Mozilla Firefox 64-bit vs. Google Chrome 64-bit

Ever since Mozilla Firefox FINALLY released a 64-bit version of their browser, I began comparing my usage of numerous tabs open in Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

After closing and re-opening Firefox numerous times, I had no trouble re-loading Firefox even with 100+ tabs open.

However, as soon as I attempted to accomplish the same thing with Google Chrome with even only 50+ tabs open, I got the following error message:

I could neither kill the offending tab nor wait a sufficient time for the browser to finally load the page!

This problem effectively deadlocked my Google Chrome browser and prevented it from loading any other pages making my Google Chrome browser COMPLETELY USELESS!!

I tried closing and re-opening Google Chrome numerous times in order to rectify this problem, but it seemed to make no difference.

Needless to say, Google Chrome does not handle a large number of tabs open simultaneously very well.

I looked at how Google Chrome was storing my browsing data and I found this:

The amount of data that Google Chrome was storing and caching significantly slows down the browser after a period of time and prevents pages from loading quickly.  Until you clear out your cache and browsing history, Google Chrome will continue to run very slowly!

I will continue to use Google Chrome as part of my development processes and testing, but I will now more heavily rely on Mozilla Firefox 64-bit to handle my MAJOR web researching and browsing needs!!

Firefox 64-bit for Windows finally available!!

The Mozilla Foundation has FINALLY released a 64-bit version of their Mozilla Firefox browser!!

You can read more about the Firefox 64-bit release here: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/12/15/firefox-64-bit-for-windows-available/

Lastly, you can download the 64-bit version from here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/

Woo hoo!

Firefox Developer Edition

If you are looking for a 64-bit version of Firefox and are willing to try out experimental build versions of Mozilla Firefox, then you should try out Firefox Developer Edition: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/all/

Firefox Developer Edition offers regular build updates and provides both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Mozilla Firefox for Windows!

Mozilla Firefox vs. Waterfox

I have been waiting for a very, very long time for Mozilla Firefox to release a 64-bit version that was originally promised several months ago so I consequently switched over to Waterfox--a 64-bit derivative version of Mozilla Firefox.

This was primarily due to the reason that opening a very large number of tabs in Mozilla Firefox was causing the browser to crash often and become very sluggish.

However, it seems that with the latest releases of Mozilla Firefox (v. 42.0 as of this writing), this problem has been resolved!

Instead, I am now finding that Waterfox by far is a much more sluggish browser when it comes to opening a large number of tabs (presumably because the community of developers working on Waterfox is considerably smaller than those working on Mozilla Firefox).

As you may have discovered if you install Waterfox and Mozilla Firefox on the same machine, because they both use the Mozilla engine, either Waterfox or Mozilla Firefox can be running at any given time--they can never be running at the same time.  However, this unique property also allows them to share the same settings including the tabs they open!

In a test that I did of opening 50+ tabs in Waterfox and Mozilla Firefox, opening the same exact same set of tabs caused Waterfox to become so sluggish that it could take a minute or more to load a single web page, while Mozilla Firefox handily managed loading a new web page very speedily in a matter of seconds!

While I would still like to see a 64-bit version of Mozilla Firefox be released in the near future, now that most of the performance issues have been resolved, I am going to revert to using the 32-bit version of Mozilla Firefox for the foreseeable future!

Importing cookies from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox

If you launch Mozilla Firefox for the very first time after a fresh installation, you will notice that you are presented with a wizard that allows you to import cookies from other browsers such as Internet Explorer.

However, what happens when you need to import cookies from another browser after Mozilla Firefox has already been running for some time?

Unfortunately, there is no built-in method in the Mozilla Firefox browser that allows you to do that.  Fortunately, though, that is why they have Add-ons/Extensions!

You can download the Cookies Import/Export Add-on from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/cookies-exportimport/

This allows you to easily import the Cookies that are exported by Internet Explorer.

Very handy tool!!

Cookie Expiration Times in Google Chrome Developer Tools

I was recently using Google Chrome Developer Tools to examine Cookie Expiration Times and noticed that the expiration times were completely unexpected based on how I had configured my cookies!

Well, as it turns out, Google Chrome Developer Tools is displaying the Cookie Expiration Times in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)!

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a setting to allow Google Chrome Developer Tools to display the Cookie Expiration Times in local time.

In order to view local expiration times, you can go into Google Chrome's Settings and look at the Cookie Expiration Times individually:

1. Settings-->Privacy-->Content Settings
2. All cookies and site data...
3. Select the site that you want to view
4. Click on the name of the Cookie to view the Cookie details which includes the Expiration Time

However, if you install an Add-In such as Cookie Inspector, you can get the Cookie Expiration Times to show in local time!  (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cookie-inspector/jgbbilmfbammlbbhmmgaagdkbkepnijn?hl=en)

If you are using Firebug for Mozilla Firefox, you can also directly get the local Cookie Expiration Times:

Alternatives to BrowserStack

If you want to perform Cross-Browser testing of your application and you have looked at BrowserStack, here are some things to know before you make your decision:

1. BrowserStack offers one of the shortest trials of any other Cross-Browser software vendor.  The trial is limited to a mere 30 minutes of Live testing!!  https://www.browserstack.com/question/590
2. If you choose the Freelancer option for $12.50/month (or $19/month if you choose the monthly plan), you only get a 100 minutes of Live testing per month!  https://www.browserstack.com/pricing 

Therefore, if you are looking for cheaper alternatives to BrowserStack, you will definitely want to take a look at these options:

1. Sauce Labs: https://saucelabs.com/pricing  - Sauce Labs offers a 14-day free trial and for only $12/month, you get Unlimited Manual Testing!
2. TestingBot: https://testingbot.com/pricing - While TestingBot only offers a 100-minute trial, for $12/month, you get Unlimited Manual Testing and 400 minutes of automated testing and 4 concurrent VMs (which is nearly double the automated testing you get with Sauce Labs!)
3. BrowseEmAll: http://www.browseemall.com/Buy - For the same cost of the Live tier of BrowserStack, you can get the Professional subscription ($29/month) which offers Unlimited Manual Testing as well as Unlimited Automated Testing!!
4. Mobile1st: http://mobile1st.com/pricing-purchase/ - If you are primarily concerned with Mobile Browser testing, Mobile1st offers a very cheap option of only $10/month with support for 14 different mobile devices.  

Using a CDN for your Script and Style Content on an SSL-secured ASP.NET Web Application

If you haven't already read about the SSL security features in newer browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, these browsers are essentially blocking any non-secured content from being downloaded and viewed by the client.

In other words, the "Mixed content" prompt you used to receive while browsing sites with Internet Explorer will not work in browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.  Instead, you will get an error like the following:

Therefore, if you an SSL-secured ASP.NET Web Site, the best thing to do is to make sure that you always use an SSL Url for your CDN.

For example, the Microsoft Ajax CDN (http://www.asp.net/ajax/cdn) does not publish any of the Urls as https:// Urls, but they are available both on the http:// and https:// protocols.

Other CDNs such as Google CDN (https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/) and Bootstrap CDN (http://www.bootstrapcdn.com/) publish their CDN Urls as https:// by default.

Finally, other CDNs such as the jQuery CDN (https://jquery.com/download/) makes it clear that you can use either the http:// or https:// protocols since you simply prefix the Url as //code.jquery.com and do not explicitly specify a protocol.

Windows Identity Foundation Cross-Browser Compatibility Issues

I was recently building an ASP.NET MVC Web Application using .NET v. 4.5 with Windows Identity Foundation and Forms Authentication based on this article: http://brockallen.com/2013/01/26/replacing-forms-authentication-with-wifs-session-authentication-module-sam-to-enable-claims-aware-identity/

Unfortunately, I discovered a very unexpected behavior!!

I tested the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 11
• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox 39

When I logged in with Internet Explorer 11 and navigated back and forth between 2 WIF Sites (Development and Staging), I was never being redirected from the Forms Authentication window!

When I logged in with Google Chrome and navigated back and forth between 2 WIF Sites (Development and Staging), I was never being redirected from the Forms Authentication window!  Sometimes, I would even lose my FedAuth cookies!!

However, when I logged in with Mozilla Firefox 39 and navigated back and forth between 2 WIF Sites (Development and Staging), everything worked perfectly!!

If you are also experiencing this issue, please vote on this Connect bug here: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/1693417

Bookmark all open tabs

When I am doing research as part of my Development, it is not uncommon for me to open 100+ tabs or more while I am researching various topics and solutions.

Therefore, it is very convenient to be able to bookmark all of my open tabs in a single operation!

Fortunately, this article describes how to do just that with the various browser platforms such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer!

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-bookmark-all-open-browser-tabs-at-once/

http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/04/how-to-save-all-open-tabs-quickly-in-your-browser-of-choice/

However, one of the defects I found while using this feature in Mozilla Firefox is that I am always forced to "Bookmark all tabs" into a new folder.  If I want to Bookmark all my open tabs into an existing folder, Firefox does not allow me to do so.  The workaround, of course, is to accept moving them into a new folder and then later use the Bookmark Manage to re-arrange them back into the desired folder and delete the unwanted/unnecessary folder.  

Checking browser capabilities and features

If you are developing a greenfield application using today's modern web technologies such as HTML5, chances are that you want to know what browser features you can and cannot support!

Well, fortunately, this website provides a great breakdown of what features are and are not available in each of the various browser platforms: http://caniuse.com/

You can even do a browser comparison by choosing the browsers you want to compare!

This website will allow you to test the HTML5 features of your current browser and provide you with a ranking: https://html5test.com/

Removing Source Map error messages in Google Chrome Developer Tools

When you are debugging CSS or JavaScript using Google Chrome Developer Tools, you may encounter numerous source map error messages in the Chrome Developer Tools Console.

Well, fortunately, there is an easy fix to get rid of these error messages if you are not using source maps as part of your code base.

Open up the Settings of Chrome Developer Tools by clicking on the Gear icon in the toolbar:

When you open up the Settings, you will see options for the following:

• Enable JavaScript source maps
• Enable CSS source maps

You then simply uncheck those checkboxes and you will no longer see the source map error messages in Chrome Developer Tools!

 

MCP Member Site Url

I had recently just passed the 70-480 Microsoft exam and decided to check out my transcript on the Microsoft Member site only to discover that I could not easily find the link to the website!

In addition, when I attempted to render the site in Mozilla Firefox, most of the content on the page was not rendering!

Well, knowing Microsoft, I figured I would have to browse the site with Internet Explorer instead and lo and behold I was able to view my transcript and the rest of the content on the site.

So, for your information, the Url to the MCP Member site is this: https://mcp.microsoft.com/Auth/Login.aspx

Unable to download content from Microsoft download sites using Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome

For quite some time now, I have noticed that I am no longer able to download any content from a wide variety of Microsoft download sites such as this one for SQL Server 2014 Express when I used Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42299

This issue eluded me for a very long time until I recently encountered a problem with rendering a website that had mixed SSL and Http content.  Of course, the Firefox Developer Tools pointed me to this article: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Security/MixedContent

Of course, as you can probably guess, all of these Microsoft download sites are presenting Mixed Content!

This completely prevents me from downloading any of the executables from Microsoft's website until they fix/resolve this issue with all of their websites.

That means, for now, I am forced to download whatever I can through MSDN, or fortunately, a browser like Opera provides me with a prompt regarding the Mixed Content and provides me with an option to Unblock the content to be able to download it!

Why Waterfox is my new favorite browser

You may have heard that Mozilla Firefox will soon be releasing a 64-bit version of its browser for Windows.  It was originally slated to be released at the end of March, but it has been pushed back and delayed until sometime in May.

I have been a long-time user of Mozilla Firefox and it has easily become my most heavily used browser (even over Google Chrome).  The extensive library of plugins (especially Firebug) as well as its better management of memory has easily trumped it in my favor against the use of Google Chrome.

Unfortunately, its lack of 32-bit support has also been my bane.  My heavy usage of 50 or even a 100+ tabs is very common as part of my daily development activities.  Being limited to a 32-bit address space of 4 GB causes Mozilla Firefox to crash on an almost daily basis for me.

Well, along comes a side project called Waterfox!!  https://www.waterfoxproject.org/

This project boasts 64-bit support as well as being built on the same code base as Mozilla Firefox.  Of course, one of the downsides of being built on the same code base is that it forces me to choose between Mozilla Firefox or Waterfox because Windows does not recognize them as distinct browsers and therefore only allows one instance of a Mozilla-based browser running on my system at any given time.

Nevertheless, it is easily much more stable than Firefox and can readily handle the heavy usage of hundreds of tabs open simultaneously.  It not only performs well but it has not even crashed on me once in all of my usage over the past few weeks!  How great is that!!

So, at least until Mozilla Firefox releases full 64-bit support for its browser, I am sticking with Waterfox for the foreseeable future and I would advise any existing Mozilla Firefox users to do the same!!

Happy browsing!!

Silent installation of Opera

I love to perform unattended installations for nearly every piece of software that I own so that I can save a tremendous amount of time otherwise spent on clicking through dialogs each time I have to re-build or re-install my Windows OS.

One of the browsers that I commonly use is Opera: http://www.opera.com/

Earlier releases of the Opera browser directly supported a silent installation, but then they removed that feature and now it seems that they have added it back into the latest release.

The silent installation of the new Opera browser is extremely simple and only requires the /silent switch. 

Therefore, the command will look something like this:

Opera_28.0.1750.40_Setup.exe /silent

That is all there is to it!

If you want to look at additional options for installation, you can simply type the command:

Opera_28.0.1750.40_Setup.exe /?

This will display a dialog with all of the installation options for the Opera executable.

Detecting Mobile Browsers using ASP.NET and C#

If you want to do server-side detection of Mobile Browsers in C#, surprisingly enough, it is not that easy!!

I thought that I could simply use the IsMobileDevice property from the HttpContext Request Browser object, but while this works for many mobile device browsers, it certainly does not work for all of them!

For example, I tried browsing to my website using the built-in mobile browser on my Samsung Android phone.

Sure enough, the mobile browser was detected and the web page informed me that my mobile browser was not supported.

However, I looked through my Visitor Stats on my site and I found that people had been install Mozilla Firefox for Android.  I tried installing this browser on my phone and sure enough, my web page did not detect the browser as a mobile browser!!

Fortunately, I found this site which provides a C# script which can be used in your ASP.NET/C# code to properly detect mobile browsers.  http://detectmobilebrowsers.com/

Since the code seemed a bit outdated, I updated the following line to match newer standards:

string u = HttpContext.Current.Request.UserAgent;

Once I updated my code to use the Regular Expression provided on this site, I was able to successfully detect the Mozilla Firefox for Android browser as a mobile browser and block it from being used on my site!

Mozilla Firefox 64-bit

I have been using the 64-bit version of Google Chrome ever since it was released and Mozilla Firefox has fallen behind in still releasing a 32-bit version of the browser.

Fortunately, it is finally planning to catch up with a 64-bit release of Mozilla Firefox scheduled to be released sometime in May.

You can get a preview of the 64-bit release of Mozilla Firefox from here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/all/

If you are interested in some other Mozilla Firefox offshoots that are already 64-bit, you can check these links out:

http://www.mozilla64bit.com/

https://www.waterfoxproject.org/

Mozilla Firefox 36--Still as unstable as ever

When I began using Firefox 29 last year, I had already started experiencing problems with the browser freezing up and frequently crashing.

Unfortunately, even with the latest release of Firefox 36, the browser has not improved much over the last year in regards to overall speed, reliability and stability.

Earlier versions of Firefox (prior to version 29) were much more reliable and stable.  I prefer Google Chrome overall as a stable browser and I may end up reverting to using it after all, however, the major advantage Mozilla Firefox had over Google Chrome (and still does) is that it does not open a separate process for each tab.  As you can probably surmise, if you open hundreds of tabs in Google Chrome, that will quickly consume all of the memory on your machine.

Of course, having Firefox freeze and lock up frequently is not much better either since I frequently have to deal with these windows on a nearly daily basis:

Maybe Mozilla Firefox will be able to create a stable and reliable browser release much like their earlier Firefox versions.  I am crossing my fingers and hoping that time arrives in the near future....

Testing Responsive Design using Mozilla Firefox

If you are developing a website that uses Responsive Design techniques, there are several tools available for you to test Responsive Design.

One of the most commonly used tools for testing Responsive Design in the past is the use of the Opera Mobile Emulator: http://www.opera.com/developer/mobile-emulator

However, if you are not concerned with the use of specific devices that have different screen sizes and you just want to test out your media queries that are used as part of  your Responsive Design, you can do this directly using Mozilla Firefox!!

In Mozilla Firefox, use the Shortcut Key Combination: Ctrl + Shift + I.  This will bring up the Developer Tools.

On the right hand side of the Developer Tools, you will find a button for Responsive Design:

 You can then click on the Responsive Design button to highlight/select Responsive Design:

Once the Responsive Design button has been selected, you should see a screen like the following in Firefox that will allow you to choose various different screen sizes to allow you to test out your media queries:

In addition, if you will be bouncing back and forth between using Responsive Design techniques and non-Responsive Design techniques, you can also use the Shortcut Key Combination Ctrl + Shift + M!