Slashdot Mirror

The Firefox devs have been refusing to implement the KDE filepicker in Firefox:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29884 8

Yeah, msn has been borked by default on my browser.

Mozilla is honest. The figure they give is how many downloads they have counted.

It's not stating how many downloads there have been that is dishonest. It's issuing press releases like this about it that is dishonest.

Pretend you know nothing about HTTP and distribution methods, and read that press release.

Firefox adoption numbers have exceeded expectations with more than 100 million downloads

Do you really think that isn't misleading? That it doesn't make the average person think that there are 100 million users?

Our community of more than 100,000 Firefox developers, testers, and grassroots marketers, is rejuvenating Web browsing, which is why millions of new users make the jump to Firefox every week. Spread Firefox members look forward to the next 100 million downloads as they mobilize for the exciting new release of Firefox 1.5.

Where did this "millions of new users every week" figure come from? Is it directly taken from the download figures? 100 million downloads over the course of a year is about 2 million per week. It certainly looks as if they are equating downloads with new users to me.

Now bring back your memories of HTTP and distribution methods. Read that press release again, and ask yourself why the big fuss over some arbitrary figure that doesn't correspond to adoption levels. Why is this worthy of a press release, if not to mislead?

Not a single link on the results page works for me.

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=1810

Does that URL work for anyone? The same goes for every other id=

> Oh slashdot, help me out here.

I think I've found their C&C network, it has something to do with mozzarella cheeze, Stay Puff marshmallows, and a really bad dude named Xul.

http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there. is.only.xul

Just install the filterset.g updater.

Then there's the Vertigo extension. It's not a sidebar, but it's having the tab list at the left side of the screen.

FireBug

Unlike some other (poorly implemented) AJAX extensions (/greasemonkey plugins) I've seen, this shows complete responses and requests, as well as any javascript errors in-page. This is of enormous value when debugging clientside scripts: usually you only notice a bug when it's causing a page to break. This extension shows any and all errors, regardless of whether they interrupt your pageview.

Surprised that All-in-One Gestures didn't make it.
Can't live without it.

filterset.g is what I use. Even supports AdBlock Plus's whitelist feature. It's been a long time since I've had to maually block an ad.

I didn't win.

Well, I do use web developer a lot.

A

Incompatible Extension or Extension No Longer Available

Hey, you probably know that, but there is a well maintained, autoupdated set of rules for almost all Ads out there.
It's called Filterset G.
This in addition to Adblock plus keeps all ads out of sight without having to configure a single thing. No worries. :)

I highly recommend it to anyone and it's part of my default install for friends...

These are the Firefox extensions I can't live without

GooglePreview:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=189

Venkman Javascript Debugger (for 1.5):
http://getahead.ltd.uk/ajax/venkman

Live HTTP Headers:
http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/

Peter

Okay, does the plush toy they're giving away look more like a fox or a racoon?

I think Parent is referring to an addon like User Agent Switcher but with default user agents for certain sites rather than changing the whole renderer to another real agent (which is what IETab does).

You want the Nightly Tester Tools: https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?application=firefox&id=958 It allows you to have firefox ignore the version numbers.

...just add an extension! The Nightly Tester Tool does exactly what you ask.

Glad to see Web Developer at the top of the list... it is, IMO, by far the most useful Firefox plugin out there. I've been using it at work for a few months, and even got a few co-workers to install Firefox specifically because they wanted to use this plugin...

Just one datapoint, but it reinforces in my mind how important plugins (they're plugins, dammit! why are they pushing the term "extension"!) are to Firefox's success. Which, I guess, was the whole point of this contest.

Install this to read the following:

US3KDP6BklCiVjtyJft3Yw==

use password: funky0011-pass

Download one link, selected links or all the links of a page at the maximum speed with a single click......FlashGot offers also a Build Gallery functionality which helps to synthetize full media galleries in one page, from serial contents previously scattered on several pages, for easy and fast "download all"


Great extension for Firefox...just don't sue them for Rhyming-Name Infringement ;)

The only extension that i've ever used (and don't mind but wouldn't consider it essential to my browsing experience) is Sage and that came a lousy second place to Viamatic Foxprose - something that appears to be wholly useless in the 'Most Innovative' category.

The only extension that i've ever used (and don't mind but wouldn't consider it essential to my browsing experience) is Sage and that came a lousy second place to Viamatic Foxprose - something that appears to be wholly useless in the 'Most Innovative' category.

I also recommend that you check out the Gecko DOM Reference. It's a great, handy online resource which I've consulted frequently as of late for many DHTML apps and functionality.

The problem will be: How will I, using my western keyboard and english OS without the Chinese language pack installed, connect to www.server.[X][X] ? By link? Sure. that will work. Type it in? No. Tell it to someone else and have them type it in? Nope.

Perhaps a 3rd party (go Mozilla plugins!! http://addons.mozilla.org/ ) will make a plugin to translate the URL on the fly. [X][X] becomes .sau - which can then be typed in, recognised and used by people who don't speak and write Chinese.

Perhaps they will take this one step further: All chinese character URLs (does this happen today? Are your website urls in English phones or chinese characters?).

I have no problem with China doing this. I feel that it will be China's problem when people have issues connecting to them. Always interesting to visit Japanese sites. I wonder if they will follow suite.

Well, we has this one, that permitted execution of shell commands. Basically, FF behaved like it had ActiveX, which, in the Linux world, is considered a bug, not a feature. Found in the wild? Proof-of-concept exploit? I doubt it. http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/mfsa2005- 59.html

Yes, I think so. Too lazy for linkage, but I believe there was a IDN exploit on FireFox which did actually work on Linux/OS X.

The problem, however, is in the acutal design of IDN. AFAIK, Mozilla decided there was no way to fix it, and turned it off; if you correctly implement IDN, you leave yourself open to the exploit (insecure redirection, spoofing exploit).

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27909 9 (I think you have to copy-paste bugzilla links, no slashdot referrals).

Quote from Opera:"
Hello Eric,

What you illustrate is an inherent problem with IDNA and the international
Unicode characterset. On many systems success may depend on which fonts and
languages the user have installed (and what is included in the default installation)

There was a discussion about a similar issue in our forums a couple of days ago:

Unfortunately, I do not believe your suggestion of warning the user about IDNA
encoded names in the name of secure servers is particable. It might look
that way when you are dealing with spoofsites such as your example, but it would
be maddening for Chinese and Japanese websurfers, in fact it would also
irritate many European (e.g. French, German and Scandinavian) surfers who are
using languages with characters that will generate punycode servernames.

The problem about spoofing websites using IDNA is IMO best solved by the
domainname registrars, by limiting on their side the character-combinations they
want to accept in a domainname. AFAIK such limitations are implemented in (e.g.)
the Norwegian zone, but Verisign has not yet implemented something
similar, which is understandable given the worldwide use of .com domains.

Please note that Wand or cookies will not be tricked by this kind of servernames."

So yes, the answer is "Sort of"

This is pretty much the equivalent to scratch and sniff perfume/cologne ads in magazines. The method here doesn't match the product as well, so I can't imagine this would be as effective.

People skip ads because they (maybe only subconsciously) realize that they don't care about the ads, because the ads are not content. TV advertising doesn't work on a conscious level anymore. People have learned to use them as an excuse for other things (make popcorn, check laundry), or to simply automatically tune them out, much like studies have shown that people ignore 468 x 60 images on the web.

A TiVo that can automatically skip ads based on a program's break time schedule is equivalent to AdBlock; the difference is that in one, you know when the ads are coming, and in the other you know where they are coming from.

TV is also in a rough spot because:

1. There hasn't been shit on TV in at least 20 years, probably longer
2. 500 channels just means I have to spend more time looking at the program schedule to find the diamond in the rough
3. The same companies own the networks and the movie studios; the hydras have all chosen which of their heads to cannibalize
4. Games, Internet, and other activities (except reading, but that's another topic) take away from TV viewership

In a nutshell, TV is doomed in a similar way to radio. The inevitable disaster of the switch to digital TV may just be the killing blow.

And I say good riddance, until I can get a la carte programming.

This seems to be an accurate view of the law.

Just remember, so is everyone else, so if you charge too high a price, others will undercut you. Most of us just burn it to Cd and give it away.

And blaming the mozilla foundation is blaming the exact wrong "side" for any difficulity explaining licences to people.

The Mozilla Foundation explains the licensing in plain english. The GPL always had an "English" preamble. And creative commons even has "deeds" that are as clear as language can get including translations in plenty of languages and icons representing a certain use. (creativecommons.org even has a "wizard" for people who want to select a license)

I am still, However, looking for a human readable version of microsofts licensing policy. As far as I know I would have to figure out what constitutes:
A. an educational/business/goverment organisation
B. a computer (Maybe a mainboard, maybe a processor, maybe a procesor core, maybe something with a mac address plus a set of PCI identifiers and a processor serial number)
C. a "software upgrade" (Didn`t you have to buy your dells with an installed microsoft OS because the organisational licensing only is about "updates" to this OS?)
D. a hurricane victim (tsunami victims need not apply)

Its all explained in this 44 page word file.

So yes, licensing is confusing for "normal people" or busineses. But when you work together with Microsoft (Through the BSA or other lobbyists) to make people follow licenses... then you could get help from their side by asking for understanable licences to enforce.

You must duplicate the notice in Exhibit A in each file of the Source Code. If it is not possible to put such notice in a particular Source Code file due to its structure, then You must include such notice in a location (such as a relevant directory) where a user would be likely to look for such a notice. If You created one or more Modification(s) You may add your name as a Contributor to the notice described in Exhibit A. You must also duplicate this License in any documentation for the Source Code where You describe recipients' rights or ownership rights relating to Covered Code. You may choose to offer, and to charge a fee for, warranty, support, indemnity or liability obligations to one or more recipients of Covered Code. However, You may do so only on Your own behalf, and not on behalf of the Initial Developer or any Contributor. You must make it absolutely clear than any such warranty, support, indemnity or liability obligation is offered by You alone, and You hereby agree to indemnify the Initial Developer and every Contributor for any liability incurred by the Initial Developer or such Contributor as a result of warranty, support, indemnity or liability terms You offer.

'If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us, from a practical point of view, to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation.'

On behalf of slashdot, please stop posting.

If you don't like him, mark him foe and adjust your settings.

You are an annoyance,

And do you think you're doing Slashdot any good by posting this crap?

you're not funny,

On the contrary, I think it was funny. So is K'Breel. So is "Mr. President, Dr. Evil is on the line". If you don't like it, you can install a Greasemonkey script that will let you fold up comment trees on Slashdot and you can go ahead and fold up every single one written by TMM. But you certainly are not funny.

you're not insightful

And you aren't either. You're offtopic (by contrast, TMM's post was on topic).

and knowing you've posted a comment

As I said, mark him foe, adjust your preferences. If it still bothers you that user #862126 posts here, go outside. Talk to a girl. Have some fun. If you are so obsessed with TMM that you have to stalk him as an AC, you are spending WAY too much time in your mother's basement.

is like hitting my dick

Here is where I know you need a life. If you make a comparison like that, chances are you spend much of your time posting things like "fr1st ps0t" and the like. You are probably an active member of a vandalist organization such as anti-slash or a cyber-terrorist organization like the GNAA. Enjoy goatse much?

into a pile of broken glass with a pick axe.

Please do. We don't need you reproducing. Either get a life and stop stalking TripMaster Monkey or crawl back to trolltalk where you belong.

The most value I get out of Camino is for browsing some heavy AJAX sites that have not been tested with Safari. A few more iterations might make it better.

Fair enough, but keep in mind that you will seldom need to write that code. I can think of two occasions where I have had to write that much javascript to create nodes (and I do 40 this hours a week), and those were places where I had a form that needed to be expandable to allow users to add any amount of records needed. Then I discovered nice functionality like cloneNode, which does just what it sounds like, copies a node into a var. You can then use insertBefore to place the new node on the page. Usually, I write html code and just clone it as needed.

Therefore, I suspect that your dislike for Javascript stems from the fact that you may not be familiar with all of its methods and properties. I use this reference frequently. Yes, it is Mozilla, but most of the things here are standard. I'd learn some new methods and properties and then see what you can do with javascript. No, it's not the answer for everything but it can be quite powerful if used correctly.

I use a lot of Javascript in the intranet environment, which consists of IE6 (sadly), Fx, and Opera. On the internet, yes you are more limited. But as long as you provide alternate, though perhaps less convenient, ways of doing all of the important stuff on your site, you will be OK. Just don't rely on it for _critical_ validation, core functionality and you are OK. For improving usability, efficiency, and user experience in general it is great. It is what it is, but it doesn't have to be as complicated as you make it seem.

Hope you find that link helpful!

--
I am not an actor, but I play one on TV!

Try the above with any living document.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/re ference/properties/innerhtml.asp
When the innerHTML property is set, the given string completely replaces the existing content of the object. If the string contains HTML tags, the string is parsed and formatted as it is placed into the document.

http://www.mozilla.org/docs/dom/domref/dom_el_ref8 .html
Note that when you append to the innerHTML of a document, you have essentially created a new document. The session history for the browser is incremented, and when you go Back, the document is there in its original, unappended state.

Meaning I could just load a separate page instead. innerHTML looks very promising and could be a really great property, but unfortunately the implementation is so tricky and riddled with caveats that using it as anything else than read-only variable will most likely break everything else.

In your example about the best you could do to avoid the breakage that would occur immediately after applying what you did could be by doing:

var list=document.createChild('ul');
list.type="square";
list.innerHTML="<li><a href=\"#link1\">Page 1</a></li><li><a
href=\"#link2\">Page 2</a>(new!)</li>";
document.getElementById('body').appendChild(list);

This way the innerHTML gets parsed before being inserted into 'list' but 'list' is still 'floating in air', doesn't change anything in existing tree yet, doesn't write to any history, doesn't have any content to be overwritten and so on. Probably. So when it's ready you plant a ready piece of the tree into the document, no re-parsing of HTML of the actual document occurs. Likely. It's not guaranted to behave that way though, so it's just your faith in logical behaviour of the browser that keeps it running.

I'd like to remind readers that this is preview release, and there are many aspects of this platform that are not complete, including a set of tools which will be packaged up as the XULRunner SDK. I am fully aware that you can't have a platform without excellent developer tools and documentation, and we're working to get all of those resources in place in the next year.

It's "Zewlrunner". XUL = Zuul from Ghostbusters, that's why the namespace for XUL documents is "http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there .is.only.xul".

Similarly "XPI" is "zippy" - the install technology used to distribute XUL apps.

MHTML Firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=212&application=firefox

I know this doesn't answer all of your questions, but here are a few examples: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Category:XULR unner:Examples

Sorry but you are wrong. At best Fx 3 and TB 3 will be based on XULrunner. Fx 2 will be using a similar Gecko core to the one used in Fx 1.5 (Gecko 1.8.1 and Gecko 1.8) . The XULrunner work that is being done to make Fx a XULrunner app is being done on the trunk where Fx 3 and Gecko 1.9 will come from.

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox2/Features

Using Eclipse for Mozilla develpment http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Eclipse

It's already easy to embed things into a single file with Gecko-based browsers (e.g. SeaMonkey, Firefox, etc) - all you'd have to do is grab the data that makes up the various files in the page (images, swfs, etc) and use "data:" URLs. For an example of a page that already embeds some images directly into the HTML, view this page with a Gecko-based browser. If you look at the source, you'll see some images inlined right into the HTML. I'd imagine it would not be difficult to make an extension that does what Unipage is currently doing. If all the content is hosted on the same domain, you could probably do it almost trivially in the page itself with some XMLHttpRequests to fetch the contents of images and other objects and inline them into document.innerHTML before saving it to a file.

Nothing really new and has nothing to do with PDF...

In Firefox, you can use Mozilla Archive Format extension, which can also save pages in Internet Explorer's MHTML format, to do the same thing.

Besides, as it is said in Wikipedia, the reason for PDF is to render exactly the same regardless of its origin or destination and they are most appropriately used to encode the exact look of a document in a device-independent way. Unipage suffers from the common problem of webpages rendering differently in different browsers.

XulRunner is what FF2 and TB2 are going to be based on, you'll have 1 XulRunner app and will install FF and Tbird, so XulRunner is here to stay. XForms will also be an extension available later.

I am working on a couple of extensions and I wish there was a dev studio, possibly an Eclipse plugin for xul/xbl/xpcom/javascript/css/rdf integration. With my extensions, which have a very small codebase, debuging is a completely manual process (not counting venkman, which is a good tool but still not powerful enough for my needs.) Certainly having a good design helps a lot, because most of the time it is clear, which component should be looked at. When I just started on the first extension, I didn't understand javascript enough to componentize, so after a while, I completely rewrote the code, because the single file with functions grew too much and any debugging became extremely painful.

I am also looking for a way to 'run' xul components without doing a full build, a visual studio perhaps, that could help with layouts and avoid all the annoying syntax errors. XUL itself is a markup language that is XML based and allows building visual components - dialogs, menues, buttons, tabs, grids, textboxes, etc. While you can open a half done HTML page in your browser and see what is going on, with XUL you have to build the package first and then you can see what's going on (an incorrect XML structure in this case will give you an error, XUL must be well-formed and valid.)

XPCOM brings other challenges. It is a native library of services/components that can be accessed from javascript (or possibly other scripts) and that extend the functionality of the script to include things like file management, access to preference storage, window manipulation, etc. But you can't just run a compiler to see if you are doing everything correctly, you will only get errors in runtime.

Actually, I think this is the biggest problem - all errors must be caught in run-time. Javascript, XUL, XPCOM work, XBL, everything can be built (there is nothing to building anyway, just packaging really,) but after the packaging errors have to be caught in runtime, and I think this is always the biggest problem for a programmer who is used to rely on compiler to quickly catch some of the problems before even starting the application.

Maybe there needs to be a unit-testing framework created, that can help running unit tests on portions of the code without building the entire application and catching unit errors during execution of the entire application. Yes, actually, to think about it this could be a big help, especially for the new developers, who can be put off this entire platform because of lack of these tools.

http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there. is.only.xul ;-)

Derrr...I probably should've included a link for the User Agent Switcher Extenstion.

I am very sure Vista(tm) can be run under a Virtual Machine, just like XP or 98 (which runs smoothest in Virtual PC (vmware is another example). I am also very convinced os X can be running under such Virtual Machine. Everything is possible with emulation, only, you've got to pay a small price, a price of performance...

This emulator has to translate a lot of things like memory, cpu, disks, mouse, keyboard, com ports, network card, usb devices (plug 'n pray), printer and low system (bios) calls to the underlying OS which takes a lot of CPU power and memory usage.

If this would be still running that fast on that nice mactel; I do not know...

I am very sure a virtual machine will run os X on PC and Vista on the mactel platform; only the task to run it natively without emulating too much is a pain ful cruisade (sometimes)...

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Life is like a box of chocolates, You never know what you gonna get! right?

As there is a lot more to use of a human brain than currently used by the majorty; the cpu is also not used as it should be used and in most cases even overused; most stuff is programmed (very) bloated; like Windows itself, like Vista be very good in the beginning, slow (& more bloated) in the middle and bad in the end (ready to reinstall); unless you very carefully pick your applications and don't change too much than needed upgrades (like with linux: when it's running, keep it running!)

>>> ... When I started programming I had to be carefully get everything on a 360k floppy, program and data files together. If I wanted a OS I'd have to swap floppies or add a B: drive. The 720k floppy's where just coming out so I was saving for a 2x size floppy drive. The next upgrade was a 20mb drive ...

>>> ... The PC evolution has exploded in all kinds of directions; as well upwards in technology and prices as downwards in quality and programming; just like all consumer devices these times...

>>> ... I sincerely hope the same does not happen with the universal binaries and os X; I just started to work with it, after +15yrs of working with PC, grew up with OS2 v2+ and warp, DOS, GEM, cp/m, Windows v2+, Windows v3+ and trumpet netsock which was a emulator(?), ... I have finally found something which is not such a burden to maintain that hard and which just works: a Powerbook 15" with os X!

>>> With Windows I learned to not to go strange with your os;

- Get rid of Internet explorer *immediately*! get Firefox or any alternative before your pc crawls ...
- if you got a good graphics * editor or messenger(tm) client ; stay with it and don't install 20 others to "try";
- Get a good Virusscanner, a free one like AVG or payware like F-secure Antivirus.
- If you want to get a good program you got to look at the size too, a smaller footprint can mean a smaller utilisation of memory and system usage; for a virusscanner or anti spyware utility this can be very vital!
- I repaired lots of them pc's's and it's all because of these virus/spyware/strange-installed things!
- which comes to : be sure to know what you install, verify the source a/o file (bbs 2400 baud world was hard sometimes!)
- Get rid of Outlook and Messenger, go to Trillian or alike
- Do not open files

Yeah, those old versions of browsers are really painful.