August 2003 Entries

How do Mozilla get the MIME type of a uri?
For HTTP URIs, as well as for Mail Attachments, Mozilla usually gets a mime type sent from the server, and uses it. Contrary to IE, Mozilla will not sniff the type of the document, not even for application/octet-stream or text/plain documents. There is one exception: for images loaded via <img src>, Mozilla's image library will do content sniffing (never extension sniffing) to find out the real type of the image.

Read the article How Mozilla determines MIME Types

Debugging JavaScript
If you've ever written some JavaScript, and had a bug in it, and gone to great lengths of finding out why it didn't work, you've probably used some of the traditional debugging "tools" that have been available to JavaScript programmers. An unholy mix of alert boxes or maybe document.write plus judiciously inserted debugging code, and tons of out commented code.

Read Learning the JavaScript debugger Venkman

This document provides a comprehensive, high-level overview of concepts for features in the next release of StarOffice / OpenOffice.org (SO/OOo) currently in the planning phase.

Available in HTML, PDF and of course SXW format.

Executive Summary:
- Lower cost of interoperability with Microsoft Office
- Lower cost of retraining
- Better Performance
- General usability improvements
- Enhanced programmability
- Better integration into desktop systems

Read more about the OpenOffice.org codelines.

This website provides information to the consumer to aid in understanding, finding and using Open Source products.

Visit the Nordic Open Source website

Mozilla is listed but Mozilla Firebird and Mozilla Thunderbird are not yet listed. But if you send them a comment they might add them.

You can also use the Mozilla forum.

Linky is a Mozilla and Mozilla Firebird extension to the context menu that provide you with the following; Opens all links in a selection in new tabs or windows, Finds and opens links in plain text in a new tab or window, Opens all links on page in new tabs or windows, Download all links, etc.

Read more about Linky or install it right away!

What's new?
- Added Download Links option. Download all links on the current page. Disabled by default.
- Added Validate Links option. Validate all links on the current page. Disabled by default.
- Added Unescape option to context menu in the Select Links dialog. Cool p0rn feature I'm told...?
- Added Match Text option to context menu in the Select Links dialog.
- Added Dont Match Text option to context menu in the Select Links dialog.
- Added Copy Links to Clipboard option to context menu in the Select Links dialog.
- The Select Links dialog pref is now per default set to 0 meaning always show.

Check out the screenshots.
Report bugs

Spengler allows you to inspect a web service based on its WSDL file, displaying it in several human readable forms. It also allows you to create sample testcases that allow testing of the web service from Mozilla.

spengler.mozdev.org

Read about the old unoptmized version here.

Advertisements on websites are annoying, often breaking up text and flashing to get your attention. To stop about 99% of the ads on the internet from even showing, add the following code to your userContent.css file

Find out how you block almost all ads here at least if you use Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird.

BTW: The History of The Internet

Roaming is the ability to keep bookmarks/cookies/history/etc in a central repository. So you can bring your environment with you, or recover your settings on a new computer.

Netscape 4.x supported roaming but not in a very good way. Mozilla never supported roaming. But this is about to change. Some mozilla fans have for a long time worked on adding roaming support to Mozilla. It's a big task. Ben Bucksch is doing a GREAT job!

Read more about the development:
- ZillaVilla.com "A House for Mozilla"
- Bugzilla Bug 124029 Roaming - 4.x-HTTP-compatible
- Roaming related bugs

Jeg er lige blevet færdig med at læse Hjernehallen. En ganske glimrende dansk science fiction bog.
Når drømme bliver virkelige, hvad er så virkeligheden? Chris lever en triviel og ensom tilværelse, men holder sig i live på grund af sine drømme. En dag dukker en person op, som påstår, at drømmene er det virkelige, og at de begge er fanger i et gruopvækkende fængsel. Men hvor befinder de sig så, hvad er formålet med det hele?

Den er skrevet af Johan Springborg.

Du kan læse det første kapitel her og købe den online ganske billigt her og her.

There's a new and much faster bugzilla server around:
http://mecha.mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla/

It's running Bugzilla version 2.17.1

Enter a bug (guided format)
Find a bug

What is bugzilla?
Bugzilla is one example of a class of programs called "Defect Tracking Systems", or, more commonly, "Bug-Tracking Systems".
Read more here and here.

I'm back! Back from wedding. Back from a short honeymoon in the southern of Denmark. Had the most amazing week. Wedding went great. Party went great.

I'm back at work trying to scan through a huge amount of mails. Most of them virus warnings since someone used an email addresse of mine as the sender of some spam/virus mails. Damn annoying!

More updates later! I'm still trying to catch up with all the Mozilla news.

This is the last post for some time since I'm getting married this weekend!

We're not going on the big honeymoon yet. We're waiting until January 2004 where we're going backpacking in Mexico and Guatemala for 1½ month.

Microsoft stops developing / publishing Outlook Express:
Outlook Express just sits where it is," said Dan Leach, lead product manager for Microsoft's information worker product management group. "The technology doesn't go away, but no new work is being done. It is consumer e-mail in an early iteration, and our investment in the consumer space is now focused around Hotmail and MSN. That's where we're putting the emphasis in terms of new investment and new development work.
Read more and more

and BTW Microsoft has laid the blame for half of all Windows crashes on third-party code.

A couple of interesting bugs:
- Add "Windows Media Player" ActiveX support to Mozilla (Netscape 7.1 has it)
- spam/junk filter: add a "headers-only" mode
- move quote reply pref (reply below/above) to account settings
- XP_UNIX DNS lookups are serialized

Transmeta Brands "Astro" CPU As Efficeon
As its name implies, the Efficeon is designed to conjure up images of low-power computers, saving users power through the "code-morphing" technology Transmeta popularized.. "It's efficient by nature, with low heat capabilities," said Mike DeNeffe, director of marketing for Transmeta, of the chip. "(The brand name) really speaks to where we're taking the product."
Read more here and here and at Transmeta.

Just trying to catch up on some of the nice stuff thats going on in the Mozilla project:

David Bradley writes:
Bug 213813 contains a patch that has been reported to significantly increase DHTML performance. You can read the details in the patch. The patch should speed up any case where JavaScript makes repeated calls to relatively inexpensive native methods on objects. Especially complex objects with many methods and/or interfaces. The patch isn't final yet. Some research needs to be done to see what the optimal cache settings are. If anyone can try out the patch and report back, it would be much appreciated. A link to the modified release version XPConnect dll for Windows is available in bug 212831 for Windows users that might want to try this out without having to rebuild things.

AOL Unleashes Final Communicator
America Online has publicly released the final version of AOL Communicator, its new unified client featuring e-mail, an address book, and real time communications. Although Communicator compliments AOL 9 and AOL for Broadband, its underpinnings are drawn from another source - the Gecko browsing engine and XUL user interface language found in Mozilla.

Ed Burns writes:
I've finally been able to free up some time to work on Webclient for
the 2.0 release. My main goal in this release is to make all the existing features really work correctly with mozilla 1.4. My secondary goal is to make as many features as possible work with Internet Explorer.

My first task is to re-design the integration layer between mozilla
and java. The existing code was written three years ago and much of
mozilla has changed. I'm deeply indebted to the webclient community for
keeping webclient running as it is.

The webclient project aims to provide the premier browser-neutral Java API that enables generic web browsing capability. This capability includes, but is not limited to: web content rendering, navigation, a history mechanism, and progress notification. The actual capabilities implemented depend on the underlying browser implementation.

Support the Mozilla Activism

All profits made through this CafeShop will be donated to various Mozilla-based projects.

ryan writes:
shameless self-promotion
okay, so time for a little shameless self-promotion. i was doing my regular reading of local news sites like the cnn and news.com's of the world. nothing really much going on, but then i cruised over to the mozillazine to check what they had going on. they had an interesting story about a group of polish tech workers that created signs to post all over their northern polish town.the town is going to be holding a computer expo and conference. i thought this would be a great idea to start a cafepress shop to help bring money to the different mozilla projects. i call it mozilla activism. every profit that i make through this shop will be donated to various mozilla projects. considering i don't have much money myself, and i want to see mozilla kick internet explorer's ass, please check out mozilla activism and pick up a shirt, hat or thong and help kick big brother's ass.

Life After v0.3: The New Roadmap Revealed
Now that v0.3 is finally out the door, it is time to reveal what the future of Miranda IM looks like. Many exciting things are about to happen. First of all, there will be no v0.4. Why? Earlier this year we reached the point where it is no longer possible to continue developing Miranda IM the way we want it. The limitations of the current code base are just too many.

Analyst: Linux Kernel Code Seems to be Copied
Our review of source code and documents appears supportive of SCO claims, though we are not legal experts and IP matters are not always transparent

AOL Changes Strategy On Software Rollout
America Online is abandoning its strategy of making major changes to its AOL software as part of a single annual release in favor of rolling out fresh upgrades as soon as the new features are ready, company officials said this week.

Normally when you see an webpage that uses the Windows Media Player control in Mozilla of Mozilla Firebird it's shown with the old Windows Media Player control aka version 6.4 control.

With this registry fix you can now use the Windows Media Player 9 control. Either cut of the following text and save it into a wmp9.reg file and run it
Or you can just click here to download the registry fix

It's already logged as a bug in bugzilla. See bug 193883.

The Mozilla plug-in has one rather complicated feature that necessitates a complicated player management scheme. Each instance of the plug-in can be configured to share a player (or conversely, different players.) This allows a user to design a complex interface where each plug-in instance presents a different portion of the player UI but they are all linked to the same player and media presentation.
Helix Player Mozilla Plug-In Design (draft)
Helix Player Project

The Helix Player is the Helix Community's open source media player for consumers. It will have a rich and usable graphical interface and support all of the types of media currently offered by our Helix DNA Client.

Microsoft will have to reveal more information about its Windows operating system to rivals and change the way it sells its music and video software to settle four-year-old European antitrust allegations, the European Commission said.
- EU Turns Up the Heat on Microsoft
- EU to Force Microsoft to Untie Media Player Software
- Google news

Acronym is a plugin for Movable Type that adds acronym tags to known acronyms.

This text:
This is a XHTML test
becomes
This is a <acronym title="Extensible HyperText Markup Language">XHTML</acronym> test
which in the web browser is shown like this:
This is a XHTML test

Download the Acronym plugin.

Mozilla Firebird Marketing

Web panels!
Read more, more and more.

Ben about Mozilla Firebird

Macromedia Flash Player Public Beta
It's available for both Windows and Mac OS and of course for both Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Opera.

The Flash Player version is 7.0 d249
You can check your version here

A nice way to seperate your plug-ins and your Mozilla installation is show here.