Mozilla’s aggressive rollouts are mainly down to the people at Google Inc. running their popular Chrome browser at version 15. It’s crazy that Chrome has been around half as long as Firefox, yet is more than twice as high regarding current version numbers.

The guys at Mozilla obviously see this as an issue and have incorporated a new policy of releasing versions quicker than you can say ‘Checking for Updates…’ The last 3 major releases have been within 4 months of each other. The first 3 versions were each around 2 years apart. Quite a change in tact.

Not that version numbers really matter that much, I mean, just because your version is higher than the competitions doesn’t mean you’ve got a superior product. Right? However, Mozilla obviously think Google have a psychological advantage over the regular user.

At this rate Mozilla will continue to catch Chrome in the numbers stake. But it’s a risky game to be playing. With every release has to come something significant enough for users to want to upgrade. You can’t just sell it on some minor enhancements and bug fixes. The reduction in time between rollouts will also result in reduced testing time. Which affects us all as end users.

It’s clear that Mozilla is all about targeting new users with their new strategy. But regular users of the browser are updating so often it’s likely they’ll decide to ignore new versions. With the hassle of broken plugins, broken websites and changes in functionality, who really wants to be updating their web browser every 2 months?

It all points to Mozilla feeling slightly insecure. Rather than spending time sorting out the memory issues and other inherent bugs, they’d rather play catch up with Google. Firefox was brought out in 2004 4 years earlier than Chrome which didn’t release until 2008. According to the stats, Chrome is the 3rd most popular browser (as of July 2011) having around 22.00% worldwide usage and Firefox is the 2nd most popular (as of August 2011), with around a 30% worldwide base.

Mozilla are obviously coming a bit tetchy about Chrome’s rapid rise. It’s fast and clear interface is appealing to regular users. It’s got the major name behind it. It supports extensions and many web developers have access to some excellent tools available for development, design and SEO.

Firefox has a loyal user base but the change in it’s release schedule sends out warning signals. Chrome certainly has the money and brains behind it to be top dog. With the release of Googles own social networking service in the shape of Google+, Chrome can incorporate tight integration into it and if it becomes as successful as Google anticipates, it may be another reason for Mozilla users to jump ship.

It’s clear the next year or so is an important time for Mozilla. Let’s just hope the next few version releases finally sort out the memory issues. After all, who cares if we’re running Version 103.298 if all it does is crash when you have more than 2 tabs open.

As with most solutions, a CMS presents further problems; most commonly, performance issues. Here’s a few ways to mitigate these issues and ensure your website loads quickly. There are a lot of guides on how to specifically speed up certain CMS platforms but I’ve taken a step back and provided solutions for general CMS optimisation problems.

1. Page caching

If you are running a site that serves thousands of visitors then these database queries, however much you have optimised them in step 1, are going to be intensive. It’s going to be a hit on your bandwidth (which could increase costs) and also slows down your site.

Solution. Page caching. When a page is first retrieved it is stored (cached) as a static page (e.g. HTML) and then further visitors will be served that static page. No database calls means the site is back on par with the speed of static sites. If you edit the content of the page in the CMS then the cache will be cleared so visitors still receive a up-to-date version of the site and not a cached one.

2. Clever coding

If you analyse a CMS template/theme you will see that there can be up to 20 database calls on a page. Whether this be the title of the page, the date an article was posted or the location of a stylesheet. The reasons why they are dynamic in the first place is to provide flexibility, often provided through options pages.

Solution. Have a look through your website. Are there any settings that are never going to change? If so you can hardcode these into your themes so they do not require an extra database hit, which in turn will load the pages quicker. Do you need the footer text to be driven by a text field on the options page? Probably not.

3. Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Using a CDN such as Amazon Cloudfront is undeniably a way to speed any website up. When a request for a file (such as an image) is requested it is served by the CDN from the Amazon storage system (Amazon S3). Not only do you have the benefit of having your image stored on a more powerful server (Amazon S3) but whilst you are being served the image you can also be served the rest of the site simultaneous. It’s not only file sizes that are the problem but the amount of requests made on a server.

4. Optimise the database

Installing plugins not clearing up afterwards can cause problems. The larger the database the more the longer the search queries.

Optimise your database by clearing out tables and data that are not needed. If you’re searching through 10,000 entries, rather than 20,000 this will speed things up considerably.

5. Broken links

A user’s browser might spend time looking for that JavaScript or CSS file that doesn’t exist, or an image that has been deleted. It will retry a certain amount of times and it’s the times of, and in between, those requests that can increase the page load speeds.

Analyse your code and get to know it. Make sure that if the page has tried to load an image and if it hasn’t investigate as to why. Using Pingdom Tool you can check how long it’s taking to load a file and it ‘greys out’ the ones that it can’t find. Those are the ones that need your attention.

A couple of weeks ago I was happily browsing the Internet when my Firefox browser crashed. I thought “no big deal” and re-opened my browser but to my despair, my Web Developer Toolbar had disappeared, leaving a very thin bar where the toolbar should have been.

This problem can occur when a browser (with the Web Developer Toolbar enabled) crashes or sometimes when the browser is updated.

I tried disabling and enabling the plugin, restarting my browser and even deleting the add-on and re-installing it, none of which solved the problem.

The solution is actually very simple:

1. Right-click where the toolbar should be.
2. Select Customize… (this will activate a pop-up).
3. In the pop-up click on the Restart Default Set button.

This will return your Web Developer Toolbar back to where it belongs.

If your Web Developer Toolbar is now only showing icons and you would like for it to show text as well the icons, go to the main menu at the top of the browser and select:

1. Tools -> Web Developer -> Options -> Options… (this will activate a pop-up).
2. In the middle of the pop-up window there is a drop-down menu labelled ‘Display Toolbar with‘, Change this setting to ‘Icons & Text‘*.

*If the drop-down is already set to ‘Icons & Text‘, change it to ‘Icons‘, click the OK button and then carry out the two steps above and it will sort itself out.

Web Developer Toolbar

Web Developer Toolbar is a fantastic tool which every web designer / developer should not be without. It allows you to toggle between many different settings quickly and easily, such settings include: disabling and enabling the cache for your browser, disabling cookies, JavaScript, images etc.

If you are a web designer or developer you will more than likely already have this add-on but if you don’t or you are new to the world of web design/development, get it now!

You can download the Web Developer Toolbar for both Firefox and Chrome from ChrisPederick.com (the developer’s website).

jQuery Cycle Plugin is a lightweight jQuery plugin which offers an easy way to create a slideshow of images for your website.

The plugin provides a bunch of different effects for cycling between each slide, from a simple fade to the more elaborate ‘shuffle effect’, you can choose to cycle through each slide on a time delay or for it to be initiated by the user through a click.

The jquery Cycle Plugin does not only cycle through images but it can also cycle through <divs> which can contain text and images, allowing for more freedom of what goes into each slide of the slideshow.

I prefer the fading option and use it for small advertisements on a number of domains or sometimes as the main focus of a website (such as small accommodation sites). The effect is not as clean or visually sharp as a flash movie but it takes a lot less time to implement and does not require flash, therefore it will display in android devices and on the iPhone with no problems.

Implementing the code is easy, list the images inside a <div> and then specify the plugin to cycle through that <div> by using the small piece of code provided on the jQuery Cycle Plugin website.

jQuery Cycle is easy to set up, run and configure, while the end result can help give a website that extra feel of professionalism. I am a big fan of the jQuery Cyle plugin and have used it in quite a few websites to great effect.

Download jQuery Cycle Plugin at:

jQueryCycle