justaddwater.dk » Browser

Chrome “find in page” with smart search in unicode characters

Jesper Rønn-Jensen — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 20:42:50 +0000

Look at this chrome search for the Danish letter “æ” in a page.
.

Notice how Chrome actually also shows occurrences of “ae” when searching for “æ”.

The same thing goes when searching for “Ø”, “Ö” or similar accents: They will show occurences of “o”.

Usability wise, I think this is a rather good principle for end-user solutions, just like Google Chrome. But, but. As an advanced user, i would like to know if i can turn it off? Not as a general setting. Because the usecase would be that you search, and find too much. Based on this, if you search for something with accented characters, a new checkbox should appear. My suggestion (mockup):

This way, you will start with a “wide” search and end up being able to filter in more correctly.

Internal Apps In Firefox

Jesper Rønn-Jensen — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:28:46 +0000

This post is probably highly irrelevant unless you work at Capgemini and want to use the internal nordic applications in Firefox.

Read on if you want to access systems like CTR (time reporting), Event calendar, Skills database, PDR, Project forms or similar applications in Firefox.

Problem is that the systems are not accessible at all if you’re not logged in. The reason is some extremely malformed HTML. Here is the entire content of the HTML page sent out:

CTR System

Several problems here: Content outside of HTML element. No body element. No end HTML tag. And the most critical that triggers this particular problem: The form element and the SCRIPT element are outside the body.

IE has an interpretation of this illegal structure: It creates a body element and fills in the SCRIPT and FORM tag into them.

Firefox guesses differently. It moves the FORM element to the body as well, but the SCRIPT element is put in the HEAD section. The consequence is that the form submit happens before the FORM element is rendered. And it gives a JavaScript error that the form is not found.

I wrote a Greasemonkey script that essentially posts the form again (and Greasemonkey is not triggered until DOM is loaded).

Install greasemonkey script:

capinternal_systems_login_nordic_apps.user.js (version 1.0 created 2009-09-23)

If you want to improve on it or add more for more internal systems, feel free to fork this gist on Github http://gist.github.com/191896

IE CSS Bug: Limited @include Statements

Jesper Rønn-Jensen — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:57:14 +0000

I found out that Internet explorer only interprets 32 @include statements in CSS for a webpage. The rest is silently ignored.

Tested with IE7. Has anybody tried this with IE8?

For more info see:

Internet Explorer issue – maximum of 32 CSS @import

PS. Silent ignorance is just about the worst form for ignorance when coding. The least they could do was to display an error in the error console.

Firefox Tip For Framebuster JavaScript

Jesper Rønn-Jensen — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:30:06 +0000

I have for long been struggling with an internal legacy application that wraps the content page in a frameset. Very annoying because I have spent some time to reverse engineer a poor-mans API to the application.

Problem: An inline “reverse” framebuster script that makes sure that everything is nicely(?) wrapped in the frameset. As you see it’s included inline in the HTML.

<script Language="Javascript">

  url = "application_url";

  if (parent.frames[0]) {

    if (parent.frames[0].name != ‘FrameMain’) {

      document.location.replace(url);

    }

  }else{

    document.location.replace(url);

  }

script>

One thing is I never understood the thing about putting everything in a frameset. In this case, I have not been able to change the code. But as I have to use the application every now and then, the big question is:

How to change or remove the inline JavaScript, and make sure the framebuster is ignored?

I did not think this was possible until I got this answer from “esquifit” in the Greasemonkey user goup:

You do not need GM nor Opera for this task. Firefox comes with a
built-in capability for allowing/disallowing access to
properties/methods of DOM Objects on a per-site basis. It is called
Configurable Security Policies (CAPS) and it is described in [1].
Further examples and explanations are provided for example in [2] and
[3].
A short guide assuming the simplest case:
1) Close Firefox
2) Locate your profile folder [4]
3) Locate the file user.js within this folder. If it does not exist,
create it with a *text* editor (Notepad, vim, etc.), not with a ‘word
processor’ (MS Word, OpenOffice.org, Wordpad, etc.)
4) Add the following lines to user.js:
user_pref(“capability.policy.policynames”, “noframebuster”);
user_pref(“capability.policy.noframebuster.sites”,
“http://www.annoying-site.com“);
user_pref(“capability.policy.noframebuster.Location.replace”, “noAccess”);
Of course, you will have to replace the domain with the one you want to prevent from redirecting your frames.

Find the entire discussion here:

Greasemonkey users group: “How to ignore framebuster script“

Technorati Tags: javascript, frameset, frames, frame buster, inline, firefox, location.replace

Mobile User Experience:Trying Out Opera Mini

Jesper Rønn-Jensen — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 21:27:25 +0000

While being on vacation in beautiful Toscana, Italy, i’m trying out the Opera Mini browser on my Nokia 6233 cell phone. It is actually possible to use the blog administration software on the browser (log in, navigate, write posts, etc.)

But it sure is not easy! There are lots of issues in the interface that easily leads to catastrophic accidents: For instance, i just lost half an hour worth of typing because i accidentally hit the back button. Normally i get a warning (“Are you sure…”), but apparently that warning does not work on the Opera Mini browser. HTML is tedious: I could use some kind of snippet library with at least p + a tags, and how do i enter a line break? Furthermore, i can see only two lines of text (8-10 words) at any time in the text area where i write this text. Absolutely horrific for reviewing text and really really annoying that there is blank space on the screen for probably six more lines of text!

Opera, Nokia: please team up and fix these issues. I will gladly help if you need more info.

Technorati Tags: opera, opera mini, nokia, wordpress, usability, browser, mobile, user experience, uxp

Actual Browser Sizes (final)

Thomas Watson Steen — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 20:38:25 +0000

The numbers are in! Jesper first asked the question in “Design for Browser Size — Not Screen Size” and quickly after Thomas Baekdal of baekdal.com took up the challenge. After publishing his preliminary results he have now unveiled the final report:

The report finds, among other things, that the majority of people browse maximized or very close to it. That Mac user have bigger screens, but their browser are the same size as on any other platform. And, in order to support 95% of your visitors, you need to design for a maximum size of 776x424px.

Actual Browser Sizes – The Movie

Thomas Baekdal also produced a short movie explaining how this enormous feat was achieved. It’s a fun and interesting watch – even for the non-geeky of us. Let’s just say that a lot of monkeys would make all our life’s easier ;)

Technorati Tags: usability, screen size, screen resolution, browser, web design, window size, web statistics, thomas baekdal, movie, monkeys, monkey

Firefox 2 tip: autocomplete in search box

Jesper Rønn-Jensen — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 10:38:45 +0000

As Firefox 2 is set to release this Tuesday, I just want to share this neat trick with you.

Use the Google search box in top right corner as a simple calculator. This is really handy for fast lookups, calculations, word definitions, currency conversions.

In short, you can use all features Google makes accessible from their search field.

Technorati Tags: firefox, firefox2, autocomplete, live search, browser, search, tip, productivity

IE7 Accessibility: Magnification

Thomas Watson Steen — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 16:28:51 +0000

It just occurred to me that the new Internet Explorer 7 ships with a zoom tool.

In other/older browsers (even the new Firefox 2 which was just released yesterday) zoom can only achieved natively by increasing or decreasing the text size – and that is only if the text size is not written in pixels.

IE7 still have the old text size in-/decrease functionality but have also added a regular zoom tool:

This zoom feature zooms everything without distortion – not only text. This means, text, images, forms, layout – the works.

They have even changed the keyboard shortcuts so that the keyboard shortcuts that previously activated text size in-/decrease now activates page zoom. If you have IE 7 installed, try to pres Ctrl + or Ctrl – or even just holding down the Ctrl button while scrolling your mouse-wheel.

For some reason though, some pages whose text previously in- and decreased fine in IE6 now don’t in IE7. But who needs that when we got zoom?

Technorati Tags: ie7, accessibility, magnification, browser, internet explorer

All IE Browsers Standalone On Same PC

Jesper Rønn-Jensen — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 08:29:57 +0000

Yousif Al Saif of Tredosoft is probably best known for the IE7 standalone browser installer that can run isolated on a Windows machine without disturbing the version already installed. I wrote about this in “IE7, web standards and css support“.

Now he posted an article that makes it dead simple to run multiple Internet Explorers. It’s a simple one-click installer that makes you choose any of the following versions of IE:

IE 6
IE 5.5
IE 5.0
IE4.01
IE3

Here’s a screenshot of the installer:

Standalone versions of Internet Explorers have been available for a long time. (i blogged about it before back in January and February). The new and best thing is that it’s now dead simple and really really easy to use.

IE7 standalone

Tredosoft also has an installer that installs the most recent version of IE 7 as a standalone program (without removing IE6). It actually works very well for me, and I love that I’m able to test websites with the upcoming IE7 browser (currently release candidate 1).

More info:

Tredosoft: Install multiple versions of IE on your PC
Tredosoft: IE7 in standalone mode

Technorati Tags: browser, internet explorer, multiple browsers, ie, ie7, ie6, ie55, ie5, ie50, ie4, ie3, windows, standalone

Browser Size — Actual Numbers

Jesper Rønn-Jensen — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 12:30:39 +0000

I asked for numbers confirming my thoughts recently in “Design for Browser Size — Not Screen Size“.

First Jakob Skjerning (mentalized.net), and now Thomas Baekdal published his preliminary results. Great to see some thorough work done in this highly important area where pretty much no stat tool or measuring service have ever been.

For years we have seen statistics telling us the size of people’s screens. We know that 1024×768 is the dominant screen size, and that large resolution screens are coming.

But, this is useless information. We do not want to know the size of a person’s screen. We want to know the size of the browser’s content area. A person might not use the browser maximized, and other elements – taskbar, toolbars and extensions – takes up valuable screen space.

From Thomas Baekdal: Actual Browser Sizes – Preview

The conclusion (although it’s preliminary) is clear:

The actual browser size and percentage graphs clearly show that a vast majority of people use they browser maximized (or very close to maximized).

98% of the width is more or less the same as the full width of the browser without the scrollbars. 78% of the height is about the size of the full height without the toolbars, taskbar etc.

This pretty much destroys the myth that many people browse the net in a smaller window.

This is another conclusion than mine and Jakob Nielsen: “people with big screens rarely maximize”. However, nice to see some actual statistics here. Keep it coming!

Technorati Tags: usability, screen size, screen resolution, browser, web design, liquid layout, window size, jakob nielsen, web statistics, thomas baekdal, jakob skjerning