From The Facebook Blog: Just as Facebook shares your on-site interactions with your friends through News Feed, we now give you an option to let News Feed share […]

Article — 18 August 2007 — 646 words

Why do those social bookmarking links exist?

Media — User experience — Web

There is a fixture of the modern web that I really don’t understand. And in terms of annoyance it is probably second only to Snap Preview. Millions of links to social bookmarking websites littering the bottom of every news article and blog post written. You know the ones. “Digg this!” “Send to del.icio.us!” “Pimp-me-do to […]

Linknote — 23 June 2005 — 56 words

Accessibility — Web

Websites alienate Firefox users — BBC News

After all this time, one in ten websites are still not supporting Firefox. Luckily, I don’t use any of them.

“Surprisingly, after all these years, users of standard-compliant browsers are still faced with sites that do not support their browser or with a link suggesting they download Internet Explorer,” said Deri Jones, chief executive of SciVisum.