Slashdot Mirror

I don't think AdBlock, nor "The AdBlock Crew", are professionally affiliated with Mozilla. Besides, Google's main source of income is advertising and I don't think they've balked at this extension yet. Currently AdBlock blocks all Google ads very thoroughly.

3) Implement some sort of standard memory/resource allocation/deallocation API for extensions so that people can bring up a standard window and see:

There is work going on on this (the standard window, about:memory). https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=392351
(links to bugzilla usually don't work from slashdot so you may have to copy & paste that, though they did move bugzilla to a cluster recently)

Memory generally isn't explicitly allocated by extensions - they're just JS - but theres also some work going on to trace allocations back to scripts.

Alot of the hostility over this comes from the fact that it was users who were experiencing the bugs, and users generally aren't developers. Alot of people, myself included, felt like it was next to impossible to submit bug reports because, according to http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/bugs I have to:
Use a different version of the browser to the one I have installed (I can understand getting the user to compare their installed version with the latest version to see if it's been fixed or not but this makes no sense to me)
Delete/move the profile I use (what if the bug is actually in the user profile or one of the extensions?)
Determine whether the bug is part of firefox, toolkit or core (I barely understand the difference, so how is your average user going to know?)
Write it all up, sit back and watch the bitchy infighting amongst the people in bugzilla

By setting the bar so high they essentially seem to be saying "we only want bug reports from developers who we can hopefully cajole into fixing it themselves". Reports of the myriad memory problems went unheeded because users weren't able to reproduce bugs "exactly" because they don't think like software developers.

I think if FF are really serious about getting decent bug reports, they should add something like a --debug-log switch that'll keep a track of each website the user has visited (even a simple "export by browser history for this session button" would work wonders) as well as a memory analysis of what each tab/thread or whatever is doing/using (no, I have no idea how FF is structured internally), giving a nice dump that can hopefully serve as a pointer to the devs as to where the major leaks/fragmentation were occurring. Should make the "complex" bugs considerably easier to track down, no?

I'm not trying to flame FF because generally they're doing a good job, but I'm certainly one of the people who's been hideously frustrated by the apparent attitudes of some of the developers. I understand that most of them are doing it for free and probably hate having to deal with users at the best of times but a little clarity and honesty can go a remarkably long way to appeasing your user base. More flies with honey than vinegar, that sort of thing. Don't make a user feel stupid when they can't do something, make them feel good when they can. If you can't be arsed, say so - I'd much rather hear that than someone saying "yeah, I'll get right on it" and then intentionally forgetting about it forever more.

The acid2 test on webstandards.org is currently broken. ( see Mozilla Bugzilla [ you might need to copy and paste that])

A reference to http://www.webstandards.org/404/ which must fail now returns 200.

They're not trying to make a browser for a freakin' mobile phone here ok?

Minimo and Maemo browser. Here is an article about Mozilla and mobile.

In regards to your first defect, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59314 and enjoy the bitter fighting.. it's this kind of crap in a bug that can get it ignored by developers for years. Eventually someone who is bold and who can code will Just Fix It and that'll be that.

In regards to the Downloads.. yes, make it a full download manager, I don't understand why it isn't.

Here's a blog post that gets as close to an official description as I can find. It was linked from the Mozilla developer newsletter.

Sorry for replying again but I just found out that the test itself is broken and not Firefox. The reason is given here but it appears that it now renders wrong in Opera and Safari as well.

Hmm... The test breaks and IE is suddenly compliant while previously compliant browsers are not *dons his tin foil hat*

Apparently not, the bug against it is still open. ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=289480 - but you'll have to copy/paste, since Bugzilla blocks Slashdot referrers.)

And before anyone jumps on this and points out that it used to, it has apparently regressed and no longer does, according to the last comments on the bug.

Not to mention that, even if it does (finally) pass Acid 2, there are still a ton of CSS3 features that Firefox fails to implement.

None do now.

The whole idea of the browser selecting when to enforce the standards makes it not very supportive of the standards. Opera lets you play with settings that make ti disobey the standard, but that's the user's control, which is different.

All the popular browsers do that. If the author of the web page goes through the trouble of specifying a correct doctype, the browser will follow the standards. If the doctype is missing or incorrect the browser gives up and tries its best. By default Opera uses the doctype to choose quirks or standards mode just like all the rest, but it is the only one I know of that lets the user force standards or quirks mode.

See here for how Opera does it. Here for Firefox. Here for some old info on Konqueror. And here for more general info.

• XHTML support
  
• CSS 2.1
  
• standards compliant DOM
  
• SVG
  
• canvas
  
• javascript > 1.6
  

I agree on the CSS stuff but it's still preferable to tables.

> but for some headache-inducing reason it doesn't have "getElementsByClassName". Why not? WHY NOT!? GAH!

Works for me :P

It's only 3-4 lines of script to do this anyway.

Which is why I use Google to search Wikipedia...

No, Netscape and Microsoft sold their browsers on CD.

Well there you go then.

Yeah how about firefox....

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9458

That is the bug for inline-block support. A very BASIC part of the CSS standard. For example it is useful for making a span tag retain a fixed predetermined width.

It works in every. other. browser.

Not only that - the bug has a 10 year history.

Firefox 3 will pass the acid 2 test. You can try a nightly build if your curious and flame me later if it's currently broken. I believe Firefox 1.0 through 2.0 used the same Gecko branch (1.8?) which was why there weren't very many display changes between the browser versions. Firefox 3 will use Gecko 1.9.

Firefox 3 will pass the acid 2 test. You can try a nightly build if your curious and flame me later if it's currently broken. I believe Firefox 1.0 through 2.0 used the same Gecko branch (1.8?) which was why there weren't very many display changes between the browser versions. Firefox 3 will use Gecko 1.9.

Apparently that has been fixed now? A change on the way Vista stores settings for default browser it seems.

I checked this out earlier when CNN pointed it out. While imeem doesn't make it easy for you to download music, they are streaming standard Flash video with MP3 soundtracks, which makes it easily downloadable e.g. using DownloadHelper. The MP3 files can then be extracted using e.g. MPlayer ("mplayer -dumpaudio -dumpfile foo.mp3 foo.flv").

End result: free, often decent quality (128 kbps), legal MP3s of music from major labels (where fair use applies; the usual disclaimer about not being a lawyer also applies).

Please check thy facts, kind sir. Javascript was conceived of as a Java-like script language. A poor man's Java for those that found object oriented concepts a little too brain intensive. Thrown in the first netscape browser to allow a little customisation of the DOM on the fly, for things that then then HTML 3 couldn't do properly.

You may be surprised to know that I am well in possession of the facts. I used to believe that Javascript (formerly Livescript, formerly Mocha) got its name in simply a cross-branding deal. In fact, it was far more complex than that. Javascript was created to script Java as well as the DOM. The original concept would have blown today's AJAX out of the water in usability. Alas, it was not to be.

Here's more history for you: http://safari.oreilly.com/0768666775/ch01lev1sec1

Also, here's a bit of Javascript for you, demonstrating how powerful it was intended to be:

<script>
var myobj = Packages.javax.swing.JOptionPane;
var Frame = java.awt.Frame;

var frame = new Frame();

frame.show();

myobj.showConfirmDialog(frame, "Hello from Java! See Ma? No applet!");

frame.hide();
</script>

(That will work in FireFox with a recent Java plugin. I guarantee that it will not work on Internet Explorer.)

You have to remember, Java already existed in the browser when Javascript was created. Netscape internally discussed just using Java itself for scripting, but decided that a new, more dynamic scripting language would be more useful. (Source) Thus the birth of Javascript. Eich described the first revision as "having gotten out of the lab a bit earlier than intended". Javascript 1.1 was much closer to his vision, and what we think of today when we talk about Javascript.

You also need to understand that the Javascript language went beyond just the browser. Much of its development was driven by its use as a server-side CGI language. So it became a "real" language very quickly, despite its slow start.

And if you think that's cool, remind me sometime to tell you about how multipart/x-mixed-replace could have been server-side push long before AJAX, Comet, or <event-source> ever existed. ;)

Javascript is not an object oriented language.

Incorrect. Prototype-based languages are very much OO languages. They're different from class-based, languages, but that doesn't make them any less powerful.

There is no polymorphesm

I think you misunderstand the very meaning of polymorphism if you believe that.

Here's the "Runnable" interface implemented in Javascript:

var MyObject1() {}
MyObject1.prototype.run = function() { alert("Running 1!"); }

var MyObject2() {}
MyObject2.prototype.run = function() { alert("Running 2!"); }

var objarray = [new MyObject1(), new MyObject2()];

for(var i=0; i<objarray.length; i++) objarray.run();

The polymorphism appears to work fine?

or inheritance

Funny, Netscape's Client Guide has an entire chapter on that.

strong type checking

Strong typing is not a OOP requirement. It is a feature of some languages. Nothing more, nothing less. In any case, Javascript actually has quite a few typing fe

Fair enough. I was awfully obnoxious, so I should make up for it with some actual information.

For a quick, but useful and accurate, starting point I like Mozilla's introduction.

Then I recommend downloading and trying prototype. It saves the mundane tasks, makes code a little easier to read, and is used by other popular frameworks.

Those cover the base scenarios. I haven't seen any good intermediate documentation. After the intros I suggest reading more reference documentation and just trying things out.

I'm not sure if you are trying to be ironic here or if you are actually serious.

Where would we be today if the HTML spec didn't specify jpg, gif, and png as baseline standards for the image tag?

No HTML specification does that. The farthest any HTML specification goes is mentioning that they are common formats.

Can you imagine a huge mishmash of competing proprietary image standards, many of which wouldn't even render in free software browsers like Firefox?

Yes, in fact that's precisely the state of the world today. For instance, Firefox doesn't support JPEG 2000.

That would be a nightmare

Not really, because all major browsers support JPEG and PNG, despite the fact that the HTML specifications haven't recommended them.

HTML is a standard; it only works when it specifies exactly which formats are to be used

It does no such thing. For instance, it doesn't require browsers to implement JavaScript, it provides scripting language-independent hooks that can be used to support JavaScript or any other scripting language. It doesn't require browsers to implement CSS, it provides stylesheet language-independent hooks that can be used to support CSS or any other stylesheet language. It doesn't require browsers to implement JPEG or PNG, it provides image format-independent hooks that can be used to support JPEG, PNG or any other image format. And the HTML 5 specification is taking the exact same approach by not requiring Theora or Vorbis, but providing codec-independent hooks that can be used to support Theora, Vorbis or any other codec.

The choice of video and audio codecs is outside the scope of the HTML 5 specification. Attempting to more tightly couple independent formats is myopic.

You sound like the perfect candidate for the IETab or IEView extensions. Now all you have to do is configure your security settings once, and then never open IE directly again for those IE-only sites. Unfortunately, NoScript functionality doesn't work in the rendered tabs, but since you have scripting blocked in your IE settings anyhow, this is only a minor annoyance.

Some silly people even install some sort of ActiveX extension for Firefox. Why they would do something dumb like that I will never know (and no, I can think of no valid reason to blow a hole in your security by installing ActiveX in Firefox. If you want to use ActiveX, stick to IE).

Note: I won't link to the ActiveX extension, it causes a bug in NoScript that opens up your entire system to hostile takeover. However, there is a work-around for that, but better safe than sorry I say.

You sound like the perfect candidate for the IETab or IEView extensions. Now all you have to do is configure your security settings once, and then never open IE directly again for those IE-only sites. Unfortunately, NoScript functionality doesn't work in the rendered tabs, but since you have scripting blocked in your IE settings anyhow, this is only a minor annoyance.

Some silly people even install some sort of ActiveX extension for Firefox. Why they would do something dumb like that I will never know (and no, I can think of no valid reason to blow a hole in your security by installing ActiveX in Firefox. If you want to use ActiveX, stick to IE).

Note: I won't link to the ActiveX extension, it causes a bug in NoScript that opens up your entire system to hostile takeover. However, there is a work-around for that, but better safe than sorry I say.

I don't have any virus scanner or malware blocker, or firewall or any kind of security software whatsoever installed on my computer.

[BlockSite]
http://facebook.com/
http://gamespot.com/
http://kongregate.com/
http://cbs.sportsline.com/
http://dotspotter.com/
http://.ebay.com/
http://.busted/ tees.com*
http://.iwon.com/
http://.citysearch.com/
http://.pronto.com/
http://.echomusic.com/
http://.travelocity.com/
http://.allposters.com/
http://.blockbuster.com/
http://.bluefly.com/
http://.dotspotter.com/
http://.gamefly.com/
http://.hotwire.com/
http://.joost.com/
http://.livejournal.com/
http://.livenation.com/
http://.mercantila.com/
http://.nba.com/
http://.nytimes.com/
http://.overstock.com/
http://.redlightcenter.com/
http://.seamlessweb.com/
http://.sony.com/
http://.sonypictures./
http://.theknot.com/
http://.typepad.com/
http://.viagogo.com/
http://.vox.com/
http://.yelp.com/
http://.weddingchannel.com/
http://.zappos.com/

Many of my crashes lately were bug 388993, Crash when opening a new tab.

So I have updated Firebug on 2007-12-01, as John J. Barton said.

I haven't had any crash since; I don't know if that's because of the update, or because of my Fx usage patterns (the crash-full days were probably up to a week apart).

Hope that helps.

Many of my crashes lately were bug 388993, Crash when opening a new tab.

So I have updated Firebug on 2007-12-01, as John J. Barton said.

I haven't had any crash since; I don't know if that's because of the update, or because of my Fx usage patterns (the crash-full days were probably up to a week apart).

Hope that helps.

You want PwdHash for Firefox. It hashes your password with the site domain (though not with subdomains.) This makes phishing very, very hard.

PwdHash: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1033

Based on work from https://www.pwdhash.com/ or http://crypto.stanford.edu/PwdHash/

Check out the Stanford password hash ("PwdHash") program. It already does what you want, complete with extensions for Firefox and IE:

https://www.pwdhash.com/ or http://crypto.stanford.edu/PwdHash/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1033

When away from your computer, you can use their website (or a copy of their code on your website) to generate the hashed passwords.

Dear Facebook, Stop Invading My Privacy!! Well, facebook has done it again. First the third party applications, now their new ad program called Beacon. Why is it called Beacon? I actually don't know but if I had to guess, its because facebook is basically attaching a beacon to your web browser that would allow them to monitor your online activities on other sites, even if you're not logged into facebook. This is a big no no in my book. The data transfered between my computer and sites other than facebook is my own business, not theirs. They are not even allowing us to turn the tracking off. It seems that facebook thinks that we should be required to give up our personal liberties in order to have a profile. They have have gone too far! We need to stand up for our privacy rights and say to facebook, "enough is enough!" This is an official petition to facebook, demanding that we, the facebook using public, have the right to choose what data is collected about our web usage outside of the facebook web site. This data collection is an unwelcome invasion of our computing privacy and we should have the right to prevent this. Join the fight against the facebook invasion! -- Stop Beacon from Getting your Info with Blocksite or AdBlockPlus A description of Beacon, technical details, and how to stop it: http://www.radiantcore.com/blog/archives/23/11/2007/deconstructingfacebookbeaconjavascript If you are serious about privacy and the lack of a comprehensive "opt-out" feature on Facebook, it is important to oppose the institution of Beacon in two ways: 1)Petition Mark about it, obviously. However, Facebook seems to be playing dumb in this regard. 2)So, be sure to protect yourself on an individual level as well. Blocksite is a Firefox extension that you can use so that Beacon cannot gather data on your browsing outside of Facebook GO TO: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3145 AND DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL THE EXTENSION. THEN go to "Tools" in Firefox, select the Blocksite extension, and click "Preferences" or "Options" Be sure the radio button "Blacklist" is selected, and not "Whitelist" Click "Add" next to the Blacklist box, and add the following: *facebook.com/beacon* Then click "OK" With the * on each end, this acts as a wildcard, so that all sites related to beacon on facebook are blocked. It takes like, well, I don't know, maybe 3 minutes tops, and it blocks Beacon at the user end. AdBlock Plus also has the same feature, and can also be used to block those giant banner ads that take up a large portion of the left side of the page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865 Short article about Beacon and overall privacy: http://www.ideashower.com/blog/facebook-beacon-two-weeks-later/ There are other extensions that are good in terms of privacy, such as Cookie Safe, and anonymization software such as Privoxy/Vidalia. They can be easily found by searching in the extensions on the mozilla website. Also, be sure to complain to participating websites and tell them to not use the Beacon application until the options for opting-out change. A list of 41 sites participating so far. http://www.dcoates.com/content/2007/11/17/41-sites-using-facebook-beacon-facebook-know-your-porn-viewing%3F -- Petition to tell Facebook, give us OUR PRIVACY This group has two purposes. First to inform everyone using facebook that facebook uses a program that allows it to track what it's members do on the web whether or not they are logged on to facebook at the time. This program is called Beacon and they can track what you do (including what you buy or sell) on other web

Dear Facebook, Stop Invading My Privacy!! Well, facebook has done it again. First the third party applications, now their new ad program called Beacon. Why is it called Beacon? I actually don't know but if I had to guess, its because facebook is basically attaching a beacon to your web browser that would allow them to monitor your online activities on other sites, even if you're not logged into facebook. This is a big no no in my book. The data transfered between my computer and sites other than facebook is my own business, not theirs. They are not even allowing us to turn the tracking off. It seems that facebook thinks that we should be required to give up our personal liberties in order to have a profile. They have have gone too far! We need to stand up for our privacy rights and say to facebook, "enough is enough!" This is an official petition to facebook, demanding that we, the facebook using public, have the right to choose what data is collected about our web usage outside of the facebook web site. This data collection is an unwelcome invasion of our computing privacy and we should have the right to prevent this. Join the fight against the facebook invasion! -- Stop Beacon from Getting your Info with Blocksite or AdBlockPlus A description of Beacon, technical details, and how to stop it: http://www.radiantcore.com/blog/archives/23/11/2007/deconstructingfacebookbeaconjavascript If you are serious about privacy and the lack of a comprehensive "opt-out" feature on Facebook, it is important to oppose the institution of Beacon in two ways: 1)Petition Mark about it, obviously. However, Facebook seems to be playing dumb in this regard. 2)So, be sure to protect yourself on an individual level as well. Blocksite is a Firefox extension that you can use so that Beacon cannot gather data on your browsing outside of Facebook GO TO: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3145 AND DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL THE EXTENSION. THEN go to "Tools" in Firefox, select the Blocksite extension, and click "Preferences" or "Options" Be sure the radio button "Blacklist" is selected, and not "Whitelist" Click "Add" next to the Blacklist box, and add the following: *facebook.com/beacon* Then click "OK" With the * on each end, this acts as a wildcard, so that all sites related to beacon on facebook are blocked. It takes like, well, I don't know, maybe 3 minutes tops, and it blocks Beacon at the user end. AdBlock Plus also has the same feature, and can also be used to block those giant banner ads that take up a large portion of the left side of the page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865 Short article about Beacon and overall privacy: http://www.ideashower.com/blog/facebook-beacon-two-weeks-later/ There are other extensions that are good in terms of privacy, such as Cookie Safe, and anonymization software such as Privoxy/Vidalia. They can be easily found by searching in the extensions on the mozilla website. Also, be sure to complain to participating websites and tell them to not use the Beacon application until the options for opting-out change. A list of 41 sites participating so far. http://www.dcoates.com/content/2007/11/17/41-sites-using-facebook-beacon-facebook-know-your-porn-viewing%3F -- Petition to tell Facebook, give us OUR PRIVACY This group has two purposes. First to inform everyone using facebook that facebook uses a program that allows it to track what it's members do on the web whether or not they are logged on to facebook at the time. This program is called Beacon and they can track what you do (including what you buy or sell) on other web

But what I really wish google would fucking drop from their index is experts-exchange and tech-republic. The last damn thing I want any of my search results to return is "Hey--here's the answer you're looking for. The solution is to...[PAY US FOR A FUCKING SUBSCRIPTION PLEASE]"

The crashes I've experienced (although my experiences are a bit more stable) involve the latest version and thus would require a bug report. However, simply saying that Firefox crashes isn't very useful - you at least need to know where it crashes in order for the developers to know how track down the bug more easily. That's why you need a symbol table, and for the first time, there's a symbol-table server to report these bugs: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Using_the_Mozilla_symbol_server

My last crash - Mozilla went into an infinite loop and kept allocating memory. When an allocation failed, the application crashed in the ntdll.dll module - whether there's a bug in the DLL file or Mozilla passing an invalid parameter was not determined.

Re: IGN Top 100 -- what ads?

Oh yeah, Adblock....

Carry on....

well, they fixed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=405584 (which broke in .10)

it may not matter to you, but my favourite addon ChromaTabs was broken because of that one.

is it newsworthy? of course not. i got the auto-update notice long before i saw it on slashdot. guess it's a slow day.

well, they fixed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=405584 (which broke in .10)

it may not matter to you, but my favourite addon ChromaTabs was broken because of that one.

is it newsworthy? of course not. i got the auto-update notice long before i saw it on slashdot. guess it's a slow day.

They're listed here, with links to articles that offer more details: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/known-vulnerabilities.html

2.0.0.10 f*cked up a lot of AJAXy web apps, and, frankly, Mozilla's initial response was less than "customer oriented". The "shoot the messanger" attitude exhibited in some of those early Bugzilla posts - despite there being numerous random URLs provided to point out the flaw - is a bit troubling.

As is the fact that Firefox's release process seems to be either lacking basic tests for std. API's, or is choosing to skip those tests.

And of course, the lack of an easy 1-click "Revert" menu item/button to back down versions when an auto-updater introduces such a bug further compounds the impact of these sort of bugs.

Of course, the /. crowd are somehow spinning this serious failure of both software and processes into proof of Firefox's superiority, due to the quick turnaround time. However, those of us that were actually bitten by this - and esp. had customers bitten by this (see the Bugzilla link above) - are having to rethink the usual practice of recommending FF over IE/Opera/etc.

What bug? I see bug 246078 which was fixed years ago. Is there a new bug? If so, you should make sure you report it properly.

Firefox has an option to only send cookies to the originating site, but, because in this case third-party sites use JavaScript from Facebook's servers, the cookie can still be read. As you say, it would be nice if browsers could block this kind of stuff.

If IE, FF, Opera, and Safari all produced the same exact rendering result, then why would we have more than one browser?

/* Change cursor for links that open in new window */
:link[target="_blank"], :visited[target="_blank"],
:link[target="_new"], :visited[target="_new"] {
        cursor: crosshair;
}
 
/* Change cursor for JavaScript links */
a[href^="javascript:"] {
        cursor: move;
}

To add insult to injury, I'd like to point out that MS Exchange+Outlook is not only about calendaring. It's also about:

• Tasks
  
• Contacts
  
• Notes
  
• Journal entries
  
• Instant messaging
  
• Custom forms for distributing and collecting information,
  

everything abstracted at some level so you can:

• give access to those elements to other coworkers with a unified interface
  
• create custom views to visualize sets of those types of objects in various ways (e.g. you can display calendar events on a timeline view, similarly to how journal entries are shown by default)
  
• use public folders with them (well, not anymore - the functionality deprecated...) and have user-controllable ACLs on everything
  

Plus lots of additional usability features that OpenSource community failed to replicate, e.g.:

• real-time bidirectional client-server communication (server can notify the client instantly about a change in a folder - e.g. a new meeting added by someone else who has proper permissions to the folder you're in)
  
• a nice client-side UI for managin server-side mail filters
  
• ability to control permissions about who can send mail in whose name (without admin intervention)
  
• import/export of various types of data in lots of formats - CSV, TXT, vCard, vCalendar etc. - compare that to Mozilla Thunderbird, which after over 4 years still cannot sort out Outlook Express import properly if the files are in a different location than software expects.
  

Code execution via QuickTime Media-link files

Jim, take a look at Thunderbrid with Lighting or Sunbird. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/ The community is making great progress. It may not be everything you want but I think you will find it to be pretty good and getting better all the time. Your input will also help make it better.