Resurrection

I'm back!

I'm resurrecting this 3 years old blog, this time with a new purpose!

I will make changes to this blog as time goes on.

Internet Explorer 7's RSS Icon

After a long consideration, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Team finally settled on....



That's right. It is the Mozilla Firefox's RSS icon.

From the post:

This seemed like a very good idea, so in November, Amar and I took a visit down to Silicon Valley to meet with John Lilly and Chris Beard from Mozilla to get their thoughts on it. We all agreed that it’s in the user’s best interest to have one common icon to represent RSS and RSS-related features in a browser.

I’m excited to announce that we’re adopting the icon used in Firefox. John and Chris were very enthusiastic about allowing us (and anyone in the community) to use their icon. This isn’t the first time that we’ve worked with the Mozilla team to exchange ideas and encourage consistency between browsers, and we’re sure it won’t be the last.

I am very happy to see collaboration between Internet Explorer developers and Mozilla Firefox developers. It will surely benefit the internet users greatly by creating and establishing standard among most (if not all) internet browsers.

I know it is just a tiny RSS icon, not a major achievement between IE Team and Mozilla. However all achievements start with small steps.

Google + Opera?

There is a rumor going around that Google is planning to acquire Opera Software ASA, the company who developed Opera Browser.

Gary Price said:

Dirson's New Google Blog links to a French language blog by Pierre Chappaz (former president of Yahoo! Europe), says that the acquisition is going down but to use the terms given in Google's mechanical translation of the post, this info needs to be "taken with precaution."

I agree that this rumor need to be "taken with precaution", but this is a very nice rumor. It made me think what would be like if Google actually acquired Opera.

I believe if Google acquired Opera, there is a good chance that Google will open Opera's source to the public. It would greatly reduces Internet Explorer's marketshare while creating fair number of good internet browsers. That way, no single browser will dominate the browsers market; thus, creating a heathly competition among browsers. Frankly, I don't believe in "size-fit-all" browser, because there is no such thing.

There are some other speculation that Google will rebrand Opera as "GBrowser" and use knowledge of both Firefox developers and Opera developers to improve it. Not a bad speculation but unlikely since there is no need for Google to make "GBrowser" if Google already got their men and women working on Mozilla Firefox.

Another speculation is Google will take Opera out of the market and move all Opera developers over to Firefox team. Well, after laughing on the floor for a while, I would say "fat chance." There is no good reason for Google to take Opera out of the market because taking out Opera will not help the competition in the browsers market.

I hope this is more than just a rumor because I am pretty excited to see what Google would do with Opera. I think it is a great idea for Google to acquire Opera. Google is a good company and Opera is a good internet browser. They would make a good couple.

Mozilla Firefox's Long Title Bug

Recently there been news going around about so-called "exploit" that can crash Mozilla Firefox and cause buffer overflows which allows hackers to break into Firefox. I like to point something out:

This "exploit" is, in my opinion, merely just an overrated bug. In most of cases, Firefox didn't crash. All it did is enlarged history.dat to the point (40 megabytes or more) where Firefox get painfully slow start-up. The slow start-up is caused by Firefox loading a huge file such as history.dat. Deleting the history.dat will fix the problem.

It only can be called exploit if the buffer overflow actually happens or at least Firefox crashing (Denial of Service). There were some cases of Firefox crashing, but not often enough or widespread enough to be considered DOS exploit. Heck, sometimes large PDF files crashed my Firefox, but does that mean the PDF reader has DOS exploit?

At worse, it is just a weak DOS exploit, as stated by Secunia. At best, a minor nuisance.

But I am not saying we shouldn't be worrying about this bug. I believe it should be fixed, just like all bugs needed to be fixed. The title should be truncated in the first place as part of good practice. In fact, every single thing we put into buffers should be truncated, no matter how long it SHOULD be, just make it as long as it HAVE to be. It should be standard practice among all developers... make the darn thing fit in the buffer.

My point is... the media tends to overrate the bugs because they have no clue how the bugs work. So when you read about the bugs in the media, check out Secura or Mozilla's site before you make decision. Secura and Mozilla definity know what they talking about, not the press.

Firefox Logo In The Sky

Look! It's a bird! No, it's a plane! No, it's a... Firefox logo!


The Hubble Space Telescope took this photo of the variable star V838 Monocerotis which lies near the edge of our Milky Way Galaxy.

If you rotate it 180 degrees, you might will notice strikingly similar to Firefox logo.



I know this is an old news (March 2004), but still funny news nevertheless.

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Final Released!

That's right, folks. Mozilla Firefox 1.5 is finally released!

Basic new features are (as given by MozillaZine): "Firefox 1.5 introduces several new features, including an improved software update system, faster Back / Forward page navigation, a new options to clear private browsing data, drag-and-drop reordering of browser tabs, a redesigned Options/Preferences window and more robust popup blocking. Standards support is also improved, with support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), JavaScript 1.6 and additional CSS properties. Accessibility is much improved (including new DHTML accessibility features), security has been enhanced and Mac OS X support has also been improved."

For more detailed and completed list of bug fixes and features, read the Burning Edge's List.

FYI: For anyone who already using Firefox 1.5 RC3, you don't need to update since RC3 is now final version.

Canvascape

As reported by Slashdot: "Benjamin Joffe has developed Canvascape - "3D Walker", a simple javascript browser based 3D first person game engine that shows off the capabilities of the Canvas tag found in Firefox, Safari and Opera."

It worked beautifully in Firefox 1.5 RC3, but painfully in Safari and Opera 9.0 Preview (because those two browsers are just getting started with canvas). I think this is a great way to show off what Mozilla Firefox 1.5's new canvas tag feature can do. Plus, it also show off what canvas can do as multimedia applications. It can provide interactive graphics without the need of using resource-heavy flash.

I see great potential for canvas.

Microsoft: Free Softwares Are Anti-Commercial

Recently, Microsoft admitted that they successfully attempted to remove references of free softwares from an U.N document, known as Vienna Conclusions (2.8 MB PDF). The document, presented at last week's UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) conference, discussed about issues around Information Technology and creativity.

In original document, it stated:

Increasingly, revenue is generated not by selling content and digital works, as they can be freely distributed at almost no cost, but by offering services on top of them. The success of the free software model is one example...

But after Microsoft's request, the statement been changed to:

Increasingly, revenue is generated by offering services on top of contents...

The reason why Microsoft asked? Their answer is:

While we largely agree on the point that more choices should be given to creators and users (and the subsequent conclusions on Creative Commons or Wikipedia) we explicitly disagree on the notion that "increasingly, revenue is generated not by selling content and digital works, as they can be freely distributed at almost no cost, but by offering services on top of them. The success of the Free Software Model is one example" and propose to delete this text part completely, as it contains only an one-sided perspective on the ICT industry. The rationale for this is, that the aim of free software is not to enable a healthy business on software but rather to make it even impossible to make any income on software as a commercial product.

Basically, Microsoft just plainly said that all free softwares are anti-commercial and bad for businesses. But many developers today know this statement is false since there are several successful free softwares that actually make profits for the companies who made them. For example, Red Hat is a for-profit company that developed free softwares (Linux, etc.) and still maintains to bring in profit by offering services on top of those free softwares (as stated by the original document).

It saddens me to see Microsoft propaganda influenced the decision of supposedly-impartial international body. Well, just like what FSFE president Georg Greve said... "Just another monopolist trying to uphold their monopoly by preventing freedom of markets -- which is what Free Software really aims at."

Reducing Firefox's Memory Use?

Federico Mena Quintero proposed a proof-of-concept to reduce Mozilla's memory usage (Firefox is based on Mozilla codes). He used XFree86 on Linux to prove it is possible to reduce Mozilla's memory usage by factor of 5.5.

His method of reducing memory usage is done by dealing with how Mozilla handle images in cache. Right now, both Mozilla and Firefox handle images by uncompressing them and storing them in cache for every open tab. It is designed to give boost to performance (but at the expense of memory). So Quintero proposed to uncompress images and store them in cache, ONLY when the user is looking at the images. Meaning, he proposed to delete uncompressed images and uncompress new images in cache as soon the user scroll away from old images toward new images.

For example, supposed you are looking at a page with 3 large images, and your screen is only big enough for one image at a time. You are looking at image A which is an uncompressed image in your cache. Then you scroll down toward image B. While you are scrolling down, Mozilla will delete uncompressed copy of image A, then uncompress image B for viewing. Then you scroll down even further down to image C. While you are scrolling down, Mozilla will delete uncompressed copy of image B, then uncompress image C. The process are the same when scrolling back up too.

This method successfully reduced memory usage that now (modified) Mozilla doesn't have to keep ALL uncompressed images in cache. Just keep the ones that you are looking at.

However, there are performance hits. Everything you scroll to another image, Mozilla would have to go through uncompressing, painting and deleting processes all over again. Quintero admitted that "Scrolling is a bit jerky if you yank the scrollbar's thumb up and down very quickly. The jerkiness is barely noticeable if you use the scroll wheel or the scrollbar's arrows at about the same rate as you would use while reading a web page."

Unfortunely, some people don't scroll as slow as they read. Sometime I scrolled down really fast just to see what's near the bottom or looking for specific sections (like in Wikipedia or News articles.) So using Quintero's method, it could be painful scrolling down if you scroll down fast or doesn't have fast computer.

But still, it is an interesting read. I am glad to see someone trying to solve Firefox's and Mozilla's memory leak.

Mozilla Firefox Release Candidate 3

Mozilla Firefox Release Candidate 3 is out! It should be ready for software update system. To manually update, go to Help > Check for Updates..., or you rather to wait a day or two for automatic update.

For those who do not have Mozilla Firefox 1.5, get it here. Remember this is not FINAL version, just a release candidate.

Release Note

Windows Genuine Advantage on Firefox

A while ago, if an user want to download a Microsoft product like Microsoft AntiSpyware, they have to pass the "Windows Genuine Advantage" test to prove that they are using a vaild Windows Operating System. It is one of Microsoft's latest attempts to fight Windows privacy. However, the only problem was, to pass the Windows Genuine Advantage test, the users must use Internet Explorer in order to accept Active X control.

Now, not anymore. The Internet Explorer team recently released an Firefox plugin that allow users to use Firefox to pass Windows Genuine Advantage test and download Microsoft products.

Quote from IEBlog:

I talked with Brad Graziadio, the guy who runs the Windows Genuine Advantage team, and he walked me through customer feedback. Basically, customers said “We want to make sure our PCs are running genuine Windows and have access to all the content on the Microsoft Download Center; the experience when we’re running a Mozilla browser is not great. Do something about it.” Brad’s team did. I think that’s a good thing for customers.

It is smart move for Microsoft to start supporting Mozilla Firefox. This is not the first time Microsoft supported Mozilla Firefox. Eariler, they supported Mozilla Firefox for Windows Live beta site.

Back in Action

Sorry guys, been a while since I post anything. I have been terrible busy with many stuffs. Now I'm back in action.

Firefox Web Links Bugs

Recently, Tom Ferris discovered a major bug in Firefox's handing of web links that may allow a malicous web site to execute malicious code on firefox users' computers. In short, it's called "Host:" Buffer overflow (including proof-of-concept).

It worked like this... Imagine you went to a bad, evil website somewhere in the internet, and the website has a link with extremely long address in it like this: "https:-------------------------------------------------------------... ".

When you clicked on it, the extremely long address will overwhem the NormalizeIDN buffer and spill over the rest of the address (which could include malicous code) into other parts of Firefox.

Remember, this is not the first bug arise from IDN. Another bug from IDN was the IDN spoofing (giving fake address in the address bar), but that bug been fixed by version 1.0.1.

If you don't want to wait for the patch (or Firefox 1.5 with the patch), it only take very, very simple fix with 2 steps:

1) Go to about:config
2) Double-click "network.enableIDN" from TRUE to FALSE.
3) You are done!

I tested the fix myself using the proof-of-concept. The fix worked.

UPDATE: Mozilla posted a formal suggestion of fixes for this IDN bug (including a downloadable temporary patch).

MouseHole

I found a very interesting program that act as proxy... greasemonkey style. It's named MouseHole. It will work on all web browsers because all HTML traffic will goes through MouseHole proxy and it will modify the HMTL data by using scripts. That way, you don't have to put extension for every internet browser on your computer, or even better... modify all HTML data from internet to your entire home or business network using proxy server with MouseHole running on it (somehow...). The author of MouseHole, WhyTheLuckyStiff, hangs out over at the RedHanded blog. MouseHole 1.1 just recently came out.

However, MouseHole using different coding for their scripts. It is using Ruby, a "interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming". Which mean that all current geasemonkey scripts have to be converted in order to work in MouseHole. For example, my current Mailto Envelope greasemonkey script has been converted to MouseHole script (thank to Christopher T. Osborn). You can see big differences, but can be learned.

Alternative Browser Alliance

After the flame war between Mozilla Firefox and Opera users got really too hot, one person formed a website to bring efforts to spread all non-IE browsers under one roof. The website named "Alternative Browser Alliance", its job is to spread knowledge of the alternatives to unsafe Internet Explorer and hopefully bring Mozilla Firefox and Opera users together.

From the site:

I launched this site in response to the overblown rivalry between Firefox and Opera users. The way I see it, both groups have a common enemy: dominance of the web by a single browser, currently Internet Explorer. At this stage of the game, every percentage point Firefox pulls from IE is a win for Opera, and vice versa, because it spreads awareness that there are alternatives, and that it might be worth trying them out.

This site is intended as a truce. We're in this together.

I applauds this effort because I agreed with the fact that the rivalry between Mozilla Firefox and Opera users are getting out of hands. Both sides need to be reminded that most of the planet are still using Internet Explorer and we need to help them to be aware of what they are surfing the web with and how to make it safer and more enjoyable.

Web Developer Rip-off

Seem that a company ripped off a perfectly good GPLed firefox extension and sell it under different license.

AEVITA is currently selling Web Inspector for Internet Explorer. Judging from the look of the screenshots, icons, documentations, and behavior of the web inspector, it is clearly a rip off of Chris Pederick's Web Developer extension.

AEVITA clearly has several violations:
1) Some icons are trademarked by Mozilla Foundation.
2) The documentations are copyrighted by Chris Pederick
3) Selling (possibly stolen) GPLed codes under different license.

It is very upsetting to see a company taking a perfectly good GPLed appication and then sell it under different license without giving credit to the original developer(s). Something have to be done about it. Aza Dotzler is calling on everybody to contact AEVITA and complains to them that their action is wrong thing to do.

Since blogger.com don't have talkbacks, here are the couple blogs (and discussions) about it:
chrispederick.com blog
Asa Dotzler's Blog

Update 1: AEVITA removed Web Inspector from their website.

Update 2: The AEVITA website just went down dues to exceeding bandwitdh limit (meaning, too many people getting into AEVITA website). In a way, its a small victory for open source community. Rip off a popular open sourced app and you will face pressure from very large open source community.

Internet Explorer Boycott

Paul Thurrott called for an Internet Explorer boycott after detailing the problems of Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 and the lack of actions of IE team to fix them. He also noted that the IE team is not planning to adjust the IE to work with the web standard or even try to pass the Acid2 Test which is considered to be the ulimate test on web standard compliance.

Paul Thurrott said:

My advice is simple: Boycott IE. It's a cancer on the Web that must be stopped. IE isn't secure and isn't standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and Web content creators. Because of their user bases, however, Web developers are hamstrung into developing for IE at the expense of established standards that work well in all other browsers. You can turn the tide by demanding more from Microsoft and by using a better alternative Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari (Macintosh only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well.

Paul Thurrott is well-known for his site, SuperSite for Windows.

Optimus Keyboard

I have been keeping close tab on a great keyboard, Optimus Keyboard. It is invented by Artemy Lebedev, a Russian designer. This keyboard, in my opinion, is the most brilliant computer accessory since webcam. Its like english, russian, game, and all other type of keyboards combinded, plus more. Check out the screenshots in both links.

It is incredibly flexible and it will comes with SDK (according to Lebedev). Maybe the keyboard will be able to play a video on it or some kind of animation (like during screensaver or something). One of slashdot readers raised the possiblity of a spyware hijacking the keyboard and play animation or place porno icons everywhere on the keyboard. You get the idea how flexible the keyboard can be.

But according to the latest news, Lebedev might will have trouble selling Optimus Keyboard in the United States. Seem someone patented same concept of Optimus keyboard in 1998. In my opinion, the patent holder, Elkin Acevedo, need to either let the patent goes or hand it over to Lebedev (for free or cheap price) because he hasn't make or sell his display keyboard for the past 7 years.

I am keeping my eyes on this baby and I will bring you latest news on any changes in Optimus's progress (espeically on the U.S. patent). Let hope it doesn't turn out to be another vaporware.

Minor Change In Firefox Versioning

Asa Dotzler (one of Firefox developers) announced that the Firefox developers have decided to change the versioning of Firefox a little bit. The upcoming Firefox (future versions of Deer Park) will be Mozilla Firefox 1.1 Mozilla Firefox 1.5.

Asa said:

One major consideration in this decision was that the sheer volume of changes in the Firefox core (Gecko) made a minor .1 increment seem misleading...

...Another consideration was that we've made some major improvements to the Firefox application, especially in the update and extension systems that warrant more than a minor version bump. Calling it 1.1 would suggest to most users that this was a minor update when in fact it is quite major and all 1.0 users really should move forward for a much improved product.

EDIT: New roadmap showing Firefox 1.5 BETA release in August 2005.

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6 Released

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6 has been released. It included several important fixes and improved stability especially the API compability fix with some of the extensions which was broken by Firefox 1.0.5.

Get them while they are hot.