Browser skinning simply means to change how it looks. The functionality remains the same, but the icons, background, menus and so on have an altered appearance. In some instances, browser skinning can also include adding in functionality it didn’t have prior.

Here’s how to use an alternative skin for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.

Internet Explorer

IE has never been easy to alter per its appearance. It’s tough to move around buttons, and any attempt to skin it usually results in it not working correctly due to the fact a DLL or two has to be altered (and that’s not smart.)

The way around this is to simply use another browser that uses the IE Trident engine. A good choice for this is Avant Browser. It is fully "skinnable" and just about everything you can think of can be changed in it. It also has something very desirable: A built-in flash animation filter to cut out unwanted Flash content when browsing. In addition to that it’s compatible with many exiting IE add-ons such as Google Toolbar.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox has several ways in which you can skin it. The traditional way is to browse the themes available, and add in the one you want right from that web site. The second way is to use Personas, which you may find more attractive due to the fact you have more options. For example, you can use any background image you want with Personas and save your own custom themes easily.

The last way to skin Firefox is, if you’re daring, to directly edit the CSS files it uses in the chrome directory. This is not to be confused with Google Chrome. Chrome has two files that you can edit and enable for hand-coded customizations.

Opera

Like Firefox, Opera has its own dedicated directory for skins. An advantage over IE and FF is on that page you can simply pick the color type you want:

..and go from there.

Other apps you can skin to your liking

Windows Media Player 11

This takes some effort but it’s do-able.

First, launch Windows Media Player.

Press CTRL+1 to go to "Library Mode" (CTRL+2 is "Skin Mode", CTRL+3 is "Now Playing Mode", which is the default most people use).

Press CTRL+M to show the Menu Bar.

Click View and then Skin chooser, like this:

Click the More skins button:

You’ll then be taken to a web site where you can download compatible skins.

Skins are single files with a .wmz extension. You can simply run them and they’ll install themselves.

This is what WMP 11 looks like with the Batman Begins skin:

Note: Some of you may get an error on install of certain skins. If you do, try them anyway. Most of the time they’ll work fine. If not, just switch back to Library Mode with a CTRL+1, go back to the skin chooser and try something different or just remove the skin.

Trillian Astra

This instant messaging program has long had the ability to use custom skins. Astra, the latest version of Trillian also has full skin support.

Below is one of the built-in choices, "Cobalt."

You can find many more skins for Trillian here.

VLC

It is, for whatever reason, widely unknown that VLC can be skinned easily. VideoLAN themselves has a whole section of their web site dedicated to it.

One of the most popular skins, oddly enough, is to make VLC look like Windows Media Player 11:

Looks pretty darned convincing if you asked me. The only thing that tips it off that it’s VLC is the orange cone VLC icon at the top left of the app window, and of course the title bar.

Some notes about skinning applications

Customizing the look of apps can be fun, but how it will work is largely dependent on how well a skin or theme is programmed, as there are some crappy ones out there. The general rule of thumb is to choose one that has been downloaded many times, has good ratings and in best case scenario has comments on what work and what doesn’t when using it.

It’s also good to know how to remove skins if you download one, install it but then decide you don’t want it later. Most skins are self-contained, but some put hooks into applications that if left installed may adversely affect functionality of the program. This doesn’t happen often but it’s good to be aware of it.

For those that remember internet in the late 1990s, you remember your dialup being slow, there was no such thing as tabbed browsing, web sites were clunky/cumbersome and difficult to navigate, low screen resolutions of the time meant lots and lots of scrolling, and well, you get the idea.

Thankfully we don’t have to deal with that anymore, right?

Wrong.

A smartphone’s browser interface more or less acts the same way our desktop PCs did in the late ’90s.

While it’s true that 3G connectivity – when it works – is faster than dialup was, you’re still stuck waiting for things to load. And when it does load, the browsers that smartphones have are watered down to the point where many "regular" web sites are simply unusable on a mobile device.

Developers are making continual improvements to make smartphones more usable, but the overall browsing experience hearkens back to a day when internet browsing was a chore at best.

Using the iPhone as an example, it only has a 480×320 screen resolution. That’s lower than VGA spec which is 640×480. Anybody who uses an iPhone or like mobile device knows full well that the browser has "creative" ways of getting around a resolution so low. And you have to use those creative ways (such as zoom and pan in/out) else you can’t browse with it regularly at all.

For you older ladies and gentlemen that think the kids today don’t know what it was like to browse the internet Web 1.0 style, they do because current browser technology and network speed on a smartphone is pretty darn close to the mark of what a browsing experience was like in the late 1990s.

How long will it take smartphones to graduate to a desktop PC’s level of web browsing?

Indeterminate. But there are three things that will kick-start mobile browsing forward exponentially.

The first is the network itself. 3G is just too darned slow. Better than EDGE, yes, but still slow. The next-gen network for whatever it will be called should fix that ill in short order.

The second is the hardware, namely the processor. Newer chips will be introduced within the next five years that run faster without adding any additional heat. (It’s always the heat that’s the big deal by the way.)

The third is the software, but that’s being attended to right now. All the major players have good solid OSes for their respective platforms. Better mobile browsers like Opera Mobile (which does do tabs very well by the way) means a better mobile browsing experience.

A problem all software developers for smartphones face is having to work around – meaning not with – the aforementioned points above. It seriously curtails development when your biggest roadblocks are the processing speed of a smartphone and the network in which it connects to. Shades of how software development used to be for PCs? Oh, yes. Even the programmers have to deal with Web 1.0 era style crapola.

I want to make clear that I’m not saying smartphones are unsuable. They obviously have their place in the modern tech world, and tons of people use them on a daily basis. However you have to admit, browsing on one is very reminiscent of the usability problems we had years ago.

If there was any universal immutable truth to the internet, it’s that things vanish from it all the time. Those pages you bookmarked last year? They may be gone. Those forums posts that contained a wealth of useful information? They may be gone as well.

There are several different ways to archive web pages.

You could use ScreenGrab for Firefox. But the problem is that you can text-search anything in an image.

You could use PDF Creator and "print" pages to PDF. This does allow text searching, but the PDF rarely looks anything like the original page and any images present look "off."

What truly works are MHT files. I’ve mentioned this before but have a few extra goodies to make it even easier.

What’s the difference between an MHT and a regular "Save Page As.."? The MHT is an actual single-file archive that contains all the code and images. It’s a great way to archive web pages that contain information you want to save.

Firefox does not have native ability to read or save MHT files, however with UnMHT, you can. It will even read MHTs saved by Internet Explorer, and IE will also read MHTs saved by Firefox. In addition to that, UnMHT has the ability to save all open tabs at once – something that IE 8 doesn’t do.

See video below for details on how it all works.

Before social media was even a twinkle in a programmer’s eye, there were the early days of internet, affectionately known now as Web 1.0. Nobody knows the exact date of when Web 2.0 started, but it is believed to have started some time in 2004, which at this point is five years ago (oh, how time flies..)

Many of you out there will remember these pre-2004 attempts at audience participation, all in its glorious lameness.

Guestbooks

There was a time when web sites were positively littered with these things. Imagine for a moment that there was a forum, but there was only one thread, and that thread was flat. And it also exposed your email address for the world and spam-bots to harvest. This was the guestbook.

Guestbooks were things that everybody had but nobody ever used. It was an island that connected to absolutely nothing, and most didn’t even notify the admin of new posts.

The guestbook was pummeled into obscurity due to lack of interest and for the fact spam-bots not only harvested email addresses as mentioned above, but also spammed the crap out of them. CAPTCHA? What CAPTCHA?

As insane as this sounds, guestbooks are still available. Bravenet offers one, for free of course, because nobody in their right might would ever pay for it.

WebRings

This was an attempt to create user-generated communities/directories by having owners of web sites/pages link together by category, hence the "ring." The only problem is that nobody ever clicked the links tacked at the bottom of the web pages they were on. Like guestbooks, many web sites were littered with these things as well – usually right after the guestbook.

Some WebRing services still exist. There is the original WebRing which appears to now have a broken web site. Yahoo! used to own this believe it or not, but wisely dropped it. There is also alt-webring.com, which does appear to be active and functioning well, and RingSurf. All do the same thing, but nobody cares about them anymore and haven’t for some time.

ShoutBoxes

This was the next generation of the guestbook. A simple box on a web page that allowed to to post a one-line phrase (your "shout,") hit Submit, and that was that, it was online.

ShoutBoxes were actually pretty cool and useful, but suffered from spam-bot infestation just like guestbooks did.

The original code for a ShoutBox required you to install a Perl script on your web server. These days if you want one, ShoutMix offers them for free – on their server. The feature set is decent, but the moderation options are simply too little to work with.

Using a ShoutBox is completely obsolete considering Disqus does the same job, except a whole lot better, completely for free, has threading, awesome moderation, etc. If you want to enable a simple comment area on your web site, want completely hassle-free code and full options, Disqus is it. The only other feasible option that’s as easy and feature-rich is HaloScan (odd name, good service.)

On-Site Chat

There have been many iterations of live chat over the years in respect to embedding it within a web page.

One of the earliest used a system (said loosely) called meta refreshing. This was a live chat, except not in real time. You would type in your line and hit submit, then the browser would refresh every 5 seconds or so to see not only your message but other messages other people in the "room" would be typing. The whole experience was just plain weird.

Another way was to embed an IRC channel right in the web page via Java using PJIRC. I actually installed this before years ago and it worked very, very well.

The latest and easiest iteration of chat-on-site is Meebo. It is by far the easiest of the lot.

There’s one inescapable problem with chat-on-site however, and that’s the awkward factor. Unless the "room" is active and you see chatting going on, few wouldn’t bother if the place is empty – which most of the time it would be.

These days, the only time chat-on-site actually works is if it is accompanied by a live video feed. Otherwise people simply don’t bother and will go use IRC instead – assuming they even use that.

Groups

A group is a version of a forum, and its singular largest advantage was that it has very good privacy options. The most popular of the lot which still exists is Yahoo! Groups. MSN had groups until 2008. Google’s offering is Google Groups.

What killed the use of groups was the way Yahoo! handled privacy issues. They did so very poorly. First they said at one point that absolutely nobody owns their content when it was under the assumption that users did retain content ownership, and second was the use of what’s known as "web beacons" that really ticked off people because of the way it was implemented. Many people dumped Yahoo! Groups after that and never went back, because the wonderful privacy options at that point were worthless.

There is no real reason to have a 1.0-style group system today when you’ve got things like blogs, forums that don’t use those beacon things, and so on.

What will possibly fall into obscurity in the future?

RSS

Per very recent events, there are those who say RSS is a dead horse.

Instant Messaging

Major IM offerings are very long in the tooth and simply don’t have features people want or need any longer, but are edging to fix that soon by the inclusion of social media connectivity. Yahoo Messenger 10 will have the ability to receive updates from Twitter. AIM 7 now has "Lifestream" with support for both Twitter and Facebook. But even with these updates, they will not be enough to sway people back to those bulky IM clients. Too little, too late. Nobody who uses Pidgin is going to switch back. Not a chance.

I don’t believe IM will ever truly go away, but it will probably never be in the top spot as the preferred method of communication ever again.

Discovery services

These are web sites like StumbleUpon and Digg. These sites are getting stomped by social media because they’re just not quick enough on the draw, and they’re both maligned with seriously dopey commentary from its users. You’ll find more interesting stuff from your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

And if you don’t believe me, try an advanced Twitter search, and enjoy how easy it is to search and zone in right where you live by location, mile radius, date range, etc. That’s a good discovery search.

The definition of a web site that refuses to upgrade is one that does not "understand" anything other than Internet Explorer 6 or 7. For many this is a constant source of frustration for three very good reasons:

1. Internet Explorer 8 has been in existence for almost seven months at the time of this writing. The administrators of these "IE only" web sites couldn’t figure out how to write in support for 8 in this span of time? Apparently not.
2. Many choose not to use IE, but they’re out of luck when certain web sites will only support IE 6/7 and nothing else.
3. Windows 7 comes provided with IE 8 (unless you’re in the UK.) These computers will be on the shelves very soon and in come places already are. What does one do in that situation since they can’t "degrade" to IE 7 or 6 just to get certain web sites to work?

There are two ways to get around problematic web sites like this.

Method 1. Using IE 6 or 7 in WINE for Linux

WINE has had the ability to run a whole bunch of different IEs for some time now. Versions 1 all the way thru 8 are available, but the ones you would be interested in for compatibility’s sake are 6 and 7.

The only problem you may encounter running IE this way is that certain plugins for IE may not work when used in WINE. This is rare, but it can happen if it’s some ActiveX oddball plugin or something like that.

Method 2. Windows 2000 or XP virtual PC

On my Windows 7 desktop I purposely keep a barebones setup of XP running with IE 6 in VirtualBox. When I upgraded to Win 7 I already had an existing fully licensed copy of XP Professional Edition, so that’s what I have used in the virtual PC.

In Windows you have three major choices for computer virtualization, that being the aforementioned VirtualBox, Microsoft’s Virtual PC or VMware. I choose VirtualBox because it operates exactly the same in Windows, Mac or Linux – and I truly like that kind of compatibility because no matter what OS I’m on, VirtualBox is always familiar. However you may like Virtual PC or VMware better as far as your personal preferences are concerned. I will say the easiest of the bunch is Microsoft’s version because it’s very straightforward – but it only works under Windows.

Setting up your virtual PC with IE 6 or 7, and other notes

If you have a fully licensed OEM disc of Microsoft Windows XP, such as I do, this comes with IE 6 as its bundled web browser. What I’ve done in my virtual XP PC is used Microsoft Update to patch up every single thing I possibly could except the browser. This can be done easily. What I have is an XP that does have IE 6 for those web sites that absolutely refuse to work right with anything else.

VirtualBox running XP Professional Edition with the IE 6 browser

A bunch of updates in the virtual PC with XP, including Service Pack 3 – but still on IE 6

It is the fortunate case that web sites that are IE6-only are dwindling slowly but surely off the internet, but instead of embracing multi-browser capability, they’re latching on to IE 7 which is just as bad.

For the time being, I use a virtual XP with IE 6 and if I have to go to 7, this can be downloaded without going to 8 with XP, and I’m sure Microsoft will be keeping this download on their web site for at least a few more years.

Even if you are running XP with IE 8 now and plan to stick with that for a while, you can still use Virtual PC or VirtualBox to install another Windows XP (assuming you have another legal licensed copy) with IE 6 or 7. This will work fine.

The only thing you cannot do is have both IE 7 and 8 in the same Windows OS at the same time. While that would be really great if you could do that, it’s simply not an option. The easiest workaround is to have a virtual PC with a previous-generation browser.

For those of you out there who do not have another legal copy of Windows, my suggestion is to use VirtualBox and install a distribution of Linux, such as Ubuntu, and use IE 6 or 7 via WINE. Most distributions make this very easy to install, and I may even write up another article on how to do just that so it’s even easier for you.

People save web pages to ensure they can retrieve information later without having to load it on the internet. It also is a way of retrieving a web page just in case the original web site has an outage or goes offline for whatever reason.

There are two basic ways of saving web pages, that being via the browser or "printing it" to a PDF.

Via the browser

The browser that has the absolute best web page save feature is Internet Explorer 8, due to the fact it can save entire web pages as a "Web Archive." When you click File/Save As (if you don’t see that in your IE 8, press ALT on your keyboard to bring up that menu,) you’ll see it as a save option:

When you choose to save it will "crunch" everything into a single file:

Why is this the best? Because it’s a single file that contains everything (and that’s why it’s labeled as an archive.) All the text, all the images and everything included. If you load it afterward, it looks exactly the way it was originally. It is to the best of my knowledge the only browser that does it right.

Other browsers, such as Firefox, save as "Web page, complete" and it’s nothing but a huge mess. An HTML file will be saved which is the web page, but a subfolder will also be created with all the images, JavaScript files, etc. You can literally get 20+ files out of a single web page save.

Love or hate IE 8, it rules the roost when it comes to web page archiving.

Drawbacks:

• Only one – it’s proprietary to IE 8. Otherwise it’s the best way to archive a web page.

Via PDF Creator

If you don’t use IE 8 and want a web to save web pages a single files that include images and so on, the best way to do this is to use PDF Creator to create PDF files. This is free software that will install a virtual print driver and can be used in your web browser of choice.

Once installed, go to any web page, load it, then click File/Print or press CTRL+P. 

Choose PDF Creator from the window that appears:

..click OK.

The page will be crunched and made ready for PDF rendering:

You’ll see this:

Click the Save button at bottom right. You’ll be asked to name the file and where you want to save it to. Once done, the page is archived as a PDF.

Drawbacks:

• Many times the PDF creator will default to a serif font (Times New Roman) instead of the font seen on the original web page.
• Any links in the web page will not work in the PDF.

These drawbacks are usually acceptable being it’s the text you care about the most when it comes to a web page. Any images on the page will be embedded in the PDF; all text is searchable as well.

In addition, the PDF created even for very large web pages will be small in file size, suitable for sending in email if you want to send it off to a friend.

Via ScreenGrab

This is for Firefox only.

ScreenGrab is a FireFox plugin. It allows you to save a PNG or JPEG screen shot of any web page, but does so far better than ALT+PrintScreen. ScreenGrab will take an image of the entire page including the full length. The screen shot taken will look identical to what you see on-screen.

Drawbacks:

• Since the output file is an image, none of the text can be searched and links won’t work either.
• The default output file is a PNG. If the web page you save is very long, the file saved will be enormous.
• On very large web pages it can cause Firefox to freeze up when attempting to take a full screen shot, particularly on slower computers.

You can make the screen shot ScreenGrab takes to be smaller by purposely not using the browser maximized, because yes, ScreenGrab captures everything – including all the white space on the sides.

To use ScreenGrab, install the add-on, then on any web page, right-click and choose ScreenGrab:

"Complete Page/Frame" will save the entire page, length and all.

"Visible portion" only captures what the browser is displaying at that moment.

"Selection" allows you to select what you want captured.

"Window" acts like ALT+PrintScreen does.

Choosing to Save will save the file. Choosing to Copy will copy the image to the clipboard buffer where you can paste into another program such as an image editor, Word, etc.

Some people may be under the impression that if a web site loads slowly and/or causes your browser to crash that it might be your computer’s fault it happened.

Not necessarily.

There are several things that people interpret as a fault with their computer when in fact it isn’t.

Things that are not your fault when problems happen loading web sites

Web site server issues

PCMech even suffers from this periodically (it is a largely visited site). It happened yesterday. When sites go slow due to server issues, that has nothing to do with your internet connection whatsoever.

The best way to find out if a site is having problems is to perform a Twitter search. This does not require a Twitter account at all. For example, if your were having a problem with Gmail, search Twitter for that term. If you see a bunch of other people having similar issues, then you know it’s not your fault.

And yes, Twitter itself has another site that checks this.

Flash

Many people hate Flash with a passion. Flash will crash any browser. It will even crash your OS at times. Most of us use Flash when we view video content on the internet. Even if you have a brand new multi-thousand dollar Mac Pro with 32GB of RAM in it, Flash will at times cause OS X to have a kernel panic, forcing a restart of the OS. Not even a BSD-based UNIX is immune to this (and you can’t get any more stable than UNIX).

Flash has never had an in-program way of disabling it. Either it’s installed and on-demand whenever a request from a web site is made, or you have it uninstalled completely as there is no "off" option. Fortunately there are add-ons like Flashblock for Firefox that can temporarily disable Flash. This allows the option of having it enabled only when you want it to be. It’s sad that an add-on like that needs to exist when there should be an in-program way of doing it, but it’s better than nothing.

Slashdotting/Digg Effect

If a particular article on a web site triggers a massive response from the internet as a whole, an onslaught of requests hit the web server and will at times temporarily take it offline due to the sheer amount of incoming traffic. The original phrase for this effect was called Slashdotting, but it is also known as Digg effect. Either means the same thing in general conversation.

When this happens, the site you’re trying to get to will either load very slowly or not at all until the traffic goes back down to normal levels.

OS/Browser limitations

Certain web sites will make too many network requests. This in combination with an OS limitation either by bug or design will render your internet connectivity unusable for a minute or two.

The best example of this is Google Maps using the Windows operating system. That web site uses many different servers in order to display map data in your browser. If you zoom very quickly around the map, this makes so many network requests that Windows will literally lock any further requests and make it appear that your internet connection isn’t working. This is incorrect. It is working, but Windows is specifically designed to limit network requests for security purposes. The solution is to close the browser, wait 60 to 90 seconds, and your internet connection will start working again.

To date, I have only been able to replicate this rare instance using the Google Maps web site. And yes, it still happens.

Is this a fault of Windows? No. It’s a fault of Google Maps. Other mapping web sites never have this issue. Only on Google Maps (and not Google Earth) does this occur.

The browser itself is also purposely designed to only accept a limited amount of network (as in http) requests at any given time.

In Internet Explorer 8, the maximum concurrent connections to a single host allowed is 6. This is an improvement over previous editions of IE where the setting is 4. This is yet another reason to use the most current version of IE, should you use that browser.

In Firefox 3.5.3 (the latest version at the time of this writing), the maximum concurrent connections to a single host is also 6. However it should be noted that the maximum total http connections in Firefox is 30, with a per-server of 15. The 6 applies to the persistent connections per server (which is what matters the most).

You can see these settings by typing about:config and searching for the term connection, like this:

I strongly recommend against modifying these settings. Increasing the maximum connections or other "max" values for other connection settings ordinarily will not increase your transfer speeds at all.

Webmaster error

This mainly happens on personal web sites. If a the owner of a web site is using WordPress for example, and installs a WP plugin that doesn’t exactly work correctly which causes "weird" things to happen to the site, this is obviously not your fault.

"Showpiece" web sites

These are web sites that are so full of Flash (of course) that there’s actually a pretty good chance it will crash your browser unless you have a fairly fast computer.

A classic example of this is the Transformers Movie web site.

This web site is absolutely horrible. It will bring your web browser to its knees. When you click "Enter Site" it will purposely force full screen. Horrible, horrible, horrible. You will hate this web site in very short order. The only thing that will save your browser from crashing is if it’s the current version of IE or Firefox (both have well-written code to accommodate for super-bloat sites with craptastic Flash).

Web sites like these are showpieces and nothing more. They serve no purpose other than to be glitzy and have plenty of "wow" factor. Said another way, useless.

If the site hoses your browser, I sincerely apologize in advance.

Caret Browsing is when you use your keyboard to navigate a web page as you would if you were in a text editor or word processing application. This style of moving within a document is nothing new as it’s been around for a very long time, however most don’t know it exists in web browsers. IE and Firefox both have the Caret Browsing feature, accessible by pressing F7 on your keyboard.

The best use of Caret Browsing is to precisely select blocks of text. When you use your mouse to highlight text, often it will occur that the browser selects something you didn’t want to. With Caret Browsing, the browser enables a cursor that you can move with your keyboard and get right to where you want to be, highlight, select, copy and then paste into your preferred text or document editor.

See video for details below.

Last night on the PCMech LIVE show there was someone in chat who was having a not-so glorious time with Thesis, a theme for WordPress. This theme costs $87 so it’s not cheap. Actually, not-so glorious really doesn’t accurately describe his experience. He hated it. Why? Because when he tried it, it didn’t work.

Unfortunately it’s very difficult to give any advice when it comes to custom themes for WordPress because you have to give the auto mechanic’s answer as to why it didn’t work: "Could be anything." That is in fact the best answer you can give because there are any number of things that can go with with WordPress, your web host provider, other WP plugins that may be "getting in the way", etc.

Dave on his own site recently did a video on the Headway theme, an alternative to Thesis. But even with that there will probably be those who consider it difficult to use, even though it was designed to be easy.

Of course, there are those who will read this and have absolutely no clue how any of this stuff works at all, and that’s the problem. Web sites still to this day have never gotten to the point of being easy.

Here’s the basic way of how web sites work in very generic terms:

1. Domain is registered with domain registrar.

Even at step 1, people get confused. "Domain? What the f!#ck is a domain?" I explain this to people as "your dot-com".

"Oh, okay. So a domain is the actual dot-com name thingy."

Yes.

But then the confusion goes further because there are many different registrars. I use Dotster but I usually just tell most people to use GoDaddy because they’ve seen it on TV before.

2. Host the domain at a web host provider.

From here it goes all downhill. The person who’s trying to get his or her web site online was a little confused before, and now they’re totally confused.

"Wait.. I just paid for the domain thing. Now I have to pay again to host it? Why? I just paid for the name!"

The domain registrar fee you paid is for the domain registration only and not the hosting. A domain name does not magically serve itself to the internet. It must be hosted somewhere. To do this, specific name servers must be specified.

You can guess the next question.

"What the f!#k is a name server?"

So then I have to explain that when you type in a dub dub dub dot whatever dot com, your browser makes a network request to the internet. The internet identifies a domain as pointing to a specific name server (that being the one belonging to your web host provider), goes there and serves the web page to your browser. Name servers are specified at the domain registrar level.

3. Install a content publishing system.

If you thought it went all downhill before, now you’re thoroughly doomed.

The entire reason to install a content publishing system is so that it makes it easier for you, the web site owner, to publish your content on the internet. Content engines such as WordPress allow you to do this. However in order to get it actually installed is an absolute nightmare for those who have never done it.

This is why:

You must know how to upload the system to your web server provided by your web host provider via FTP.

Fortunately FTP isn’t too hard to figure out with programs like FileZilla, but the hard part comes in knowing where to upload your stuff. You need to know the server name to connect to and the specific directory to put your files. Is it public_html? Is it www? Is it something different entirely?

Guess what? It’s different per web host provider, so I can’t say "upload x to y". This is irritating not only for the guy who’s trying to explain it (me) but for the person who’s actually trying to do it (you).

You must know how to create and activate a MySQL database.

We’ve got phpMyAdmin for this and that takes away a lot of hassle and it is usually provided with any web hosting account one would purchase, but.. and you knew there was a but.. for those that know it, do you remember the first time you use phpMyAdmin? Remember how frustrating it was even though you already knew MySQL? And remember how it took you a while before you learned how phpMyAdmin does things? Sure, now you can go in there and get things done easily, but it wasn’t a 1-2-3, right?

Imagine being thrown into phpMyAdmin with no MySQL experience whatsoever.

It’s not pretty.

It is a 1-2-3, but with a lot of crap in between

Even with the 1-2-3 above, this didn’t even cover themes, custom plugins, custom PHP code and probably a million other things besides that.

I do empathize with anybody who is doing the whole web site shtick that hasn’t before. It can be terribly difficult if for nothing that nobody explains what the terms actually mean.

This is why I tell people to use www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com because both of those allow you to "attach" a domain (your dot-com) much easier than hosting it yourself. In addition you can try before you buy; you can’t do that with web hosting ordinarily. Granted, you don’t get the customization options of self-hosting, but it’s a whole lot easier to deal with.

How do you explain how a web site works to someone?

Have you ever tried? Was it successful or did it frustrate you beyond belief trying to explain how things work with domains, domain registrars, web host providers, content engines, etc?

Google seems to have an odd way of deploying their Chrome browser. The first reaction when it appeared was, "Hey! Where’s the Mac and Linux versions? What gives?"

It was nothing short of strange why Google seemed to concentrate on Windows so much concerning their own browser offering. Granted, Windows is the most-used desktop operating system in the world, but hey, there are plenty of Mac and Linux users out there.

So now the 64-bit version of Chrome is available for…

Linux.

And nothing else.

I’m not kidding. Linux people can build it right now if they want to in all its 64-bit glory.

Windows people still get the 32-bit flavor only.

As for Mac OS X? It’s still in development. Sorry, Mac people.

In all seriousness, this is why so many people stick to Firefox. When Mozilla has a release of that browser, it’s worldwide, has almost every conceivable language version available and has versions ready for Windows, Mac and Linux that are ready-to-run.

And yes, there’s 64-bit Firefox just in case you were wondering (as well as several other Mozilla products).

I’m seriously trying to like Chrome.. but.. well.. um.. no.

To our Linux users in the audience, if you’re able to build a 64-bit Chrome and get it to work, please feel free to comment on your experience with it. Many would be interested in your thoughts on it.

In our last episode.. I talked about how much web browsers suck. But now it’s time to discuss how great they are.

The best way to describe the greatness of modern web browsers is to point out the features we have now that most people take for granted.

1. Tabbed Document Interface

Most people know this as simply tabs. This was one of the best improvements ever made in a web browser. And said honestly, I cannot browse without them. I first remember first using a tabbed interface with Maxthon (which used the IE engine). IE took a very long time to develop a tabbed version of their own, but finally brought one to the table with IE 7. Better late than never, I suppose.

2. Zoom

I first used a zoom feature in Opera way back at version 5 and it was great. Unfortunately Opera was a pay-browser back then so that was a no-go for me. IE always did have the ability to increase text size but not images (that wasn’t until much later). Firefox always had a zoom but it didn’t work properly until version 3. Fortunately, all browsers now have a proper zoom feature. They will even zoom Flash content now.

3. Better bookmarks

Bookmarks now not only hold information on the URL of the site you want to go to, but also the "favicon" (small image representing the site, should it have one) and can also contain keyword tags in browsers like Firefox.

4. In-browser search bar using search engine of choice

This is something a ton of people take for granted. Early browsers had absolutely no search bar whatsoever. You had the address bar and that was it. If you wanted to search Yahoo, you had to physically go to www.yahoo.com to do it.

Before the search bar there were add-on toolbars for both Netscape and IE. One of the more popular offerings was Google Toolbar (which is still available). However with any toolbar you were forced to the search engine provided and no other.. that is unless you wanted to install yet another toolbar. And of course people remember their Netscapes and IEs back then with 2 or more toolbars in it. Rather terrible. And crash-prone.

Search bars now allow any engine to be used with no additional memory munched up since it’s integrated into the browser.

5. Full screen mode.

This is yet another vastly underrated feature. It is (to the best of my knowledge) universally accessible on the Windows platform by pressing F11 in IE, Firefox or Opera. You press F11 again to go back to windowed mode.

Full screen mode is great because it dedicates your entire screen to whatever web page you’re viewing. In fact, you can make it "book like" by pressing F11, then increasing the zoom a few times (CTRL-plus or just plus in Opera) for maximum readability.

A small note for those looking to buy a netbook: Know your full-screen feature in your browser because I’ll guarantee that you will use it. A lot.

What features of modern browsers do you like?

Chime in with a comment or two.

The web browser is the most used application on your computer, period. Even when you’re not using it, it’s probably minimized to the taskbar/dock/panel.

Unfortunately web browsers still to this day have a fair degree of suck factor. Here are 5 reasons why web browsers suck:

1. Plugins are the browser’s own worst enemy

I call them plugins. Call then "add-ons" or "extensions" or whatever else you want. They’re plugins.

Plugins are a wonderful way to seriously screw up your browser in short order.

In Internet Explorer 8: In Manage Add-ons there is absolutely no way to uninstall anything there. Not possible. This sucks. You can "disable", but not uninstall. This is because add-ons in IE are "tied" directly to external programs. So in order to get rid of it, you must actually go uninstall the program that uses IE – assuming you know which to uninstall.

In Mozilla Firefox: Many plugins create SQL tables internally to the browser in order for them to work. On an uninstall of many different plugins, files are left behind and the SQL tables remain – in several different places. And darned if you know which tables within Firefox you’re supposed to drop. Thought you could kill this stuff with a registry/file cleaner? Wrong. Has to be done manually. This is assuming you actually know where to look.

And, of course, whenever a new version of the browser is released, plugins break.

2. Proprietary crapola

Internet Explorer is the one to blame for this catastrophe. The fact there are still web sites to this day that are "IE only" is simply ridiculous.

And if you put a tag on your site that says, "Best viewed with Firefox", that’s just as bad. You should be ashamed of yourself for doing such a thing.

3. Copy/paste text from a web page is still a nightmare

Sometimes all you want to do is copy a little piece of text rather than type it out. Good luck with that, because you’ll need it.

Some web pages have it so you can copy/paste text easily. But on others when you attempt to highlight anything this huge BLOCK of text is copied. Then when you try to adjust the highlight you made, it gets even worse.

Let’s say for the moment you’re successful in copying some text to the buffer. Okay, we’re good, right? Wrong. On paste into something as simple as Notepad these huge SPACES happen. "Wait, wait.. I didn’t copy any big-ass spaces.." Well, Mr. Browser thinks you did.

Out of frustration you just have to type out whatever you wanted to copy yourself.

4. Printing web pages is still terrible

Some web sites make it easy to print things. For example, many bank web sites smartly offer PDF versions of bank statements for print-out. This is great because PDFs always print exactly the way you see them.

But let’s say you’re not on a bank site and you want to print something out. The text is either too big or too small on the printed page, the graphics (should any exist) look terrible, and what is that font that printed? That’s not what’s on the web page..

5. Slow!

Believe it or not, there was a time when IE was a really fast browser. That was way back at version 3. And it was wonderful.

Believe it or not, there was a time when Firefox was a really fast browser. That was way back at version 1.5. And it was wonderful.

Both are now are memory hogging, plugin-infested lumps of digital slowness.

Want to know why Google Chrome and Safari appear to run faster? It’s not because of less memory consumption or faster scripting. It’s because you’re not using the same plugins as in your IE or FF.

Unfortunately most don’t like Chrome or Safari.

Am I saying to run IE or FF with no plugins at all? Well, if you can browse that way, I’d say go right ahead. Ditch the toolbars and any plugins installed to breathe life back into the browser. It will speed up quite a bit. That is until you open up a few tabs with some Flash, and then.. it.. gets.. slower.. and….. slower…… and, well.. it would be faster for you to go to the kitchen and make a sandwich.

What do you hate about web browsers the most?

Let us know by writing a comment or two.

Yahoo, yes (that Yahoo) made some significant changes to their main web site. While this angered some, to those I say this: Yahoo is not Google, and I’m glad it’s not. If you’re expecting Y! to be another Google clone, it isn’t. And it shouldn’t be.

The first thing I do on Yahoo is switch over to the compact view and change the color to blue (just my preference). This is located at the far right:

From there, Y! is slim and trim, the way I like it:

For those using 1024×768 displays, yes, Y! is still very friendly to that resolution (even in Y’s "full" mode).

Above: Adding in (or removing) favorites is easy. And yes you can add in non-Yahoo sites.

You will notice that at least in compact mode, Yahoo.com does not scroll-scroll-scroll down like it did before. It’s been cleaned up considerably and yes it is easier to use.

My only immediate complaints are these:

No links are underlined

I’m a fervent believer in having as many links underlined as possible to there’s no guessing whatsoever, especially for the color blind who cannot distinguish black text from blue.

Should have more my.yahoo.com features

My.yahoo.com has things like tabs and moveable boxes. The main Y! site should have this also.

If you’re going to have a logo color change, it should be universal

Pick a color and stick with it, Yahoo. Yahoo.com has a purple logo now. My.yahoo.com has a red logo. Mail.yahoo.com and several other Y! services still have the red logo.

If you’re going to commit to the purple, then, well.. commit.

Are you a Yahoo?

Many of you out there use Yahoo.com as your home page. Are the changes welcome or should Y! have stayed with the old format?

Opera is one of those browsers that has a very dedicated community, but pales in usage compared to Firefox and Internet Explorer.

The perks of Opera have pretty much always been the same.

• Best native tab management
• Lightning fast operation in just about every way
• Low memory usage
• A user interface that just makes sense
• More options that are actually usable

I’d dare to say that other browsers "borrow" features from Opera routinely. The Opera browser always seems to come up with something really cool but people really don’t take notice of it. Then after a while, a competing browser will introduce a very similar feature and be lauded as if they invented it.

An example of this is the zoom feature. Opera was the first browser I can remember that got zoom right the first time. Firefox didn’t get that right until version 3 and IE not until 7, both several years after Opera more or less perfected it.

The only thing about Opera that was obvious is that it looked old. The current Opera 9.64 does look a bit antiquated while IE, Firefox, Safari and Chrome look snazzy and modern.

Opera 10 on the other hand finally gets a freshened interface. It’s nothing particularly groundbreaking, but considering how often we all use our web browsers, this is a welcome sight to see. There is no part of this browser that says "old" anymore.

Concerning the address bar…

The AwesomeBar in Firefox sucks. Even in FF 3.5 it’s still a drag to use. You will realize why once you use Opera’s address bar. Why? Because Opera never "thinks" when trying to pull up information. The moment you start typing, wham, instant search of your bookmarks with no "thinking". It is nothing short of amazing how fast it is (even on slow PCs!)

Concerning better web integration…

From the Opera 10 page:

If you use a Web mail service as your default mail client, you can tell Opera 10 to do the same. Clicking on e-mail addresses or "Send by Mail" in Opera will open the compose page from your Web mail service provider. The same is true with the Feed reader — you can now also add any RSS/atom feed into your favorite online feed reader from within Opera 10.

This is actually really cool. But unfortunately the selections available do not include what most people use.

For example, when you click on an email address on a web page, this is what happens:

Okay, cool, I can choose a webmail service of my choice, let’s see what choices I have.

That’s it? No Hotmail? No Yahoo Mail? No Gmail? I’m hoping those services will be added in when this browser is out of beta.

Concerning the other stuff…

Opera Turbo

The Opera Turbo feature is an accelerator of sorts that is supposed to increase the speed of browsing when on a slow or choked (i.e. a slow public wi-fi) network. It is enabled by clicking the clock icon at the lower left of the browser. I can’t use it because my network is too fast (oh, darn it all). You can read more about Turbo here.

Resizable search field

At top right next to the address bar you can search Google (just like in Firefox or IE) and now you can adjust the size of it, but I bet you didn’t know that IE and FF can do the exact same thing. Opera makes it easy to spot. The other guys do that hiding-in-plain-sight thing.

Auto-update

Summed up: It’s about time Opera got this.

Would I recommend Opera now?

Opera 10 is the first version of this browser that I would actually recommend. As good as 9 and all the previous versions were, I just couldn’t recommend those. And the main reason for that is sub-par web standards support.

Version 10 on the other hand does have proper web standard support (believe me, that’s important). And as soon as the loose ends are tied up from the beta to the final release, I think this will finally be the one that will get Opera more new users.

Some sites make it easy (more or less) to delete your account if you don’t feel like using it any longer. Others however make it exceedingly difficult.

Recently I was going thru my password manager and realized there were a ton of accounts I simply didn’t use anymore, so I figured I’d get rid of them. Some I was successful with, while others.. not so much.

Deleting a Gmail account

Google has their services set up in such a way where Gmail is a product attached to your primary Google account. For example, FeedBurner, Picasa Web Albums, Google Docs, Google Alerts and so on are all products.

You have a few options here. You can either delete just the Gmail account, or delete the Google account entirely.

• Go to https://www.google.com/accounts (and yes, the https must be present).
• After logging in, click the Edit link next to My products.
• If you want to delete Gmail alone, click Remove Gmail permanently.
• If you want to close the entire account, click Close account and delete all services and info associated with it.

Deleting a Hotmail account

Microsoft is similar to Google in the respect that Hotmail is deemed a product attached to your Windows Live ID.

• Login to your Hotmail/MSN/Live account at http://login.live.com
• Click Close account
• You may be told that the system is unable to do it and that you have to "Close your Microsoft account". Go ahead and do it.

Is the Hotmail account truly closed at that point? No. The account will be treated as if you haven’t logged in for a few months. After a few days, all information will be removed, so I guess that’s the closest definition of "closed" you can get with a Windows Live ID.

Closing a Yahoo account

Yahoo makes it easy. Follow the steps here.

Closing an AIM account

I could not find a way to close an AOL/AIM account. After a Google search, it would appear the only way to "deactivate" one is to not login to it for six months. Not an elegant solution by any means, but it’s at least something.

Finding links to close other types of web accounts

All web services should make closing your account easy, but unfortunately they don’t. Everybody does it differently. But there are a few common threads.

• Names: It can be called "Close Account", "Remove Account", "Delete Account", "Terminate Account", etc.
• Links: I’ve seen several instances where the "Close My Account" link is black and non-underlined making it look like plain text when in fact it’s a link.
• FAQ: Try searching the FAQ for the web service you’re trying to close.
• Profile: Sometimes the link to close an account will be listed under "Profile".

If you cannot close the account, what do you do?

You will run into some instances where there is no way to close the account (like Identi.ca and AIM). Chances are the reason you want to close it out to begin with is to stop getting those stupid emails from the service. The easiest thing to do is to edit the profile and change it to use a throw-away address. Once done you won’t get anymore crap from them in your email.