Advanced Physics Homework Help: Itex Issues & HTML Entities

[turin]

I've noticed that people in the advanced physics homework help forum are quite itex happy. Unfortunately, my browser (Firefox 3.8.6) isn't rendering it, so I just see a mess of commands and control characters. Any suggestions (such as a browser setting)?

Also, are the html entities still favored over full-blown inline tex, whenever possible?

 

[jhae2.718]

Do you have JavaScript enabled?

Now that PF uses MathJax, there really isn't the bandwidth reason to favor HTML symbols over TeX.

 

[jtbell]

Is there some reason you can't upgrade to the current version of Firefox which is 10.0.2 (at least under Mac OS)?

 

[turin]

Version 10 already! The version I'm using came bundled in Ubuntu Lucid Lynx less than two years ago. I tend to shy away from upgrading, but the version number increase seems exponential. I wonder if there are two different developments of Firefox, one for Mac and one for humble people :)~

(I shy away from Javascript as well, because it seems to emphasize mouse over keyboard. So that explains my issue, which is certainly nothing new, just disappointing.)

Anyway, thanks for the replies, y'all.

 

[Fredrik]

Version 10 already! The version I'm using came bundled in Ubuntu Lucid Lynx less than two years ago. I tend to shy away from upgrading, but the version number increase seems exponential. I wonder if there are two different developments of Firefox, one for Mac and one for humble people :)~

(I shy away from Javascript as well, because it seems to emphasize mouse over keyboard. So that explains my issue, which is certainly nothing new, just disappointing.)

It's 10.0.2 on Windows too. Once they had released version 4, we got 5,6,7 etc. very quickly. I guess some marketing genius had decided that they need to catch up with Internet Explorer's version numbers.

You will need javascript though. It's annoying that Firefox doesn't allow us to have javascript disabled except for sites on a list of exceptions. I would like that, because there are sites that use javascript to show pop-up ads.

Also, are the html entities still favored over full-blown inline tex, whenever possible?

I would say no, since LaTeX no longer puts a load on the server. Since we switched to MathJax, the server doesn't have to render images or store them. It's all done on the client side. However, I recently had this conversation with Mark44:

...posts with lots and lots of LaTeX take an inordinate amount of time to load in some browsers, and that ticks me off when it takes forever for a page to load.

Is that really still a problem? Some old version of IE (that very few people use) had problems before, but I thought it was fixed by the recent upgrade of MathJax. I'm using Firefox, and I've never had any problems.

Yes, it's still a problem in IE9, which is not an old version.

So at least one person, and possibly all IE9 users, would prefer if we avoid LaTeX. It would actually be nice if other IE9 users could let us know if it's really slow for them too. For me (Firefox 10), it usually takes at most a second for the images to appear.

 

[tiny-tim]

...posts with lots and lots of LaTeX take an inordinate amount of time to load in some browsers, and that ticks me off when it takes forever for a page to load.

even in Safari 4.1.3 on Mac OS 10.4.11, some pages take over 30 seconds to load

 

[Borg]

You will need javascript though. It's annoying that Firefox doesn't allow us to have javascript disabled except for sites on a list of exceptions. I would like that, because there are sites that use javascript to show pop-up ads.

Firefox has a Add-on called NoScript that allows you to kill JavaScript globally or just for individual sites. It has a lot of features including Whitelists, etc. but I mainly use it to block JavaScript for individual sites.

 

[jhae2.718]

Version 10 already! The version I'm using came bundled in Ubuntu Lucid Lynx less than two years ago. I tend to shy away from upgrading, but the version number increase seems exponential. I wonder if there are two different developments of Firefox, one for Mac and one for humble people :)~

Firefox switched to creating a new major version about every two minutes. I have 10.0.2 on Natty.

You should be able to upgrade to FF10 in Lucid.

 

[mishrashubham]

Firefox has a Add-on called NoScript that allows you to kill JavaScript globally or just for individual sites. It has a lot of features including Whitelists, etc. but I mainly use it to block JavaScript for individual sites.

I second that; Noscript is a pretty powerful addon and also quite lightweight. Has tons of features (including the basic black and white lists), for example you can enable javascript on some sites temporarily as well, protects from clickjacking etc. It is under active development and therefore updates frequently and automatically (does not silently consume bandwidth however). Highly recommended.