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Green: Red… why in the heck are you wearing a huge red lizard costume?
Red: What? You don’t recognize me? I’m today I’m “Mozilla!”
Green: What… the? Ohhhh… Okay I get it… *Shakes head* Man you’re weird. This will take some explaining, so bear with us. I guess that leads into this week question.
Brandon B. from California Asks:
“Which web browser do you recommend for Pogo.com, and why does my Java test tell me I am running the ‘Mozilla’ browser? I thought I was running Internet Explorer!”
Green: Great question Brandon. Just in case anyone out there in Pogo land doesn’t know exactly what a browser is, let’s start there.
A browser is what 99.9% of you out there are looking at right now, unless you happened to have printed this story or something… hehe. In its most basic sense a browser is a computer program that is designed to connect to the Internet and read web pages.
Red: Warning! History of the Internet lesson ahead!
So, back millions of years ago when the Internet was young (Fine okay, 1993, but it feels like millions of years ago in the computer age!) The first widely popular web browser was invented and it was called “Mosaic.”
Green: Then, the company that invented Mosaic wanted to make a leaner and meaner better and badder web browser. They wanted a web browser that would be so awesome and that it would kill Mosaic. They decided to code-name it “Mozilla.”
Red: Har Har… get it? Mozaic+killa = Mozilla. Anyway “Mozilla” was a huge hit, and almost everyone used it. By “everyone,” of course, I mean the very few people who were Internet users at the time. Most people these days don’t realize that that original company was Netscape and that the final name of the browser was none other than Netscape Navigator!
Green: So, “back in the day” Netscape got so popular that websites would check to make sure you were using the Mozilla browser. If a webpage didn’t see you were using Mozilla, it would say “Sorry you need Mozilla (or Netscape) to read this webpage.”
So, to finally answer your question Brandon, your browser says it’s Mozilla because its pretending to be Mozilla to work with older webpages. Just like Red here is pretending to be Mozilla, Netscape’s mascot. And failing horribly I might add.
Red: *Rolls eyes* So, now that we have thoroughly confused the heck out of everyone we can move on. Just remember Firefox, AOL, Internet Explorer and Safari are all written to be able to read pages written with the Mozilla technology. Don’t worry too much about the whole Mozilla thing. It’s largely irrelevant but we Tiki’s are such geeks we thought we would tell ya’ll anyway!
If you’re geeky like us and want to learn more about it, just do a web search on “User Agent Strings.
Green: So, we should clear some things up about browsers. Not all browsers are created equal. You would hope that every web browser would work with Pogo perfectly and display everything correctly, but unfortunately it’s not the case. Every browser is different.
Red: So, because of this, Pogo.com has chosen five different browsers to support. Even these have their different quirks. Which one you use is up to you, but we do recommend you use one of these five.
Remember those QA people we talked about last time? Well, they test Pogo in the following browsers and report back to the engineers each week when we make minor (and major) changes to the website or games.
The browsers we support for the PC are:
For the MAC we support:
Technically we do not support Linux, but I’d try Firefox if I were you. *wink*
Green: Green: Here is the “quick list” for things you might find helpful about each browser.
| Browser | Java Type | Comments |
| Internet Explorer 6/7 | MS Java 1.1.4, Sun Java 1.5.0_xx and 1.6.0_xx (Windows Vista) | Most common browser. We test extensively with this browser. Comes with Windows |
| Firefox 2 | Sun Java 1.5.0_xx and 1.6.0_xx (Vista) Sun Java 1.4.2_xx (Mac OSX) | Doesn’t use MS Java. Cannot play Wild Tangent games, and some other 3rd party Pogo games. Mac runs a bit slow with Java. |
| AOL | MS Java 1.1.4, Sun Java 1.5.0_xx and 1.6.0_xx (Windows Vista) | Uses Internet Explorer technology and IE’s cache. Can cause issues with Minis. |
| Safari | Sun Java 1.4.2_xx (Mac OSX) | Only on Mac, usually runs Java faster than Firefox. Can cause issues with Minis. Comes with Mac OSX |
I personally use Firefox. And my goofy brother uses Internet Explorer. And our mutual friend Melmac uses Safari. They all work. We use all five trying to troubleshoot your systems.
Red: Oh, and if you’ve been reading the community news site lately you will see that there are currently some weird issues with the AOL browser and caching that might cause the Mini Mall to act weird. We have more info on how to fix that here at Pogo’s Help Site.
Green: So, in conclusion, what browser is the best? Well, that’s for you to decide. They all have their ups and downs. And everyone has their personal preferences. Also, our tech support team might ask you to try a different browser once in a while. With broadband, most other browsers are pretty quick to download, so it usually helps them out for you to try a different one. Who knows maybe you will like the new one.
Red: Phew… this Mozilla costume is getting hot! I think I’m going to take the head off. ….*grunt*….*pull*….!!!!! Oh no! It’s stuck!
Green: Oh yeah? Is it now? Hmmm… too bad about that…
Red: It almost feels like it’s somehow attached…
Green: Do you remember our last meeting, and that trick you pulled with my surfboard and the superglue? Well… I’ve been peeling pieces of Surfboard off my feet for weeks. I found the rest of glue in the kitchen junk drawer. Thought I’d help you finish off the tube. HAHA!
Red: ARRrrrrggg!!! AHhh!!!!! Noooooo! As soon as I get out of this thing GREEN!
Green: Haha gotcha Red! Until next time everyone! Enjoy Pogo!
