It occurred to me recently that I don’t really know who taught me to use computers and the internet. I can remember being told that ctrl+z undoes whatever you’ve just done and immediately realising that it was going to be the most useful keyboard shortcut I would eve know, and when I was first told what the internet and what a browser was, and I know the resources that I’ve used the most in learning how to write HTML, CSS and PHP (W3Schools.com and php.net, in case you were wondering.) But in terms of things like how to actually browse the web, what browser to use, how to best use a search engine and so on, most of my knowledge has come incrementally, from a range of different sources, and is probably the result of spending too much time sat in front of a computer.

So for a bit of a change and to try to save you from having to slowly pick these things up by spending too much of your time in front of a computer, I thought that rather than posting news and opinions on the world of information technology, I’d try posting something of a bit more obviously practical use; some web-related tips and tools for day to day life that I’ve picked up over the last ten years or so, which should be useful for people other than web-obsessed geeks.

(This is mainly based on what I’ve set up recently, having started working in a new computer at a new job— suddenly finding myself without all the bits and pieces that I consider to be my day-to-day essentials, and found myself feeling surprisingly lost without…)
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October 19th, 2007 | Browsers, Computer Tips, WWW | No comments

Back in the early days of the World Wide Web were the “Browser Wars.” The Web was just taking off, and the vast majority of the browser market used the Netscape Navigator browser. One of Netscape’s goals was to “level the playing field” among operating systems- in line with the ideals behind the World Wide Web project, to create a browser platform that was consistent across operating systems. Microsoft saw this as a threat, and released Internet Explorer as competition.I don’t want to go into the details of the browser wars themselves- suffice to say that Netscape went out of business and subsequently Microsoft stopped developing Internet Explorer for about 7 years- but one consequence was that for some time, the browser market was split between Netscape and Microsoft. (more…)

April 18th, 2007 | Browsers, WWW | 1 comment