Browsers

New and updated Web browsers are released frequently, and I try to keep track of them all. This category contains articles that mention browser news, features, bugs, plug-ins, extensions, bookmarklets, and similar.

Using a transparent image as an icon fallback

When you use an icon or other graphic instead of text for buttons, make sure there is real text for users who cannot see the image.

Posted on April 30, 2013

Conditional sibling class names for IE patching

A different approach to using conditional comments to add class names for targeting CSS at different versions of Internet Explorer.

Posted on April 11, 2013

Media Query width and vertical scrollbars

All browsers do not handle vertical scrollbars the same way when calculating the width to match in a media query.

Posted on January 25, 2013

The mysterious WebKit placeholder overflow bug

Under some circumstances using a placeholder attribute on text input fields can cause overflow problems in WebKit-based browsers.

Posted on January 12, 2013

Skip links and other in page links in WebKit browsers

In page links do not work as expected (or as in other browsers) when activated by keyboard in WebKit browsers like Safari and Chrome.

Posted on March 9, 2012

Using max-width on images can make them disappear in IE8

Images that have a CSS max-width, a width attribute in the HTML, and are children of a floated element that has no explicit width set may be invisible in IE8.

Posted on February 2, 2012

Visited links can only be differentiated by colour

It used to be possible to apply any CSS to visited links. This has privacy issues, so most browsers have implemented styling restrictions and only allow colours to be changed.

Posted on December 8, 2011

No more conditional comments in IE10

Microsoft is removing support for conditional comments in IE10. I don’t think they will be missed.

Posted on October 27, 2011

Testing on mobile devices without the hardware

Tips for installing and running the iOS Simulator and the Android Emulator for testing your web sites on mobile devices without buying lots of hardware.

Posted on August 30, 2011

Line-height in input fields

The Firefox default stylesheet uses the !important keyword when declaring line-height for text inputs. You can’t override this from an author stylesheet, so a workaround is necessary.

Posted on August 23, 2011

Centering button elements and input buttons

Some browsers don’t let you center button elements horizontally by assigning auto margins. Bug or not?

Posted on June 1, 2011

Time to make the title attribute device independent

The contents of the title attribute in HTML is difficult or impossible to access in current browser implementations if you do not use a mouse.

Posted on April 26, 2011

X-UA-Compatible and HTML5

If you for some reason have to use the non-standard X-UA-Compatible header to force standards mode in IE, be aware that it is invalid HTML5. Fortunately it is easy to fix.

Posted on March 31, 2011

The IE6 countdown

Microsoft is trying to convince people to upgrade from IE6 through a website called The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown.

Posted on March 7, 2011

HTML5 Validator extension updates

The HTML5 Validator extension for Firefox has received a number of updates and is now hosted on GitHub.

Posted on February 26, 2011

Validating HTML5 with validator.nu and the HTML5Validator Extension for Firefox

How to automatically validate HTML5 in Firefox by installing a local copy of Validator.nu and my HTML5 Validator Extension.

Posted on February 10, 2011

Opera Mobile emulator and Opera Mini simulator

Checking your work in - and sometimes adapting it for - mobile browsers is quickly becoming more important. Testing is Opera Mobile and Opera Mini is pretty easy.

Posted on February 1, 2011

Media queries, viewport width, scrollbars, and WebKit browsers

WebKit-based browsers do not include vertical scrollbars in the viewport width, which goes against the Media Queries specification and differs from Firefox and Opera.

Posted on January 18, 2011

iOS browsers that allow font scaling and text reflow

Safari for iOS doesn’t offer text resizing. Two third-party browsers that do are iCab Mobile and Atomic Web Browser, both of which also reflow text after a font size change.

Posted on January 5, 2011

Safari for iOS needs a text size preference and text reflow

Safari for iOS needs a text size preference or a control to change text size. It also needs to reflow text to make line lengths fit the screen.

Posted on January 3, 2011

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