browser : Java Glossary

Best Browsers

Please select one of these modern browsers to download and install free.
Click the corresponding browser icon to download the latest free browser software, or click the browser name for more information.
	Google Chrome	24.0.1312.57	with the Java 1.7.0_17 JRE (Java Runtime Environment). Frequently updated. Has no edit source button. Slow starting when fiddles with a proxy. Flaky support of Applets and Java Web Start. Poor downloading. Handles foreign language sites particularly well since it integrates with Google Translate. Best for interacting with Google. BrowserMark rates this as the fastest browser. Good for ecommerce. Can’t print white writing on a black background.
	Firefox	20.0	with the Java 1.7.0_17 JRE. Its support of Java is erratic. Most widely supported next to IE. Many add-ins. Very fast rendering. Weak on table rendering. Best for printing. Fairly slow to start up.
	SeaMonkey	2.17.1	with the Java 1.7.0_17 JRE. Similar to Firefox, with integrated Email.
	Safari	5.1.7	with the Java 1.7.0_17 JRE. For both Macs and PCs. Some rendering problems. Simple and stripped down.
	Opera	12.15	with the Java 1.7.0_17 JRE. Comes in both 32 and 64-bit versions. For printing, I flip to Firefox. For ecommence I flip to Chrome. Some sites claim they do not support it. Not good for filling in forms or web commerce. Many sites are incompatible. Light and fast.
	Avant	2013:22	with the Java 1.7.0_17 JRE. It is a fast browser, especially at starting up. Has problems with JavaScript. Excellent at rendering and printing tables. It uses the Firefox or Chrome rendering engine. Handles Applets, but has trouble with Java Web Start.
	IE10	10.0.9200.16521	with the Java 1.7.0_17 JRE. Not recommended. This browser is hopeless at Java, especially the 64-bit version. However, some websites will work with no other browser.
	Oracle’s Java	1.7.0_17	JRE

Terminology

Performance

• Buy more RAM.
• Tweak/tune/configure/adjust your TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) connection. This will speed up all your internet connections and downloads, not just the ones you do with your browser, perhaps by as much as 100 times. Try any or all of these tuning tools to see which works best for you: TCP Optimizer, TweakMaster or TweakDUN.
• If you use Firefox or IE, consider installing the Google Accelerator.

Detecting Which Browser

Browser Bugs

Opera: ignores <col format settings for table columns. Ignores CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) max-width property. Does not support CSS overflow to permit scrolling tables. Can’t access a printer to print a selection in Vista.

Netscape: Does not display borders on Applets.

Firefox: Does not display borders on Applets. Ignores <col class and alignment settings for table columns.

Mozilla: Does not display borders on Applets.

SeaMonkey: draws boxes needlessly around links that consist of an image plus text.

Internet Explorer: does not render *.png image files with transparent backgrounds properly. In the latest update of IE (Internet Explorer), it won’t render Applets unless you click on them. This makes Applets like CurrCon which displays all the prices on a page in your local currency useless. This is just another part of Microsoft’s dirty war against Java.

Report bugs to the vendors in their support forums. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Officially, browsers are not supposed to support <col class= command out of some some idiotic prissiness. Some browsers support it anyway out of common sense.

Those browsers marked with an x all have a bug. They will not render <col class="xxxx">s correctly. The ones with a tick render it correctly. The Opera people say this is a feature not a bug. The language lawyers claim the W3 spec says that the browser is supposed to ignore the color attribute from the <col class. Logically, I think the <col styles should apply to the entire column, but not to <th rows. In addition Firefox, SeaMonkey, Safari and Flock also ignore the <col align attribute. Opera and IE render it properly.

Firefox, SeaMonkey and Opera support almost all the HTML5 entities. Chrome and Safari support many of them.

If both cells in the left hand Style Test column are the same colour, then your browser (the one you are using now to view this page) supports <col class=.

If both cells in the right hand Alignment Test column right-align, then your browser supports <col align= correctly.

Dreamweaver lets you apply a css style to all rows individually. Last revised/verified: 2013-04-14

Setting Default Font

• In the Opera Browser, Click Tools ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Advanced ⇒ Web pages and select your basic default fonts, sizes and colours. Click Tools ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Advanced ⇒ Fonts. Pick your default fonts for the various purposes. Also you can set up fonts to use for various international Languages. Use Latin-Extended-A for Esperanto.
• In Firefox, click Tools ⇒ Options ⇒ Content ⇒ Fonts & colours ⇒ Advanced. Set up Turkish and Unicode for Esperanto.
• In Netscape, click Tools ⇒ Options ⇒ General ⇒ Fonts & Colours. Set up your fonts for the various character encodings. Western, Unicode, User-Defined, Turkish, Baltic and central European may all need to be modified. Unfortunately they don’t tell you the official encoding name, just the country. If at first you don’t succeed, try some different fonts. I did get it to work eventually. Set up Unicode and Turkish for Esperanto.
• In Mozilla, Click edit ⇒ preferences ⇒ appearance ⇒ fonts. Set up Turkish and Unicode for Esperanto.
• In SeaMonkey, click Edit ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Appearance ⇒ Fonts.
• In Internet Explorer Click Tools ⇒ Internet Options ⇒ General ⇒ Fonts. Select your fonts for the various character encodings. If at first you don’t succeed, try some different fonts. I did get it to work eventually.

Rant

If HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) were a compact, preparsed binary format, that would eliminate nearly all of the malformed HTML in the universe. That would also mean it would be much likely if a document were tested on only one browser, it would render properly on all of them, or at least most of them. As a side effect it would dowload twice as fast, and render more quickly.

Engaging the Java Console in Your Browser

If you are in a browser you have to enable to console before you can see it. Avant and Chrome do not support Java, or more precisely, their support does not work. Safari does support the Java console. Browsers no longer have menu-items to engage and disengage the console. You do it in the Java Control Panel.

Windows: Engaging the Console

1. On Vista/W2008/W7-32/W7-64, click Programs.
2. Double click Java.
3. Click Advanced.
4. Click + Java console.
5. Click Show Console.
6. Click OK.
7. Click File.
8. Click Close.

Mac OS Leopard Engaging the Console

In Mac OS Leopard, you also have to enable the console on the Java Preferences Application.

1. Applications
2. Utilities
3. Java Preferences Application.
4. Click Advanced.
5. Click Show Console.
6. Restart your browser.

1. Click Tools.
2. Click Sun Java console.

DOM (Document Object Model)

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