browsers – Page 2 – computeraxe

How To Turn On JavaScript

Need instructions to enable JavaScript for popular browsers? Here’s how to activate javascript in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome and iPhone browsers with simple step-by-step instructions for PC and MAC users.

Just before the closing body tag, don’t forget to put a set of <noscript> tag with some content telling the user what’s up. What follows is a suggestion that directs the user on how to improve their system. Another approach would be to offer alternative content that doesn’t require any scripts.

Hello! To see all the cool effects on this page, you need to activate JavaScript in your browser. JavaScript is required for interacting with many of today’s top Internet sites, so you may need to know how to turn javascript on. The directions are slightly different depending on which browser software you use.

Visit activatejavascript.org for directions on how to activate javascript. If javascript is not enabled in your browser, a message will appear at the top of the screen: Your JavaScript is disabled!. Follow the directions to activate javascript for the browser and operating system that you’re using. Javascript will be enabled the next time you start the browser.

If the software that you’re using to view sites on the Internet doesn’t have javascript capability, try another more modern browser, like Firefox. PC, MAC and mobile versions of Firefox are available for free download at http://www.mozilla.org/.

</noscript>

Enable Caching in Firefox for Faster Web Sites

Using an .htaccess file to specify that images should be cached is one way to speed up the time it takes for your web pages to appear. Those of us still using older browsers will thank you for using an Expires Header in .htaccess to manage caching.

Yet another good reason to upgrade your browser is to take advantage of newer features. Caching of images and other often-used files can be controlled by your browser.

IE 9 apparently has caching defaulted to ON. Firefox 5 does not.

Here’s how to enable caching in Firefox.

Type “about:config” in the address bar and hit enter.
Accept the warning by clicking on the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
Scroll down to ‘browser.cache.disk.enable’ and double click. You will see the value in the fourth column toggle from false to true, if caching was not enabled already.
Scroll down to ‘browser.cache.memory.enable’ and double click to enable by setting it to true.

That’s it! The performance of your Firefox browser will speed up, noticeably so. After enabling caching, the time to download pages from a client’s site went from 6-10 seconds to 2-3 seconds!

Which Versions of PHP and MySql Run Your WordPress Blog?

How Healthy is Your WordPress Blog? Do you know what version of PHP or MySQL your server is running?

The improvements in WordPress continue. Check the state of your blog’s health by running the new Health Check plugin. Currently, it will check for the versions of PHP and MySQL that are running your blog. In order to work with WP 3.2, your server will need to be up-to-date and running —

PHP version 5.2 or greater
MySQL version 5.0.15 or greater

In an attempt to help others into the 21st century, WordPress will no longer work using PHP 4 or MySQL 4.

WordPress will also drop support for Internet Explorer 6. Yay! There are other improvements coming, so stay tuned!

IE7 Error Refuses to Open Site – Operation Aborted

A client mystically had these errors pop up where they could not open their web site with Internet Explorer. It’s strange that this error hadn’t been reported to me before because the site has been operational for a couple years now. Internet Explorer 8 doesn’t spew the error, nor does Firefox, but IE6 and IE7 would report that it couldn’t open the site with the following error window:

Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site - Operation aborted.

The problem was traced to the older IE browsers’ inability to render the page completely before it tried to execute some javascript code.

The solution was to add a simple defer tag to each javascript call, like so:
<script defer="defer" type="text/javascript" src="src goes here">/*code goes here*/</script>

Thanks goes out to Richard for posting his found solution. Thanks, Richard!

Microsoft also indicates that this error can be avoided by updating your browser to the latest version, which at this time is IE8. Now, if only all my clients would do the same!