mozilla log.

I haven’t written about Mozilla or Firefox in some time, and I’m okay with that. Ultimately, I don’t find writing about browsers satisfying anymore, and ones that I don’t use even less so. (If you haven’t been keeping track, I use Apple’s Safari now for personal use, and IE on my work computer. I even ditched Camino a while ago.)

But I’ll make an exception for Why Firefox is Blocked, a site that’s making the rounds that some people love. And I can’t figure it out. Total Whisky Tango Foxtrot over here.

See, the Mozilla Foundation supports ad-blocking plugins that let you filter out web advertisements. Why Firefox is Blocked picks specifically on Ad Block Plus, but there have been at least a half dozen of those in the last few years. Some block only Flash ads, some images of a certain size… but they all block ads.

Generally speaking, the web is a nicer place to browse without them — just like the real world. (No, really — take a look at what the world looks like without advertising. This isn’t a theoretical concept, but it’s a difficult one to get your head around when you’re used to a certain level of omni-present advertising.)

The idea behind Why Firefox is Blocked is that some web sites — and let’s be honest, they’re web businesses — support themselves solely on advertising revenue. Ad-blocking for them equals lost revenue, so since there is no way to stop Firefox users from blocking ads, they’ll block all Firefox users from visiting their sites.

Not only that, they’ll redirect them to a snarky website that treats incoming readers — potential customers, in this model — as criminals. By using a browser that supports ad-blocking, they’re 1) thieves, 2) aiding and abetting theft, and 3) really cheap.

No, really. Read the site. If you use Firefox, you’re a really cheap thief.

All of this wrapped in the smarmy language of, “it’s our content, if we say you must see the ads, you must see the ads, because that is our right.” It’s actually really offensive from a business standpoint; why would you say this to a potential customer?

Oh, that’s right, because the TV and movie industries have already said this to them, so it must be okay.

(But if you have to block ad-blockers, you’re no different than the TV stations fighting Tivo… and look how that’s turned out.)

If we were to accept these arguments, shouldn’t we:

• Block any browser capable of blocking ads, like Safari, Internet Explorer, and Opera?
• Block any browser capable of not displaying images from the non-originating site, like Mozilla or Netscape?
• Block any browser not capable of displaying images at all, like Lynx?
• Refuse to publish any RSS feed?
• Block any RSS reader who doesn’t display your ads?

Where will it stop? Where do you draw the line with this reasoning?

Furthermore, why pick on Firefox and not other browsers? Is it because it’s open source? Is it because it’s popular? I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’ve been hounded by enough Firefox zealots to turn me away from the browser entirely. (Where were you damn kids when it was Mozilla 0.6 and barely compiled, let alone worked? Posers. Get off my lawn.) The latest iterations are slower, less elegant the the first versions. And the 1.5 to 2.0 upgrade was rocky for many of my machines.

But something smells fishy here. This site has a grudge against Firefox personally, but doesn’t explain why. Firefox is a cult, a religion, and therefore bad. There’s not much to say to that, since it’s not a real argument.

So, if you’re considering deploying this on your ad-supported web business, let me offer two suggestions.

1. Don’t forget that your visitors are potential customers for your advertisers, so consider their experience.
2. Consider alternate business models. Ads plastered on your pages aren’t the only way to pay the bills.

They may not be your customers, but they’re someone’s else’s customers — and that business pays your salary.

Treat their customers the way you’d want to be treated.

I’d like to apologize for the automated links for 2007-02-28 post that will show up sometime later today. Tonight was a banner night for web surfing, as I tried to both catch up on my feeds and try out Camino’s speediness with some traditionally slow sites in Safari. Like, cough, Google Reader, which bogs down in Safari under the weight of the hundreds of posts I’m trying to process. For weeks I’ve wondered about the users who raved about its snappy response; the UI is well done — tap tap tap goes the spacebar with no clicky-clicky required — but after the first 20 articles I spend more time waiting for a response than actually reading.

(Most everyone reading this already knows that I can read really fast: really, really fast when the occasion calls for it. Scanning news is one of those things.)

Camino handled the load far better than Safari did, letting me page through posts quickly, if not as fast as I might like. There’s only so much one can do to cut through all the AJAXy overhead. I grow less fond of AJAX with each passing day. I may soon find myself using AJAX in the same way Merrystar uses Flash — avoid, disable, and enable only when absolutely required.

The only drawback with the Safari → Camino switch is an aesthetic one: small Helvetica type isn’t weighted as nicely in Gecko browsers as it is in Safari, particularly at the lighter weights and smaller sizes. (Sub-10pt italic seems particularly affected.) Also, the line height seems to be crowded in text blocks, so that words seem crowded in a paragraph. It’s very subtle, but I’m known to be picky about my fonts.

(The partial solution is a simple ⌘+ to increase the font size, which makes the web a nicer place to browse anyway. The line height is still awkward, but less distracting than before. It’s still not as good as Safari.)

I’m happy to say that Camino really is chugging along well, and I may keep Safari off the dock and in reserve for specialized tasks. But it’s probably too early to see if there’s a significant difference.

But, back to the apology. The downside of this web browsing is that I’ve been hitting my del.icio.us links pretty hard, and the next post is likely to be pretty big.

Hopefully, you’ll find something interesting in amidst it all.

It’s been a while since I posted the latest Mozilla release… I figure that the Firefox train has gotten going and you don’t need me to publish the schedule anymore. In fact, you don’t need me telling you which train to catch, if I can extend the metaphor a bit further. There are a lot of good browsers out there now.

Which is why today’s xkcd is so damn funny.

What does it say about be that I find stick figure comics (and Dinosaur Comics!, of course) so apropos to my own life? Consider and discuss.

Joel Spolsky: My three favorite Firefox extensions.

It’s been a while since I switched from Linux to Mac OS X, and a week ago I got a new Windows laptop at work which needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. So: it’s time to review some software.

Mac OS X

I confess: I use a lot of the default Apple software. I started out fresh last November and gave the prepackaged software a try before switching back to my Open Source standbys.

• For Mac alchemy, only Quicksilver will do. Holy holy holy. Quicksilver changes everything.

• Biggest surprise, next to Quicksilver? Safari. I was surprised by how much I liked Safari’s RSS news reader, and how seamlessly it integrated into my workflow. It’s snappy (with some exceptions, of course) and the UI is slightly easier to use than Firefox. Firefox is my current third-string browser, edged out by Camino — both Gecko browsers, but Camino is noticiably faster than Firefox. I tried out a few other browsers along the way: Seamonkey (the old Mozilla suite), Shiira, SunriseBrowser. None of them stood out enough to dislodge Safari or Camino.

• Mail, aka Mail.app. It was good enough to get me to switch from Pine, but its IMAP problems caused me to switch to POP3, which made me become a religious reader of jwz’s Mail.app posts. I like the interface (especially how I can color-code messages) but would like some tighter integration with iCal for tasks. This AppleScript baloney is … baloney.

• I plunked down the cash and got Mac Office, so I use Entourage for my work mail. It works well enough, but the UI? Not so much. Still on the fence with this one. (Mail and calendaring will probably be another separate post.)

• Emacs is here, in both Cocoa and Carbon versions. I’m using the Carbon one more and more, but still waiting for XEmacs to make the leap.

• I am really impressed by Mac The Ripper and HandBrake, the ultimate Mac DVD backup combination. MtR copies your DVDs onto your hard drive (*excellent* for watching while travelling, save your batteries!) and HandBrake compresses them from 7GB to < 1GB.

• Adium X is an instant messaging client that blows iChat out of the water. To be fair, if iChat supported more than 3 protocols, I might be more willing to give it a chance. But it doesn’t. Adium does, and does it better than Trillian.

• For audio processing, I use Audacity. It’s as good as you get outside of an Amiga. (Don’t forget the LAME codec if you want MP3 support.)

Utilities:

• Browsejour, a handy app to spot other items using Bonjour in the area.
• Disk Inventory X gives you a visual representation of a directory. Eh. It was useful when I was searching my old drives.
• DynDNS Updater, to keep my dynamic hostname associated with my Mac.
• Flickr Uploadr, er, uploads files to Flickr.
• Flip4Mac, plays windows media files.
• GLTerminal, a full screen terminal.
• Growl notifies you of events. I haven’t decided if this is a good thing or not. It adds key functionality to applications that miss it, but sometimes it’s too intrusive. I’m on the fence here.
• NeoOffice, the OpenOffice.org port to OS X. With MS Office installed on this machine, I only use it to read OpenDoc format files. Hard to think of a 350+MB app as a utility…
• OggDrop X, for converting OGG music files.
• pearLyrics, a handy app that scans the web and adds lyrics to your iTunes songs. Unfortunately, Warner/Chappell Music sent a cease and desist, and you can read the rest.
• VLC for those media files that Quicktime can’t hack.
• Yahoo Widgets, for traffic and weather. I was using it for stocks too, but that just got too depressing. (There’s a reason I go with index funds.)

Encryption and Security:

• MacGPG and GPGMail, for encryption.
• OTR Proxy, for off-the-record encryption.
• XNmap, a front-end to nmap. Just because.
• IPScanner. No reason.

Amusements:

• Armagetron and Armagetron Advanced, Tron Cycle games.
• Battle of Wesnoth, which I have deleted off my machine so I can remain a productive member of society.
• Crack Attack, one of Merrystar’s favorites.
• Google Earth. Google Maps on steroids.
• Stellarium, planetarium software. Sweet.

Windows

Yah. I still use Windows at work. Here’s what I’m using these days.

• PuTTy for SSH and SSH tunnels.
• 7-Zip for file compression (removing WinZip along the way. WinZip is not free, people!)
• PDFCreator” for making PDFs.
• Irfanview for image manipulation.
• Firefox, though I don’t really use it at work anymore. (I visit reporting sites and control panels that require IE… that’s about it. How sad has my life become?)
• Trillian for instant messaging. I tried out Gaim again and still didn’t like it on Windows. Slow, clunky, UI is odd.… just couldn’t warm to it. So, back to Trillian I go, despite its lack of address book integration. (Adium X is definitely ahead of Trillian here.)
• Eraser, for secure file deletion.
• Yahoo Widgets, for weather and traffic.
• Skype hasn’t been put back on my machine, for obvious reasons
• AppRocket is close to Quicksilver, but can’t manage the tight integration with the filesystem. (This is the filesystem’s fault, not AppRocket’s.) Makes the Thinkpad almost bearable now.

Okay, lazyweb: let me know what else I’m missing!

I’m retiring my bookmarks file. Migrating from Firefox to Safari rendered it obsolete, so I’m replacing it with a smaller, more targeted links page.

Still, not bad for a file that has been online since my very first web page in 1994!

Firefox tops PCWorld’s top 100 products of 2005. Mac OS X.4 (Tiger) is #3.

I believe Jim has found a new tagline for his site:

Jim Henley: And the Thunderbird icon still looks like a greeting card envelope wearing a ridiculous blue wig.
Brett Peters: LOL
Brett Peters: What do you think about the Firefox logo?
Jim Henley: It doesn’t suck nearly as much.
Jim Henley: It’s sort of cute. Not at all like the planet Earth with a Viking beard.
Brett Peters: Now that you mention it, it really DOES look like the planet Earth with a Viking beard.
Brett Peters: You know that I’m never going to be able to look at it the same way again, right?
Jim Henley: Ah. That’s what the best writing does.
Brett Peters: The very best writing makes you think of Viking beards?
Brett Peters: How odd.
Jim Henley: They all laughed at Northrop Frye too.
Jim Henley: My theories await a new generation with the wit to absorb them.

New Mozilla Developer’s Site is up.

Not for the faint at heart: Mozilla Deer Park Alpha 1.

The lesson of Pros and Cons of Firefox Critically Evaluated?

Beware anyone who critically evaluates software with an obvious axe to grind. (I make no claims to critical evaluation on my part.)

Firefox 1.0.1 is out, with some bug fixes, at the usual places.

Also excellent: ForecastFox.

Yet another excellent Firefox extension: I must not fear!

(It’s right up there with the egg timer and the Lorem Ipsum generator.)

What better way to spend a day you’re feeling lousy than by updating your bookmarks?

(Don’t actually answer that. Taking naps would be a better way.)

Have I mentioned how the Firefox Bookmarks Synchronizer has changed the way I use my bookmarks? Keeping a copy of your bookmarks on a server so you can download them onto whichever computer you’re using is nothing new — I’ve had mine online, somewhere, since my very first homepage in 1996 (at http://owlnet.rice.edu/~cutter/) — but it was always so manual, it required volition. FTP works, and can work well, but setting it up differently on each UNIX, Linux and Windows box got old fast.

(It was actually easier back in the dark ages of the internet; wherever I went on the Rice campus, I could log in and access everything from whatever client I was on. Ah, those heady days of using SPARC stations and DEC Alphas.)

Anyhow, the Bookmarks Synchronizer makes it easy — it downloads on startup, uploads on exit, merges changes automatically. It makes it easy to move from computer to computer, which, which when you regularly bounce between 3 different laptops running Linux and Windows, is no small thing.

Add it to the list.

SecurityFocus HOME Mailing List: BugTraq:

Various vulnerabilities were found and fixed in Mozilla-based products, ranging from a potential buffer overflow and temporary files disclosure to anti-spoofing issues.

Year in review: Browser wars, part 2

Slashdot | Mozilla Lightning to Challenge Outlook

Mozilla 1.7.5 is out. They just keep plugging along, you know?

The Open CD 2.0 release is out:

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of TheOpenCD v2.0. The disc contains old favorites like Mozilla, OpenOffice, AbiWord, Gimp in updated versions, but also has some noteable additions like Firefox, Thunderbird, Blender and Gaim. The CD browser technology is also new this time, and is based on Gecko (see screenshots). This approach should make it simpler to make derivatives, including localized versions, some of which will be out shortly. We have timed the release to be out just before the holidays so you can fill the stockings of friends and family with Free and useful software. Get a copy from one of our FTP mirrors or on Bittorrent.

Stick a fork in in: Thunderbird 1.0 is out. Go get it.

Today’s announcement marks the immediate availability of Thunderbird 1.0 for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux-as a free download from mozilla.org and by CD from the Mozilla Store. Thunderbird is now available in English, German, Greek, and Turkish with more languages on the way.

It took me several minutes to realize I’d just installed an egg timer into my web broswer.

EggOn!: The Firefox extension for making the perfect egg.

EggOn! is a Firefox extension for cooking the perfect egg. EggOn has three settings, so you can cook perfect eggs according to your tastes.

In between naps this Thanksgiving weekend, I found some time to look over the latest (0.9) release of Mozilla Thunderbird, the stand-alone Mozilla mail client. There are some new features that are quite good, but overall I’m not impressed enough to consider switching over from PINE. I would dump Outlook in a second at work as a mail client, but the integrated calendar features (and their ubiquity at work) keep me using it.

The last release of Thunderbird I used for any length of time was 0.6; at the time I thought it a good, solid successor to Mozilla Mail. There have been some interesting additions since then, but there’s still a ways to go yet.

The addition with the most potential is definitely the integrated RSS newsfeed reader. Someone was using their little gray cells on the Thunderbird design team when they came up with this feature. It pulls up summaries of the articles, or the articles themselves, and organizes them like email messages. By treating blog entries like mail, it takes a step towards intertwingling your inbound data. Having one place to look at all your inbound data is a good thing; conceptually, blog entries that you subscribe to are identical to emailed newsletters.

Unfortunately, there is still a ways to go before. Adding feeds is manual and difficult, but that could be solved with a XUL extension. The biggest drawback is that the blog entries are still separated by feed, instead of mixed together into an inbox. This is a common weakness of many RSS readers - they parse the RSS document and represent them as individual entries, but really it’s a veneer on top of the XML file. Notification on each folder is nice, but a summary folder of all the new ones would be better. Following the email concept entirely would be best of all; once everything is mixed together, one would categorize and break it apart with the same tools, in the same manner, without reference to source. Unity of interface should be the goal.

I’ve been somewhat ambivalent about RSS; I use it to simplify my web browsing, and am glad that it’s becoming more widely available. But email’s still king for outbound notifications, and whomever intertwingles RSS with email first wins. Perhaps this is merely an extension to the law that ‘all software will expand to read email’?

Anyhow, I think Thunderbird has made some great strides with RSS integration, and I’m glad to see that they’re going in that direction. The next big problem remains MS Exchange integration, especially with the calendar. Now that Novell has released the source of Ximian Evolution Exchange Connector, I hope that we’ll see more open source projects like Thunderbird just work with Exchange. In the meantime, the biggest obstacle to converting Outlook users will remain calendaring. (Outlook Express users, however, should switch immediately.)

Still, Thunderbird is a good, solid graphical mail reader. I’m personally not yet convinced that local mail readers are the way to go, but if that’s how you work, Thunderbird is definitely worth a look. It’s not as absolutely compelling an application as Firefox- yet.

I’d keep my eye on it, though.

Jim, the Mozilla Firefox Start Page isn’t just a Google search page, it’s a Google search page with a pretty logo on it! All the difference in the world!

Ahem.

Okay, so it’s just a Google search page, and one I don’t use very often, what with the built-in search bar (Ctrl-K and Ctrl-J to start a search are becoming second nature, though I usually hit the wrong one for whichever OS I’m in). But it’s still cool that this little browser that, as little as a year ago, left people asking me “why do you use that thing,” now has a Google landing page all its own.

I am, perhaps, not the most rational browser user. I admit it. But sometimes it’s good to get excited about software.

Slashdot | Firefox News Roundup

Have I mentioned how much I like the new Mozilla Firefox Start Page?

Well, I do.

USA Today has an article? US FREAKIN’ A TODAY???

I swear, this is all the Red Sox’s fault.

People looked at me like I was an idiot back in 1998 for using Mozilla 0.6. And now Mozilla’s in USA Today. And the WSJ. And just about every other technology paper.

Man, am I proud of those guys.

USATODAY.com - Firefox ignites demand for alternative browser.

Wow, is Wired slipping? They seem to forget that the first non-beta version of an open-source Mozilla browser was Mozilla 1.0, released 5 June 2002.

I mean, Firefox 1.0 is really, really sweet and I love it. Love it love it love it. But the Mozilla developers haven’t been working on the platform that supports it since 1998, and that platform went GA two and a half years ago, making Firefox possible.

Ach, just go read the article yourselves — Wired News: Firefox 1.0 Makes Flashy Debut:

The Mozilla Foundation, inheritor of the Netscape programming code base, made the very first non-beta version of its open-source browser available for free at 1 a.m. PT Tuesday. Soon after its release, Mozilla’s servers were overwhelmed.

Slashdot | What’s Next For Mozilla?

It’s done! Mozilla Firefox 1.0! Go get it!

Huzzah!

Slashdot | Thunderbird 0.9 Released

This is an odd vulnerability, but sometimes they are. It seems pretty minor to me.

Secunia - Advisories - Mozilla / Mozilla Firefox / Camino Tabbed Browsing Vulnerabilities:

Secunia Research has discovered two vulnerabilities in Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, and Camino, which can be exploited by malicious web sites to obtain sensitive information and spoof dialog boxes.

1) Inactive tabs can launch dialog boxes so they appear to be displayed by a web site in another tab. This can be exploited by a malicious web site to show a dialog box, which seems to originate from a trusted web site.

Successful exploitation would normally require that a user is tricked into opening a link from a malicious web site to a trusted web site in a new tab.

A test is available here:
http://secunia.com/multiple_browsers_dialog_box_spoofing_test/

The vulnerability has been confirmed in the following versions:
* Mozilla 1.7.2 and 1.7.3
* Mozilla Firefox 0.10.1
* Camino 0.8

2) Inactive tabs can gain focus from form fields on web sites in another tab. This can potentially be exploited to collect sensitive data entered in form fields on other web sites.

Successful exploitation would normally require that a user is tricked into opening a link from a malicious web site to a trusted web site in a new tab.

A test is available here:
http://secunia.com/multiple_browsers_form_field_focus_test/

The vulnerability has been confirmed in the following versions:
* Mozilla 1.7.2 and 1.7.3
* Mozilla Firefox 0.10.1

Other versions may also be vulnerable.

Solution:
Don’t visit trusted web sites while visiting untrusted web sites or disable JavaScript.

Damn heap-based buffer overflow vulnerabilities: Secunia - Advisories - Mozilla Multiple Vulnerabilities.

The latest versions (Firefox 1.0PR, Mozilla 1.7.3, Thunderbird 0.8) are fixed.

New: Firefox 1.0PR, Thunderbird 0.8, and Mozilla Suite 1.7.3.

Sweet.

Firefox Help: Blocking Advertisements

Slashdot | Mozilla Releases Mozilla Sunbird 0.2:

(T)he Mozilla team released the first ‘official’ beta release of Mozilla Sunbird, version 0.2, a stand-alone calendaring application (similar to Apple’s iCal). There are two flavors of this project, one that works as a ~700 KB plugin to Firefox/Thunderbird/Mozilla (titled Mozilla Calendar) and the ~8 MB stand-alone calendaring application, Mozilla Sunbird.

jwz: CensorZilla:

When we created mozilla.org and released (most of) the source code to Netscape Confusicator 4.x, Netscape’s lawyers made us go through a big “sanitization” process on the source code. Largely this consisted of making sure we had the legal rights to all the code we were releasing, and making sure every file had proper and accurate copyright statements; but they also made us take out all the dirty words. Specifically, “any text containing vulgar or offensive words or expressions; any text that might be slanderous or libelous to individuals and/or institutions.”

Wired News: More Extensions for Mozilla:

Reporters who cover technology joke that the easiest way to provoke reader reaction is to describe Macs as underpowered and overpriced, or virus writers as hackers. Do either and your inbox is guaranteed to get flooded with e-mail.

We can now add another response-rouser to that list: Write a story about Mozilla and Firefox extensions and fail to mention a few of the add-ons that people evidently find essential to their life and pursuit of happiness on the Web.

There’s a Mozilla patch out for Mozilla, Firefox, and Thunderbird. Mozilla browser and Firefox can just click on the link above. Thunderbird requires a little more - see the article.

What Mozilla users should know about the shell: protocol security issue:

On July 7 (yesterday) a security vulnerability affecting browsers for the Windows operating system was posted to Full Disclosure, a public security mailing list. On the same day, the Mozilla security team confirmed the report of this security issue affecting the Mozilla Application Suite, Firefox, and Thunderbird and discussed and developed the fix at Bugzilla bug 250180. We have confirmed that the bug affects only users of Microsoft’s Windows operating system. The issue does not affect Linux or Macintosh users.

Today, the Mozilla team released a configuration change which resolves this problem by explicitly disabling the use of the shell: external protocol handler. The fix is available in two forms. The first is a small download which will make this configuration adjustment for the user. The second fix is to install the newest full release of each of these products. Instructions on administering these changes can be found below.

Wired News: Building a Better Mozilla:

Below are some of the extensions that have been rated highly by Mozilla users. All the extensions work with both Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox — an enhanced version of the Mozilla browser — unless otherwise noted, but most developers are now creating and updating extensions only for Firefox.

jwz - spin, spin, spin!

Via /.: Firefox 0.9.1 and Thunderbird 0.7.1 released.

The Mozilla Foundation has just made available interim releases of Firefox 0.9.1 and Thunderbird 0.7.1. Apparently: ‘These releases are designed to address early issues found in the new extension manager and automatic upgrade system as well as making changes to the new Firefox theme based on initial feedback.’

Mozilla 1.7 is out.

Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7 is out. Download it now.

:: Reviews : First Look at Mozilla Firefox 0.9

The last time we looked at Mozilla Firefox , it was still called Mozilla Firebird and then only in version 0.6. Times have changed. Oh how they’ve changed. Today, The browser with the identity crisis has a sleek new interface, modern features, and is blowing the doors off its competition… and this is putting it mildly.

…

When compared to browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox is light years ahead. Microsoft will need to do some serious footwork to catch up to the usability and functionality of this browser. Seriously. The only browsers that come close are Mozilla (of course), Opera , and Konqueror . Safari is also coming along nicely on OS X . The beauty of this browser is not only its functionality… it also lies in its portability. Firefox is currently supported under Linux (GTK+-Xft), Mac OSX, Sun Solaris SPARC/x86, Sun JDS 2003, Microsoft Windows (all versions), and IBM OS/2 , so you can drop it onto almost anything with a modern CPU.

Firefox 0.9 is out. Download it now.

Slashdot | A New Look At Mozilla Firefox 0.9

Firefox 0.9 RC1 is out. Try to break it before Monday.

Mozilla 1.7 RC3 is out.

In a somewhat odd move, Mozilla 1.8 alpha is now out, skipping right over Mozilla 1.7 final.

Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6 is out. Good work on the new logo, guys!

Mozilla 1.7 RC1 is out.

Have I mentioned how impressed I am with Firefox?

Hard to think this is the same browser as Seamonkey, Mozilla 0.6.

MSN bans pop-ups on global sites because people hate them.

Popups are still an issue? I haven’t seen one in years since I switched to Mozilla.

Slashdot | 4 Years Later, The Mozilla Tide Has Turned

Have I mentioned that I really like the new logo?

Firefox Help - Online Help for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser.

Firebird 0.8 is out, with a new name, FireFox.

Mozilla.org is slashdotted, so use a mirror:

• ISC (FTP)
• ISC (HTTP)
• Georgia (FTP)
• Georgia (HTTP)
• Indiana (FTP)
• Indiana (HTTP)
• Oregon (FTP)
• Oregon (HTTP)

And when the torrent dies down, check out the name change FAQ.

More reasons to not use Internet Explorer — Microsoft recommends you type URLs, not click on them.

No, seriously: see Microsoft Technote #833786:

SUMMARY

When you point to a hyperlink in Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook Express, or Microsoft Outlook, the address of the Web site typically appears in the Status bar at the bottom of the window. After you click a link that opens in Internet Explorer, the address of the Web site typically appears in the Internet Explorer Address bar, and the title of the Web page typically appears in the Title bar of the window.

However, a malicious user could create a link to a deceptive (spoofed) Web site that displays the address, or URL, to a legitimate Web site in the Status bar, Address bar, and Title bar. This article describes steps that you can take to help mitigate this issue and to help you to identify a deceptive (spoofed) Web site or URL.

If you need yet another reason to switch to Mozilla, try this on — No relief from Microsoft phishing bug:

Tuesday’s edition of Microsoft’s monthly bundle of security advisories features an omission that should keep online fraud artists and identity thieves happy: over one month after its discovery, there is no official patch available for a bug in Internet Explorer that lets swindlers pass off counterfeit websites as the real thing.

The bug, publicly detailed on December 9th by “Zap the Dingbat,” is an easily exploited flaw in the way Internet Explorer displays URLs in the address bar: it turns out the browser is incapable of displaying the special character “%01,” or anything following it, in a Web address.

That simple gaffe is tailor-made for the devious online swindle called “phishing,” in which a fraudster spams the Internet with e-mail purporting to be from a reputable financial institution or e-commerce site, and urging the recipient to click on an included link to update their personal profile or carry out some transaction. The link takes the victim to a fake website designed — with increasing sophistication — to look like the real deal, but where any personal or financial information entered is routed directly to the scammer.

Experts have traditionally advised consumers to avoid these scams by carefully checking the address bar in their browser window to verify that they’re actually on citibank.com, for example, before entering their password or account information. But the IE bug makes that advice obsolete: combined with URL obfuscation techniques already well known to phishers, IE helpfully transforms a clumsy fake like “www.citibank.com%01@211.239.150.170/login/login.htm” into the flawless counterfeit “www.citibank.com.”

Branding Mozilla: Towards Mozilla 2.0

Slashdot | Branding Mozilla: Towards Mozilla 2.0

floppaganda: Tcsh Script for Mozilla Build

Mozilla 1.5 beta is out. Don’t forget the release notes.

A new article has appeared on mozilla.org on Mozilla Branding, with a nice way to settle the whole Firebird naming fiasco. Excerpts:

4. Current Brand

Our current brand is largely associated with the previous Netscape product releases.  When talking about the “open source version of Netscape” the press usually talks about this nebulous thing: “Mozilla”  People inside of the project usually call it the “app suite” or sometimes they separate the “browser” or “mail/news,” but it is almost always referred to as a “release of Mozilla” when we reach a milestone.

From now on we should try to capitalize on the Mozilla name, as it is already well known and is widely used outside of our small technical community.  However, once we have got a logical split of the browser and mail/news into separately run projects, we should use the brand we have while allowing the two main parts (and other parts, in the future) to have their own identities, while still reinforcing the Mozilla name.

5.  Rules of the Game

Before and during the release of Mozilla 1.4, we need to make sure that we can keep our new development work (Thunderbird/Firebird) separate from SeaMonkey.  There are quite a few reasons to do this, including making sure that we can keep the right bugs in the right place (the technical reasons) and to avoid any kind of brand confusion in the marketplace or in the press (branding reason.)  This gives us our rules of the game:

1.  When referring to a SeaMonkey-based release use the phrase “Mozilla Application Suite” as the name of the app suite.

It’s not sexy, and people will probably shorten it to “App Suite” or just “Mozilla” but we want to make sure that it’s made distinct from the upcoming Browser and Mail products.

2.  When referring to specific parts of the Application Suite, use Mozilla Navigator and Mozilla Messenger.

Sometimes we need to refer to specific parts of the App Suite.  These names have been around a long time and were inherited from the old Netscape products and we should probably stick to them.  Also, they are distinct from Browser and Mail which is important in the long run.

3. When referring to Thunderbird or Firebird before or during the 1.4 release cycle, make sure to use the project name with Mozilla pre-pended as “Mozilla Thunderbird” or “Mozilla Firebird” instead of Mozilla alone or Firebird/Thunderbird alone.

After the release of 1.4 we will be doing our primary development on the Firebird and Thunderbird projects.  When we do releases of that codebase we should be using self-descriptive brand identities for the public and the press.  New rule:

4.  Use the names “Mozilla Browser” and “Mozilla Mail” to describe the Firebird and Thunderbird projects after the 1.4 release.

Also, this branding should be found throughout the projects if possible instead of referring to the Firebird and Thunderbird names directly.  Project names are transitory.  As long as we have both a mail and browser project, we should be using the Mozilla brand and reinforcing it whenever we get the chance.

I’m glad to see that “Mozilla Mail” and “Mozilla Browser” won out, even though I generally like “Phoenix” as a name. The distinction between them and “Mozilla Navigator/Messenger” is a fine one, and perhaps confusing, but since one will replace the other, it probably won’t matter anyway.

Mozilla 1.4 alpha is out in the usual locations.

What I find much more interesting, however, is the direction outlined in the revised Mozilla Development Roadmap. Once Mozilla stablizies on the 1.4 release, the move will be towards Phoenix’s model - a smaller, faster, better browser, with stand-alone snap-in modules.

From the roadmap:

1. Phoenix is simply smaller, faster, and better — especially better not because it has every conflicting feature wanted by each segment of the Mozilla community, but because it has a strong “add-on” extension mechanism. We recognize that different users need many different features; such demand is legitimate on its face. Attempting to “hardwire” all these features to the integrated application suite is not legitimate; it’s neither technically nor socially scaleable.

2. What’s good for the browser (Phoenix) is good for the mail application (Minotaur, leading to Thunderbird), too. Mozilla’s integrated mail has many fine features, but it suffers from too many integration points with the other apps, and it remains a complicated front end maintained by too few people, most of whom have different day jobs now.

3. The 1.0 branch is almost a year old. It’s time to move from 1.0 to 1.4 for mozilla.org-blessed stable development and product releases, to get all the stability, performance, and security fixes made on the trunk since 1.0 into the hands of distributors and users. Many distributors have plans to make this migration. This migration frees the trunk to make more aggressive changes during 1.5 and 1.6, but still with the incremental daily build discipline, and the quarterly alpha/beta/final milestone testing feedback loops.

4. Gecko stalwarts are leading an effort to fix those layout architecture bugs and design flaws that cannot be treated by patching symptoms. Those bugs stand in the way of major improvements in maintainability, footprint, performance, and extensibility. Just by reducing source code complexity, Gecko stands to become much easier to maintain, faster, and about as small in dynamic footprint, yet significantly smaller in code footprint.

5. The faux-egalitarian model of CVS access and pan-tree hacking that evolved from the earliest days of Mozilla is coming to an end. Many of the original hackers have moved on, leaving unowned and under-owned modules behind. The combination of over-reach, turnover, and legacy CVS access grants has led mozilla.org to institute code review requirements beyond those required by the relevant module owner (if there is an owner).

Come and get it: Mozilla 1.3 is out. New in this release:

• Mozilla Mail has junk-mail classification. With some initial “training” the client can identify and segregate spam messages from good messages. To see more about Mozilla’s junk-mail classification, visit the Mozilla Spam Filtering page.
• Newsgroup filters have been implemented.
• An initial implementation of Mozilla Midas, rich text editing controls, have landed in Mozilla for 1.3. See the Midas page for more information.
• Image auto sizing allows a user to toggle between full-sized images and images sized to fit the browser window. To give it a try, load a large image into the browser window or size the window to be much smaller. Now clicking on the image will alternate between auto-sized and full-sized.The feature can be disabled (or enabled) from the Appearance panel in Preferences.
• Users can now “dynamically” switch profiles. To give it a try, from the tools menu select “Switch Profile…”
• Find as you type, formerly known as type ahead find, has a new preferences panel (Advanced: Keyboard Navigation).
• When installed, Chatzilla now has a normal Mozilla preferences panel.
• Mozilla 1.3 also includes fixes for performance, standards compliance and site compatability.

Download it now.

Wow. Mozilla now includes the kitchen sink, too. (Via /.)

It’s true. Netscape DevEdge redesigns, shows off web standards. Lots of good stuff in there, including blue lizards. Nice work!

Let’s say you’re at freezing at home this weekend, browsing the web. You know what you should do? Go read a few nice introductions to Mozilla. There’s the Mozilla Starter Guide:

So you’ve just downloaded the latest Mozilla and you want to know what makes Mozilla the best browser out there? This page should give you a good idea of some of the features that Mozilla has that set it apart from the rest of the pack.

From there, you can take a look at A Guide to Mozilla 1.0. And when you’re done with that, try 101 things you can do in Mozilla.

Too bad Mozilla doesn’t come with a space heater.

Phoenix 0.5 (Naples) is out, and you can tweak it under the hood to go even faster.

A few quick tests and it looks like it works for Mozilla, too. Edit your prefs.js to include user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0); and watch the pages fly!

All fixed now. Go get it.

Looking for a faster, lighter version of Mozilla? (Greedy bastard.) Why don’t you give Phoenix a whirl?

The complete text of O’Reilly’s Creating Applications with Mozilla is now online. Click on the chapters link to dive right in. (Via Mozillazine).

Mozilla takes another step towards a complete application platform: Mozilla Calendar 0.8 released. (Via Mozillazine).

Mozilla 1.2 Alpha is out, with better keyboard navigation. Also: 1.0.1, a bug fix and security follow-up to Mozilla 1.0.

Finally, Mozilla gets some long-deserved press on its potential as a platform:

But the best part about Mozilla is that it is not just a browser. Scores of developers are now talking about using Mozilla as a “platform” — that is, using Mozilla’s underlying code to build non-browser applications, like calendar programs and e-mail programs and even Linux desktops. You don’t need to download Mozilla to use these apps, as some are distributed with their own stripped-down version of Mozilla’s engine — which, if you think about it, is exactly the kind of thing Microsoft was trying to prevent when it launched its war against Netscape. It didn’t want Netscape around, because Netscape was becoming a platform. So wouldn’t it be rich if, in the end, Microsoft succeeds in killing Netscape and winning the browser war but still, somehow, doesn’t eliminate the platform threat? If Netscape dies but the dragon that it spawned burns Redmond?

What is it with me and the lizards these days? I can’t stop rooting for ‘em.

Quick, catch it before Toho’s lawyers sue!

Interesting: optimoz: gestures. It’s like Graffiti (handwriting on a Palm) for Mozilla.

Congratulations to the Lizard Wranglers and Porkjockeys: Mozilla 1.0 shipped today. If you still haven’t tried it, perhaps you should take a look at the guide to Mozilla 1.0 and reconsider.