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I do PGP sign my mail, at least whenever http://enigmail.mozdev.com/enigmail is updated for the latest version of http://mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/thunderbir d. I have found that it causes problems. AOL has classified some of my mails as spam because of the PGP signiture. Apparently they can't differentiate between a PGP sig and random characters to fool filters. It hasn't been reported that other mails have been lost for the same reason, but it seems like a valid assumption.

Anyone else noticed this?

without all the crapola popups

Popups? What popups? Get a better browser dude!

I've watched Mozilla development for a few years now, and I can tell you that this is actually a good thing... By listening to everyone you end up with (among a million other things) a kitchen sink.

Ahem.

Actually, in a way, they already have it...SpoofStick is an extension that'll help detect spoofed sites.

Firefox SpoofStick Extension

First you must understand how components work in mozilla. I read the book "Creating XPCOM Components" from the mozilla site. I found it a great resource. It explains the mozilla architecture, how to create extensions, install and deploy them, and interact with other components in mozilla. I think it is a great starting point. You must have some C++ knowledge to understand it.

For example, the most difficult thing for me was trying to figure out how to package up my XUL/JS in a form that Firefox would take it. All the tutorials talked about install.js, installed-chrome.txt, and regxpcom, all of which are outdated. (Hint: Since Firefox 0.9, install.rdf is the key to the whole thing, so any tutorial that doesn't mention it is outdated.)

Once you've gotten the basics (probably by reading the O'Reilly book--the Nigel MacFarlane book may have a lot of useful info, but it was so poorly written I couldn't get through it), you really want to do yourself a favor and install Venkman, the Javascript debugger. The only place I've been able to find that has this little gem for Firefox is here.

Then, as you inevitably run into walls trying to get things done in the browser, cozy up to the source. There's not much you can do with XUL/JS that hasn't already been done in the Firefox source, and the search tools available on LXR will often lead you right to them.

And here are some source files you're definitely going to need to look at:
browser main window
browser menus and commands
browser main logic

Also, shamelessly unzip and dissect other people's XPI's; they probably won't mind anyway.

For example, the most difficult thing for me was trying to figure out how to package up my XUL/JS in a form that Firefox would take it. All the tutorials talked about install.js, installed-chrome.txt, and regxpcom, all of which are outdated. (Hint: Since Firefox 0.9, install.rdf is the key to the whole thing, so any tutorial that doesn't mention it is outdated.)

Once you've gotten the basics (probably by reading the O'Reilly book--the Nigel MacFarlane book may have a lot of useful info, but it was so poorly written I couldn't get through it), you really want to do yourself a favor and install Venkman, the Javascript debugger. The only place I've been able to find that has this little gem for Firefox is here.

Then, as you inevitably run into walls trying to get things done in the browser, cozy up to the source. There's not much you can do with XUL/JS that hasn't already been done in the Firefox source, and the search tools available on LXR will often lead you right to them.

And here are some source files you're definitely going to need to look at:
browser main window
browser menus and commands
browser main logic

Also, shamelessly unzip and dissect other people's XPI's; they probably won't mind anyway.

For example, the most difficult thing for me was trying to figure out how to package up my XUL/JS in a form that Firefox would take it. All the tutorials talked about install.js, installed-chrome.txt, and regxpcom, all of which are outdated. (Hint: Since Firefox 0.9, install.rdf is the key to the whole thing, so any tutorial that doesn't mention it is outdated.)

Once you've gotten the basics (probably by reading the O'Reilly book--the Nigel MacFarlane book may have a lot of useful info, but it was so poorly written I couldn't get through it), you really want to do yourself a favor and install Venkman, the Javascript debugger. The only place I've been able to find that has this little gem for Firefox is here.

Then, as you inevitably run into walls trying to get things done in the browser, cozy up to the source. There's not much you can do with XUL/JS that hasn't already been done in the Firefox source, and the search tools available on LXR will often lead you right to them.

And here are some source files you're definitely going to need to look at:
browser main window
browser menus and commands
browser main logic

Also, shamelessly unzip and dissect other people's XPI's; they probably won't mind anyway.

For example, the most difficult thing for me was trying to figure out how to package up my XUL/JS in a form that Firefox would take it. All the tutorials talked about install.js, installed-chrome.txt, and regxpcom, all of which are outdated. (Hint: Since Firefox 0.9, install.rdf is the key to the whole thing, so any tutorial that doesn't mention it is outdated.)

Once you've gotten the basics (probably by reading the O'Reilly book--the Nigel MacFarlane book may have a lot of useful info, but it was so poorly written I couldn't get through it), you really want to do yourself a favor and install Venkman, the Javascript debugger. The only place I've been able to find that has this little gem for Firefox is here.

Then, as you inevitably run into walls trying to get things done in the browser, cozy up to the source. There's not much you can do with XUL/JS that hasn't already been done in the Firefox source, and the search tools available on LXR will often lead you right to them.

And here are some source files you're definitely going to need to look at:
browser main window
browser menus and commands
browser main logic

Also, shamelessly unzip and dissect other people's XPI's; they probably won't mind anyway.

Make them use Firefox with this extension. Then they only use IE for the sites that require it. Those, one would hope, should be reasonably safe.

And finally, the mother of all example sites

The mother of all example sites would be over here. Unzip the extensions, and examples abound.

• What you need is appendItem and friends, or such methods as "insertItemAt", "insertBefore" and "removeAllItems" for the menulist element, along with addEventListener.

Alas, menulist has nothing to do with menus. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe menulist is the XUL equivalent of HTML select dropdowns; the elements used for window menus are menu, menubar, menuitem and so on.

I'm starting to figure out how to do this with XUL in-memory datasources now, though; see the first example on this page.

For the last 5 years Windows 2000 has had WFP to protect against core files being overwritten. I've not had a single "DLL hell" experience yet in ~15 years of using Windows.
However I've installed Firefox on ten different distros (probably more now) and never once seen an icon for it appear automatically in my GNOME menu. Why is this so broken? APT, Synaptic, RPM, yum, etc. are all basically broken from my point of view, but we put up with them because it's worth the fuss. Millions of computer users can't even find a new icon on the DESKTOP, much less dink around with non-standard filesystem heirarchies (which distro do you use?) and symlinks.
Pet peeve of the day (which happens to be relevant to this thread) : Windows downloads are only a fraction the size of equivalent Linux apps. Try OO.o, Firefox, etc. My Xandros 3 install had to download 40MB (using the lovely APT) which doesn't compare well to a 4MB download for Windows.
Seriously, you should look into using something more current than Windows 3.11.

To compare apples to apples:
OO.o:
Windows - 45MB
Linux - 77MB

Firefox (with installer):
Windows - 4803KB
Linux - 8422 KB

Thunderbird:
Windows - 5877 KB
Linux - 10113 KB

I've heard enough about bloody shared libraries that evidently NEVER get shared, and instead I end up with five different incompatible versions of glibc/GTK/whatever and it's also annoying to wait while APT downloads an EXTRA 300% of the listed download size. If making *NIX installers like Windows means that I'll have all the advantages, and all of the downfalls, then I'll take it thank you very much. It's a great deal better than what we've got now.

For the last 5 years Windows 2000 has had WFP to protect against core files being overwritten. I've not had a single "DLL hell" experience yet in ~15 years of using Windows.
However I've installed Firefox on ten different distros (probably more now) and never once seen an icon for it appear automatically in my GNOME menu. Why is this so broken? APT, Synaptic, RPM, yum, etc. are all basically broken from my point of view, but we put up with them because it's worth the fuss. Millions of computer users can't even find a new icon on the DESKTOP, much less dink around with non-standard filesystem heirarchies (which distro do you use?) and symlinks.
Pet peeve of the day (which happens to be relevant to this thread) : Windows downloads are only a fraction the size of equivalent Linux apps. Try OO.o, Firefox, etc. My Xandros 3 install had to download 40MB (using the lovely APT) which doesn't compare well to a 4MB download for Windows.
Seriously, you should look into using something more current than Windows 3.11.

To compare apples to apples:
OO.o:
Windows - 45MB
Linux - 77MB

Firefox (with installer):
Windows - 4803KB
Linux - 8422 KB

Thunderbird:
Windows - 5877 KB
Linux - 10113 KB

I've heard enough about bloody shared libraries that evidently NEVER get shared, and instead I end up with five different incompatible versions of glibc/GTK/whatever and it's also annoying to wait while APT downloads an EXTRA 300% of the listed download size. If making *NIX installers like Windows means that I'll have all the advantages, and all of the downfalls, then I'll take it thank you very much. It's a great deal better than what we've got now.

For the last 5 years Windows 2000 has had WFP to protect against core files being overwritten. I've not had a single "DLL hell" experience yet in ~15 years of using Windows.
However I've installed Firefox on ten different distros (probably more now) and never once seen an icon for it appear automatically in my GNOME menu. Why is this so broken? APT, Synaptic, RPM, yum, etc. are all basically broken from my point of view, but we put up with them because it's worth the fuss. Millions of computer users can't even find a new icon on the DESKTOP, much less dink around with non-standard filesystem heirarchies (which distro do you use?) and symlinks.
Pet peeve of the day (which happens to be relevant to this thread) : Windows downloads are only a fraction the size of equivalent Linux apps. Try OO.o, Firefox, etc. My Xandros 3 install had to download 40MB (using the lovely APT) which doesn't compare well to a 4MB download for Windows.
Seriously, you should look into using something more current than Windows 3.11.

To compare apples to apples:
OO.o:
Windows - 45MB
Linux - 77MB

Firefox (with installer):
Windows - 4803KB
Linux - 8422 KB

Thunderbird:
Windows - 5877 KB
Linux - 10113 KB

I've heard enough about bloody shared libraries that evidently NEVER get shared, and instead I end up with five different incompatible versions of glibc/GTK/whatever and it's also annoying to wait while APT downloads an EXTRA 300% of the listed download size. If making *NIX installers like Windows means that I'll have all the advantages, and all of the downfalls, then I'll take it thank you very much. It's a great deal better than what we've got now.

For the last 5 years Windows 2000 has had WFP to protect against core files being overwritten. I've not had a single "DLL hell" experience yet in ~15 years of using Windows.
However I've installed Firefox on ten different distros (probably more now) and never once seen an icon for it appear automatically in my GNOME menu. Why is this so broken? APT, Synaptic, RPM, yum, etc. are all basically broken from my point of view, but we put up with them because it's worth the fuss. Millions of computer users can't even find a new icon on the DESKTOP, much less dink around with non-standard filesystem heirarchies (which distro do you use?) and symlinks.
Pet peeve of the day (which happens to be relevant to this thread) : Windows downloads are only a fraction the size of equivalent Linux apps. Try OO.o, Firefox, etc. My Xandros 3 install had to download 40MB (using the lovely APT) which doesn't compare well to a 4MB download for Windows.
Seriously, you should look into using something more current than Windows 3.11.

To compare apples to apples:
OO.o:
Windows - 45MB
Linux - 77MB

Firefox (with installer):
Windows - 4803KB
Linux - 8422 KB

Thunderbird:
Windows - 5877 KB
Linux - 10113 KB

I've heard enough about bloody shared libraries that evidently NEVER get shared, and instead I end up with five different incompatible versions of glibc/GTK/whatever and it's also annoying to wait while APT downloads an EXTRA 300% of the listed download size. If making *NIX installers like Windows means that I'll have all the advantages, and all of the downfalls, then I'll take it thank you very much. It's a great deal better than what we've got now.

I'm a Free Software guy, because after all has been said and done, the GNU philosophy provides a much more rational answer to the question of "Why use it?" than the Open Source Initiative.

The Open Source Initiative answers that question by saying that Open Source software is better: the programs are better, the development model is better, the support is better. In some cases that's at least subjectively true. Apache really is a best-of-class webserver. gcc really is a very good compiler collection.

But then the examples quickly dry up. Mozilla, supposed to be the posterchild of the OSI movement, was years late, and had to be forked to spawn Firefox to finally deliver something people will actually use. It's a bit better in some respects than Internet Explorer, but not by a large margin. What's more it has been plagued by the exact same problems that open source development was supposed to prevent: it's late, security issues have been kept under wraps (you'll need to copy-paste this link into a new browser window), and it's bloated.

That's not to say that it's bad software. In fact, I think it's pretty good software. But after years of development, broad community support, and generous funding by AOL, the end result turns out to be just slightly better than the most important closed source competitor. It's hardly a compelling argument in favor of the supposed superiority of Open Source.

It's easy to go on in this vein, and mention the whole or partial failures of Open Office, or Helixcode, or XFree86, but that would be merely antagonizing and besides, it doesn't prove anything. In order to debunk the claim that Open Source leads to better software, it's not sufficient to mention open source failures: it's necessary to show closed source success as well.

Well, that's not hard either. There's Apple's spectacular introduction of MacOS X, Microsoft's splendid .NET framework, the continued, and apparently unbreakable, dominance of Adobe and Quark in graphic design. Packages like AutoCad, Maya, Cubase, Reason, Live and Final Cut Pro are not just best-of-class, they practically define the industry. And then there's everybody's favorite, games: in the 6 years since the founding of the OSI, the games industry has grown by more than 100%, all without giving open source so much as a second thought.

Considering all this, it's hard to maintain that Open Source implies better software. And if it doesn't imply that, then why use it, or produce it? After all, isn't the Open Source creed all about doing what works best?

Most Open Source advocates aren't quite ready to admit this to themselves yet. They claim Open Source produces more secure software, and use Windows' extremely poor record in this regard to prove it -- but they ignore the rising number of GNU/Linux exploits and the exemplary security record of closed source MacOS and HP/UX. They claim MS Office is bloated, but ignore the lumbering blimp that is Open Office. The list goes on and on, but I'm quite sure that at this point the few people who are still reading will wonder whether this post goes on forever.

When all is said and done, what remains is the love of programming, the joy of seeing your work being put to good use, and the desire to share it with like-minded souls. Being "better" is important; what's more important is how we can protect our rights to share amidst a climate of overbearing patents and corporate favoritism.

This is what the GPL tries to guarantee, and why Free Software is so different from Open Source.

If you're just starting out with XUl, you may want to brish up on your JavaScript first. Although XUL itself is a rather straightforward markup language (albeit with many, many quirks), in order to make your app actually do anything, you'll need to write some JavaScript to control it. There are many, many Javascript resources out there, and I also recommend JavaScript: The Definitive Guide from O'Reilly.

Once you have that down, here are a few XUL sites I recommend:

Creating Application with Mozilla - Online version of O'Reilly's book. Great resource for beginners to follow through, but some of the examples no longer work due to changes in the APIs since the books release.

XUL Planet - An excellene resource for XUL developers of any level. This site contains a great tutorial for getting started and becoming familiar with the environment, as well as a definitive reference guide for XUL and XPCOM objects and functions.

XUL Planet Forum - This forum is also housed at the XUL Planet website, but it deserves separate mention. This is the only forum/newsgroup/list I've been able to find that's still active and populated with friendly and helpful souls. I've received helped there several times on problems I'd been working on for weeks or months.

There are also a few XUL-related newsgroups on mozilla's usenet server (eg, news://news.mozilla.org:563/netscape.public.dev.xu l), though not too many people use those groups anymore.

There's also Mozilla official XUL Programmer's Reference. This is a great reference resource, but it's not geared for beginners.

And finally, the mother of all example sites: http://www.hevanet.com/acorbin/xul/top.xul If you can't figure out how something work, this most likely has a working example.

Good luck!

You can always start at mozilla and xulplanet

mozilla
xulplanet

As for the more advanced stuff, I'm not sure where.

Don't forget the Extensions for Firefox such as Ad-Block.

And of course, there's OpenOffice.

BSPlayer for movies, its fast and fairly lightweight. theres free, and non-free versions on the BSPlayer site

SmartFTP - n00b friendly FTP client - free for home/non-commercial use

pretty obvious what the following 3 are:
Apache
MySQL
PHP

PostCast SMTP server

CrapCleaner! cleans crap from your PC! temp files, MRUs, deletes invalid registry stuff. Whenever I use it, it usually free's up ~1GB on my hard drive! quite amazing how much crap there is on XP

Firefox and Thunderbird

• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• Outpost Firewall
• Cygwin
• The GIMP
• Spybot
• adAware
• Trillian
• Google Desktop Search
• SETI@home
• iTunes

• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• Outpost Firewall
• Cygwin
• The GIMP
• Spybot
• adAware
• Trillian
• Google Desktop Search
• SETI@home
• iTunes

Did it ever occur to them that every time we try signing up for the class action lawsuit, when we hit submit iexplorer.exe gives us a general protection fault? That seven percent must be the Mozilla users.

With so many MUAs existing, I am surprised, for the sake of security, that you wouldn't pick one with native security measurements in it! (Such as simply not showing images by default, in this case.)

Oh, did I forget to mention that Thunderbird does that?

Mozilla Thunderbird blocks images by default in messages until you click "load images". Useful for reading graphical newsletters you *did* subscribe to.

Damn, i hate managing links in HTML. Correction:
Browser: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Graphics: http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/

A few years ago, before i started using Linux seriously, I started building an almost free/open Windows XP system. Here's the basic breakdown of the so-called free system:
Shell: http://www.bb4win.org/
Burning prog: http://www.burnatonce.com/
DC client: http://gempond.com/odc/
Graphics: http://gempond.com/odc/
IM: http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
Browser:
Mail: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/
Office suite: http://www.openoffice.org/
et cetera...
But then it dawned on me: All these programs are avaliable under GNU/Linux.

That day was the day that i switched to Debian. I haven't looked back.

A quick search of the source code seems to show that the native OS LoadImage function is only used to set Mozilla icons (system tray, window icons, etc) and the splash screen (and the cck). Since none of these images come from untrusted sources*, it seems that the LoadImage hole is not exploitable via Mozilla.

*without major user intervention, like installing an XPI or messing with the JAR files that make up Mozilla

A quick search of the source code seems to show that the native OS LoadImage function is only used to set Mozilla icons (system tray, window icons, etc) and the splash screen (and the cck). Since none of these images come from untrusted sources*, it seems that the LoadImage hole is not exploitable via Mozilla.

*without major user intervention, like installing an XPI or messing with the JAR files that make up Mozilla

" Gmail does not currently support your browser. See browser requirements for Gmail or sign in anyway. "

After clicking "Sign In Anyway" I was able to access my account, and everything seemed to be working OK...the keyboard shortcuts, etc. However it was much slower than IE or Fx.

I agree. It is not ready yet. However I looked at the roadmap and here is a list of planned features:

• Invitations - Guests will be alerted when events changed; responses automatically imported.
• Multiple People - Support for various calendar servers.
• Synchronization - Support for sync with mobile devices.
• Views - In-line editing for events in both list view and calendar view.
• Standalone Build - Full support; as feature complete and as stable as Calendar

I'm interested in the mozilla calendar project, if it integrates with thunderbird, I'll switch for good. But they are still in the early stages of developement, it seems.

The calendar extension works with Thunderbird, but it's just a calendar, not groupware.

If you're just looking to keep your own appointments, it works very well.

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

It can't hurt to give it a try to see if it suits your needs.

There is currently a ton of work being done on Sunbird. The backend is being rewritten to allow multiple calendar type providers, and the frontend is being cleaned up to match the new backend. Check out the calendar portion of: Mozilla Wiki for more details.

The prime candidate for a Symbian port would be Minimo, rather than Mozilla.

There is a project at Mozilla for smartphones : Minimo

I would really be interested in a port of a Mozilla browser to some of these small footprints devices. I currently use Opera on my series 60 Nokia smartphone. It's a real pain to use.
I heard some interesting things about Minimo : here's the link.

Any idea how Wikalong compares to Opine-It!, mentioned in another post in this subthread?

In that case, you might be interested in the opine-it extension for Firefox.

Q:Is there a FireFox plugin to delete cookies that last too long?

1. Enter about:config in Location bar and hit Go.
2. Enter network.cookie.lifetime in the Filter box.
3. Double-click on network.cookie.lifetimePolicy and change the value to 3.
4. Double-click on network.cookie.lifetime.days and enter the maximum number of days cookies should be allowed to last for.

More at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/cookies/coo kie-prefs.html.

Most people don't understand or use OpenPGP programs

I don't know if Chase Phillips (the KEY owner) would purposely sign malicious software

I don't know if Chase Phillips has truely generated and operated that keypair I know none of the people who have signed Chase Phillips key. If I was certain that one of them would only sign the key after checking Chase's identity, I would feel reasonably secure that the key is controlled by Chase. It would help immensely if a widely trusted entity like Verisign would verify and sign Chase's key.

It's signed using GPGP. There is also a checksum.

It's easy enough to check if bothered.

Easy enough for us, sure. But again, consider the users that the NYT ad aims to convert. On the getfirefox main page, I see a big green download link which immediately downloads the file.
However, I do not see any directions on the site as to how to verify the signature or checksum.

Nor do I see any instructions on the Release Notes page, which includes directions for downloading and installing.

My point is that power users will have no problem verifying the checksum or signature if they want to. But if we want Firefox to be a mainstream browser, it has to "seem" mainstream.

And this might include getting a verisign certificate. We can debate all day that verisign is useless, and that certs don't do any good because spyware is signed etc etc.
But it DOES add that extra little bit of legitimacy in the minds of the Clueless Users (the ones who will be using Firefox if it is to be "mainstream") because they will see a happy popup message with a big green check sign instead of a scary popup message with a big exclamation point. It's stupid, it's useless as far as we are concerned, but it will go a long way towards making it appear legit to grandma.

The current system lets mirrors tamper with the software.

Instead of blindly parrotting what the article says, how about posting, oh I don't know... facts?

The current system includes signed binaries. It uses GPG, not Verisign, so you don't get a nice little message pop up when you run the EXE (can't programs fake that anyway?). It's cross-platform, instead of a Windows-only solution.

damn not handling links properly.. ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rele ases/1.0/win32/en-US/Firefox%20Setup%201.0.exe.tor rent

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/rele ases/1.0/win32/en-US/Firefox Setup 1.0.exe.torrent

However, let's not forget that Mr. Torr is considering the "average" user who simply navigates to he Mozilla home page and clicks Free Download using, of course, their default installed browser (which, arguably, may have already been compromised).

Those users, which, like it or else, account for the vast majority of all personal computer users, do not even know how to spell gpg. And they are the ones who need the protection the most.

However, let's not forget that Mr. Torr is considering the "average" user who simply navigates to he Mozilla home page and clicks Free Download using, of course, their default installed browser (which, arguably, may have already been compromised).

Those users, which, like it or else, account for the vast majority of all personal computer users, do not even know how to spell gpg. And they are the ones who need the protection the most.

1. The complaint was about Flash
2. Flash is a plugin
3. Plugins are DLLs (in Windows; EXEs when downloaded) that import functionality from other programs on your computer. Examples: Flash, Shockwave, Java, Real Player, QuickTime
4. Extensions are XPIs, which add functionality into the browser's own code, much of which is simply XUL (XML) and JavaScript.
5. Firefox has an extension manager, not a plugin manager

So anyway, Flash installs and I can view the Ocean's 12 website OK. But now what if there's a security bug found in Flash and I want to disable it? With Internet Explorer, I can simply set the Internet Zone to "High" security mode (to block all ActiveX controls), or I could go to the Tools -> Manage Add-Ons dialog if I just wanted to disable Flash until an update was available. How do I disable Flash inside Firefox? Good question. I don't see any menu items or Tools -> Options settings, the Tools -> Extensions dialog doesn't help, and Flash isn't even listed in Add / Remove Programs.