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I recommend the TargetAlert extension.

If you use firefox, this extension should prevent any such PDF difficulties. I think this should be assimilated into the actual program instead of being left as an extension.

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=636&application=firefox

We have something that would work better than torrent files for p2p in the browser - dijjer. It requires a Java Runtime Environment but there are extensions which make it easier to use in Firefox. Dijjer downloads content in-order (unlike bittorrent) and there's nothing to configure once your web server supports the range header. I was working on a dijjer applet and extension a while ago, but I got too busy to develop it further. The slashdot effect for webpages could be mitigated using a combination of Dijjer and MAF to distribute archive copies of the page as long as its popular.

I can only imagine this was done as an extension because XUL Runner isn't finished yet.

I think using the browser as a host for other apps is cool, there will be a bubble in this as there is in so many other internet trends. Right now we're in the "Wow, let's write an extension because we can!" phase (partly because the only practical way to develop with Gecko is as such, see above). When everyone gets over the cool factor of it, the projects that actually enhance (or even relate to, for that matter) the browser experience will be distilled away from what should have been standalone apps in the first place.

As much as some people want to think the OS will become merely a life support system for the browser, it just isn't going to happen; the network is not the right place for some things, and if one program has everything, it inevitably becomes bloated and slow.

I can only imagine this was done as an extension because XUL Runner isn't finished yet.

I think using the browser as a host for other apps is cool, there will be a bubble in this as there is in so many other internet trends. Right now we're in the "Wow, let's write an extension because we can!" phase (partly because the only practical way to develop with Gecko is as such, see above). When everyone gets over the cool factor of it, the projects that actually enhance (or even relate to, for that matter) the browser experience will be distilled away from what should have been standalone apps in the first place.

As much as some people want to think the OS will become merely a life support system for the browser, it just isn't going to happen; the network is not the right place for some things, and if one program has everything, it inevitably becomes bloated and slow.

This bug says that Mozilla (aka Seamonkey) should implement the "encrypt when possible" feature. That is, if the email client has the public key of all recipients, then the email should be automatically encrypted. If this feature were implemented in Seamonkey and Thunderbird, it would do wonders for increasing the usage of encryption. All you would need to do then is get a private/public key for everyone you know, and then all email will be automatically encrypted. Your mom wouldn't even know it was happening.

They're referring to the WYSIWYG editor they've introduced for writing entries. I assume it requires support of the designMode attribute. There's a little more here, if you're interested.

Enigmail project website features are:

• Encrypt/sign mail when sending, decrypt/authenticate received mail
• Support for inline-PGP (RFC 2440) and PGP/MIME (RFC 3156)
• Per-Account based encryption and signing defaults
• Per-Recipient rules for automated key selection, and enabling/disabling encryption and signing
• New: OpenPGP key management interface
• Automatically encrypt attachments for inline PGP messages
• Powerful GUI for easy configuration and management
• User Preferences for advanced configuration
• Integrated OpenPGP PhotoID Viewer
• Supports OpenPGP key retrieval via proxy servers
• Integrates with GnuPG
• Works with the Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Suite, and Netcape 7.x mail clients
• Supports Thunderbird's Multiple Identities feature
• Available for: Windows / Mac OSX / Linux (x86-32, x86-64, SuSe, Debian, Mandrake PPC & x86 ) / UNIX (Solaris 8.0, *BSD i386)
• Language Packs available for localisation

Works for me!

Tor is one of the best. Try SwitchProxy (an extension in Firefox) ["It lets you manage and switch between multiple proxy configurations quickly and easily. You can also use it as an anonymizer to protect your computer from prying eyes."]

Good thought but...check out #5 of the Firefox EULA
Firefox EULA

Everyone reading Slashdot? Maybe. But for those of us who try to protect our family and friends, these tools can be invaluable. I also like to teach people how to use the no-script extension.

Actually, ActiveX does run just fine on the Mac, and has for a long time. I used it in 1996 to develop a plug-in system for a visual programming language called Bounce, and Mac Common Lisp). Metrowerks actually modified their C++ compiler to support it (adding a _comobject magic class that you can inherit from to get the vtable pointers formatted in the right place so multiple inheritance and QueryInterface worked together properly). Microsoft used it to port IE to the Mac, and paid Metrowerks to make the modifications to support it.

ActiveX/COM is actually quite a cool and useful technology, which is why Firefox uses XPCOM on all platforms, a clone of ActiveX/COM. Mozilla's XPCOM isn't the only clone of COM: before Mozilla developed XPCOM, Macromedia developed their own ActiveX clone called MOA on all platforms. mTropolis mFactory also had its own COM clone called MOM. There are actually lots of COM clones, many of which are incompatible with the real thing and require their own special tool chains to develop plug-ins (which is ironic since the goal of COM was cross language binary compatibility).

And yes, MacIE is a horrible wretched piece of crap, and open sourcing it would be a pointless waste of time. The JavaScript interpreter is uselessly sub-standard, and the DHTML implementation is missing many important features.

Microsoft hired a bunch of excellent Mac programmers to develop it, and they wrote much of their own code base from scratch (using the Metrowerks Powerplant gui toolkit, totally different than the new Aqua [old NeXT Step] libraries), but Microsoft pulled the rug out from under them before they could fix any of the bugs, and wouldn't let them support it, instead diverting them to other projects like WebTV. So it's languished for many years, and even if it were open sourced, it would be an enormous amount of work to bring it up to being compatible with modern web browsers.

-Don

. . . in a way.
Okay, so it's not exactly "working" in Firefox, per se, but you can use this extension to resolve the problem.

Download size is an important factor in adoption. Keeping the download size small, especially below a mental barrier like 5.0 MB keeps Firefox in the class as "simple utility applications" and is downloaded without as much hesitation by users. It also allows clever marketing ala Asa's "It's like downloading an MP3"
-- http://wiki.mozilla.org/Download_Size (emphasis mine)

I don't like this feature in IE personally, but you may find that the New Tab Homepage or Duplicate Tab extensions work for you.

  ~ Christefano

I don't like this feature in IE personally, but you may find that the New Tab Homepage or Duplicate Tab extensions work for you.

  ~ Christefano

You're almost certainly trolling, but I'll reply to some points anyway.

Some bugs are very difficult to characterize. Those require a developer to be a true scientist. However, Firefox developers apparently look for bugs that are easy to fix. Bugs such as this one, which is now more than 2 1/2 years old, are ignored.
I think everybody believes it's many bugs that add up to cause the problems users see, not just one single bug. That makes it much harder to track down the individual issues.

It's insulting and ignorant to claim that developers ignore the hard bugs.

No developer has asked me for more information, but they have marked the CPU and memory hogging bug reports as invalid.
There's probably a reason (if only that your bug report is the same as hundreds of others and equally useless). Care to post bug #s?

Every month I make part of my living as a writer, and have done so for more than 18 years. I did a very clear test using both Windows XP and Linux, and found the same problem.
People sometimes write novels for bug reports, with great detail about the useless tests they conducted and irrelevant statistics they measured during the test. That doesn't make them good or valid.

You said, "Many bugs that are filed aren't important to 99.99% of the userbase."

That's a new excuse! I've added it as number nine in my list. That excuse does NOT apply here. The CPU and memory hogging bug is being discussed publicly in long articles you apparently didn't read.
You didn't specify what bugs you were talking about. I don't think people would say huge leaks are unimportant, but many people file pointless bugs or bugs on things that could just as well be considered features. I was responding in a generic way to your generic "excuse".

You didn't read the articles in Information Week, and you apparently have no theory about why there are such SERIOUS problems in Mozilla browser and Firefox.
I read the articles (they didn't say anything interesting). I read multiple forums where people talk about Firefox leaks. I know what issues people complain about. But users just go on and on about the same symptoms, never providing specific testcases that reproduce issues. Multiple people often decide that they're experiencing the same bug when they clearly are not. They perceive changes between releases that don't exist (e.g. claiming certain changes occurred between 1.0.6 and 1.0.7 that, if you look at the code, could not have). Addressing complaints on issues like these tends to be a hopeless task.

If you could just create one page that, when reloaded repeatedly demonstrated increasing memory usage, that would be incredibly helpful. A testcase in which you load a page in a tab, close the tab, and repeat to demonstrate increasing memory usage would also probably be useful. But nobody does.

You claim it can take days to reproduce the bug, and it happens through normal use. Well, steps to reproduce such as "surf for a day" for you might be checking forums for new trolls about why Firefox is bad. For someone else, it might be contributing to Wikipedia articles. For another user it might be using LXR to trace through some code. Even if a developer DOES experience the problem, how does he/she track it down? Tools such as valgrind make the browser run 100x slower while being debugged - can you possibly surf for a week like that? Other tools give you too much data to have the slightest hope of wading through it all to find the problems. It's a hard problem. People DO work on it, and memory leaks are constantly being fixed. But there are probably a lot of them, and they all take time.

The article talks about setting a specific memory cache size... if you read the source code, you'd know that Gecko is smart enough to already pick cache sizes based on the amount of RAM you have, AND it picks small values - if I remember correctly, SMALLER than the ones suggested in the article. The author of the article probably saw the tweak mentioned on some forum where nobody bothers to conduct scientific comparisons.

Wait... experts submit bugs to Mozilla. This book doesn't seem to cover how to submit bugs to Mozilla! https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

I generally use Thunderbird, however I think any of them would work just as well as the next. All I use e-mail for is reading e-mail (and sometimes newsgroups) and I think any of them will do that pretty good. The only thing I would like to see is better integration with outlook. While this really shouldn't be needed there are unfortunately some people that expect you to use obscure outlook features such as calender checking. Maybe if something come out of the Mozilla Lightning project that will help.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24151 8
I'm sure this one when it lands will help even more. :)

For those who do extensive research using a browser, Firefox has serious problems. Opening and closing many Firefox windows and tabs causes crashes and CPU and memory hogging. That kind of heavy user often sees Firefox using 99% CPU and/or more than 400 Megabytes. See these Information Week articles:

Firefox 1.5: Not Ready For Prime Time?

Firefox 1.5 Stability Problems? Readers And Mozilla Respond

The problems are the same in the Mozilla browser. Both have had a CPU and memory hogging bug for more than 2 1/2 years.

The evidence is that Mozilla leaders don't care. Quote from the second article linked above: "Schroepfer and Beard admitted that Mozilla is not working on any of the problems in our bulleted list except for the high memory usage issue. So problems like high CPU usage, program freezes and lock-ups, and long pauses before a tab or the browser opens from hyperlink clicks in other applications might not be fixed in the next version of the program."

For both Firefox and the Mozilla browser, there is a lot of talk about crashes and how to avoid them. Here are some quotes about crashes from the Known Issues for SeaMonkey 1.0 Beta page:

"A significant number of SeaMonkey crashes are actually caused by Java. Please make sure you are using the latest available version of Java."

"Sun's JRE will crash at startup if your useragent does not begin with Mozilla/5."

"Some SeaMonkey crashes are actually caused by Flash. Please make sure you are using the latest available Flash plugin (Bug 211213)."

"On Windows the Adobe SVG plugin crashes. Workaround: Don't copy it (NPSVG3.dll, NPSVG3.zip) into your plugins folder. If you want to view SVGs, SeaMonkey builds (except Linux GTK1) include native SVG support. (Bug 133567)"

Mozilla developers refuse to consider bugs that bug reporters cannot characterize completely. See this Slashdot comment: Leadership problem? See this list of excuses: 1) Maybe this bug is fixed in the nightly version. 2) Yes, this bug exists, but it isn't important. 3) No one has posted a TalkBack report. (If they read the bug report, they would know that there is never a TalkBack report, because the bug crashes TalkBack, too.) 4) If you would just give us more information, we would fix this bug. 5) This bug report is a composite of other bugs, so this bug report is invalid. (The other bugs aren't specified.) 6) You are using Firefox in a way that would crash any software. 7) I don't like the way you worded your report. 8) You should run a debugger and find what causes this problem yourself.

Talking of firefox extensions this one is a must have https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=1457 It lets you see thumbnails of your open webpages.

However, unless you have RSS feeds to every Mozilla development site, and maintain an encyclopedic knowledge of every configurable doo-dad and Extension, you'll likely find many good tips and best practices for enhancing your browsing experience.

Well, I don't have any Mozilla RSS feeds and I'm sure not familiar with the majority of available extensions, but any search engine will quickly point you toward something useful if you have some idea as to the nature of the problem you want to solve. For example, after giving in and buying a LCD monitor (ooooh shiny!) the menu/tab/statusbar/etc. fonts looked huge in Firefox. Changing my KDE settings did nothing to fix this. A fast Google search on "firefox font size menu tab" produces this page as the second result (was the first a few days back). Instant fix.

I guess the book might be good for "uber-n00bs", but aren't the majority of Slashdot readers outside of this category?

You mean you haven't heard of Flashblock? (Install it from here.)

It does exactly what you want—blocks all Flash with a box with a Play button on it, which you can click if you want to allow that Flash object to play.

I'd also note it's not related to the ads, but the first search result.

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=10&application=firefox

Also make sure you update adblock or use adblock plus, if you use it. adblock cand cause the issues you are reporting. Flashblock and adblock are avalible from Firefox addons google for adblock plus to find the site.

If you cannot install extensions type about:config in the adderess bar and in the filter paste xpinstall.enabled if it is false double click to turn it to true.

Has anyone else found that the 2 1/2-year-old CPU and memory hogging bug is worse with Firefox 1.5? Have you experienced it in Mozilla?

I'm surprised at the number of crashes in Mozilla and Firefox. Here are some quotes about crashes from the Known Issues for SeaMonkey 1.0 Beta page:

"A significant number of SeaMonkey crashes are actually caused by Java. Please make sure you are using the latest available version of Java."

"Sun's JRE will crash at startup if your useragent does not begin with Mozilla/5."

"Some SeaMonkey crashes are actually caused by Flash. Please make sure you are using the latest available Flash plugin (Bug 211213)."

"On Windows the Adobe SVG plugin crashes. Workaround: Don't copy it (NPSVG3.dll, NPSVG3.zip) into your plugins folder. If you want to view SVGs, SeaMonkey builds (except Linux GTK1) include native SVG support. (Bug 133567)"

The software I write (cash register software) would be considered unreleasable if it crashed. I notice that Mozilla and Firefox developers talk about crashes in what seems to me to be an easy-going fashion. I don't feel that way about Firefox and Mozilla crashes. When they crash, or have serious symptoms like the CPU and memory hogging bug mentioned above, I may lose literally hours of work. After a crash I must re-establish all my windows and tabs.

The way I do things, there are several components to Web Development:

Document markup and design:
HTML: Used for document markup only!
CSS: Used to solve most display requirements

Content management / functionality:
Javascript: Client side DHTML (when you DONT want to refresh the page)
PHP: database interaction, web forms, etc.

The CSS links CanSpice points to are excellent resources. I think you should start there, regardless of wanting to learn a web programming language. Knowing CSS will benefit you to:

+ Start on the right path with web standards (as opposed to old HTML 4 sins that many webmasters commit to this day). HTML is NOT for display / design purposes, only for document markup.
+ Cross-browser functionality
+ Less code (you can usually do a lot more with a little css, compared to html)
+ Separation of design and code. You can keep all your css in an external stylesheet than can be updated independently of the site code.

As far as web programming, you basically have two sides:

1. Javascript
It is extremely useful for its DHTML capabilities. You can instantly move html elements around on a page and do some pretty powerful stuff with this. People hate it when they have to refresh a page for something as simple as sorting a table. This is where Javascript shines. Get started by learning the DOM (document object model). Keep in mind that each browser implements this model a little differently so you can consult each browser's documentation.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /workshop/author/dhtml/dhtml.asp (IE)
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/dom/domref/dom_shortIX .html (mozilla)
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Core/core.html (safari implements this)
www.brainjar.com (great for DHTML as well as CSS)

(by no means a complete list but you get the picture)

2. PHP.
YMMV, but I have found this to be one of the easiest languages to learn. Other contenders in this category include: ASP, ASP.NET, C#, Perl, ColdFusion just to name a few. PHP has a very low effort to learn and there are tons of resources on the web to help you. The Microsoft languages (.NET stuff) are pretty powerful too, but you mentioned this is mostly for hobby reasons so I would recommend going with something with an open license like PHP. ColdFusion is also extremely easy to learn, but your host may not support it (and you may not want to have to purchase the Macromedia IDE for it).

Some great PHP resources:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/
www.w3schools.com

Good luck!

A true (X)HTML freak will probably use a sophisticated text editor (like EditPad for Windows, nedit, bluefish or even emacs for Linux...), but for beginners a tools like Dreamweaver or Mozilla Composer or its next version nvu might be a good place to start. With NVU / Mozilla Composer, if you need something special in your source, you can switch to source-edit-mode and change or insert it.

A big disadvantage of many hight-level tools is their inability to cope with PHP. (By the way, the parent is right to say that PHP is a much better beginner's choice, since it is not as cryptic in syntax.)

On the client's side, you might find javascript useful. With a HTML layout tool, PHP and javascript, you can probably do most pages.

Firefox had a white-on-orange RSS icon (http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/rss-old.png ) but it got changed for being too geeky, too big, and looking like it said "ASS". I agree that it's a stupid icon, but could be better for the average windows user who knows what a "web feed" is.

Copy and paste https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26135 4

Sycraft-fu wrote: For example I have problems with American Express's website with my browser of choice (Firefox 1.5). It's not that they won't use it, it's that FF renders something wrong. IE works fine, FF 1.0.7 works fine, but 1.5 screws up the HTML.

It doesn't seem to be delibrate or anything, just some snag they hit. I doubt changing user agent would do anything.

Firefox 1.5 fixed a rendering bug, but amex.com were relying on the wrong behaviour. It looks like they're in the process of fixing that. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29420 1.

So yes, for that site changing your user-agent won't do any good at all.

its *never* a Firefox problem.

David Baron is, in fact, writing enormous amounts of code. He is close to being finished with rewriting the entire reflow system of Gecko (= progressive page loading).

Mozilla Foundation is no longer developing future versions of the (1.7) suite. A different team of developers has taken it over, and renamed it SeaMonkey. So complaining about their inability to fix a Suite-only problem is fairly pointless. If it's a problem with the Core (shared between Firefox and Suite) then reproduce it in firefox and let Mozilla know. Otherwise, get in touch with the Seamonkey developers by email or IRC or whatever, it's not hard.

And if you have a problem with your bug being auto-resolved, just go ahead and reopen it again. The auto-resolver was supposed to clear up rotten bugs that weren't real or were fixed by other code changes, not actual replicable bugs.

She is not that ugly, look carefully at this: http://www.mozilla.org/press/image-library/people- mitchell-baker.jpg. Her hairdresser however, deserves to get shot without a trial.

Look: http://www.mozilla.org/press/image-library/people- mitchell-baker.jpg

I am not certain of this, but I believe that because of the tri-licensing scheme, Google would not have to open-source much of its improvements to the code. They can choose to treat the code as MPL-licensed, in which case new files that they created could remain proprietary.

If anyone can verify this it woule be appreciated. Otherwise check out the MPL FAQ

Okay, cellphones.

So why not use minimo?

There may be too much copy-left remaining in the license for gecko:

How 'viral' is the MPL?

If I use MPLed code in my proprietary application, will I have to give all the source code away?

The MPL has a limited amount of 'copyleft' - more copyleft than the BSD family of licenses, which have no copyleft at all, but less than the LGPL or the GPL. It is based around the definition of a 'Modification' in the license

First of all doesnt google already work with opera including on mobile devices? Second, they could easily use mozilla in the mobile browser market by helping out minimo by fixing bugs and porting it to other devices.

Still early in development, and I don't know how excited big phone companies would be to use OSS (especially if using an Microsoft OS), but Mozilla has Minimo coming down the pipe. The existing preview builds already work in many Windows Mobile devices.

Sadly, my PDA isn't one of them.

Question: is there any way to gather real percentages here? (ie, is there any way to 'sniff' the extensions installed in Firefox?)

Not precisely, but FlashBlock has 15000+ downloads this week, and 350000+ total downloads listed at the bottom of the page. That's all since November 30. Now, since that is a new version for 1.5, I assume that many of those were previous users as well, so it's a decent estimate of the userbase, or at least that userbase which has installed FF 1.5.

To be perverse about it, what if I installed a GreaseMonkey script that blocked all images? A lot of sites would 'fail' for me too, without a graceful fallback.

Or what if you used a text only browser, like Lynx? Oh wait, that actually works properly if the site is designed correctly. This flash headline thing, however, does not work properly in my browser.

But I've never encountered such a situation.

Look at their demo page with FlashBlock installed. Voila, there's your situation. Every headline shows up as a blocked Flash app. Hideous.

this is a solution that works *today*

Regardless of the fact that a solution works, it's still wrong. Doing something the wrong way because it's faster doesn't make it right.

I'm saying that it would be better to wait years for your solution than to implement this Flash headline crap on your site, because in so doing, you will be alienating at least some percentage of your users. Me, for one. Even if the number is 2%, driving away 2% of your potential readers because you want to use some unusual font for your headlines seems, to be blunt, dumb as hell.

Dude, that's been tried before and rejected on the grounds that it looks like 'ASS'. Have fun trying it again.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26135 4

You can do a lot more with Firefox than just override the fonts. Using userContent.css , you can totally redo websites. For example, my Slashdot looks like this.

The CSS for that is on my blog.

(And, ironically enough, looking at those screenshots, I blanked out my username, and am now posting them under my username. I honestly can't remember why I did that.)

There's not a FF extension *specifically* to open up a min-emacs in FF for editing, sadly, but you can approximate it with a firefox extension called "ViewSourceWith" https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=394&application=firefox ,
which you can set to either run a new emacs or exploit the emacsclient command.

  I'm a heavy Wikipedia editor, and ViewSourceWith, when combinaed with Wikipedia mode ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia-mode.el ), is worth its weight in gold.

There is an experimental JavaScript 2.0 proposal maintained by Waldemar Horwat. Last updated June 2003.

Get the extension here https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=743&application=firefox

That is, assuming you use Firefox ;)

Hey, now that 1337 has been abandoned by it's generation, we old farts are picking it up. It's actually easy to standardize it as a code, with tools like Firefox's https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=770&application=firefox leetspeak plugin - you just highlight text and click to encode/decode! Handy for getting past (speak o' th' devil) Yahoo's Fascistic "indecency" filter, yet clear to all those who can read it. Ironic, no?