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Posts Tagged ‘firefox’

Firefox 3.0.5: how to fight caching issue

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

If you are web-developer you probably already heard about regression bug in recent Firefoxes, event latest Firefox 3.0.5 is affected.

Bug is described here on Bugzilla [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=441751], it is fixed, and should be available in new version of Firefox.

As the bug description notes Firefox ignores cache control attributes so we can’t just use them:
Cache-Control: max-age=0, no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate
Expires: Sun, 1 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT
Pragma: no-cache

Rare case is you need to tune cache then you can use browser.cache.check_doc_frequency parameter [http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.check_doc_frequency] that can be accessed with about:config URL.

But for others question is what to do right now, event with new version of Firefox we can’t ask users to update their Firefoxes.

There are 2 solutions that we have found and tested:

1. If you want to make Firefox to reload some page
You can generate new URLs for any cache sensitive resources every time.
Add some insignificant parameters to URLs: http://www.google.com/something?aaa

2. If you need to make some actions within some page,
for example you need to provide an unique attribute for images in Ads campaign.
You can use Javascript to generate it.
Firefox uses same page but execute Javascript everytime.

You can use following code to generate random number:

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<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[

var AdsId = '' + Math.floor(Math.random()*1999999999);

//]]
</script>

I hope men will update their browsers fast so we will not stick with that like with IE6.

New web-experience with Mozilla Prism

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

preamble

Our world is currently in transition from traditional desktop applications to web-oriented where most of time we want to do everything in the Web with help of our browsers.
Sometimes nevertheless we want to use some web-applications like: Gmail, Google docs, FaceBook or on-line dictionary as desktop application. Is it possible ? Try the Prism.

prism world

With Prism you can run web-oriented applications directly on desktop in their own window where they have access to all windows features and you still can access these same applications from your web browser.
Prism is built on Firefox so it supports all rich internet technologies and runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Also Prism developers thinking how to integrate better the Prism with Firefox,
enabling one-click “make this a desktop app” functionality that preserves a user preferences.

For more information about Prism go to the project page: [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Prism]
When invoked it is as pretty as following picture:

google calendar in Prism

getting Started with Prism

download and install appopriate version for your platform:

Prism for Firefox v0.2 for Firefox 3.0b3pre or greater, Windows/Mac/Linux.

The standalone version of Prism v0.9 is also available:
for Windows (installer, archive), Mac and Linux.

Mozilla foundation wants for you

Prism is open source project and if you want to help Mozilla with Prism development go to:
[http://wiki.mozilla.org/Prism]
forum for discussions: [https://labs.mozilla.com/forum/index.php/board,16.0.html]
Bugzilla for bug reporting: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Mozilla+Labs&component=Prism]

Simplify of web-development with Firefox plug-ins

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

preamble

There is set of plug-ins that really simplify development process and glance will help you select something for your daily work.

golden list

name: firebug
functions: edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live
hints: page loading analysis, live working with CSS styles, JavaScript debugger
add-on page: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843]

name: user agent switcher
functions: switch the user agent of the browser
hints: cool but IE, and Firefox still interpret code differently and anyway for interpretation tests you need ‘ies4linux’ [http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page]
add-on page: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59]

name: dust-Me Selectors
functions:finds unused CSS selectors
add-on page: [https://addons.mozilla.org/ru/firefox/addon/5392]

name: firesizer
functions: resize of firefox the window to specific dimensions
hints: it helps to test site in required resolutions
add-on page: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5792]

name: SQLite manager
functions: manage SQLite databases
hints: I think you know why it is better to use SQLite DB on workplaces
add-on page: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5817]

name: add N edit cookies
functions: allows you add and edit session and saved cookies in live
add-on page: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/573]

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