Help for PC Web Browsers and Flash Player

Why Upgrade to Latest Version?

Keeping up with the latest version of your web browser also helps protect you from Internet based worms, spyware, adware, scams, and identity theft. I am also very aware of the kind of features being used by other web designers and have factored that in, so if you stick with what software I recommend, for my website, you will be in good shape, for the best experience, at most other cutting edge websites, as well. Newer browsers generally give better performance including being much faster on the slowest websites and make better use of the hardware your computer has like RAM and GPU.

Ultimate Experience for Windows Users

For a whole new fully immersive experience beyond just the new font and built in audio, use Internet Explorer 9 (for Windows Vista and 7 users), Firefox 4.0 (or the very similar Pale Moon 4.0, or Firefox 4.0 optimized for Yahoo), Firefox with Bing, Google Chrome 5.0 (stable channel version), SRWare Iron 5.0 (stable channel version), or Apple's Safari 5.0. The latest browsers will provide stunning visual effects involving high impact graphics shapes, light and shadow, and conditional formatting tricks, like: angled rounded corners on images, headings, quotes pages, and select paragraphs; image, page, quote rotation; text drop shadows on headings; drop shadows on images, quotes, select paragraphs; stylized drop caps for quotes; alternating colors for featured links; featured links going to a different website, going to another one of my websites, and on the same page marked as such; featured links to zip files marked as such; faded featured previously visited links; and background gradients. This is all done without any plugins (including Flash Player), without any additional graphics or slower download times, it keeps the website just as accessible as before, and only needs to be edited in one place to change or update the entire website.

New Font and Built in Audio for Windows Users

Google Chrome 3.0 and higher supports all the types of audio and video you will find on my website, including the open source friendly and Apple/iPod/iTunes versions.

Unfortunately you see that different browsers support different audio formats, which makes things more complicated, than necessary. This will likely not change, because of licensing fees and fears of being sued for using someone's unknown patents and these issues will not be resolved for many years, if ever. I have made listening to my songs and readings on my website simpler and less technical, for my visitors, by setting up my audio, to auto detect the correct version, for your web browser. If you use one of the above browser listed versions or higher, the audio on my website will automatically determine the correct file format, that works best, with your web browser.

Google Started a New Format War

Google has now removed the Apple/iPod/iTunes version support from Chrome now to force its users to use its own new format (WebM) or use Flash for video. This was designed to make trouble for the entire consumer electronic industry and its users.

Google is making trouble for Apple and its users, because Apple has decided not to allow Flash on its iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads due to it radically lowering battery life, to not populate its store with poor performing widget apps, and because it was only available several years after the iPhone and iPod Touch were released.

Google's newly preferred format (WebM) likely has patents on it, opening up those who use it on websites to likely but unknown liabilities, without any patent pools like, in the Apple/iPod/iTunes format, and has no hardware acceleration support in most devices, unlike the Apple friendly format, so it would destroy battery life as well. Google has also refused to pay potential patent royalties, for users of its new format, when the inevitable patent lawsuits begin.

Ironically this Apple friendly format is not owned by Apple or Microsoft (and both pay more for using the patents in software then they get from them) and every major consumer electronics manufacturer (including Google and many of its phone manufacturer partner companies) had not just agreed to it, but actually funded its development (and they all cross license each other as they are the patent holders).

Microsoft has recently added a free add-on to Google Chrome, that adds back in this removed video format support.

Working with Older and Less Functioning Web Browsers

All the web browsers, that I support, support my new font in their most recent fully tested versions.

Many Better and Free Choices for Web Browsing

You can have as many browsers on your machine as you want and they won't interfere with each other, so you can use the free Firefox for most browsing and use Internet Explorer 6-8 for those few websites that are broken.

Try the latest version of the Mozilla's free Firefox 4.0, Google's free Chrome 5.0, or Apple's free Safari 5.0

Learn about switching from Internet Explorer 6-8 to Firefox. This page will answer most of your questions.

Solving Windows Specific Application Installation Problems

One of the ways of getting around the reality that Windows applications are hard to uninstall, because there is no way for Windows to keep track of what files belong to each application, is to use portable apps. Another advantage of portable apps is that you can take your applications on a USB flash drive and carry around all your applications to any Windows computer, without having to leave any personal data behind or mess with installing or changing the configuration of the computer you are using. All these applications are free and open source or freeware from reputable companies and are free from viruses and spyware. You can get Google Chrome 10.0, SRWare Iron 10.0, Firefox 4.0, Foxit Reader 4.3, Sumatra PDF reader 1.4, WinDjView 1.0, VLC Player 1.1, Songbird 1.9, OpenOffice.org 3.2, LibreOffice.org 3.3, and Abiword 2.8, there.

Internet Explorer 9

Microsoft has just released version 9, of Internet Explorer, to the public, as it has made it through testing. I have been able to test it today, on my website, through a web browser testing service. The simple design, which is mostly yellow and one column works fine, with every version of Internet Explorer version 7 and higher. If you have Windows Vista or Windows 7, then you can upgrade Internet Explorer, to version 9.My website looks fine, in the advanced version, with Internet Explorer 9. It renders the fonts, layered backgrounds, transparency, angled backgrounds, rounded corners, and drop caps very well, but it does not support the text shadow, on the headings. I was unable to test the audio, that works, without requiring another program, on the virtual machine I used.

Another thing to check is the performance of Internet Explorer 9. If you can run Windows 7, with all its special effects, without any lag or slow downs, then it probably will work well, but if you bought a cheap laptop (or netbook), then it is likely that it will be slow (much slower than even the previous versions). One way to get it faster relatively cheaply is to add more RAM. I would recommend that you check the websites, that you frequent, to make sure they are compatible, as this browser has had a complete overhaul. Also the 64 bit version has much worse performance, to the point of being almost unusable, and should be avoided.

Security is improved greatly and the interface is now much more minimalistic - the controls are smaller, which gives you more space, for the web pages. If you use tabs, then you will likely have trouble using more than a few of them at once, because of Microsoft wanting to give extra space, for web pages. Search is now built into the address bar, so that would make me concerned about how the web browser knows, if you are typing in an address, or a search term, without having to type in special commands. The fonts look much smoother, but some people with poor eyesight will find the text harder to read. Things have also been changed significantly, for accessibility features, used by those who are sight impaired, so they might need to update screen readers, for this new version of Internet Explorer.

New Developments: Don't Do Anything

I have learned some new things, after: finding some good design magazines online, having invested in some more software/services, and that some new techniques are now available, that have matured recently. The result of these new developments is, that I was able, to get the custom fonts and many of the special effects, on my website, to work, with Internet Explorer 6-8.

The performance appears fine software wise, bit I don't know how much RAM, or how fast a processor is necessary, for reasonable/usable performance. The custom fonts look much better, on Internet Explorer 7, or higher. I was able to come close, to making the ideal design available, similarly to how it appears, in most of the more popular new browser, in Internet Explorer 6-8, but the performance suffers noticeably, as well as there being 2 many layers, for all the background designs, to show up correctly.

I can now fully test, for every major version of Internet Explorer, from 6 on, and can now support most, of the modern features, on these versions. I still recommend upgrading your browser to a better one, because of the security and performance benefits alone.