Domain: mozilla.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to mozilla.org.
Comments · 17,579
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Firefox and usemap
I'll consider using Firefox again once the developers stop marking bugs as INVALID, despite the exhibited behavior going against the standard. Particularly since it works correctly in the other major browsers.
Until then, I'll stick with Opera, thanks. -
Re:Who are they hiding the features from?
They're not hiding details from anybody, although they're also not widely publicising details to those who aren't interested in trying out pre-release software – the beta 1 release notes include a summary of new features, and there's more information for developers on how to use the features. (Beta 2 is expected for tomorrow and is primarily bug fixes; there won't be any significant changes to the feature set until Firefox 3, which seems to be the real major release.)
From the release notes:
- Built in Phishing Protection.
- Search suggestions now appear with search history in the search box for Google, Yahoo! and Answers.com
- Changes to tabbed browsing behavior
- Ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs
- Better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
- Inline spell checking in text boxes
- Search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
- New microsummaries feature for bookmarks
- Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
- New combined and improved Add-Ons manager for extensions and themes
- New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
- Support for JavaScript 1.7
- Support for client-side session and persistent storage
- Extended search plugin format
- Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
- Support for SVG text using svg:textPath
Features like phishing protection were actually announced for IE7 over a year ago, but it seems that Firefox will be the first to ship with them. (Firefox also defaults to an implementation that better protects your privacy than IE, using an automatically-updated blacklist of sites instead of sending every URL you visit to a web service run by a company you may or may not trust.)
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Re:Who are they hiding the features from?
They're not hiding details from anybody, although they're also not widely publicising details to those who aren't interested in trying out pre-release software – the beta 1 release notes include a summary of new features, and there's more information for developers on how to use the features. (Beta 2 is expected for tomorrow and is primarily bug fixes; there won't be any significant changes to the feature set until Firefox 3, which seems to be the real major release.)
From the release notes:
- Built in Phishing Protection.
- Search suggestions now appear with search history in the search box for Google, Yahoo! and Answers.com
- Changes to tabbed browsing behavior
- Ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs
- Better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
- Inline spell checking in text boxes
- Search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
- New microsummaries feature for bookmarks
- Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
- New combined and improved Add-Ons manager for extensions and themes
- New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
- Support for JavaScript 1.7
- Support for client-side session and persistent storage
- Extended search plugin format
- Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
- Support for SVG text using svg:textPath
Features like phishing protection were actually announced for IE7 over a year ago, but it seems that Firefox will be the first to ship with them. (Firefox also defaults to an implementation that better protects your privacy than IE, using an automatically-updated blacklist of sites instead of sending every URL you visit to a web service run by a company you may or may not trust.)
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Re:Who are they hiding the features from?
They're not hiding details from anybody, although they're also not widely publicising details to those who aren't interested in trying out pre-release software – the beta 1 release notes include a summary of new features, and there's more information for developers on how to use the features. (Beta 2 is expected for tomorrow and is primarily bug fixes; there won't be any significant changes to the feature set until Firefox 3, which seems to be the real major release.)
From the release notes:
- Built in Phishing Protection.
- Search suggestions now appear with search history in the search box for Google, Yahoo! and Answers.com
- Changes to tabbed browsing behavior
- Ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs
- Better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
- Inline spell checking in text boxes
- Search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
- New microsummaries feature for bookmarks
- Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
- New combined and improved Add-Ons manager for extensions and themes
- New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
- Support for JavaScript 1.7
- Support for client-side session and persistent storage
- Extended search plugin format
- Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
- Support for SVG text using svg:textPath
Features like phishing protection were actually announced for IE7 over a year ago, but it seems that Firefox will be the first to ship with them. (Firefox also defaults to an implementation that better protects your privacy than IE, using an automatically-updated blacklist of sites instead of sending every URL you visit to a web service run by a company you may or may not trust.)
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Here's the actual new feature list
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Firefox_2_fo
r _developers
New features for end users
Firefox 2 provides the same clean, streamlined, interface as previous versions, with small improvements to make it easier to use. In addition, it includes improved security features and useful tools to make the Internet experience safer, faster, and better than ever before.
User experience
* Inline spell checking for text areas lets you compose with confidence in web forms.
* Microsummaries provide a way to create bookmarks that display information pulled from the site they refer to, updated automatically. Great for stock tickers, auction monitoring, and so forth.
* Extension Manager user interface has been enhanced.
* Search engine manager lets you rearrange and remove search engines shown in the search bar.
* Tabbed browsing enhancements include adding close buttons to each tab, adjustments to how Firefox decides which tab to bring you to when you close the current tab, and simplified preferences for tabs.
* Autodetection of search engines allows search engines that offer plugins for the Firefox search bar to offer to install their plugins for you.
* Search suggestions allow search engines to offer suggested search terms based on what you've typed so far in the search bar.
Security and privacy
* Anti-phishing feature to warn users when the web site you're looking at appears to be a forgery. -
development in the dark?
"Mozilla isn't giving many details on the soon-to-be-launched Firefox 2"
Can the author really not realize this is an open-source project and that the developers make it a point to open this project up? This link demonstrates the beauty of open source projects -- here is as much (probably more) as you want to know about the development work.
http://developer.mozilla.org/ -
Re:A Browser Suite
You mean like Seamonkey?
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Keep Mozilla Simple
Seth Godin, author of several books on the Internet, including Small Is the New Big, says Mozilla needs to incorporate tools like tagging or building tools like a link to eBay's Skype calling service that will help keep friends connected.
Wow, that sounds like a great plug-in. I cannot wait for other people to start using that. That should be right down some of my friend's alleys. Some of my other friends, I couldn't even show them how to use StumbleUpon or the GMail Manager. Keep it simple for the people like my parents, please.Mozilla isn't giving many details on the soon-to-be-launched Firefox 2, but Dotzler says there will be new features not found in current browsers.
Once again, I look forward to these plug-ins. And let's hope they're either plug-ins or disabled upon installation. You see, something that makes plane jane Mozilla so amazing is that it doesn't come as a bloated application waiting to error. More complicated programs suffer more memory and more bugs. I don't want my Mozilla to have a bazillion functions, keep it simple or you'll lose me as a fanboy. -
Keep Mozilla Simple
Seth Godin, author of several books on the Internet, including Small Is the New Big, says Mozilla needs to incorporate tools like tagging or building tools like a link to eBay's Skype calling service that will help keep friends connected.
Wow, that sounds like a great plug-in. I cannot wait for other people to start using that. That should be right down some of my friend's alleys. Some of my other friends, I couldn't even show them how to use StumbleUpon or the GMail Manager. Keep it simple for the people like my parents, please.Mozilla isn't giving many details on the soon-to-be-launched Firefox 2, but Dotzler says there will be new features not found in current browsers.
Once again, I look forward to these plug-ins. And let's hope they're either plug-ins or disabled upon installation. You see, something that makes plane jane Mozilla so amazing is that it doesn't come as a bloated application waiting to error. More complicated programs suffer more memory and more bugs. I don't want my Mozilla to have a bazillion functions, keep it simple or you'll lose me as a fanboy. -
Re:Webpage design
javascript is pretty important to keep enabled. Plenty of legit uses, and most sites use some form. Why not just install the web developer plugin and toggle it? thats what i do with referers as the odd site doesnt work properly with them disabled. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/60/
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Why do they do this...The question in TFA is why do they do this?
The answer is: They are assholes, idiots, lazy, in bed with Microsoft, or some combination thereof.
Personally I get left out of video sites all the time because I choose to use an older version of Windows (because I can). These sites will kindly tell me that they only "support" running on a PC with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Yet sites like Google Video work perfectly for me.
What really blows my mind are old sites that check your UA to make sure you are running "Netscape", although spoofing the UA in Firefox usually lets it work fine.
I follow the Firefox bad site reporter data at http://reporter.mozilla.org/app/ and it boggles my mind how many sites are like this. -
Karma Whoring
For everyone using firefox, here's a nice little extension to get past this stuff. You can also set it as a googlebot and get all their articles for free.
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Re:Offtopic: flash download
There's a Firefox plugin for just that purpose. It also supports Google Video and a ton of other sites. The videos in YouTube are actually "flash video" (.flv), not Flash per se. You can play them with e.g. "mplayer" (not the same as Windows Media Player).
Firefox plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/
MPlayer: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ -
Re:Let's be accurate.
Of course I can back it up. Other people can, too. Anyone who knows C++ can look at the code to either projects, and can make the judgement for themselves. If they have any background with developing large scale C++ applications, their analysis will mirror mine.
I don't want you to take my word for it. I want you to do the research for yourself. I've provided the links to the source repositories below, for your convenience. Keep in mind that they're both the development branches, so the code itself for both may not be perfect. The clarity of the developmental KHTML code compared to the equivalent developmental Gecko code shows how much better the KDE development process is.
Here is the KHTML source code: http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdelibs/khtml/
Here is the Gecko source code: http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/
And I'm not sure why you see fit to engage in personal attacks against me, just because I have proven that your browser of choice (obviously Firefox) is technically inferior to Konqueror. I do ask that you investigate this matter for yourself. Peruse the source code for each project. You will clearly see that the KHTML code is of a far higher quality than that of Gecko. -
Re:Explained in FAQ
I'd be interested in knowing exactly what sorts of problems they have with Safari's design mode support
http://www.mozilla.org/editor/midas-spec.html
You see that big list of Supported Commands? Safari only supports bold, italic, and undo.
Even worse, Safari doesn't support the StyleWithCSS command, and the actual code output is a mess of Apple-specific classes and spans everywhere. I've seen cleaner code come out of frontpage. -
Re:What?!Ok, I'll cite google then, from the url that was in my post (if you've read it correctly)
Does Gmail support my browser? Gmail is accessible at http://mail.google.com/ wherever you have access to the Internet via a PC, Linux, or Macintosh (Mac) computer with one of the following fully supported browsers:
- IE 5.5+ (download: Windows)
- Netscape 7.1+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Mozilla 1.4+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Firefox 0.8+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Safari 1.3+ (download: Mac)
e r=15046">basic HTML view of Gmail. Basic HTML view works with the following browsers, as well as many others:- IE 4.0+
- Netscape 4.07+
- Opera 6.03+
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Re:What?!Ok, I'll cite google then, from the url that was in my post (if you've read it correctly)
Does Gmail support my browser? Gmail is accessible at http://mail.google.com/ wherever you have access to the Internet via a PC, Linux, or Macintosh (Mac) computer with one of the following fully supported browsers:
- IE 5.5+ (download: Windows)
- Netscape 7.1+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Mozilla 1.4+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Firefox 0.8+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Safari 1.3+ (download: Mac)
e r=15046">basic HTML view of Gmail. Basic HTML view works with the following browsers, as well as many others:- IE 4.0+
- Netscape 4.07+
- Opera 6.03+
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Re:What?!Ok, I'll cite google then, from the url that was in my post (if you've read it correctly)
Does Gmail support my browser? Gmail is accessible at http://mail.google.com/ wherever you have access to the Internet via a PC, Linux, or Macintosh (Mac) computer with one of the following fully supported browsers:
- IE 5.5+ (download: Windows)
- Netscape 7.1+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Mozilla 1.4+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Firefox 0.8+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Safari 1.3+ (download: Mac)
e r=15046">basic HTML view of Gmail. Basic HTML view works with the following browsers, as well as many others:- IE 4.0+
- Netscape 4.07+
- Opera 6.03+
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Re:What?!Ok, I'll cite google then, from the url that was in my post (if you've read it correctly)
Does Gmail support my browser? Gmail is accessible at http://mail.google.com/ wherever you have access to the Internet via a PC, Linux, or Macintosh (Mac) computer with one of the following fully supported browsers:
- IE 5.5+ (download: Windows)
- Netscape 7.1+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Mozilla 1.4+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Firefox 0.8+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Safari 1.3+ (download: Mac)
e r=15046">basic HTML view of Gmail. Basic HTML view works with the following browsers, as well as many others:- IE 4.0+
- Netscape 4.07+
- Opera 6.03+
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Re:What?!Ok, I'll cite google then, from the url that was in my post (if you've read it correctly)
Does Gmail support my browser? Gmail is accessible at http://mail.google.com/ wherever you have access to the Internet via a PC, Linux, or Macintosh (Mac) computer with one of the following fully supported browsers:
- IE 5.5+ (download: Windows)
- Netscape 7.1+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Mozilla 1.4+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Firefox 0.8+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Safari 1.3+ (download: Mac)
e r=15046">basic HTML view of Gmail. Basic HTML view works with the following browsers, as well as many others:- IE 4.0+
- Netscape 4.07+
- Opera 6.03+
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Re:What?!Ok, I'll cite google then, from the url that was in my post (if you've read it correctly)
Does Gmail support my browser? Gmail is accessible at http://mail.google.com/ wherever you have access to the Internet via a PC, Linux, or Macintosh (Mac) computer with one of the following fully supported browsers:
- IE 5.5+ (download: Windows)
- Netscape 7.1+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Mozilla 1.4+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Firefox 0.8+ (download: Windows Mac Linux)
- Safari 1.3+ (download: Mac)
e r=15046">basic HTML view of Gmail. Basic HTML view works with the following browsers, as well as many others:- IE 4.0+
- Netscape 4.07+
- Opera 6.03+
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Firefox enterprise deployment information
OK I'm going to collect all the information I've found on this topic into this post for posterity.
Bugzila bug discussing Firefox MSI installer. Discusses Mozilla's view on things and what different people want in order to deploy Firefox on large scale desktops.
Instructions on how to package official Firefox releases into an MSI.
UK University admin blog talking about Firefox and System Administration. Talks about deployment of Firefox on enterprise desktops, issues with GPO and links to projects and resources and pros and cons with various packaging attempts.
3rd Party Frontmotion Firefox MSI installer. Pros - readily available. Cons - from a 3rd party (trustworthiness, how long will it be supported for, will they start charging...) -
Slow Microsoft
Poor, poor Microsoft not being able to get a browser that meets 1998's standards by 2007. As the article pointed out, it takes years to get it right. Of course, if they hadn't let MSIE rot to begin with, they'd be okay now.
As it stands, it's already been demonstrated that:
- Large, well-organized open source projects (Mozilla) can do it.
- Well-organized corporate / open source collaborations can do it (Safari)
- Smallish companies can do it (Opera)
- and even guys-in-their-basements can do it (iCab)
Microsoft, one of the largest software companies in the world, is trying to claim they don't have at least equal development muscle to these groups?
Seriously, the problem is of their own making. Now they're trying to fix the biggest bugs in IE6, but they're ignoring some of the biggest features of CSS that it lacks (like display: table*). It's hard to feel any sympathy.
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Re:No problem... Right?
That's unfair. Bug 915 will be fixed any day now. And it will only be 8 years old next month.
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Re:No problem... Right?
They either support the standards or they don't. Simple!
By that reasoning, Mozilla doesn't support any standards either. For example, HTML 4.01 compliance bugs.
It is hard to measure the level of compliance - you could generate an implementation that supports 100% of the properties in a spec by themselves, but they didn't interact well, and might score highly in an artificial test suite, but drive you mad in the real world. On the other hand, another implementation might do 75% of properties in a spec, but have them work in every edge case you can think of.
So, no, it's not simple, and supporting a standard is not just a case of "yes" or "no" -
Re:Standards support
Firefox still doesn't support soft hyphenation
Really?display: inline-block
If you're interested, a quick workaround you can use:display: -moz-inline-block;
You also might want to take a look at Mozilla CSS Extensions because it allows a somewhat better accuracy with CSS behaviour than what w3c has defined in some cases -- This has been very helpful for me when you're doing CSS hacks for Opera.
display: inline-block;variable opacity
I hope when Firefox does support this they give you a option to disable it.Text shadow
This too.Firefox is probably the least standards-compliant of all modern (non-IE) browsers.
I'm sure they wouldn't reject someone helping them becoming more 'standards compliant' (I prefer to say 'w3c recommendations compliant'), they have, after all, made the tools available to help. -
Re:Standards support
Firefox still doesn't support soft hyphenation
Really?display: inline-block
If you're interested, a quick workaround you can use:display: -moz-inline-block;
You also might want to take a look at Mozilla CSS Extensions because it allows a somewhat better accuracy with CSS behaviour than what w3c has defined in some cases -- This has been very helpful for me when you're doing CSS hacks for Opera.
display: inline-block;variable opacity
I hope when Firefox does support this they give you a option to disable it.Text shadow
This too.Firefox is probably the least standards-compliant of all modern (non-IE) browsers.
I'm sure they wouldn't reject someone helping them becoming more 'standards compliant' (I prefer to say 'w3c recommendations compliant'), they have, after all, made the tools available to help. -
Trademark infrigement
Lemme check http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/poli
c y.htmlMoFo trademark policy...
1) modified logo
2) high-resolution
3) ...
4) We gonna sue their ass for trademark infrigement!
5) Profit of course from the buzz -
Re:Google still wins
Google wins. Why? They offer the option to download the damn videos.
Using Firefox? Check out VideoDownloader: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/ -
Re:Any copycat that didn't copycat flash-suckiness
Try Unplug ( https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2254/ ), which is pretty good. You can play the extract (The
.FLV file) in VLC under Win32; assumedly you can do it on the other platforms VLC compiles on? -
Re:Clones are one thing...
I haven't specifically tried what you're asking for - but I suggest trying the appropriate firefox plugin and swftools
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Re:Seamonkey vs. Mozilla?
Code-wise, Seamonkey is pretty much the code that could have become Mozilla Suite 1.8.
The Mozilla Corporation/Foundation are not supporting Seamonkey in the same way as they did the Suite - Seamonkey is now a community-driven project, and while it's still mostly hosted by the Mozilla Foundation, the coding is now done by volunteers rather than anyone employed by Mozilla (except for the back-end which is code shared by Firefox, Thunderbird, Camino, Sunbird, etc)
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/news.htm l#2005-07-02 -
Re:Any copycat that didn't copycat flash-suckiness
To store YouTube videos on your own machine, get the VideoDownloader extension for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/. Then go to the page for the YouTube (or Google Video or whatever) page of your choice, and click on their icon. A window pops up and you click on a button to download the actual
.flv video. That's in Flash video format, which you'll probably want a player for: http://www.martijndevisser.com/blog/article/flv-pl ayer-updated. Now you can run that (on a Windows machine at least) and play .flv videos from YouTube locally. Voila! -
ffmpeg?
going by your low UID, I think you might have tried this but still here is what I tried (this worked for me, though FF is required and not flash): use this FF addon to dload the flv file, and then just use "ffmpeg" tool to extract to mpeg format.
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Re:Keeping Firefox up to date on Windows
There might be some info in the comments of this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2310
6 2
Personally I got tired of wondering how things could be done in Windows, so I switched to Linux. Like you said "on Linux this is a non issue". -
Re:What ever happened to XUL?
Firefox extensions are written with XUL, and there are plenty of them.
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Re:not just a new fad
XmlHttpRequest - you could do much the same thing with IFRAME elements, at least on your own site.
As far as I'm aware, XMLHttpRequest has the same restrictions as iframes and most other ways of accessing documents in different domains, so there's no difference in the "on your own site" aspect - in Mozilla it's the same origin policy and is applied to XMLHttpRequest too. That's actually quite annoying when you really want to load things from other domains; cross-document messaging is a handy solution (allowing one document to open itself to messages coming from anywhere, as long as it takes the responsibility to provide its own security to make sure nothing bad happens), though currently it's only implemented in Opera.
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Re:Online-only
If you have Firefox, try VideoDownloader to download the streams.
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Simpler Guide to Defeating online info-gathering
What the article fails to point out is that you do not need to accept any of Google's cookies, not even for the session. Even with GMail you can access your account via POP3. So...
In FireFox 1.5.x
Edit -> Preferences -> Privacy Tab -> Cookies -> Exceptions
Then add the Google domains you wish to block/allow. This will result in many random cookies being generated by Google for each search done (as they will think you are a new comer each time). Personally I white-list all my cookies, only allowing the sites I trust to set cookies, which are then automatically cleared when I close FireFox.
Also do not use GMail via the web interface, it is possible to use GMail via an email client residing on your computer.
http://gmail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic =1555
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answe r=13273
From there you can use your choice of email Encryption/Steganography as you see fit.
Other interesting Firefox extensions for privacy include:
RefControl: http://www.stardrifter.org/refcontrol/
AdBlock: http://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/10/
User Agent Switcher: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/59/ -
Simpler Guide to Defeating online info-gathering
What the article fails to point out is that you do not need to accept any of Google's cookies, not even for the session. Even with GMail you can access your account via POP3. So...
In FireFox 1.5.x
Edit -> Preferences -> Privacy Tab -> Cookies -> Exceptions
Then add the Google domains you wish to block/allow. This will result in many random cookies being generated by Google for each search done (as they will think you are a new comer each time). Personally I white-list all my cookies, only allowing the sites I trust to set cookies, which are then automatically cleared when I close FireFox.
Also do not use GMail via the web interface, it is possible to use GMail via an email client residing on your computer.
http://gmail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic =1555
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answe r=13273
From there you can use your choice of email Encryption/Steganography as you see fit.
Other interesting Firefox extensions for privacy include:
RefControl: http://www.stardrifter.org/refcontrol/
AdBlock: http://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/10/
User Agent Switcher: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/59/ -
Re:Can't help but ask...
In SeaMonkey, that behavior is easy to do without any extensions. Just change the default cookie policy to only allow session cookies, and then add sites you trust to the list of sites that are allowed to set cookies. Here are my settings - this lets me stay logged in to sites like slashdot, amazon, have my bank remember my state, etc, without a persistent cookie from google.
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Mozilla developers' comments
The discussion on this bug which was eventually resolved as WONTFIX is quite interesting, IMHO.
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Firefox is again the most unstable program...
Firefox is, once again, the most unstable program in common use.
The 1.5.0.4 version of Firefox was quite stable, if the Flashblock extension was installed. The 1.5.0.6 version is unstable again. The CPU-hogging bug is back!
This comment posted from a copy of Firefox that is constantly using 2.8% of the CPU, even when all pages have been loaded, and there is no active content. That's 2.8% on the way to 70% or more, making it necessary to close Firefox and reboot Windows XP.
There are some bugs found by Coverity left unfixed, but so far things have gotten worse since 1.5.0.4, not better. -
For those who are interested in Firefox' results
Here are some links to show the bugs in the Bugzilla database which were turned up by Coverity.
Open Coverity Bugs
All Coverity Bugs -
For those who are interested in Firefox' results
Here are some links to show the bugs in the Bugzilla database which were turned up by Coverity.
Open Coverity Bugs
All Coverity Bugs -
Re:Please
Try the repaginator extension for Firefox
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Re:The differance
Yeah it'll help. But you should just get a FF extension like customize google which does it for you every time. Thats assuming you run FF.
As a bonus it also does lots of other neat stuff. -
Re:BS
That's because the UI is written in XUL, and the installer includes all the libraries for it, for all win32 platforms. Not all software for windows is so lucky and portable. You're mistaken about windows apps being portable.
You're full of it. If you've ever read Raymond Chen's blog you'd know just how much work Microsoft puts into maintaining binary compatibility - and the results show. Maybe you're the one person in a million who uses the few applications that do break, but in my experience, when upgrading to new Windows versions, only a tiny number of programs have problems (mostly games, which tend to abuse low-level features... Raymond's blog provides numerous examples where the applications that do break tend to be misusing APIs).
Getting back to SeaMonkey, it's not like the whole backend is reimplemented for each Windows version. The vast majority of the code really isn't at all affected by the Windows version. There's a lot of C++ code in SeaMonkey too (it's nowhere near being just XUL + JS on top of Gecko), and of all the SeaMonkey and Gecko C++ I've written I've only had to worry about the Windows version once - when I was modifying splash screen code to take advantage of new Windows 2000 features. There are certainly other cases where the code is optimized and takes advantage of features of later Windows version, but it's rarely more than a tiny change to accomodate all versions of Windows. I don't recall ever worrying about the Windows version in the rest of my patches at all.
Seriously, have you ever looked at the seamonkey download page where they offer a Fedora Core rpm build?
If you want the ability to be able to download and install, just use Fedora. Don't bitch if you're using a geek Linux like Ubuntu or Gentoo or Slackware or something. Fedora is a pretty usable Desktop OS right now, and most download sites offer rpm builds of their software. Not everything needs to be in a yum repository.
So if I want even non-proprietary applications to be readily available, I have to use one of a tiny number of distros (ignoring the fact that I'm sure there's some other project that provides DEBs but not RPMs). That seems to me like you actually don't have any real choices in the Linux world.
Look, there are other problems with desktop Linux, but the ones you cite aren't the bad ones. Hardware compatibility for example. Or kernel modules you need to recompile every single bloody kernel update. Drivers that only work under ndiswrapper. WPA support in Linux wireless-tools package instead of wpa_supplicant. Those are issues. Wireless support should be friggin' perfect by now, yet lags behind the windows world by a long shot. Those are barriers to penetration much more than the availability of a binary installer (which btw some companies also offer).
Those are certainly larger barriers to adoption, but I do think that the more limited binary compatibility with Linux is not something that should be ignored. -
Re:BS
That's because the UI is written in XUL, and the installer includes all the libraries for it, for all win32 platforms. Not all software for windows is so lucky and portable. You're mistaken about windows apps being portable.
You're full of it. If you've ever read Raymond Chen's blog you'd know just how much work Microsoft puts into maintaining binary compatibility - and the results show. Maybe you're the one person in a million who uses the few applications that do break, but in my experience, when upgrading to new Windows versions, only a tiny number of programs have problems (mostly games, which tend to abuse low-level features... Raymond's blog provides numerous examples where the applications that do break tend to be misusing APIs).
Getting back to SeaMonkey, it's not like the whole backend is reimplemented for each Windows version. The vast majority of the code really isn't at all affected by the Windows version. There's a lot of C++ code in SeaMonkey too (it's nowhere near being just XUL + JS on top of Gecko), and of all the SeaMonkey and Gecko C++ I've written I've only had to worry about the Windows version once - when I was modifying splash screen code to take advantage of new Windows 2000 features. There are certainly other cases where the code is optimized and takes advantage of features of later Windows version, but it's rarely more than a tiny change to accomodate all versions of Windows. I don't recall ever worrying about the Windows version in the rest of my patches at all.
Seriously, have you ever looked at the seamonkey download page where they offer a Fedora Core rpm build?
If you want the ability to be able to download and install, just use Fedora. Don't bitch if you're using a geek Linux like Ubuntu or Gentoo or Slackware or something. Fedora is a pretty usable Desktop OS right now, and most download sites offer rpm builds of their software. Not everything needs to be in a yum repository.
So if I want even non-proprietary applications to be readily available, I have to use one of a tiny number of distros (ignoring the fact that I'm sure there's some other project that provides DEBs but not RPMs). That seems to me like you actually don't have any real choices in the Linux world.
Look, there are other problems with desktop Linux, but the ones you cite aren't the bad ones. Hardware compatibility for example. Or kernel modules you need to recompile every single bloody kernel update. Drivers that only work under ndiswrapper. WPA support in Linux wireless-tools package instead of wpa_supplicant. Those are issues. Wireless support should be friggin' perfect by now, yet lags behind the windows world by a long shot. Those are barriers to penetration much more than the availability of a binary installer (which btw some companies also offer).
Those are certainly larger barriers to adoption, but I do think that the more limited binary compatibility with Linux is not something that should be ignored. -
Re:Google Calendar
This just in: synchronizing a beta web service and an alpha calendaring program causes problems.