Slashdot Mirror

I've been using Protable Firefox for the past few weeks. This with the addition of the Bookmark Synchronizer Extension, this makes sure I always have my favorite browser and all of my bookmarks with me at all times.

and you can plop Mozilla right onto a flash drive from the zip file builds available from the Mozilla.org Foundation.

Mozilla Firefox also has a zip version, but that doesn't mean you can just plop it on removable media and expect it to store its settings there automatically. It still loads and saves its settings right on your hard drive. Can Mozilla store settings on the same drive that its zip was extracted to when regular Mozilla Firefox builds don't, even if the drive letter changes between machines you load it on?

Firefox project works. Thunderbird project works. But Mozilla Marketing Project it's working beyond expectatives, and not only at Slashdot: Video of ABC News on Firefox

If you need to use both a web browser and an email client on a regular basis in multiple locations, then you don't need these customized builds, there is already something around for you, it's called Mozilla. Maybe some of you recent Firefox-from-IE converts have never used Mozilla or think it reminds you of Netscape (Firefox reminds me of IE). Give it a chance though. It allows you to use roaming profiles which is exactly what this article is about. You also aren't wasting your system resources like you are when you run Thunderbird and Firefox at the same time. You generally save over 30MB of RAM by just running the Mozilla Application Suite. This is because you only have one instance of the Gecko engine running instead of two. Oh, and you can plop Mozilla right onto a flash drive from the zip file builds available from the Mozilla.org Foundation.

adblock with *.googlesyndication.com/

My version (0.9/Win) has a spell checker... The dang thing nags me on every message I send. Check in Tools->Options->Composition.

From the Thunderbird site:
There's no need for third party spell checking software. Mozilla Thunderbird comes with an integrated spell checker developed by the Spellchecker Mozdev Project.

Funny you should mention that.

On MSN UK, a list of recommended downloads was compiled from trusted non-MSN sites, and the list was shown on the front page.

On the front page one day:

Mozilla Firefox
Simply the best browser ever

I'm guessing the Mozilla Calendar isn't what you're looking for? I don't know what kind of integration you need, but it meets my needs, which I admit are pretty basic as far as a scheduling program goes.

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

he should dump Outlook and lose his shared calendar

he should dump Outlook and lose his shared calendar

Has anyone forgotten the all important drone??

Is microsoft attacking the spammers because the spammers are using their drones?

If in agreement:

Download: http://www.tucows.com/preview/213160.html Sygate Personal Firewall, http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ Adaware free, http://www.mozilla.org/ Mozilla Firefox.

Goto IE
Set a fake proxy server in Tools -> Options -> Connections -> Lan settings
So you never use IE again, even accidentally, or with kids messing around.

Just put in fake as the address and 8080 (or whatever) as the port, simple.

Install Adaware, Run adaware but don't commence searching, kill explorer.exe from the task manager, keep taskmanager open and now commence searching with Adaware.

Goto the Applications tab and click on New Task, enter into the box *Shudder* "explorer.exe".

Install Sygate's free firewall, Sygate Personal Firewall, Most secure there is out there, no bloated crap that Norton pushes.

Install Firefox and Thunderbird.

None of this software asks you for ANYTHING...

Don't forget to eventually BUY a subscription virus tool though.

In the alternative that you're a cheap ass you can use http://www.free-av.com/.

It isn't perfect software but virus protection is a must, no matter what you do or how weak it is.

There, and not one penny spent, nearly complete protection.

The main reason why I'm doing this is because one person whom does this means one thousand less potential spam emails out there..my own little spam attack..

Come on guy's!! Mod me up!

Err, Wash, rinse and repeat =)

Download: http://www.tucows.com/preview/213160.html Sygate Personal Firewall, http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ Adaware free, http://www.mozilla.org/ Mozilla Firefox.

Goto IE
Set a fake proxy server in Tools -> Options -> Connections -> Lan settings
So you never use IE again, even accidentally, or with kids messing around.

Just put in fake as the address and 8080 (or whatever) as the port, simple.

Install Adaware, Run adaware but don't commence searching, kill explorer.exe from the task manager, keep taskmanager open and now commence searching with Adaware.

Goto the Applications tab and click on New Task, enter into the box *Shudder* "explorer.exe".

Install Sygate's free firewall, Sygate Personal Firewall, Most secure there is out there, no bloated crap that Norton pushes.

Install Firefox and Thunderbird.

Err, Wash, rinse and repeat =)

Ahh... you're looking for Sunbird. Still really in the production stages, but...

Now that's an idea for a Thunderbird plugin! Strip urls from the spam and have it request the stuff over and over again... I'd use it.

It has been submitted, but no action so far.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24563 4

It's right here, if you use Firefox: AdBlocker

How often do you need to run an X app across the wire? How many times do you need to support multiple displays and screens (OK, this is slashdot, so I know some of you do -- I have myself, but it's very rare).

Let's see... Every day I have two or three XTerms on different machines from which I launch some editors (emacs, xemacs) and various graphical programs (purify, xcompare). Then I also have a mail client (sylpheed) running from yet another machine through ssh X forwarding and sometimes also a web browser (FireFox) running remotely from that machine. I even run the GIMP remotely at least once per week. And I do a lot of copy and paste between these applications running on different boxes. Basically, it would be hard for me to work without the network transparency offered by X. Should I also mention that these boxes run different operating systems (Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD) and use different processor architectures?

Granted, I may not be a typical user and as you pointed out, some Slashdot visitors are likely to do unusual things. But for me, relying on X to work accross the wire is not very rare - it's what I need every day.

So the fact that KDE and GNOME rely on X is a feature, from my point of view. I wouldn't mind if a replacement for X would be added as an option, but I don't think that I would use it.

How to help prevent spam/viruses. Most of this information is common knowlege for the IT savy but can be a good cluestick for the relatives.
FireFox http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ is a web browser that is much more secure then Internet Explorer. I have been using it for many
months now, it is very stable and has a small fraction of the security problems found in IE.
Ad-Aware http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ is a spyware finding and removal tool. This is one of the best anti-spy ware programs available and should be run at least twice a week.
Spy-Bot http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html is an excellent compliment to AdAware and should be run also twice a week. The combination of both Adaware and SpyBot make for great security.
Trend Micro http://housecall.antivirus.com/housecall/start_cor p.asp has a free online virus scanner that I run once a week. It has found viruses that Norton did not detect.
Microsoft's windows update http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ should be
checked often to patch your operating system. I would suggest you install the updates.
Zone Alarm http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/company/zap _za_grid.jsp If you do not have a Firewall router at home or are using dialup. Make sure you have some sort of firewall running on your machine. This one is pretty good and free.

Here is a mini guide I wrote up on how to prevent from getting spam.
1. Do not give out your work email address to anyone not work related. Do not give it out to relatives.
2. Do not use your primary email address to sign up for things online, use a email from hotmail or gmail.
3. DO not use your work/primary email to post on message boards or USENET unless they are closed and protected forums.
4. Do not sign up for free giveaways, even if they are work related.
5. Do *NOT* forward jokes or other such emails. Discourage people from forwarding them to you. These emails hold a massive list of email addresses and will eventually end up in the hands of spammers.
6. Do *NOT* reply to any spam asking to be removed or to "unsubscribe." It just guarantees that you will get more spam as you have confirmed it is a
valid account.
7. Do not buy anything form a spam email. This only encourages the practice.
8. If you get spam in Outlook, go to "File", then "Work Offline" and then delete the email messages. Selecting the email message for deleting opens
it, this can cause a virus to be downloaded or download pictures that have unique tag. With the unique image tag, a spammer can tell when you
opened the email and that your account is valid. By using the "Work Offline" mode, no images will be opened.

You can find these links at my site http://www.friendsglobal.com/

There's a Firefox extension called Gnusto that lets you play these games from your browser. Have fun : )

As someone who religiously uses the web developer tools for Firefox, I could REALLY use this IE engine switching feature in Firefox. Save me the trouble of Start-Programs-Internet Explorer.

Yes, saving me 7 seconds is worth a team of people slaving weeks and weeks to put this in Firefox ;)

There are screenshots and comments over at Planet Mozilla.

"Close but no cigar. It takes you to google's "I'm feeling luck" page as if you had typed in barnes and noble on google and clicked the button."

If anyone else finds that as annoying as I do, there's a fix so that it displays the proper search results

The latest idea to fight spam comes from www.makelovenotspam.com (browser flash-plugin needed) and LYCOS, who offer a simple screen-saver program for the Windows (english), Macintosh (MacosX (english) and Macos9 (english)) in various languages (english, french, spanish, german,...) which actually surfs the promoted URLs inside spams and generates traffic for the website owners, thus generating costs for the sources of spam, and trying to slow down those sites. The screen-saver promises to only generate about 3megabytes of traffic a day when being used constantly for 24 hours 100% a day. Can we call this a new means of self-justice, or is this a legal means of making spammers pay for their trash they keep sending us? You cannot actually call it DDOSing those sites as each screen-saver only generates a few http-get requests from time to time, and visually displays the spam-servers on a world-map.

The company actually delivers the live real-time spam information via XML files.

I wonder if anybody before got this idea, actually to collect the spam urls and shit inside spams, so that maybe someone could share this data through similar means to a big community (like slashdot), and making thos spammer websites fear a slashdot-like effect on their services with the help for example of a mozilla extension plugin or other nice little scripts and automatism?

Interesting questions and discussions come up, as lot of people ask if this could get Lycos or the actual users of the screen-savers into trouble? Can this be defended by our free-seech, 1st ammendment and other basic democracy laws or other means? Do you think all this is justified? What other solutions could there be for spam at all?

At leat i think that simple filitering and disregarding of such a huge problem doesnt solve anything at all, and i think i am not that mistaken, as spam hasnt really slowed down, or stopped just because of filtering, but spammers try to send even more sophisticated spam and scam, and just migrate over to other fields of endeavor like instant messaging clients, blogs and all that other stuff. So we actually need to tackle the whole problem on the very other end of the place, at the sites, services and products that come advertised in the spams.

I could think of a simple XML service maybe something calld "DSUX" (for: download spam urls xtensively) or some similar service :)

Any comments?

Hmm... it sounds like you are looking for something like the SpoofStick Firefox extension.

by default, ssl cache is disabled on firefox.

There was no real reason to use KHTML over Gecko for Safari. Firefox is very nearly as fast as Safari (on my iBook 800) now, and is compabitable with far more websites than Safari, due to Gecko having a lot more real world use than KHTML ever will. 7 vs 1-2%.

There's yet another 3rd party patch of sorts over at mozilla.org

However, if your computer did come with your unpatched Firefox installed as the default browser instead of IE, then would not the first web page you see after firing up the browser for the first time say something like: "Your version of Firefox is out of date and requires a security update. Click here to update it"?

SVG enabled builds have svg in their name:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mozilla/nig htly/latest-trunk/

It hasn't been decided when SVG might possibly be turned on for release builds. I've heard some talk of the 1.9 timeframe, but a lot of code still needs to be reviewed. Also, I think they are waiting on some rendering backend for one of the main platforms.

Bug 122092 - Enable SVG support
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12209 2

Obviously you will have to copy and paste the above link.

SVG enabled builds have svg in their name:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mozilla/nig htly/latest-trunk/

It hasn't been decided when SVG might possibly be turned on for release builds. I've heard some talk of the 1.9 timeframe, but a lot of code still needs to be reviewed. Also, I think they are waiting on some rendering backend for one of the main platforms.

Bug 122092 - Enable SVG support
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12209 2

Obviously you will have to copy and paste the above link.

waste? redundant packages? I just installed FireFox on XandrOS, and it took 35MB. The Windows installer is 4MB. I think that Linux is the king of wasteful redundant libraries; it seems that every program wants to install its own version of some arcane widgets. Look at the big, important projects for example:

Openoffice.org 1.1.3:
Linux -- 78246 KB
Windows -- 46100 KB

FireFox 1.0:
Linux -- 8422 KB
Windows -- 4803 KB

AbiWord 2.0.12:
Linux -- 21.16MB
Windows -- 4.8MB

Clearly there's something wrong here. Only OSX binaries are even more gigantic than the Linux ones, and that's only because of the Apple RISC hardware.

Adblock can block images, flash objects, or just anything from a particular server(eg: ads.osdn.com).

Not just that, but also the spaces they occupied, so you don't get big annoying blanks where the big annoying adverts are traditionally.

Is compatible with Firefox 1.0 on Windows and Linux.

No problem, instaling an update is free.

Where can I get my free update for Win98?

You mean www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only .xul?

What about Thunderbird and Mozilla's calendar extensions for either one? The calendar

You did not like tabbed browsing?

Anything not released under one of these is only a curiosity at best.
So Firefox is a Curiosity? Last I checked it's using the MPL (Mozilla Public license)

You do need to add some extra hooks in the browser, though.

But real geeks don't use the mouse when they browse the web. :) You can perform all normal browsing functions using the keyboard only. Use Ctrl+T for opening a new tab, Ctrl+L for focusing the Location bar to type a new web address, PgUp/PgDown for scrolling up and down, Alt+Left and Alt+Right for navigating back and forward, etc. Reading through and learning the Mozilla keyboard shortcuts was really an eye-opener for me.

people start putting Firetruck banner ads all over the place

(WE KNOW YOU WANT TO! http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ - DO IT NOW!)

(WE KNOW YOU WANT TO! http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ - DO IT NOW!)

It'll happen after you describe your specific 100% CPU bug on http://bugzilla.mozilla.org

If it turns out that your specific bug is affecting a large number of people, it is likely to be fixed quickly.

Use the system; it's there for YOU.

So why hasn't http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/known-vul nerabilities.html
been updated now that 1.0 is out?

you try finding every hole in millions of lines of code

That would be a hell of a lot easier to do if I had access to the code.
Lots of people do it constantly!

My browser has a built-in RSS reader. Why doesn't yours?

Dutch news-site (with a fairly large, non-techie audience) nu.nl was affected as well, a large warning was put up Saturday.
The warning (sorry, dutch only) mentioned that until Sunday afternoon, they received 1300 requests for help from possibly-affected visitors.

As far as accountability goes, it was nice to see the publisher, Ilse Media, put up a clear FAQ and even a special-purpose contact-form to accomodate for their not-web-savvy users.
They also mentioned further statements from Falk AG were forthcoming Monday 22nd.

Using an alternative browser, with AdBlock installed, I wasn't affected myself...

The linked page is apparently slashdotted, but the goddam popup ads still manage to load. Sometimes the internet really stinks

Yes, your browser. Get a real one.

That's an inadequte solution to a real bug.

On the bright side, other people agree with the OP that it's a major bug, and there's hope of it being fixed soon. See bug #213393

IMO flaws like this (and the text input problem an ac mentioned above, which I tested in a bazillion tabs and am just now reaping the benefits of---argh) make the case that ff should have gone through another round of intense bug squashing before 1.0 was released.

it is firefox's fault (bug 156493).
in posix systems, firefox needs to contain plugins so they don't cause it to crash if they are unstable

This is something that instead of being asked here should be asked at the Mozilla Firefox forums. There are lots of people who will be happy to help you.

If you believe you have found a bug, you should search if anyone has reported that bug, and if not report it here.


Sorry, but its almost offensive to see this at slashdot.