Google Chrome Joins The Modern Browser Party

Welcome Google Chrome

For months if not years rumor had it that Google was cooking up a browser of their own which many dubbed "The gBrowser". Since Google had built a good relationship with the Mozilla foundation it was presumed that they would build it on top of the Mozilla rendering engine "Gecko" but Google has just announced / released the "Google Chrome" Web Browser, based on WebKit, the rendering engine inside Safari and Konqueror.

You can download the beta here for Windows (it will be available for Mac and Linux shortly) in one of 43 languages and give it a test spin yourself.

The interface screams of simplicity yet under the hood contains a lot of great design. The browser is designed to load each tab as its own process in the host Operating System, thus if one site crashes, you need not lose your entire browser and all other sites.

Tabs can be easily dragged, dropped and re-arranged... and best of all you can drag a tab out of the set, and start a new window... or merge one or more tabs back into one window just by dragging it back. (Note to all Web Browser makers, this is how all browsers should work!

Developers will be happy too, since it runs WebKit, its fast and any site that supports Safari 3.1 will work just fine with Google Chrome. Not only that it comes with a Task Manager that reports back how much memory your web site/application is actually using so you can watch your memory management and check for memory leaks.

For end users and developers go download it now and check it out! As for Google, welcome to the Modern Browser party, we're certainly glad to have you... Diversity is the key to the modern web.

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Web Bug Track - A Brief Update

The status quo

Well, here we are 1 year later! It was a year ago we first welcomed you to this "bug blog". It started as just a simple concept... a way to track web bugs in HTML, JavaScript, DOM, CSS, etc. in the world wide web of Web Browsers.

The landscape has changed significantly since starting this blog. Mozilla released Firefox 3, a worthy successor to the hugely popular Firefox 2, even setting a Guinness World Record in the process. Opera released the latest update to their browser, squashing a several pesky bugs and improving their Web Standards by drifting away from legacy IE-spoofing and being the first to pass the ACID3 test! The KDE folks released Konqueror 4.0, boosting speed and cleaning up rendering issues they had. Safari has been making leaps and bounds with WebKit in terms of supporting advanced CSS3 properties and being the second browser to pass the ACID3 test. Finally Microsoft re-opened their bug tracking tool "IE Feedback" on the Connect site when IE8 Beta 1 was released to developers. This was a welcome change as there was much frustration when Microsoft decided to close it (and remove all entries) after IE7 went RTM. We hope that it will remain open when IE8 goes RTM later this year, however if it doesn't you can rest assured that Web Bug Track isn't going anywhere!.

Alas when we began this blog, there was a simple concept we wanted to fulfill. Allow Web Developers and Designers a source to track bugs (regardless of which Browser / Vendor they were for), provide clear workarounds where known to get around bugs and lastly allow the community an opportunity to share their bug findings, so that we can all benefit.

So here we are now getting 1,000s upon 1,000s of hits every month from Developers looking for workarounds, or just looking to find out which versions of a browser are affected by a bug, or which HTML elements have issues in which browser. I can tell you that from the stats and the praise I've received thus far, I feel overwhelmingly satisfied that this experiment has been a huge success... and obviously filled a need in the "Developers Toolbox" of tips and tricks.

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So where to now?

Good question! There's a few changes coming up that I think will make things that much better.

• Recent Updates Section


• Knol Reference Page - Web Browser Bugs

The Recent Updates Section will allow returning visitors to easily spot changes to bugs / workarounds. An addition to Google's Knol Reference Pages allows direct linking/searching of bugs here on Web Bug Track by Browser, HTML Element Type, JavaScript Method or Property. There will be a few more additions too, but I'll keep those as a surprise for now. ;-)

Thanks for making Web Bug Track a success! I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed putting it all together.

Cheers!

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bug 287 - can't float over an iframe in Konqueror

Issue: #287
Affects: Konqueror 3.5.4
Status: [Fixed!]
Fixed in: Konqueror 4.0

Advanced web sites and applications these days tend to "float" content above the document window to provide dynamic tooltips, calendars, option lists, lightbox effects for image galleries etc.

In order to be able to do this, an element must be "floated" above the rest of the page, often with a higher z-index value to ensure it stays above all other elements.

In Konqueror however, you can't float elements above an iframe, regardless what the z-index is set to. The only exception is that you can float another iframe, over an iframe. See KDE Bug ID:141615.

Example:

<style>
#myFloaterDiv {
  position: absolute;
  width: 200px;
  height: 200px;
  top: 100px;
  left: 100px;
  z-index: 1000;
}
#myIframe {
  position: absolute;
  width: 300px;
  height: 300px;
  top: 200px;
  left: 200px;
}
</style>
<div id="myFloaterDiv">
  Floating above
This should be above the iframe.
</div>
<iframe id="myIframe" src="http://www.digg.com/">
</iframe>

Known Workarounds: None.

Related Issues: None.

Modern Browsers

Modern Browsers: I expect this to be a moving target, but as of mid-2007 I would only qualify the following as "Modern Browsers". You should expect to see little support, and very few features for browsers not listed here. If your Web Browser is not listed here, it IS time to upgrade.

• Mozilla
  
  
  
  • Mozilla
  
  
  • Firefox 1.5* | 2.0 | 3.0 | 3.5
  
  
  • Camino 1.5
  
  
  • Epiphany 2.2
  
  
  
  


• Opera 8.0 | 9.0 | 9.5


• Safari 3.0 | 3.1 | (4.0*)(Mac or Windows)


• Konqueror 3.5 | 4.0


• Google Chrome 1.0 | 2.0 (based on WebKit)


• Netscape 7.0 | 8.0 | 9.0


• AT&T's Pogo (based on Firefox) [in Limited Beta]


• Internet Explorer 7.0 | 8.0 | 9.0***

***IE9 announced at PDC and on the IE Blog

*Safari 4.0 is now out in Beta for Mac and Windows

*Firefox 1.5 is a modern web browser for sure, but with the fast pace of Firefox development, full support for this version has already moved on. If you are using Firefox 1.5 we strongly suggest you upgrade to Firefox 2.x or, if 3.x when it is available.