firefox

GMap Double Click Event Fired When Double Clicking on Markers in Firefox

Dec 25th, 2008
According to the Google Map's documentation, a doubleclick event should not be triggered on the GMap object when it occurs on a marker : "This event is fired when a double click is done on the map. Notice that this event will not be fired if the double click was on a marker or other clickable overlay. " But I am finding in Firefox 3.0.5 on both Windows and Linux, the event is triggered when clicking on a marker, which results in centering the map. This does not occur in IE7 on Windows. It's not a huge deal, but I have attached event listeners to markers so I could delete them when a user double clicks. They do in fact get deleted in Firefox, but the maps also centers on where the user clicked, which isn't what I want.

I am using custom icons and thought that might be the problem, so I went with the standard icon but the problem persists. I searched GMaps issues and sure enough, if your marker is set to be draggable, the event will pass through to GMap and center in Firefox.I tried to mess around with the code and see if I could find a hack to fix it, but nothing worked. Might be able to "un-center" the map by keeping trac of the events fired, as the marker doubleclick always came first in when I was debugging. But it's probably not worth it...

Posted In: firefox, Mashup | No Comments

Firefox performing better on Linux

Nov 22nd, 2007
In March, I wrote about Firefox's woeful performance with some javascript heavy sites. I am happy to say, Firefox is performing much better on these sites now that I have upgraded to Gutsy Gibson and Firefox was upgraded. This contrasts with the fact that Firefox seems to be crashing a lot more on windows these days, especially Vista.

Posted In: Uncategorized, firefox, Ubuntu | No Comments

Disable Firebug for Gmail

Nov 11th, 2007
Had an interesting message come up while using Gmail - Disable firebug:



The logging of the Ajax calls seems to be slowing Gmail down according to Google, not that I have noticed any performance issues. The interesting thing to me is, how do they know I am using Firebug? I looked at Firefox's user agent via javascript and didn't see anything there that indicated I was using Firebug. I took a quick look at Gmail's obfuscated js code and searched for the message, but didn't find anything. Not that it matters, but I wonder how they know I have Firebug installed and enabled?

Posted In: firefox | No Comments

Firefox + JavaScript + Linux = BAD?

Mar 20th, 2007
It can't be so, yet it appears to be, at least on my box running Ubuntu Edgy Eft... In trying to use Google Docs, Firefox repeatedly freezes and or takes forever to respond when using spreadsheets online. This could be a problem with the JS on Google Docs, but it runs fine on Firefox and IE on Windows. I have also experienced this problem on other sites that make use of Javascript. On a site that I developed which uses Thickbox, Friefox on Linux takes its sweet time bringing up the images, but runs smoothly for FF on Wndows. I experienced the same problem on this site with a different Linux box that was running Fedora Core 4, so its not just this distro or version of Firefox. There is mention over at O'Reilly about FF crashing on Linux, but that isn't the problem I am having. It's simply a matter of Firefox taking forever for certain sites with JavaScript.

Posted In: Linux, firefox, Ubuntu | No Comments

Javascript, Tables & InsertBefore

Nov 27th, 2006
I was trying to dynamically add rows to a table and ran into a problem with both Firefox and Internet Explorer. I had a table with a couple rows of data and there was a link to add a new row at the bottom of the table (in its own row).



The javascript simply cloned the first row, cleaned out some values from the td’s and inserted the new row into the table before the last row (i.e., the inserted row would be the second to last row) . That's where the problems arose. In firefox, table.appendChild(newRow) functioned fine, but when I tried table.insertBefore(newRow,lastRow) it threw a DOMexception saying it could not replace the child node because it didn't exist. In Internet Explorer, I could use appendChild or insertBefore. It turns out, you need to append and or insert to the tbody html element, instead of the table element. A real basic example:

<html>
<body>
<table>
<tbody id="useThis">
<tr id="row1"><td>Row One</td></tr>
<tr id="row2"><td>Row Two</td></tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<script type="text/javascript">
//clone row1
var newRow = document.getElementById('row1').cloneNode('true');
//get row2
var row2 = document.getElementById('row2');
//add cloned row1 one before row2
document.getElementById('useThis').insertBefore(newRow,row2);
</script>
</body>
</html>

Posted In: JavaScript, firefox, Internet Explorer | 6 comments

Google Analytics & Secure Connections with HTTPS

Nov 14th, 2006
I ran into a small problem with Google Analytics and secure connections. I worked with a company to get a secure certificate installed and noticed that the Google Analytics tracking code placed on the pages was calling a script from http and not https. This raised an alert in Internet Explorer asking if you “want to display non-secure items in the page”. Firefox also had a red icon, indicating everything was not secure on the page.



A quick search on Google turned up nothing useful, so I visited Google Analytics and quickly found the answer to my problem - http://www.google.com/support/analytics. The instructions are straightforward and you can place the code on non-secure and secure pages. Looking at the new tracking code and both JavaScript files on Google’s server, it looks like the only difference is the tracking code calls the script over https. This leads me to believe you could only update the secure pages on your site with the new tracking code and be fine.

Posted In: firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Analytics | No Comments

Testing for IE7

Oct 20th, 2006
With IE7 about to be pushed out to millions of computers, I realized I need to test some sites and make sure everything looked okay. But I don't want to lose IE6 in the process. I found a stand alone version of IE7 RC1. For some reason, I am not too worried about Firefox 2.0. They haven't made huge changes in CSS, which is what scares me about IE7. Surprisingly, all the sites I have built recently looked fine in IE7. I haven't employed any IE specific hacks, mostly just adding extra divs or other unnecessary markup.



While researching this, I also stumbled across IEs4Linux. I haven't had a chance to install it yet, but will in the next couple of weeks. Now, if the developer adds IE7 to the list, that is one less reason for me to fire up my Windows box.

Posted In: firefox, Internet Explorer | No Comments

Gmail and Saving via JavaScript

Jul 15th, 2006
I noticied (and read online) that Google had put in scrolling on their maps via the mouse wheel. But I just stumbled across something new while using Gmail - if you are typing an email and hit crtl+s, the normal Microsoft save command for word docs, it will actually use AJAX to save the email into your drafts (works on both IE and firefox on windows, but you have to have focus on the text area for composing the email in order for it to work) . They had auto-save, but this is something I wasn't aware of. I also tried it on firefox on Linux, but it didn't do it. You may be wondering why I hit crtl+s? It was a habit I developed while working as a webmaster for a ski area. Not that often, but often enough, the power would go out and I would lose all my unsaved data on the computer. It only had to happen a couple of times before I developed a habit if saving all the time. Such is the price of working at a ski area and being able to get powder for lunch...

Posted In: JavaScript, firefox, Internet Explorer | No Comments

IE and China Airlines

May 20th, 2006
Gunjan and I are going away for the Holidays in December and have been researching prices of flights to various countries. While seeing how much it cost to get to Asia, I went to China Airline's website (using Firefox of course) and was greeted with a javascript alert that said "Please useing IE6.0 or later !". Man, I thought those days were long gone...

I wonder what impact IE7 will have on the world of web design? Will it stop or slow the movement towards Firefox? Does the general public even care about what web browser they use, or do they see a web browser as a commodity? In my opinion, Firefox's increased market share played a large part in Microsoft's move to push out IE7, fix bugs in their rendering engine and try to adhere to standards. If Firefox continues to slowly eat away at IE's dominance, I think we will see not only more development of IE from Microsoft, but also more of a convergence towards accepted standards.

Let's face it, the browser is becoming more and more important every year. Applications that once required a desktop platform can now be moved online and dispersed via the internet. For that reason alone, IE is very important to Microsoft.

Posted In: firefox, Internet Explorer | No Comments