Browser Support Changes; iPad Support

Posted April 4, 2010, 1:59 a.m.

There have been some changes to browser support for Off on a Tangent, mostly reflecting current browser usage trends.

I’ve dropped official support for a number of smaller, rarely used browsers like K-Meleon, Konqueror, and BeZilla Browser (based of Firefox 2). This doesn’t mean the site won’t work in these browsers, it just means I’m not officially supporting them, I don’t test in them, and any issues affecting users of these browsers will get less attention than issues affecting supported browsers.

I’ve added support for two new-ish WebKit-based browsers, Arora and its distant Haiku OS cousin, WebPositive.

Lastly, I’ve initiated official support for Apple’s new iPad tablet computer (now that an emulator is available free from Apple). The iPad, which launched on Saturday, runs a variant of the iPhone operating system. Right now, it’s supported as a mobile browser (mostly because it’s tough to use the full site’s drop-down menus on a touch-based system). I may change that in the future to default to the full site, if I can come up with a better way to handle the drop-downs. It seems silly to send my stripped-down mobile site to a device like the iPad, which has a screen resolution comparable to that on ‘netbooks’ and small notebooks.

If you have an iPad, let me know whether you prefer the full site or the mobile site. Thanks!

As always, a full list of supported browsers (and screenshots of the site in each) is available on the About the Site page.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

The exception proves the rule in the cases not excepted.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Justice makes the wrongdoer see the injustice in the violation of a law; mercy makes him see it in the sufferings and misery he caused those who love him deeply.

Fulton Sheen

Telling a woman that abortion is the ’empowering’ response to a crisis pregnancy is really telling her that she is not strong enough to handle motherhood. What a terrible and unrealistic way to view women.

Abby Johnson

Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.

Hannah Arendt

I am dumbfounded at how little philosophical and metaphysical importance the human mind has attached to the vital subject of excrement.

Salvador Dali

A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying.

Elbert Hubbard

Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.

Farrah Gray

Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin—a fact as practical as potatoes.

G. K. Chesterton

This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.

Will Rogers

Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations—not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated.

Elie Wiesel

Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion.

Steve Jobs

It is the idea that rejecting God . . . will somehow lead to freedom, to complete human fulfillment. As a result [he] is replaced by fleeting human idols which offer the intoxication of a flash of freedom, but in the end bring new forms of slavery and death.

Rino Fisichella

In America any boy may become President, and I suppose it’s just one of the risks he takes.

Adlai Stevenson II

The way to deal with worldly people is to frighten them by repeating their scandalous whisperings aloud.

Bernard Shaw

Broadmindedness, when it means indifference to right and wrong, eventually ends in a hatred of what is right.

Fulton Sheen

Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

William Faulkner

If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be worth re-electing.

Woodrow Wilson

One may say [that] the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

Albert Einstein

The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. . . .

Charles Spurgeon

It is both foolish and wicked to teach the average man who is not well off that some wrong or injustice has been done him, and that he should hope for redress elsewhere than in his own industry, honesty and intelligence.

Teddy Roosevelt