Monday, August 31, 2009
Why Firefox Should Support ActiveX
Check it out. Pretty sweet, huh? If you're using Firefox or Safari, you won't be able to see it. It's a calendar. All you have to do to embed one in a page is type the following code:
<object classid="clsid:232E456A-87C3-11D1-8BE3-0000F8754DA1"></object>
That's one line of code. In contrast, I made a calendar on my site in HTML, CSS, and Javascript that performs most of the same functions: http://home.comcast.net/~richmaxw. I made that with 95 lines of code, plus 33 lines of CSS and a 40 lines of JavaScript. I had to add the JavaScript to ensure it would display properly in browsers other than Internet Explorer. There are many other ActiveXObjects you can use. You can browse them using OLE View. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer 8 seems to be moving away from ActiveX. I added a Windows Media Player object to a site of mine and whenever someone tries to view it, it displays a warning asking if the user is sure they want to watch the movie. Flash objects don't trigger the warning. It must be a security issue, but crackers can exploit all features of a browser, including JavaScript, for malicious purposes. Should we disable JavaScript, too?
Thursday, August 27, 2009
List of Navigator Attributes by Browser and Operating System
| As a web designer, I have had to test my sites in many different browsers. My pages tend to be customized for each browser, and over time, I've accumulated a list of navigator attributes that I test for. Sometimes I redirect a browser based on what operating system they use (navigator.platform) other times by language (navigator.systemLangauge, which isn't supported by Firefox). So, here's a table of the attributes for which I've tested. I believe that some people would find it useeful. Note that these were obtained in different operating systems (usually virtual machines). Internet Explorer 2 is not included in the results because it did not support scripting: | |||||||||||
| navigator.platform |
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| navigator.userAgent |
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| Internet Explorer 8 | Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729) | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 7 | Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729) | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 6 | Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 5 | Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt) | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 4 | Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 95) | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 3 | Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Update a; Windows NT) | ||||||||||
| Firefox 3 | Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729) | ||||||||||
| Firefox 2 | Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.20) Gecko/20081217 Firefox/2.0.0.20 | ||||||||||
| Firefox 1 | Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0 | ||||||||||
| Safari 4 | Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/530.19.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.2 Safari/530.19.1 | ||||||||||
| Safari 3 | Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.28 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.2.2 Safari/525.28.1 | ||||||||||
| Safari 2 | Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/418.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/419.3 | ||||||||||
| Konqueror 4.1 | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/4.1; Linux) KHTML/4.1.3 (like Gecko) SUSE | ||||||||||
| Opera 9.64 | Opera/9.64 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) Presto/2.1.1 | ||||||||||
| Opera 8.5 | Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) Opera 8.50 | ||||||||||
| Opera 7 | Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.02 [en] | ||||||||||
| Chrome 2 | Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/530.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/2.0.172.39 Safari/530.5 | ||||||||||
| Netscape 4.79 | Mozilla/4.79 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) | ||||||||||
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You may have noticed that Opera 8.5 identifies itself as Internet Explorer 6.0 by default, although this can be changed by going to Tools → Preferences → Advanced and selecting another option from the Browser Identification drop-down menu. That browser never ceases to impress me. You may have also noticed that almost every browser includes the word Mozilla in its application version information. It has nothing to do with Firefox. This is an old spoof used by browsers to pretend that they were Netscape Navigator. |
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navigator.appName |
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| Internet Explorer 8 | Microsoft Internet Explorer | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 7 | Microsoft Internet Explorer | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 6 | Microsoft Internet Explorer | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 5 | Microsoft Internet Explorer | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 4 | Microsoft Internet Explorer | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 3 | Microsoft Internet Explorer | ||||||||||
| Firefox 3 | Netscape | ||||||||||
| Firefox 2 | Netscape | ||||||||||
| Firefox 1 | Netscape | ||||||||||
| Safari 4 | Netscape | ||||||||||
| Safari 3 | Netscape | ||||||||||
| Safari 2 | Netscape | ||||||||||
| Konqueror 4.1 | Netscape | ||||||||||
| Opera 9.64 | Opera | ||||||||||
| Opera 8.5 | Microsoft Internet Explorer | ||||||||||
| Opera 7 | Microsoft Internet Explorer | ||||||||||
| Chrome 2 | Netscape | ||||||||||
| Netscape 4.79 | Netscape | ||||||||||
| As you may have guessed from the above answers, detecting Netscape Navigator is a bit tricky today! It makes me wonder whether the usage share of Netscape Navigator is under-estimated by HitsLink! | |||||||||||
| navigator.AppVersion | |||||||||||
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| Internet Explorer 8 | 4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0) | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 7 | 4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729) | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 6 | 4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98) | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 5 | 4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98; DigExt) | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 4 | 4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 95) | ||||||||||
| Internet Explorer 3 | 2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Update a; Windows NT) | ||||||||||
| Firefox 3 | 5.0 (Windows; en-US) | ||||||||||
| Firefox 2 | 5.0 (Windows; en-US) | ||||||||||
| Firefox 1 | 5.0 (Windows; en-US) | ||||||||||
| Safari 4 | 5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/530.19.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.2 Safari/530.19.1 | ||||||||||
| Safari 3 | 5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_5; en-us) | ||||||||||
| Safari 2 | 5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) | ||||||||||
| Konqueror 4.1 | 5.0 (Compatible; Konqueror/4.1; Linux) KHTML/4.1.3 (like Gecko) SUSE | ||||||||||
| Opera 9.64 | 9.63 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) | ||||||||||
| Opera 8.5 | 4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) | ||||||||||
| Opera 7 | 4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.1) | ||||||||||
| Chrome 2 | 5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/530.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/2.0.172.39 Safari/530.5 | ||||||||||
| Netscape 4.79 | 4.79 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) | ||||||||||
| To test this out in your own browser, type the following code into a text file and save it with a .html or .htm extension: <html> <head> <script type='text/javascript'> document.write("User agent: " + navigator.userAgent + "<br/>"); document.write("App name: " + navigator.appName + "<br/>"); document.write("App version: " + navigator.appVersion); </script> </head> <body> </body> </html> | |||||||||||
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