A handy reminder for anyone playing with html forms: Internet Explorer does not post values assigned to an input with type ‘image’. It ignores the value and simply posts the co-ordinates at which the image was clicked.

The most likely reason to post a value associated with an image input is probably if calling a specific function. In this case, the image is usually in place of a submit button so the fix is quite simple: put the name/value into a hidden element so the information is definitely posted when the form is submitted.

<input type="image" src="save.gif" value="Change" name="ChangeInfo">

Would become:

<input type="hidden" value="Change" name="ChangeInfo">
<input type="image" src="save.gif" name="SaveChanges">

Last week I commented on Microsoft pushing potentially unstable software to users who were likely to be unaware of the potential risks. Unfortunately it seems Google is no more responsible, with a link at the bottom of each Youtube page inviting users to “Try YouTube in a new web browser! Download Google Chrome”.

The fact that I’ve been playing with the beta of Chrome for weeks and haven’t had any problems yet is beside the point. There could be stability or security issues, which could leave many unsuspecting users vulnerable.

We’ve been featured in The Independent Newspaper as part of Energy Efficiency Week. Primate is an official promoter of Carbon Creditz, so now you can claim 500 free Carbon Creditz when you sign up for a Free Business Website.

It seems increasingly fashionable, if somewhat worrying, to push beta releases to the unsuspecting general public. I’m as keen to see the release of Internet Explorer 8 as the next developer, not least because it will be the first Microsoft browser to run in standards compliant mode by default; but it does concern me when I visit the IE homepage and am greeted by a big advert inviting me to download IE8 beta with the tag line “Introducing Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 - faster, easier, and safer than ever.” Is the average web user aware that beta means it is potentially unstable or insecure pre-release software put out there purely for testing purposes? I doubt it.

It’s been a few weeks since Google released a beta of their new Chrome web browser and we’ve been having a play with it. First impressions are good - nice look, good speed and stability.

It seems they’ve put plenty of thought into what a browser interface should do these days and opted for minimalistic, even going so far as to replace the conventional title bar with the page tabs when the window is maximised. All other buttons and menu items are in-line with the address bar, while the status bar only appears in the bottom left of the window when there is information to display; a very neat solution indeed.

Primate Website in Chrome

Thankfully Google realised that the last thing developers needed was yet another rendering engine so Chrome is based on the Webkit open source project, a good standards-compliant engine already used by the Safari browser which is popular with Mac users. It has to be said I think that Chrome has slightly better text anti-aliasing than Safari. Google Chrome is in fact an offshoot from the Chromium open source project.

Security is definitely a hot topic these days and Google have published plenty of information regarding Chrome’s abilities to keep you safe online. I won’t claim to understand the ins and outs of software programming and I’m fairly sure anybody who’s interested in the subject will already have read the release documentation, but consideration has been given to security relationships between the browser process, rendering engine and plugins through use of sandboxing. Many people have already expressed concern over Google’s optional collection of usage information though it’s hardly a new idea; many browsers and other applications have this feature although it’s not clear exactly what information they gather given the chance.

Google have also been quick to stress that the release of Chrome will not affect their sponsorship of Mozilla’s Firefox browser despite it’s release coinciding with the end of their two-year contract with Mozilla.

All in all this is one to watch. Google undoubtedly have an ability to market new web services so we could see a reasonable uptake of the software. From what I’ve seen, that’s probably no bad thing.

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