Why FireFox dominates Internet Explorer

Why FireFox dominates, and will continue to dominate Internet Explorer for years.

Memory Usage

Internet Explorer has some big memory issues. They may or may not fix this in IE 8, but hopefully they do. FireFox simply just uses a whole lot less memory than Internet Explorer. That is all I have to say about memory with these two browsers.

The Community

Believe it or not, the community plays a vital role. FireFox is backed by a huge community of volunteers, who code and design. Internet Explorer may have a community, but it differs a whole lot from the Mozilla FireFox community. A good example is when a vulnerability, or a bug is found for FireFox. They immediately fix the bug, and release an update for it. While the Internet Explorer "team" could take months, or even years to find the bug, then release an update or patch for it. This is one of the big reasons why FireFox is the safest.

Themes and Plugins

FireFox allows you to install Themes and Plugins for various uses. Internet Explorer still does not have this feature. FireFox is also Web Developer friendly with the plugins it offers, and the built in features that come with it. The IE team said Internet Explorer 8 will be more web developer friendly. I guess we will see, but don't hold your breath waiting for them to add any new features.


Web Standards

Internet Explorer does not follow web standards. This gives us web developers and designers headache, after headache trying to get our work compatible with Internet Explorer. This is especially true if you are dealing with Internet Explorers buggy CSS implementation.

Conclusion

Although I can not stand Internet Explorer, I am still a fan of Microsoft, and their products. If Internet Explorer wasn't one of the popular browsers than I wouldn't be writing this, since we wouldn't have to test our pages, because no one would use it. Since that is not the case I think Microsoft should wake up, and fix their browser!

User Registration in PHP

I have recently wrote an article on user registration in PHP. I show you how to create a PHP script that registers a user in your database. To view the complete tutorial please visit Leet Webmasters Tutorials. You will also find a lot more tutorials from LeetWebmasters.com.

Planning your first web site

So you want to build a web site? This may seem a bit overwhelming or intimidating for beginners, but if you break it up, then plan it out step by step, it is easy, and fun.

To build a basic web site all you need to know is some HTML, this is where the Leet Webmasters tutorials come in. I have created a HTML Basics tutorial that will show you the basics of HTML.

Now you need to ask yourself what you want your web site to accomplish. If you are not interested, or involved in a certain topic, then you usually do not want to make a web site about it. Try to pick some things that you are interested in, then after you have found some, narrow them down to your favorite, or what you would enjoy the most.

Next you need to find out what age group would be interested in your topic, or web site. For example, maybe your web site is going to be about skateboards, this topic would appeal to the teens, so you would try to target that user base.

If this project is going to be too much for one person, you, then you might want to ask a friend if he/she would want to help. This way both of you could add content to the web site, and help each other when it comes to running it.

Now, you have everything planned out and ready to go... What now? Well, you need to find a web host. There are many free web hosts out there, and this may be the better way to go, to see how you like it. You can always upgrade to a paid host if you need to later on. Free-WebHosts.com has a list of free web hosts.

The look of your web site is very important. Adobe Dreamweaver is great for people who do not like to 'code' a lot, but at an expensive price. Of course, you can always find tutorials here on Leet Webmasters, and ask for support on the forum!

That pretty much sums it all up. Wasn't that hard, was it? If you need any help, please ask on the forums, we will be very happy to help you!

Why to stay away from tables when designing a web page

The following post will show you why to stay away from tables when designing a site.

Most web developers and designers will tell you to stay away from tables when developing web sites, of course there are some exceptions, like forms, and data. Instead they will tell you to use CSS. When designing your web site you should use CSS, along with the HTML <div> tag. Now, you may be asking, why? The reasons are below!

1. Tabular Data. Not layouts

Tables are for Tabular Data. They simply are not for designing a page. Here is a good page at about.com that explains Tabular Data.

2. Nested Tables

Nested tables is a common way to make layouts with tables. With nested tables, one, or more, tables are placed inside each other. There is a problem when designing a page this way, it takes the browser longer to render your page. With CSS there is way less code, and your code is cleaner, therefor it is easier on the browser.

3. Changing fonts, colors, and layouts.

Lets say you had a site with 100 pages, with tables, and you wanted to change the header of every page to blue instead of red. With CSS you could go into the CSS file, included on every one of those 100 pages, and change the font-color to blue. It would then update all of your pages with the color blue. With tables you would have to open every one of those pages and change the color.

4. Invalid XHTML

When using tables for your web page layout, you are writing invalid XHTML. You should only use tables when you are working with Tabular Data, as I stated above.

5. Smaller HTML files

No one wants a huge HTML file, full of messy code, right? Well, this is just another reason to use CSS. Since you can call your CSS stylesheet from external file, it doesn't even need to be in your HTML file to work, making it even smaller.

Using WampServer

In this article I will tell you how to setup, and use Wampserver.

WampServer is a 'Windows web development environment'. With this program you can create web applications with PHP, MySQL, and Apache. This program includes PHPMyAdmin and SQLiteManager, from which you can easily manage your databases.

I've been using this program for a while now, and it is really, really helpful, so I am writing this to let you all know about it.

I have mainly used it to test all my pages offline, locally on my computer. I copied my whole site, with the databases, set it up, and then I could edit the site, and add features without it ever going 'live'. After that, I just upload the finished site.

To download the program follow this page, to the download link. The program installs with the installer, and is completely virus free.

A friend of mine also told me about two tools, that when combined with this program, make it extremely easy to execute SQL queries, without knowing SQL at all, this program is called MySQL Query Browser. This program is for download at Dev.MySQL.com. The Direct Download Link - Dev.MySQL.com.

Now that you have the program downloaded, and installed, right click on the quick launch WampServer icon and click www directory. In this directory, create another folder to store all your files in. Then you go click on localhost, in the same menu, which would take you to your folder.

I may write an article over MySQL Query Browser, but this program is really only for the people who are using databases, or PHP for their site.

Hopefully this article helped you! If not, feel free to ask on the forum.

Direct Link to this article - www.LeetWebmasters.com

The Leet Webmasters Blog

Welcome to the LeetWebmasters.com blog. I will post the latest articles, tutorials, and any updates related to the site. If you are not sure what Leet Webmasters is about then I will explain below.

The web site [leetwebmasters.com] provides webmaster, or soon to be webmasters with tutorials, tips, guides, and scripts for their own web sites. Some of the topics include SEO (Search Engine Optimization) , Web site development, and keyword development. Along with the webmaster articles come tutorials from HTML to MySQL.
Home Page - http://LeetWebmasters.com
Community Forums - http://LeetWebmasters.com/community

Keep checking by for updates!