Slashdot Mirror

Mozilla Suite. Enjoy.

The 1.5 beta has inline spellchecking, some new RSS features and a nicer options UI.
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releas es/1.5beta1.html

When FF crashes, I usually lose 10-20 tabs that I was looking at and will never recover.

I tried using OpenOffice once, and it was just as good. But the Mail Merge interface sucked, and that was an important feature for me.

Both already exist. IEView (Firefox -> IE). FirefoxView (IE -> Firefox).

Just so you know, the page works when you spoof to IE6 using the User Agent Switcher extension.

Perhaps they'll add that in the next release.

Haven't you seen it? it is an already issued bug

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31046 3

Perhaps they'll add that in the next release.

Haven't you seen it? it is an already issued bug

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31046 3

Check out XUL. It is good enough to write a browser, Jabber client, or complete bookshop.

Check out some of the UI functionality here.

Check out XUL. It is good enough to write a browser, Jabber client, or complete bookshop.

Check out some of the UI functionality here.

it's not working when I post it here.

I tried tt and ecode, but they both didn't work, so I had to add spaces here and there to avoid slashdot braking the declarations. You can reformat it if you like.

(you need an extension to use a different CSS in Firefox? Unbelievable!)

I guess Mozilla thinks that it's complying with the spec because you can add styles to userContent.css and it will cascade them, but this is inadequate. There should be a way to override the authors styles according to the accessibility guidelines. Most people don't recognize the power of User CSS unless they're long time Opera users, so might not have occurred to Mozilla.

I tried one of your .css files using one of the extensions you nicely linked to... the site look even worse!

The first two were geared towards the Original Light slash that used Tables. NeoSlash is the new one. I'm probably not going to do advanced layout because all the current HTML needs adjusting, so it would be a waste of time when they fix it.

The first few pages are now a column on the left containing what should be evenly distributed along the full width of the page!

Are you talking about how the side bars turn into list items? That's because people think it's semantic and accessible to put groups of links inside UL and LI, then use styles to change them from block to in-line elements that flow. Interesting theory, but ultimately it causes more problems when the style is removed, disabled, or unsupported.

CSS lets you put things anywhere, so those links should be at the bottom of the source, but I think that makes it hard to position in IE.

I just want a sort of light, text only display with no little columns of space wasted on either side of the screen.

Then use my stylesheet and ask slash to move the slash-box code to the bottom of the source... Or hide them.. Well, my sheet does add colors, but they're not too high contrast so they don't hurt my eyes.

I'm updating my NeoSlash Stylesheet to .block{display:none;} and that should get rid of most of the slashboxes, but login is in a .block, and some other sites use .block so it may interfere if you use it at other sites, and I try to design my sheets universal. If there was just a body class=slashdot I could make it apply only to .slashdot .block{display:none;}.

Fine details again:

If you're using EditCSS, you have to:

Action, Clear.
File, Open...

If you Open without clearing, you will just cascade (Join) all the styles together. I tried to make my CSS work cascaded, but it's too much work to undo everything. Therefor, you should clear the styles in order to remove slash's layout.

3. With Web Developer extension it's more involved:

Disable, Styles, All Styles.
CSS, Add Style Sheet...

1. Bookmarklets are the faster way:

First go to squarefree.com...#zap_style_sheets and bookmark zap styles And then paste the styles at the User Style make-bookmarklet page and it immediately creates a bookmarklet from the stylesheet, so simply bookmark the link that it creates. The link is the text with the border that says zap colors. You should change the text to NeoSlash or what ever you want.

I will put another style up in my journal since posting CSS in comments gives errors. This time I removed all the '!important' from the declarations because It was hurting, not helping much, so you're going to have to clear the styles first or you might get author

I reviewed it at my security newsletter for nontechnical people

firefox has had a much better solution for quite some time: FlashBlock

It sounds like Lightning is a TB extension, while Sunbird is a standalone program. What are the pros and cons for each?

Firesomthing gives me a random browser name for every instance of firefox I have open. Currently I'm running Mooncougar

Q. Will this be Mozilla Lightning(TM)? Is this an official Mozilla Foundation product?
A. "Lightning" is simply a project code name to keep from having to type or say "Thunderbird extension for tightly-integrated calendar functionality" all the time. The Mozilla Foundation has not yet announced any plans to add Lightning to its set of supported products under any name; indeed, such an announcement would be premature, as the exact composition of Lightning is still very much under discussion.

The slashdot story is a little misleading... As you can see on this wiki here Lightning is an extension for thunderbird but very tightly integrated.

And I quote:

"Lightning" is simply a project code name to keep from having to type or say "Thunderbird extension for tightly-integrated calendar functionality" all the time.

"dogfood bugs" are usability issues, according to:
http://www.mozilla.org/editor/dogfood.html

Or call it Seamonkey instead, b/c Mozilla Suite isn't supported by the foundation any more, and they only put out security updates.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

No, clearly not there yet. Now obviously the Linux Kernel is more complicated than your average project, but it would seem the system Mozilla uses, Tinderbox would be also useful, as it seems the IBM automated test referenced above is not for when code is checked in, but after a release. The other thing with Tinderbox is that folks that check non-unit tested code in that breaks the build don't get to do that at a certain point ;)

Essentially, Tinderbox is a detective tool. It allows you to see what is happening in the source tree. It shows you who checked in what (by asking Bonsai); what platforms have built successfully; what platforms are broken and exactly how they are broken (the build logs); and the state of the files that made up the build (cvsblame) so you can figure out who broke the build, so you can do the most important thing, hold them accountable for their actions.

I'm not sure what open source software has to do with things. We're talking about buffer overflows here not replacing Firefox, and buffer overflows are actually easier to spot if you don't look at the source (this isn't a programming strategy, just common sense. If buffer overflows were so easy to spot don't you think the programmer could just look through the code looking for buffer overflows?). The argument here however is that extensions can be installed to the machine and do malicious activities. I'm just saying that this can't be done or isn't feasable simply because there's only one site that you can install extensions from, http://update.mozilla.org/ in a default firefox install.

Interesting. I've never had a problem with this.

First of all, Firefox will continually check for updates not only to the program itself, but to any extensions and themses you may have installed.

You do need to turn on this preference howerver. Go into Options-->Advanced-->Update and check the appropriate boxes.

So you don't need to manually check, it does it for you. :-)

You could also subscribe by email to Mozilla.org Press Releases. Any updates to Firefox would be mentioned in a press release. There is also a RSS feed of the Press Releases.

Interesting. I've never had a problem with this.

First of all, Firefox will continually check for updates not only to the program itself, but to any extensions and themses you may have installed.

You do need to turn on this preference howerver. Go into Options-->Advanced-->Update and check the appropriate boxes.

So you don't need to manually check, it does it for you. :-)

You could also subscribe by email to Mozilla.org Press Releases. Any updates to Firefox would be mentioned in a press release. There is also a RSS feed of the Press Releases.

Interesting. I've never had a problem with this.

First of all, Firefox will continually check for updates not only to the program itself, but to any extensions and themses you may have installed.

You do need to turn on this preference howerver. Go into Options-->Advanced-->Update and check the appropriate boxes.

So you don't need to manually check, it does it for you. :-)

You could also subscribe by email to Mozilla.org Press Releases. Any updates to Firefox would be mentioned in a press release. There is also a RSS feed of the Press Releases.

it's called 'showip', pretty useful

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?application=firefox&category=Popular&numpg=10&id= 590

A better extension is Customize Google. This extension will add several functions to make Google even more powerful.

You can force it to the compatible with the Nightly Tester Tools. However, at least on my system, it broke the ability for form fields to have that little drop down with saved information. Unfortunately, that killed this extension for me, so I'm using the A9 toolbar instead (and as a bonus, now I have a small discount at Amazon).

I don't know if you've tried the next-generation suite based off the old Mozilla browser, but SeaMonkey is amazingly fast on my computer. It loads in about a second, compared to about 3 seconds for Firefox. I am a former Internet Explorer user who finally gave in to Firefox when it hit 1.0. Unfortunately, with each release, it seems to get slower and take up more memory. I've switched to Seamonkey because it integrates an email client with the browser and uses the same amount of memory as Firefox alone (I had never used Thunderbird, I always stuck with Outlook Express). Extensions like Adblock and Multizilla make the Seamonkey transition worthwhile. It wouldn't hurt to try it out.

Actually, Firefox already blocks popups, so Google's Toolbar doesn't need to block them, unless you're looking for a popup blocker blocker.

there have been svg browser plugins for some time; now native svg is included with firefox on ms-windows, and scheduled for inclusion with firefox and mozilla. here are some SVG and SVG animation links for you:

• Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 Specification - w3c 2003
• Mozilla SVG Project
• SVG Animation Tutorial - dated 2002, i'm sure you can find something more recent

Simply use GMail Delete Button, which adds a delete button to messages. Really, of all the things to treat as a showstopper, this is a fairly minor thing. Especially since it can be so easily solved.

So it requires someone to file a special request under the law to check Mozilla's dealings.

Not true. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation the Mozilla Foundation is required to file disclosure paperwork with the IRS every year. These disclosure filings (called Forms 990) are public and searchable via GuideStar (requires free registration).

The Mozilla Foundation's 990s are, it's true, only current to 2003. But that's not due to any deep conspiracy; it's just because they didn't file the 2003 990 until October 2004. So you shouldn't expect to see the 2004 disclosure until a year or so after that (October-November 2005).

If you want to spin a conspiracy theory, a more plausible one would involve the recent formation of the "Mozilla Corporation" as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Foundation. It's unclear to me if money paid to such an entity would need to be disclosed or not (it would definitely have to be reported to the IRS, but possibly in a way that isn't public like the 990 data). If not, it's possible that one of the motivations for the formation of the Corporation would be to accept large donations from parties like Google without having them show up on the Foundation's public disclosures -- but that's unlikely since Google has been the default search engine in Firefox since 0.1, and the Corporation has only existed since August of this year. So any payments from Google would have to have been pretty recent for this to be plausible.

You can now go back to your regularly scheduled tinfoil-hat fashion show ;-)

None of these is a complete solution, but they may help you.

http://www.schneier.com/passsafe.html Password safe - This uses strong encryption with a master password to store all your other passwords. You still have to cut'n'paste them everywhere, though. Keep it on a USB key with the encrypted passwords.

https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?application=firefox&id=670 Password Composer - Takes the md5 of your master password and the hostname of a site to generate a unique password for each site. It's available as a Firefox extension, or as a bookmarklet. The method is simple, so you can get your password back with nothing more than echo and md5sum on the command line, so you're not at the software's mercy. However, there's not a good way to change either your master password or a site password if they're compromised. And it's only good for the web. But it's still a good improvement for handling tons of sites that don't need the very highest security.

http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/ Kerberos - Use a password to log in once, and then you're authenticated for all the services you need. This works great, but it has to be supported by each site that uses it. It's great for intranets, but it doesn't help for random web sites.

I wonder how fast Firefox would load if the XUL processor was preloaded. Like XULRunner with the Firefox XULs.

It is not so much the technology as the economic might of the one of the biggest developers of AJAX: Google. They are giving a wall to wall 24x7 demo of AJAX technique and its effectiveness to anyone who pays attention. The fact that middleweight clients that can support a bit of asynchronous update traffic in what , to the user, is the "background", is not so much technically amazing as perceptably practical and a better web experiance. I was looking for better doc on AJAX, having first got the impression it had to be JavaScript [which, frankly, is a crappy tool for designing ambitious software]. This article is a good addition to a topic that doesn't have much presence in the bookstores yet. There are other sources on line. Its not just for XML and its not just a J language either... Ruby will do.

The browser feud is really becoming a pointless exercise in arguing.

Welcome back to 1997. Shall we start using little buttons that say, "Best Viewed in FireFox" or "Best Viewed in Internet Explorer?"

On second thought, never mind.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_for mat=specific&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__ope n__&content=utf

MSIE does not publish bug info, and it should be worse than Moz, but I'd wager it's not very bad -- several windows versions use utf-8 internally, and Asia is a very very larget market to leave unsatisfied. The problem isn't on the browsers either. Heck, Big5 -> unicode is convertable with a simple dictionary -- if you support Big5, you'll surely support Big5 characters within unicode.

I have Firefox with the excellent Web Developer extension installed. This lets you edit and change CSS on the fly, amongst other things. Each of the sections (games, apple, IT etc) seem to have their own CSS overlay. Kill that, and the page reverts to standard green.

Yeah, I was wondering why the story's titles after "Is AOL The Key to Microsoft 'Killing' Google?" had bigger fonts. Seems like a good upgrade after all.
There are a few warnings on the pages, though. You should try to validate them on w3c's validator, or this excelent extension for Firefox.
Anyway, kudos to you all.

the infamous "Slashdot bug". (Not sure if it's corrected in recent versions since I normally use Mozilla or Safari.)

It's fixed, but not in the 1.0 branch (1.0.7), only in the head. So the fix is included in the 1.5 Beta 1 (Deer Park).

Here's the Bugzilla entry (direct links from Slashdot don't work, so copy/paste): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21752 7.

the infamous "Slashdot bug". (Not sure if it's corrected in recent versions since I normally use Mozilla or Safari.)

It's fixed, but not in the 1.0 branch (1.0.7), only in the head. So the fix is included in the 1.5 Beta 1 (Deer Park).

Here's the Bugzilla entry (direct links from Slashdot don't work, so copy/paste): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21752 7.

If it is so swift at responding to security, then why did it take 7 years to notice and fix a critical vulnerability? Furthermore, if the developers care so much about security, then why the organization allows certain people in the bug group to censor security flaws within Mozilla's projects, thus making users vulnerable to browser bugs for YEARS? Is it one of those M$ scheme designed to destroy the hard-earned reputations of the browser?

It is one thing to have old bugs, but it is another matter when Mozilla developers being hypocritical when they allow such moronic security practice to take place. Long live IE!!!

Then do what I do: don't use your distro's tools to install Firefox, use their Linux installer and install to a subdir in your user directory.

Better yet, just get the firefox tar.gz archive rather than the installer and extract it where you will. (you can get it here: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rel eases/1.0.7/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-1.0.7.tar.gz )

It's really sad that to be able to download a simple archive, which is all that you need to run firefox, you have to go through the "other platforms" links, back up a directory and into the linux-i686/en-US/ directory - they've made it extremely difficult to find and new users wouldn't even be aware of its existence. Does every linux user now use this superfluous linux-installer instead??

This is not about Mozilla distributing infected binaries. Mozilla did not.

The binaries originally came from the Korean localization team, but they were definitely hosted on ftp.mozilla.org. Although I suppose we could quibble about "distributed"-- records from our primary mirrors indicate zero (0) downloads of the infected files.

I assume mozilla.or.kr points people at the Korean secondary mirrors from which we don't get download numbers.

I'm confused about the "standards" that everyone touts with Firefox, even FF admits that they DO NOT follow standards strictly:

http://www.mozilla.org/access/keyboard/tabindex

Do a ctrl-f and look for "w3c", it's in that sentence! So what am I missing here FF l33ts?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

If you want to include all or part of a Mozilla trademark in a domain name, you have to receive written permission from Mozilla. People naturally associate domain names with organizations whose names sound similar. Almost any use of a Mozilla trademark in a domain name is likely to confuse consumers, thus running afoul of the overarching requirement that any use of a Mozilla trademark be non-confusing. If you would like to build a Mozilla, Firefox Internet browser or Thunderbird e-mail client promotional site for your region, we encourage you to join an existing official localization project.
source

So Mozilla does state a policy regarding exactly what has occurred here. The problem is, U.S. trademark laws don't have any teeth in Korea. In fact, there is a U.S. government-run site that goes into great detail about how companies that have registered trademarks in the U.S. should not try to do business in Korea (or enforce their trademarks, of course) until they have registered their trademark in Korea, as well:

Basic intellectual property laws exist in Korea. However, protection of intellectual property and the laws governing enforcement of these protections are not necessarily extra-territorial. What is understood and practiced in the United States is not always practiced in Korea. U.S. companies wishing to sell their products or services in Korea should first and foremost find out if they have to register their intellectual property rights (copyright, trademark or patents) in Korea...One of the most frequent IPR problems facing U.S. businesses in Korea is trademark protection.
source

Now, the last piece relates to trademark use by localization teams. The site distributing the binaries was in fact run by a Korean Firefox localization team, however, Mozilla has yet to refuse their right to use the trademarks, as per Mozilla Foundation policy, which allows use by localization teams in general, and rejects only in specific instances:

It is very important that Community Releases of Firefox and Thunderbird maintain (or even exceed!) the quality level people have come to associate with Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. We need to ensure this, but we don't want to get in people's way. So, we are taking an optimistic approach. Official L10n teams can start using the "Firefox Community Edition" and "Thunderbird Community Edition" trademarks from day one, but the Mozilla Foundation may require teams to stop doing so in the future if they are redistributing software with low quality and efforts to remedy the situation have not succeeded. Doing things this way allows us to give as much freedom to people as possible, while maintaining our trademarks as a mark of quality (which we are required to do in order to keep them).
source

I'll readily admit that I have no idea whether Mozilla has attempted to reject their right to use the Mozilla trademark, but given the warning found on U.S. government sites regarding trademark enforcement, I'd say it would be prodigal use of the foundation's limited resources. Further, there is nothing to indicate that there is in fact any "affiliation" whatsoever, as nowhere does Mozilla Foundation acknowledge the presence of the Korean site (although its URL does appear on a Mozilla-run wiki - who knows who put it there).

In any case, this reflects poorly only on the part of the Korean Localization Team, as Mozilla Foundation likely lacks the resources to succesfully pursue a trademark infringement case abroad in Korea, and we have already established that the site is not an official Mozilla site (unlike, for example, http://www.mozilla-europe.org/ or

If you want to include all or part of a Mozilla trademark in a domain name, you have to receive written permission from Mozilla. People naturally associate domain names with organizations whose names sound similar. Almost any use of a Mozilla trademark in a domain name is likely to confuse consumers, thus running afoul of the overarching requirement that any use of a Mozilla trademark be non-confusing. If you would like to build a Mozilla, Firefox Internet browser or Thunderbird e-mail client promotional site for your region, we encourage you to join an existing official localization project.
source

So Mozilla does state a policy regarding exactly what has occurred here. The problem is, U.S. trademark laws don't have any teeth in Korea. In fact, there is a U.S. government-run site that goes into great detail about how companies that have registered trademarks in the U.S. should not try to do business in Korea (or enforce their trademarks, of course) until they have registered their trademark in Korea, as well:

Basic intellectual property laws exist in Korea. However, protection of intellectual property and the laws governing enforcement of these protections are not necessarily extra-territorial. What is understood and practiced in the United States is not always practiced in Korea. U.S. companies wishing to sell their products or services in Korea should first and foremost find out if they have to register their intellectual property rights (copyright, trademark or patents) in Korea...One of the most frequent IPR problems facing U.S. businesses in Korea is trademark protection.
source

Now, the last piece relates to trademark use by localization teams. The site distributing the binaries was in fact run by a Korean Firefox localization team, however, Mozilla has yet to refuse their right to use the trademarks, as per Mozilla Foundation policy, which allows use by localization teams in general, and rejects only in specific instances:

It is very important that Community Releases of Firefox and Thunderbird maintain (or even exceed!) the quality level people have come to associate with Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird. We need to ensure this, but we don't want to get in people's way. So, we are taking an optimistic approach. Official L10n teams can start using the "Firefox Community Edition" and "Thunderbird Community Edition" trademarks from day one, but the Mozilla Foundation may require teams to stop doing so in the future if they are redistributing software with low quality and efforts to remedy the situation have not succeeded. Doing things this way allows us to give as much freedom to people as possible, while maintaining our trademarks as a mark of quality (which we are required to do in order to keep them).
source

I'll readily admit that I have no idea whether Mozilla has attempted to reject their right to use the Mozilla trademark, but given the warning found on U.S. government sites regarding trademark enforcement, I'd say it would be prodigal use of the foundation's limited resources. Further, there is nothing to indicate that there is in fact any "affiliation" whatsoever, as nowhere does Mozilla Foundation acknowledge the presence of the Korean site (although its URL does appear on a Mozilla-run wiki - who knows who put it there).

In any case, this reflects poorly only on the part of the Korean Localization Team, as Mozilla Foundation likely lacks the resources to succesfully pursue a trademark infringement case abroad in Korea, and we have already established that the site is not an official Mozilla site (unlike, for example, http://www.mozilla-europe.org/ or

We have SeaMonkey now!

I'm the Firefox fanboy in my company for sure, but I have a growing trust issue with Mozilla here. Firefox 1.0.7 was released this morning, and http://www.mozillazine.org/ said to expect the list of known security vulnerabilities at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/known-vul nerabilities.html#firefox1.0.7 would be updated soon. With every other previous minor release this page was swiftly updated with all the security bulletins. Since its been two months since the previous minor update, what is Mozilla not telling us? A quick check of the new build announcements at http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/ shows a lot of security updates and a lot of regressions. So where are they?

What about the Seamonkey Project?