I’ll make my best efforts to ensure that the pages can be viewed properly in the majority of web browsers, and I’ll do my level best to test that the code is accessible and valid.

That’s why I find this post by Eric Meyer disturbing. Eric points to a recent trend where people are developing iPhone-only websites. Now, these folks are likely cashing in on a trend, aiming for ‘cool points’ by supporting the latest Apple mega-gadget, but to exclude the rest of the web?

I’ll put it this way: web standards allow you to serve up a different stylesheet depending on the device. You can have the same page, the same underlying (X)HTML code, but a different stylesheet that caters to the device in question. So why lock non-iPhone users out?

As Eric says in his post:

I might be willing to entertain the argument if the iPhone’s browser were some specialized non-web contraption. It’s not. It’s a full-fledged XHTML+CSS+DOM browser that happens to lag a bit in some implementation areas and won’t run some plugins.

What percentage of the web browsing population is using an iPhone? Take a look at your web stats and find out. Internet Explorer is still a dominant force, FireFox (from my stats) has about a 12-16% market share. Safari, Opera and Camino have less than 5% market share combined. Looking at my own stats, I see a few rogue handheld devices connecting to my sites, but why create a bespoke site for iPhones, Sony Ericssons or whatever else?

Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong, and the iPhone will gain some kind of global dominance to rival the two main browsers. Maybe then I’ll have to give it some more thought. But in the meantime, I’ll concentrate on making my pages work for the majority of the market, thank you very much.

[tags]iPhone, Design, Web Standards, Compatibility[/tags]

Let’s say you come across an URL that hasn’t been linked. Select it (careful with spaces at the start and end) and drag it up to the address bar. Release the mouse and FireFox will automagically jump to that page.

In fact, you can even drag regular links to the address bar for the same effect.

Other FireFox Navigation Tricks & Techniques

This got me thinking about other navigation tricks I wanted to share. Let’s try:

• ALT+HOME: This shortcut will take you back to the browsers default homepage.
• Changing Your Default Homepage: Drag a link from the address bar over the Home button. Release the mouse and you’ll be asked if you want to reset your homepage.
• ALT+D or CTRL+L: This jumps you straight into the address bar and allows you to either type in a new address or modify the address that’s already there. CTRL+L works in Internet Explorer, FireFox and Opera.
• ALT+Back Arrow/ALT+Forward Arrow: The essential Back/Forward browsing commands. Don’t leave home without them.
• CTRL+T: Open up a new tab in your browser window. It’ll start up with the cursor in the address bar waiting on your command. Literally.
• CTRL+TAB: Cycles through the various tabs you have open in FireFox. Bonus points for using CTRL+SHIFT+TAB to cycle backwards! Got too many tabs open? Then you might need…
• CTRL+W: Closes the current tab you’re looking at. Be careful, closing the last tab shuts down FireFox!
• Preloading Pages: I like to read stuff right through to the end before reading material that’s been linked to in the post. To have all the material ready and waiting, I middle click each of the links as I browse and they load up in new tabs while I’m reading.
• Bookmarking: If you’re old school and insist on bookmarking, CTRL+D will bookmark the page you’re on. Actually, I’m using the Del.icio.us Bookmarks extension for FireFox and CTRL+D brings up a new bookmark in that too! Hooray!

Conclusion

Well, the conclusion is that I am a FireFox ninja! Most of these tricks should work in Internet Explorer, only a few work in Opera (unfortunately). If you’re a Flock fan, everything should work as I foretold it.

Nonetheless, learning them has improved my web browsing experience no end.

Over to you. Care to share any Power User tips for FireFox?

I’ve just discovered the Operator extension for FireFox, which is a plugin to detect and debug microformats on any web page. I’ve tested this on a couple of pages I’m working on, and it’s extremely useful.

You can use Operator to debug your microformats. Holding down the Ctrl key when you select a microformat action will show you the HTML that corresponds to that microformat. In addition, holding down the Shift key when you select a microformat action will display our internal representation of the microformat data.

The difficulty with microformats thus far is that they’re generally invisible to users. To see widespread adoption of the microformat standard, we need to be able to detect instances on a webpage and then be able to do something useful with them. For example, Operator gives us the ability to export vCard information to Outlook (at least that’s how it worked for me).

The one drawback of Operator is that it adds yet another toolbar to Firefox, which has the effect of cluttering the screen and further reducing the viewable area. Perhaps dropping this to the status bar would be a better solution?

Regardless, Operator is hopefully a tentative step forward for the Microformats movement! I haven’t mentioned Tails Export, by the way, because it’s still not compatible with Firefox 2.