How to run multiple Firefox instances on Mac OSX Leopard

Monday, July 20th, 2009

Whew… Long title.

So I do some web development and there are instances where I need to test on multiple browsers (and multiple versions of browsers). It was pretty easy to install multiple instances of Firefox on my Mac (running OS X Leopard):

1. Go to Mozilla and download the dmg.
2. Mount the dmg file
3. Instead of dragging and dropping the version into your applications from the mounted image, go to your applications folder and create a new folder for the version you want.
4. Drag the application into your newly created folder
5. Drag the app from your folder into the dock (or run the app and choose to keep in dock).

Voila. You’ll be able to test sites on different versions of Firefox.  Have fun.

UPDATE: One more step I forgot about to make your life easier. Go here and learn how to create a profile for each of your accounts (like I did below) and then you won’t be prompted for updates each time you open that version of Firefox. I just saved mine into the version folder for each version.

Death to IE6

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

As I’ve pointed out twice (my plea to corporate America here & during a poll here), I’m on the bandwagon of those trying to kill IE6. As a web developer it hurts every time you’re forced to support it. It adds hours of frustrating wasted time to every project and as I point out in my plea to corporate America: It’s old, really old and full of holes.   I’ve gone as far as prompting IE6 visitors to this site to download an upgrade by use of a modal popup.

Now more than ever, this movement is gaining steam:

• There is now an article at Mashable about killing IE6
• News that Youtube will kill it’s support for IE6
• And Digg wanted to, but realized that the reason people use it is because they have no choice (locked down XP computers without being able to upgrade).

But by far the funniest of all I’ve seen yet is this – IE6ify any website. This tool will make the site look likes it being shown in IE6 (to a developer). Basically it breaks your page.  Enjoy the fun that I and so many have experienced trying to use CSS on IE6 in this replicator. (H/T to Logan)

Do you block or support IE6?

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

With the recent launch of Internet Explorer 8 and recent campaigns to block IE6, kill IE6 and end IE6 (this one is even by a .Net magazine), and pleas by countless bloggers (like this one here by me) have people finally relented and either installed a new browser or started supporting IE7 in their corporate environment?

Well…there was 1.6% drop of market share in April 2009 from 17.0% to 15.4%, but unfortunately 15.4% of users is still a significant percentage (see all stats here).

So this begs the question. Web developers – are you helping bring about the demise of IE6? Are you allowed to at your business / corporate environment?  My answer is yes and no. I don’t support it here, I use the pop-up, and I don’t support it on our spoken whirred blog. But I do degrade using hacks for IE6 on Spoke’s main site.  Love to hear your comments about this as well.

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Cufon – An Alternative to SIFR?

Monday, May 11th, 2009

Cufon looks promising:

Cufón aims to become a worthy alternative to sIFR, which despite its merits still remains painfully tricky to set up and use. To achieve this ambitious goal the following requirements were set:

No plug-ins required – it can only use features natively supported by the client
Compatibility – it has to work on every major browser on the market
Ease of use – no or near-zero configuration needed for standard use cases
Speed – it has to be fast, even for sufficiently large amounts of text
And now, after nearly a year of planning and research we believe that these requirements have been met.

I like these ideas and I’m going to test it out on a site soon. I’ll probably do so here, before I attempt this on Spoke’s site (which is comprised of SIFR).

The two things I like about Cufon (and SIFR for that matter):

• The ability to use fonts regardless of them being installed on the web machine (less images)
• Easily degrade to specified fonts (instead of your site not working on a mobile client like an iphone).

One thing that has bothered me throughout the examples of Cufon is double-clicking on a paragraph of text doesn’t just highlight the text, it highlights the text near it as well.  Like this picture I snapped of highlighted text, it messes up just a bit. Something to work on, but if it degrades gracefully and works without flash installed, this would be an annoyance and nothing more. It looks promising.

Dear Corporate America,

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

Please stop using Internet Explorer 6.  It came out in 2001, is riddled with bugs and forces developers that want to use cool tools like MooTools write CSS and HTML hacks that make me cringe.

I understand you are fearful of change.  I get it.  Don’t upgrade to Office 2007.  Doesn’t bother me at all. Don’t upgrade to Vista.  Heck that OS compelled me to switch to a Mac. I also understand that your IT support staff is not prepared for the onslaught of calls due to the ribbon replacing menus in Office 07.

But the whole goal of Internet Explorer 7 was to be more secure (i.e. less for you to worry about).  Especially now that it’s been out for 2 years.  Also, it’s a browser, so it won’t crash your network or cause a flood of calls to your IT support center.

In conclusion, this is my plea to you corporate America, to do what’s best for web developers everywhere and upgrade to IE7 already.  The world of tab pages and standards based CSS support awaits you.

Sincerely,

Brian Schwartz

Pandora – Localized Advertising Confirmed

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

So today I'm listening to Pandora again and I see the ad below, confirming what I guessed at in a previous post – Pandora is geographically targeting ads to users. 


This banner ad is specifically for an open house at the University on November 21. This Open House is in St. Louis.

The landing page is also well-done because it's well designed and has the requisite social media sharing toolbar.  Although it should probably list the address of the open house on the landing page somewhere. 

 
A few years ago I managed a similar campaign for another college in St. Louis, and although those campaigns were successful at driving traffic from direct mail, organic searches and pay-per-click advertising , it
would have been nice to use other tools like this.

Well done Fontbonne and well done Pandora.

Why Not A Microsite?

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

Hello.  As I type this I’m watching the end of the final round of this year’s Masters (somewhat anti-climatic this year, but I digress), and I keep seeing ads for IBM where instead of giving us a microsite to go to or a URL, they provide us with search terms.  The ad that I just saw said "search: IBM go green". 

I have no reason to follow this call-to-action, as I have no need to use IBM’s server products, but it stood out to me.  Why use search engine results in TV advertising when they are so subject to change or competitor influence? 

Last year some time, Pontiac was running TV advertisements with donuts for local markets, where the call to action for St. Louis, MO was "google pontiac st. louis".  Chris Hammond, a former co-worker of mine, thought it would be funny to try to take over the top spot for this term.  He did for a short time (I think, Chris if you read this jump in with what position you got up to). 

Regardless of who it is: WHY DO THIS???

Why not a microsite, (go to pontiacstlouis.com, go to ibmgogreen.com, etc.) where you can control the results?  Any SEO guru, competitor with an agenda or disgruntled former employee could throw up a site or blog post, an expensive PPC ad or something similar to get on the top page of google that could disrupt your best efforts for this TV ad.

Also, why make a consumer choose between 10 results (example: Pontiac St. Louis) when you can control the message with one?

Microsite’s are great for reaching specific audiences with specific messaging, but search engine algorithms are subject to change. 

If someone has a reason I’m missing, please let me know.  Until then, I’m rejecting this method in favor of microsites for my clients. 

Why a website – now?

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

I’ve been asked why I don’t have a website a lot recently. Since I’ve been able to do a lot of business with partners and haven’t really had the need to self-promote, I’ve never really cared.

So why this site and why now?

One important reason – I had to test out some functionality for a client (who will remain nameless until their microsite is launched) that required me to try integrate two technologies: typepad and facebook and make sure they placed nice together. So here comes Creative Reason’s TypePad Blog. I’ve been impressed thus far and this site now exists. It may even soon take over creativereason.com.

So, why not? I’ll give the ole blogging thing a whirl again. Plus, the collective work of myself, Dan Klein, David Meyer and Chuck Hart deserves to be told (humbly, of course). This isn’t probably the best or worst medium to do so, but it’s a start from my end.

I’ve blogged a lot in the past and I’ll do so here. Upcoming posts may include general musings on marketing, technology, my work and who knows, maybe this will go somewhere. If it doesn’t, oh well, that wouldn’t be a huge surprise, how many blogs were created in 2006 & 2007 that are still around? I would guess 20% of them or less are updated regularly. Let’s try to beat the odds.

Cheers for now,

Brian Schwartz