Wikipedia:Browser notes

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Browser notes is a Wikipedia page aimed at helping contributors and readers choose a browser. There is no perfect browser for viewing Wikipedia.

Please list the pros and cons of particular browsers for viewing and editing Wikipedia articles. Limit your contributions to practical drawbacks and actual experiences with various browsers in interaction with the Wikipedia. If you wish to report a bug to do with Wikipedia's interaction with a browser, see wikipedia:bug reports.

No browser wars but if you must comment at length, take it to the Browser notes talk page, please.

Please change the order of the browsers to place the Consensus Best Browser first on the list for each platform and continue in order of preference. Keep comments brief.

The Opera, Internet Explorer, Konqueror, and Mozilla-based browsers support a direct interface to searching in Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Searching for more information.

Contents

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Browsers on Microsoft Windows

  • Mozilla Firefox, formerly known as Mozilla Firebird, formerly known as Phoenix
    • In v0.8, existing wikilinks can be left red (looking like absent articles) after a right-button mouse click. In MediaWiki v1.3, the colour became orange.
    • Text search ignores edit window in v0.8 - v1.0 (see bugzilla entry on this issue. Possible workaround is to activate the "highlight" function in the find bar.
    • Edit button missing for some sections (see i. e. first sections of the Mars article) for Mozilla Firefox 1.0.4. This problem is still present in v1.0.7.
  • Mozilla Suite, being relaunched as SeaMonkey
    • Text search ignores edit window in Version 1.4
  • Opera
    • Editing buttons (B, I, Ab etc.) do not enable undo for Opera 8.01.
    • Edit button missing for some sections (see i. e. first sections of the Mars article) for Opera 8.0.1
    • Very old versions cannot edit long pages. See Wikipedia:Browser page size limits.
    • v7.2 interprets ISO-8859-1 as Windows-1252, which results in the superscript-2 character to be lost (Peru is particularly bad). This has been resolved in v7.5, and the problem does not occur at all in 7.1 and older.
    • Interprets Devanagari (Indic) scripts incorrectly as far as the use of vowels are concerned. (up to v.8)
  • Netscape
  • K-Meleon
    • No problems reported as of ver. 0.7.1.
  • Internet Explorer
    • Some special characters are not displayed, others only if you set your font to Arial Unicode MS, if you have that. However, that font has the problem that a character in italics often touches the next character, if that is upright without a blank space in between.
    • Those who try to type non-Latin1 characters directly into an article are sometimes surprised by IE's attempts to encode the data in a language-specific charset instead of Latin1 plus (at times incorrect) numeric character references. For advice, see Wikipedia talk:Wikipedians/South Korea
    • IE cannot handle numeric character references (NCRs) in UTF-8: if a page uses this encoding and NCRs the encoding must be set to User Defined.
    • All versions of IE have problems with text sizes, but should work fine with the default skin. Textboxes may be too wide on other skins, or font sizes may be illegible.
    • Text search ignores edit window in unspecified IE version. Works in IE v6.0-SP1.
    • Setting a font size does not work for the wikitext area or the edit summary and go/search boxes, unless one uses a local Cascading Style Sheet containing
      textarea, input {font-size: 100%}
(or other percentages of choice).
    • IE doesn't override the display font, for passages of multilingual text or IPA used for pronunciation. WP Editors are using templates to work around this deficiency (see Template talk: Polytonic, Template talk:IPA).
    • IE does not support translucent PNG images.
  • NCSA MOSAIC
    • latest version (3.0) can't even load wikimedia pages due to lack of support for the http 1.1 host header system.
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Browsers on Macintosh Systems

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Mac OS X

  • Safari
    • When navigating using the back and forward buttons and/or editing, the window's vertical scrollbar can sometimes "freeze"; that is it ceases to get visually updated properly: the bar and its attendant arrows still work, but the bar will pretty much continue to get displayed in one position despite the fact that the user is dragging it elsewhere. This is an intermittent problem. Observed with version 2.0 on Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.1 and several earlier versions.
      • Workaround: click the resize widget in the bottom-right corner of the window, and drag it a few pixels. This will redraw the scrollbar correctly.
  • Firefox 1.0.6
    • The browser has difficulty with subscript and superscript that does not use the <sub>/<sup> code, particulary the "x&sup2 ;" type. However, the unicode version does not display well, either. Unicode makes most numbers difficult to read and makes the numbers 3 and 4 unreadable.
  • Netscape
    • Browser search ignores edit window
  • Opera 6
    • Internal buffer sometimes can't handle long pages, mangles them
    • Slow. No auto login between sessions.
  • Opera 7.5
    • No problems reported.
  • OmniWeb
    • Occasionally hangs permanently.
    • Does not wrap text around graphics, except in preview mode.
    • Does not display indented paragraphs separated by blank line correctly, inserts two blank lines.
  • Mozilla
    • No problems reported.
  • Camino
    • No problems reported.
  • Internet Explorer 5.2.3
    • Some text is invisible, with no apparent pattern. The words disappear mid-sentence, or even mid-word, and reappear a few words or sentences later. This particular problem hasn't been seen on a non-Wiki site. The error has been seen with OS 10.3.5 - 10.3.7.
  • iCab
    • Sidebar displays after the end of the page content rather than at the top along the page. (but note that the current version available for iCab, generally has problems displaying web sites correctly so far.)
  • Shiira
    • No problems reported.
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Mac OS 9 and earlier

  • Netscape
    • 7.x : no problem reported
    • 4.5 : overlapping text and quick bar under cologne blue settings, may add weird space in text; some encoding issues
  • Internet Explorer
    • 4.5 : logging off from one wiki to another. Some encoding issues
    • 5.5 : sometimes freeze the edit window
  • Mozilla
    • 1.2 : some encoding issues, very slow
  • Opera
    • 5.0 : cut long pages in editing mode; encoding issues. Overlapping text and bar in some pages (prefs)
    • 6.0 : add undesirable blank lines, crashes unexpectedly
  • iCab
    • Side toolbar appears in wrong location (below any main text).
[edit]

UNIX/Linux Browsers

Most require X Window System. Platform limitations as noted.

  • Arena
    • Claims HTML-3 compatibility
  • Chimera
    • No problems reported.
  • CLRMosaic
    • No problems reported.
  • Dillo
    • Very fast GUI browser
    • Formats quite nicely, but no CSS
    • Cookies are tricky, so logging in is tricky
  • ELinks
    • Text only, but renders tables and frames.
    • Support http authentification.
    • Users can use their text editor of choice to edit textarea fields.
  • Galeon
    • Left hand find bar overwrites text.
  • HotJava
    • Solaris only.
  • Konqueror
    • Problems with tables on pages when sidebar is activated. Left-aligned tables get overwritten by the sidebar. (before v3.3)
    • Working on two Wikipedias may result in being logged out of one or both of them.
    • CSS layout problems with floating images, particularly on narrower screens. For example, maps on Austria overlap rather than flowing around one another (v3.2-12).
  • Links
    • Text only, but formats well.
    • Login is broken. (Try to check referrer sending and cookie handling. If everything fails try to use eLinks, and check the same settings.)
  • Lynx
    • Text only.
    • Users can use their text editor of choice to edit textarea fields.
    • Forces wrapping of very long lines in a textarea, which is a problem in editing some articles.
    • Display options for non-ASCII characters affect editing. Be sure to set "character_set=ISO Latin 1" in your lynxrc, otherwise accented characters will be silently mangled during editing!
    • Most tables are rendered as simple text. Viewing diffs can be improved by adding the following to the lynx.lss configuration file:
span.diffchange:bold:brightred
td.diff-deletedline:bold:green
td.diff-addedline:bold:cyan
  • Mozilla 1.4+
    • No problems reported.
  • Mozilla Firefox 0.9.1+
    • No problems reported.
  • Netscape
    • Cookie support is difficult, so logging in can be tricky.
    • 4.x: Problems with <div> marked images; sometimes crashes when one writes a new article or heavily edits an existing one (users are advised to do any heavy edit-work in another application and then use cut-and-paste)
    • 6 and later: No problems reported.
  • Opera
    • No problems reported.
  • OmniWeb
    • 3.x for OPENSTEP: Ok, but sidebar displays after main page content.
  • X-Mosaic
    • No problems reported.
  • TKWWW
    • Built-in editor
  • ViolaWWW
    • No problems reported.
  • Webspace
    • SGI Irix only
  • Webview
    • No problems reported.
[edit]

BeOS

  • NetPositive
    • Not all elements of the CSS recognized, though still fairly functional. NetPositive has issues with some HTML entities on repeated editing (replacing entities by the character glyph), so be careful.
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PDA & cell phone browsers

  • Danger Hiptop/T-Mobile Sidekick
    • Site renders fine in nostalgia skin.
    • Works better with sidebar off.
  • Palm OS 5.4.5/Blazer 4.0/PalmOne Treo 650
    • Default settings
      • Site is unreadable (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page_%28table_free%29). Prior to everything downloading (and thus, prior to final rendering) page displays as plain text with links and basic formatting (example). After final rendering, the page is squashed into a thin vertical strip a few characters wide (one and two). This effect occurs with either "wide page" or "optimized" views. Same effect with the main front page, the "table free pages", and all article pages.
      • If the page loading is stopped midway, the original "non-rendered" version remains and is fully functional and readable. Timing when to stop the load (after content loads, but before the styling loads) is very difficult.
      • Image:DefaultBlazerWikiRendering.pngDefault monobook skin rendering on the Treo650's Blazer.
      • User's can install their own style sheets for the various skins. This works around the problem.
    • User installed style-sheets
      • Wikipedia allows users to create accounts and upload style-sheets (amongst other things) to override/customize the rendering of pages via skins when logged in as that user-account. A style-sheet is required per skin. In the examples that follow the default monobook skin is assumed to have been selected. It is best to create a separate user-account for handheld viewing as the resulting rendering is illegible on most desktop browsers.
      • To start-off key in the URL for the per-user-account monobook style-sheet - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:user-account-name/monobook.css into the browser. Replace the italicized user-account-name in the URL with the account name for handheld viewing. The site might complain that the page was not found - which makes sense as it has not been created yet.
      • Click on the edit this page tab at the top of the page. Copy in the boxed contents below into the edit region.
#column-content {
    margin: 0 0 0 0;
    line-height: 1em;
    float: none;
}
#content {
    margin: 0.0em 0 0 0; /* Change the 0.0em to 2.8em to make */
                         /* extra white space at the top of a wiki page */
                         /* The 0.0em causes the tab buttons at */
                         /* the top ("edit this page", etc) to disappear */
                         /* on gecko based browsers. In such a situation hit */
                         /* "alt+e" to edit this page */
    line-height: 1em;
    padding: 0 0 0 0.2em;
}
/* Something about the above two sets of lines makes all content flow */
/* linearly down the page */
#column-one {
    padding-top: 0px;
    line-height: 1em;
}
#p-logo {
    position: relative;
}
#globalWrapper {
    font-size: 100%; /* Sets all fonts to normal size */
    line-height: 1em;
}
#contentSub {
    font-size: 100%; /* Sets all fonts to normal size */
    margin: 0 0 0 0; /* Removes margins */
    line-height: 1em;
    color: #FFFFFF; /* Sets the background to white */
}

ul, ol, li, dt, dd, p, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
    line-height: 1em;
} /* Packs lines nicely*/

div.tright, div.tleft {
    border-width: 0 0 0 0;
    line-height: 1em;
    padding: 0 0 0 0;
} /* Shrinks thumb picture frames as much as possible. */

div.thumb div div.thumbcaption {
    line-height: 1em;
    padding: 0 0 0 0;
} /* Shrinks thumb picture frames as much as possible. */
      • Save the page by clicking on the Save page button at the bottom of the edit window.
      • On your handheld, browse over to en.wikipedia.org and log in as the user-account created. This will be hard with the single-character width rendering - but it'll be the last time you'll have to - if all goes well.
      • Key in a favorite wikipedia page. If it renders badly, hit the refresh button. Thereafter rendering should be legible. Sample screenshots follow:
        • Image:TopOfPage.pngThis picture shows how the beginning of an article is rendered.
        • Image:Contents.pngThis picture shows how the Contents section (list items) is rendered.
        • Image:ThumbNailImages.pngThis picture shows how an inline article image is rendered.
        • Image:RegularParagraphs.pngThis picture shows how regular paragraphs are rendered.
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Browser add-ons & proxies

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Ad-busters

  • Opera kiosk mode filtering
    • May block access to articles if they begin with blocked strings such as "ad"
  • Atguard, Norton Internet Security, WebWasher
    • On default settings, disallows access to articles beginning with the word "ad" (ad hoc, ad hominem etc)
[edit]

Search Plugins

Plugins that can be used to search the Wikipedia easier.

  • Mozilla (all, including Firefox)
    1. Dictionary Search
      This plugin can be set up to search the Wikipedia as follows:
      1. Open "Tools->Options->Extensions"
      2. Click on "Dictionary Search", then the "Options..." button
      3. Choose one of the dictionary slots, and enter "Wikipedia page for $" (or something like that) as text, "W" as accesskey (it needs an accesskey), and "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$" as URL.
      4. Now you can highlight any word on a webpage, right-click and choose to go to the corresponding Wikipedia page.
    2. Mycroft Wikipedia Plugin
      Adds a Wikipedia in the language of your choice to the list of search engines on the Navigation bar.
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Textarea tools

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Built-in Tools

  • Lynx
    • Allows any text editor to be used once the option is set.
  • Konqueror
    • Internally highlights misspelled words in textareas.
  • Safari (for Mac OS X)
    • Underlines misspelled words in textareas if you check the Edit > Spelling > Check Spelling as You Type option. Control-click or right-click for a list of suggested corrections.
  • Omniweb (for Mac OS X)
[edit]

Add-ons

  • Internet Explorer
    • IESpell adds spellchecking to Internet Explorer.
  • Opera
    • Supports the spelling checking on Windows and Linux if you install Aspell. Instructions are available from Opera.
  • Mozilla and Firefox
    • Wikipedia Extension
    • Adds a toolbar with various formatting functions and quicklinks to most Special: pages.
      • Not tested on Mac
      • Make sure you get the latest version, 0.6.0.7 as of this writing; download at update.mozilla.org is out-of-date and does not work on 1.0
    • SpellBound adds spellchecking to Firefox.(SpellBound supports international spelling dictionaries)
    • These tools add an option to the browser to use an external editor on a web page textarea.
    • Mozex
      • Doesn't support Mozilla on Mac
      • Doesn't support Firefox 1.0 as provided (see this for a workaround)
    • Electrix
      • Not currently maintained
  • Safari (Mac only browser)
    • UnicodeChecker allows in-place conversion of Unicode text to HTML entities and back. Requires Mac OS X Panther (10.3). Freeware.
      • Great for editing text in non-ISO-8859-1 character sets on the English-language Wikipedia (Cyrillic, etc).
      • Works as a system service from a menu (Safari→Services→Unicode→), or keyboard shortcut (command-shift-8).
    • CocoAspell adds international spelling dictionaries to the inline spell-checker. Freeware.
      • Based on UNIX Aspell.
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See also

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External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Browser_notes"
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