July 2003 Entries

- Great 404
- Windows Memory Diagnostic Utility
The Windows Memory Diagnostic tests the Random Access Memory (RAM) on your computer for errors.
- Great Collection of Mozilla/Firebird Hacks
- How Email Works
More than half a billion people around the globe have access to email. But how does an e-mail message actually reach its destination?
- Mozilla Documentation Status
This status page provides details about the status of documentation on mozilla.org.
- Calendar Date Picker UI Comparison
- Rounded corners in XBL

You don't throw a baseball down the field for a 50-yard touchdown. You don't kick a basketball past a goalie to score a point. You don't drive the wrong way in a Nascar race. If you want to create web pages, you need to follow the rules.

Play by the rules, or get out.

Great article about web standards and why you should follow them!

Here are some statistics for gemal.dk:

Month	Hits	Visits
Jul 2003	125441	630.735
Jun 2003	71.851	338.980
May 2003	65.198	390.749
Apr 2003	48.600	139.420
Mar 2003	52.477	304.729
Feb 2003	45.310	295.776

Something happend in the start of July. Not really sure. Is the statistics impressive? I have no idea. What does a normal "personal" site generate? I'm using webalizer and are doing some heavy filtering to discard some of my own bots etc.

Output from webalizer: 2735892 records (2735877 ignored)

Blogupdates, which is my page that lists Mozilla related blogs and their last modification date is now available as a sidebar. Sidebar are currently supported by all Gecko based browsers such as Mozilla and Netscape 6/7. Konqueror also has support for sidebars.

You can see your current sidebars via the View -> Show/Hide -> Sidebar or just hit F9.

Gecko based browsers
Click this button to add the sidebar:

Opera users
Add Blogupdates sidebar to Opera

Internet Explorer users
Get a real browser like Mozilla.

Read more about sidebars:
- at netscape.com
- at devedge.netscape.com

Langa Letter: Ten Ways To Make Windows XP Run Better
Fred Langa offers tips on how to optimize Windows XP for your own work style so you don't have to live with its default settings.

Also read the discussion area associated with the article.

Mozilla News:
Mozilla will Challenge Internet Explorer
Microsoft's recent decision to only provide enhancements to Internet Explorer via Windows upgrades could leave an opening for alternative browsers.

The mozdev spellchecker is now being build by default.

Mozilla Firebird Marketing

Inside Windows-Update
When you connect your computer to Microsofts website windowsupdate.com, you reveal a lot of information about your computer to Microsoft. This article shows bit for bit, which data is transferred to Redmond and what Microsoft could learn from it.

Inside Windows Product Activation
The current public discussion of Windows Product Activation (WPA) is characterized by uncertainty and speculation. In this paper we supply the technical details of WPA - as implemented in Windows XP - that Microsoft should have published long ago.

Inside Internet-based Windows Product Activation
Internet-based product activation of Windows XP involves transmitting an amount of data to the Microsoft activation servers. Is this a threat to the users' privacy?

Miranda IM's GNU GPL License Violated
Four weeks ago it was discovered that a newly released instant messenger application, ZeeZ IM, was based on the Miranda IM v0.2 source code and was distributed in violation of the GNU GPL license.
Technical details here.

For those who dont know Miranda I can say that it's the best multi protocol instant messenger client for Windows. Read all about it. See the screenshots.

The Miranda plug-ins that I use:
- Wassup
- SecureIM
- micqBirthday

Mozilla sometimes doesn't display Sent Items folder with correct headers
This fixes the icons for sent/drafts/templates for imap servers that have their
special folders under the INBOX.

And also some IMAP code cleanup:
- Remove unused nsIMsgFolder methods.
- use XPIDL for nsImapMiscellaneousSink and nsImapExtensionSink

Big Thanx to David Bienvenu, who did a great job on the IMAP code!

Remember that you're always more than welcome to help fix more IMAP bugs. To get started read this document.

Mozilla Firebird Hottest Pick in UK 'Linux Format' Magazine
Overall, Firebird is a great browser, jam-packed with goodies and ready for even more through extensions. It's fast, attractive, easy-to-use and mostly reliable, and it's guaranteed a prosperous future. Give it a test run - you might just replace Mozilla for good.

DevEdge RSS-News Ticker Toolbar
Loading RSS news from DevEdge, C|Net, and NYT via XMLHTTPRequest

Microsoft reveals 'critical' flaw
Could allow malicious users to run code of their choice

CSS The Road to Enlightenment
There is clearly a need for CSS to be taken seriously by graphic artists

Bloggers plan round-the-clock charity drive
This weekend, 500 of them will dedicate a day of blogging to serve a higher cause, collecting pledges and raising funds for a variety of philanthropic organizations.

Read the exellent blog entry about why the current bookmark system in Mozilla is wrong and why users cant understand it.
I've been thinking a lot about the bookmarks lately, some of the problems with the current system, and what I would do to improve things. The following is a summary of a few of those ideas. I don't know if anyone "important" enough to actually make such changes reads this blog, but I'm hoping to get people thinking about it, and maybe get a discussion going elsewhere.

Read The Bookmarks.

The problem:
The mozilla project has produced a set of stable top-level libraries that are used by many outside projects, and its is time for its directory structure and build system to evolve to match this reality. In particular, the Gecko Runtime Engine (GRE) is being embedded in multiple projects but it is still inexplicably necessary to build SeaMonkey (its main embedder) to get the GRE.

The solution:
We propose to create a set of top-level directories that represent first-order libraries (like gre). /mozilla becomes a sort of hosting directory, and the top-level libraries each have their own make systems (most of which would use our current autoconf build system) instead of having a top-level make that makes multiple libraries at once.

Read the entire proposal. Also read the blog entry.

I 100% agree with this. Fx this will cut down on the space needed to build fx Mozilla Firebird. Currently it's around 3.7GB!

Unfortunately the drivers said "it's not worth the effort."... Damn!

The MozDev spellchecker has been checked into Mozilla. But it hasn't been turned on yet.

Read more in bug 56301.

Windows Media Player in Mozilla/Netscape
Mozilla and Netscape 7.1 has the ability to load the Microsoft Windows Media Player as an ActiveX control, and thus developers can now build multimedia experiences that script the Windows Media Player in Netscape 7.1, just as they do in Internet Explorer. Mozilla and Netscape 7.1 will work with both the Windows Media Player 6.4 ActiveX control as well as versions 7 through 9. This article explains how to embed the Windows Media Player ActiveX control in web pages to support Mozilla Netscape 7.1, how to control the Windows Media Player ActiveX control using JavaScript and provides working examples. This article deals uniquely with Mozilla and Netscape 7.1 running on the Windows operating system.

Read this article and other great articles on DevEdge.

The website for GSI-Enabled OpenSSH just launched today. And with a site layout that is based on my layout. But with my permission of course.

And of course it validates.

Check out these IBM Browser Productivity Components:
- Spreadsheet
- DocEditor
- Presentation

Correction:I wrote that the demos where done in XUL, they are not. It's plain old DHTML. Sorry about that. They are still impressive.

Try the demos!

XUL
Even though that the demos aren't done in XUL, XUL is still very cool. XUL stands for XML User Interface Language. This is the cross platform language that the UI in Mozilla is written in. Designing UI with XML and JavaScript is cool and very easy!

Read more about XUL here:
- Introducing XUL - The 'Net's Biggest Secret
- The Joy of XUL
- XUL specification
- Open XUL Alliance

Screenshots of the DHTML demos:

In the fall quarter of 2002, University of Washington Computing & Communications discontinued its support for Netscape browsers in favor of the Mozilla browser.

Why? Here are some of their reasons:
- Block pop-up ads
- Tabbed browsing
- Faster web pages
- Support for multiple platforms
- Support for web standards

Read more

Upon the demise of Netscape
So, a Google browser, based on Mozilla. An easily-justified commitment to cross-platform support and outstanding user experience, based on Google's history of honoring those tenets and the Mozilla organization's inherent preference for them. Culturally, hiring the core members of the Mozilla dev team would be an extraordinarily easy fit. And, frankly, it'd probably require little more development resources, bandwidth, or staffing than the Pyra acquisition did.

If that happend it could be really really cool and could mean that difference Mozilla needs to get the message to the browser people. You dont need to stick with IE. There's a much better browser out there.

Futher reading:
- The Google Browser

If you like me never ever used the "Show Related Links" menuitem in the Tools menu of Internet Explorer, why not remove it?

Just delete the registry entry:
{c95fe080-8f5d-11d2-a20b-00aa003c157a}
which is located under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Extensions\

Ad Blocking in Mozilla
With Mozilla you can block ads. I use it a lot, and simply love it. When I surf I hardly see any ads due to the blocking capabilities of Mozilla.
Read more about ad blocking

You can get cookperm.txt files from here and here.

Lotus Puts Final Touches On Notes Domino 6.5
Notes 6.5 is the point upgrade to the version 6.0 upgrade released at Lotusphere last January. Channel partners are anxiously awaiting some of Notes 6.5's new features and additional stability, such as enhanced antispam and e-mail management capabilities, support for the Mozilla browser and more tightly integrated instant-messaging features.

The Revolution Will Be Bitmapped
- Read the article

Use a Better Browser
Microsoft's Internet Explorer may currently have the largest market share, but it has been stagnating for a while. By using a better browser your experience will be better. Plus, you will help to foster a competitive environment in which browser technology can continue to innovate and make everyone's web experience more pleasant and exciting.

Will Mozilla fade and disappear?

The Door is Wide Open

The end of Netscape does not mean the end of Mozilla!

After the Netscape browser team was dissolved yesterday, there's some confusion about the future of Mozilla.

The Mozilla Foundation will now be the place that coordinates all Mozilla development. Work will continue as usual. Nothing changed there. We're still working on the best browser available!

So work on Mozilla continues. But we could always use hacker/artists/etc to improve Mozilla. Sign up here.

Some more good news. AOL has agreed to transfer the Mozilla trademark and other intellectual property to the new Mozilla Foundation. Perhaps this means the comeback of the Lizard in the splash screen.

There's also a change of strategy coming. The Mozilla Foundation plans to target end-users directly! This is great news.

You can read more at MozillaZine.

Last weekend I got my new harddrive. A very very nice Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9.

Specs:
- 160GB (Enough to build Mozilla Firebird and Mozilla Thunderbird)
- 7200 RPM
- Fluid dynamic bearing motors (super low noise)
- 8MB buffer
- 9ms seek
- More...

Bought it online here in Denmark at PC Focus. The price you ask... only DKK 1.270,00 ($190,-) incl tax and delivery.

I'm a Mozilla fan! And being able to build Mozilla Thunderbird and/or Mozilla Firebird on my Windows XP machine sounded cool. I didn't have Microsoft Visual C++ so I needed to build without any tools from Microsoft, aside from Windows XP of couse.

So here we go: Build Mozilla Thunderbird and/or Mozilla Firebird in 14 easy steps!

Another bird has landed! Mozilla Sunbird aka Mozilla Calendar aka Calendar stand alone application.

The logo to the right is the current Mozilla Sunbird logo. Perhaps it's just a temporary logo. Who knows...?

Source code

Sarissa XML-JavaScript library version 0.9b3 released

Sarissa is a JavaScript library that provides a cross-browser interface to DOM extensions, XSLT, XMLHTTP and XPath functionality for IE and Mozilla (or Moz-based) browsers. Free under the GPL. This version fixes some stuff that where broken for Mozilla 1.4.

Online docs
SF project page

How to configure Mozilla's and Netscape 7.1's privacy and security features
Mozilla and Netscape 7.1 are in my opinion very secure browsers, even in their "out of the box" state. Still, with the right settings, you can make it even better at preserving your privacy and security while you are surfing the net. This tutorial will show you how.

Evangel(Mozilla) THE REBIRTH
As many know, the EvangelMoz project had a slight skirmish with the Mozilla Project a while back, regarding if it should be marketing towards end users. It is apparent this is behind us, and we should move forward as one group, advocating open source software, standards compliancy, and inter-platform consistency.

Stuart Parmenter is slowly pushing his new project Anja onto mozilla.org:
Anya is the code name for a project using Mozilla as a server to render pages. It also consists of a thin client that talks to the server to browse the web.
Download the source code.

Finally! AOL has cut Mozilla loose. Mozilla is not dead. Netscape is.

This way Mozilla can be made by and for the Internet users. Mozilla is no longer bound to weird decisions made by AOL.

I'm really looking forward to this. It's gonna be a hard way, but it's the right decision. Having two versions of the same browser, Netscape and Mozilla, always confused people. Now we, the Mozilla community, can focus on getting people to know and use the greatest browser available.

The newly created Mozilla Foundation will serve as the home for the Mozilla community.

Enough talk, let's code! Long live Mozilla!

The Mozilla Foundation is a new non-profit organization that will serve as the home for mozilla.org. As before, mozilla.org will coordinate and encourage the development and testing of Mozilla code. The Mozilla Foundation will also promote the distribution and adoption of our flagship applications based on that code. AOL, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, and other companies will continue to support Mozilla through the Foundation.
Mozilla Foundation

Read more:
- press release
- website

I really like this paragraph:
Now that the Mozilla Foundation has been launched, we believe the time is ripe to move aggressively toward new distribution channels, new end-user markets, and better incorporation of developer-driven innovations from the whole Mozilla community.

According to Mr Linux himself Linus Torvalds, Mozilla is gonna load faster by improving the read-ahead heuristics for page faulting in the executable images.
Source: Torvalds on OSDL, 2.6, and the future

Experimental build of Mozilla for Windows with the new DNS code here. Read more about the DNS rewrite.

Recent changes to Mozilla Thunderbird here. It might soon be my standard mailclient. I'm currently use Mozilla Mail.

Improvements in DHTML performance are underway.

"Just to be perfectly clear, this is an MS Exchange replacement," said Gary Federick, leader of the OpenOffice.org Groupware Project. "OGo is important because it's the missing link in the open source software stack. It's the end of a decade-long effort to map all the key infrastructure and standard desktop applications to free software. OGo offers users a free solution for collaboration and document management that, despite being free of charge, will far surpass the quality and level of collaboration found on Windows through integration of MS Office, Exchange Server and Sharepoint. Today marks the completion of the 'Open Stack.'"

Read more:
- opengroupware.org
- Announcement
- Open Source Takes on Exchange
- OpenGroupware.org Complements OpenOffice
- Opengroupware at slashdot.org

If you're using a browser that supports the <acronym> tag, my site now features acronym support. Try to hold your mouse cursor over this text.

Currently I use a text file with all the acronyms in it. Then when all my files are parsed I substitute the acronyms. Yes... I parse all my files. This is due to I'm having one global template which I use on all of my files.

PS: Acronym support aren't in my blog yet. Perhaps I should work on a plugin for Movable Type.

Read more about the acronym tag here:
- The Acronym Tag
- W3C

Matthew Brooke from National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis writes:

The Jalama project is pleased to announce its first developer-review release (0.1alpha1), which uses the Jalama framework (written in Java) to provide the "back-end" functionality for a simple XUL wizard, embedded in a Java frame using Mozilla WebClient. The wizard guides the user through the steps necessary to create a simple EML document (compliant with the EML 2.0.0 schema)

Read the whole post.

Mozilla really needs an PR department! I'm telling a lot of people to use Mozilla. Then I say "just go to mozilla.org and download Mozilla". Then people go to mozilla.org and sadly.. 7 out of 10 give up. They just cant find out how to get Mozilla.

- Downloading Mozilla Is Hard
- Pain at Mozilla.org

So if people want Mozilla Firebird use this site!

Could this be the perfect solution to fight spam?

It would certainly prove controversial however, since it would mean abolishing the accepted email and news protocols SMTP and NNTP and involve the introduction of a centralised authentication point for all emails.

Read the article or browse the huge website that explains in extraordinary depth his vision for the anti-spam system covering every possible impact and aspect with diagrams, menus, tables, schematics.

You like reading, rite? So here we go:

RealNetworks Adds SMIL Code to Helix
RealNetworks added the code for SMIL to its open-source Helix Community, a move that allows the creation of multimedia presentations that integrate streaming audio and video with images and text...

The Fine Art of Password Protection
Passwords are both the universal language for network navigation and the weakest link in network security, as fraught with peril as they are essential. Experts say that because they are so closely linked to the ever-fallible human element, passwords cause the most headaches of anysecurity mechanism...

Corbis photo-theft crackdown hits Amazon
Corbis, which licenses thousands of images each week to the largest publishers, advertisers, entertainment companies and graphic designers around the world, has aggressively pursued companies that violate its intellectual-property rights, with sometimes surprising results. In its latest case, Corbis last week sued Amazon.com and 15 of its partners...

Mozilla Mail has made some excellent strides in the fight against unwanted mail (SPAM). Particularly with regards to the Bayesian junk mail controls. This technique is extremely effective when the user trains the junk algorithms with postive and negative data. We would like to push the SPAM work even further by adding support for real time black lists to Mozilla Thunderbird Mail. RBLs work a differently than the bayesian junk controls. An RBL is a list of 'known' SMTP servers notorious for sending SPAM. When the user receives a message, we can look at the IP address of the originating SMTP server, and look it up in a black list. One of the advantages of RBLs is that they don't require any work from the user. There is no training involved. In addition, the lists are 'live' and evolve over time as more sites are identified as senders of SPAM.

Read the Support for Real Time Black Lists spec.

My Mozilla Related Blogs just got a bit smarter. You can now see the title for the last two entries for each blog.

Mozilla Related Blogs lists Mozilla related blogs and their last modification date. This way you dont have to visit all of the to find out if anything has been updated.

Build Mozilla Thunderbird in 14 easy steps! I've written a recipe on how to build build Mozilla Thunderbird on Microsoft Windows. No need for any Microsoft Visual C++ stuff. Just plain gcc and mingw.

So read the article and start building Mozilla Thunderbird today!

Gerv <gerv at mozilla dot org> writes:
A while back I posted, asking for help with the relicensing scripts. As you all probably know, we are moving towards a triple GPL/LGPL/MPL license for Mozilla and, having obtained most of the permissions we need, we have to change the actual licenses on the code.

Unfortunately, the efforts begun as a result of that original posting have come to nothing, and I'm afraid I must ask for help again.

I really need someone who knows Python, to take over and bring to completion the 95%-there code which was originally written in bug 98089. Rewriting the code from scratch is probably too much work, and unnecessary.

If anyone is able to help, please contact me. Ideally, it would be a single person who is willing to commit to seeing this through. The amount of work involved is probably not massive, for someone who knows the language.

Many thanks, Gerv <gerv at mozilla dot org>

So if you're a python hack contact him!

Spyware Weekly Newsletter is recommending Mozilla to it's recipients. SpywareInfo is the spyware and hijackware removal specialists.

They write:
For those of you that have never used Mozilla and are still using that Microsoft browser that comes bundled with every copy of Windows, you really are missing out. The tabbed interface by itself makes it worth switching. I can't imagine why Microsoft hasn't put tabs on Internet Explorer already and the lack of them is why I finally stopped using it altogether.

And continues:
Mozilla is also completely immune to the exploits that script kiddies use to install browser hijackers into Internet Explorer.

Read Last of the Lizards Released

BrowserSpy is todays Kim Komando Kool Site. That was the reason for the increase in traffic.

What does it take to be a Kim Komando Kool Site? Kool Sites are informative, weird, stylish, offbeat or unique--you won't find any duds here!

Kim Komando Kool Sites

Darin writes:
I am trying to make Mozilla support IPv6 under WinXP. This is really just a matter of calling getaddrinfo. However, I also need to take care to always create a socket of the right family (i.e., that matching the results of getaddrinfo). This is no problem for sockets created by necko; however, since necko can alternatively use nsISocketProvider::NewSocket to create sockets, there is a problem. That method unfortunately does not allow me to pass information about the socket family down to the socket provider. This impacts SSL, SOCKS, and other nsISocketProvider implementations. Indeed, there's no reason why nsISocketProvider must even create a socket (on some platforms, in some cases). Fortunately, nsISocketProvider is not a frozen interface, so most likely I will just rev it to add the address family as a new parameter. I'm a little bit concerned about breaking compatibility with existing apps (though I don't know of any that actually use this interface), so I'm just sending this email out more or less as a warning... if you happen to know of any apps that might break, please let me know.

So if you know of any apps write him at < darin at netscape dot com >