October 2003 Entries

The tree is open for 1.6b. This means that a huge amount of checkins are happening just right now. Making Mozilla better and faster.

Some of the interesting stuff that got FIXED:
- Authentication Plugins
Mozilla should implement an interface for writing plugins to add new forms of
authentication to mozilla.
- Subscribe option for IMAP accounts
- IMAP ACL user name comparison case-insensitive
- Print Preview to view source
- modernize nsILocale
and the list goes on and on.

Thanx thanx to David Bienvenu who's work in Mozilla Mail is truely amazing! See his checkins the last week.

A complete Web Authoring System for Linux Desktop users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.

Daniel Glazman is the lead developer and maintainer for the Nvu project. Daniel has been the chief architect for Mozilla Composer.

- Read all about it
- Screenshots
- FAQ

MSfreePC will, for a limited time, pay 10% of each claim processed on the MSfreePC.com site to a host of open source projects. Consumers can select the organization they would like to see benefit from the donation by using MSfreePC's "Instant Settlement Wizard," the quick four-minute claims tool. Claimants can choose to donate to Mozilla, an open source Internet browser project or OpenOffice.org, an office suite that offers word processing and other productivity applications. Also on the list to receive contributions are the GNOME project, KDE, and Debian.

Read the press release
Do it NOW

Microsoft fired an individual over a post on his blog. Microsoft Security saw the post as being a security violation.
Why you ask: He posted a picture of some Mac G5's standing in Microsoft's shipping and receiving department.

Read the blog entry that got him fired

Read the entry about how he got fired

MT::Plugins::Acronym 0.5 has been released.

Read more and Download at:
http://gemal.dk/mt/

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

New things in this release:
- Much faster algoritm
- More acronyms added to acronym.db

Compare your current browser to Mozilla Firebird.
Categories like:
- Smart Form Fill
- Integrated Search Bar
- Password Manager
- Free from Ad and Spyware
- Tab Browsing

Then it struck me; where is the brand? That logo really sucks big time and those birds could be more clearly defined and I don't have a clue who Mozilla is. Mozzila is no longer a behind the scenes open source developer for AOL/Time/Warner. They're now a company in there own right and have to show the world who they are. They have no real identity because the one they had no longer applies. Their nerdy geeky image will just not do when held up to the light in full view of their new customers. They will want to know who they are dealing with because to them it's an unknown company with products they never heard of.
Read more of the blog entry

Just saw that eWEEK had a poll:
With a new Mozilla released, is the browser war back?
Currently the result is:
59.62% - I'm giving Mozilla a second chance
18.38% - I'm sticking with Internet Explorer
22.00% - The browser war?

Check out the poll

The development of OpenOffice.org continues after the 1.1.0 release. Now there's a new developer release available. This release is eventually gonna be 1.1.1.
The 680m11 (build 680 milestone 11) can be downloaded from different mirror sites fx ftp.belnet.be and ftp.join.uni-muenster.de
Release notes and bug fixes for this release can be found here.

This easy-to-use wireless printing application for the Nokia 7650 phone enables you to print a wide variety of content types, including photos, text messages, emails, contact lists, calendars, and notes, to Bluetooth Basic Print Profile enabled (BPP) printers available from companies such as Hewlett Packard. You can now easily share printed pictures with friends, print a copy of your calendar or email for a colleague or family member, or back up a contact list to hard copy.

Read more about Nokia 7650 phone software

I finally shifted to Mozilla Thunderbird on both Linux and Windows with the 0.3 release. Thunderbird 0.3 is a major improvement in performance v/s the earlier kludged versions where writing a large email gave you sudden flashbacks of teletypes. I was using Outlook (on Windows) and Evolution (on Linux). Thunderbird isn't equal yet in terms of sheer speed but this is why I shifted.
Read more

It seems like the next version of Internet Explorer, the one that's gonna get shipped with the next version of Windows (currently codenames Longhorn), is getting some of the features that we have in Mozilla:
- Add-ons
Small programs that extends IE.
- Blok popups
Why they didn't introduce this before is beyond me.

More info and screenshots

- If I could re-write Linux
- Internet Explorer 6 & Outlook Express tweak guide
- NVIDIA Puts Its (New) Cards on the Table

I've written some recommendations for the branding and visual identity of the Mozilla Foundation's project and product line. I argue that the Mozilla Project should adopt a simple, strong, consistent visual identity for the Mozilla products including consistent icons across applications that mesh with the host operating system. Read Branding Mozilla: Towards Mozilla 2.0 and let us know what you think."

Red Hat 9 i386 RPMS are now available at mozilla.org. Thanx to Chris Blizzard.
Check it out.

We are currently planning drastic changes to the Bugzilla product and component organisation. This will affect your components. Please review the current draft proposal and send comments to Hixie as soon as possible. Thanks!

THE PROBLEMS THIS PROPOSAL SOLVES: Bugzilla no longer really maps to the products that are being developed, which will make it harder to keep track of where bugs should go. Assignees are regularly changing, causing bugs to become lost in space and time.

Read the proposal here.

The Helix Player is the Helix Community's open source media player for consumers. The release includes a GTK based player and a mozilla plugin. We are still early into the implementation and hope that this release will spur usage and participation.

Read more

Den danske udgave af OpenOffice.org 1.1 er udgivet!

- Læs pressemeddelelsen
- Hent den danske OpenOffice.org

Hvis du vil hjælpe til at oversætte hjælpefilerne i OpenOffice.org kan du melde dig her.

A couple of very nice checkins has landed:
- Regexp performance degraded from 4.7
- deCOMtaminate nsIDocument
- Merge 3 nsIPrincipal implementations into one
- Bring back site icons (favicons) in personal toolbar
- IMAP connection seem unreliable over wan connection

Darin Fisher is asking for review and superreview for bug 222588.
The bug's about "Mozilla creates too many threads and seems to never terminate them".
Mozilla just gets better and better. Way cool!

Microsoft Corp. is working on its latest, best shot at the enterprise applications business with a new project to create a single, global code base for its product lines.
Read more

A denial-of-service attack against the OpenOffice.org office suite (when it is running with remote access enabled) has been reported. In the report, the attacker connects to a port that OpenOffice.org opens when it is started with the command line soffice "-accept=socket, host=<ip>, port=8100;" and sends to the port a series of characters. Reportedly, after receiving the series of characters, OpenOffice.org then crashes and opens its error report dialog window.

Read more

Mozilla-starter is a wrapper both for Mozilla and Firebird. If the browser is running, it uses the -remote flag of Mozilla. Thereby it can open the document in an existing window, a new window or in a new tab. If the browser is not running, mozilla-starter starts it. Mozilla-starter is ideal for opening URLs by applications (e.g. a MUA). Mozilla-starter runs on all POSIX systems Perl and Mozilla run on.

Get mozilla-starter

Q: Can you explain the difference between the Netscape and Outlook Express e-mail programs in terms of virus susceptibility?
A: Outlook Express is much more vulnerable. So I recommend that you use any other e-mail client: Mozilla, Netscape, Eudora or even AOL.
Read the article

In the case of the so-called browser wars, Oregon State University has jumped into the ongoing struggle against software giant Microsoft's continued dominance of the browser market. The university recently installed a server to deliver the latest version of a rival browser called Mozilla, which currently boasts around 1 percent of Internet users. OSU network engineer Scott Kveton said, so far, people are flocking to the new server to download the latest version of Mozilla, an alternative browser to Microsoft's.

Read the article

Bad memories of Netscape version 4.x from the AOL days and before, have been laid to rest! Mozilla Firebird officially rocks! Many people probably do not realize that Opera is not the only alternative to windows Internet Explorer. Heck, many people probably don't realize, as they contemplate yet another IE security hole in the news, that even Opera itself is available as an alternative.
Read the article

Get Mozilla Firebird

Mozilla's simple and flexible XUL saves time when building Java-less applets
To go beyond simple HTML, historically the only options have been to use Java or plug-ins. Now, you have a new way -- write and display applications natively in XML. The Mozilla platform provides such a mechanism. In this article, Nigel McFarlane introduces XUL (the XML User-interface Language). XUL is set of GUI widgets with extensive cross-platform support that are designed for building GUI elements for applications that have traditional, non-HTML GUIs.

Read the article

Once again Sun is landing some NSS code. This time it's code that extends the ECC implementation from NSS 3.8.

The new features of this code include:
- support for optimized curve-specific implementations
- optimized integer and floating point code for commonly-used named curves
- supported for creating, importing, and exporting EC keys and certs
- server-side support for ECDH-RSA, ECDH-DSA and ECDHE-ECDSA key exchange
- new scripts to automate testing of ECC support
- ECC support in command-line tools (certutil, pk12util, tstclnt, selfserv)

Read the posting. The original ECC enhancement bug.

Browsers form our third most popular group. Readers named 7 different browsers and among them they garnered 73 votes. Mozilla was far and away the most popular, and to add insult to injury to its competition, Mozilla Firebird came in second. Opera took third.
Read the story

Mozilla 1.5 really got some news going on!
- Mozilla 1.5 - Not Just for Geeks Anymore
- Mozilla 1.5 Boosts Usability
- With update, Mozilla introduces fees
- Mozilla Foundation shifts focus with new browser
- Mozilla adds spell checker, phone support for Net suite

Mozilla.org statistics
Some numbers about the active checkers-in, useful bugs, useful patches, etc.
All numbers on the page represent the work done by Mozilla contributors other than Netscape.

Current Request Queue
Who has requested approval, review, superreview, etc on patches in Bugzilla. This is frightening long. Perhaps there should be some focus on getting some of the patches checked in or marked obsolete!

Mozilla.org redesign
The new site exists to further the Mozilla brand, and make it ridiculously easy to get the latest Mozilla software. Support the foundation with a donation of time or money if you can. Support the site by making sure it's well-linked. Support the cause by spreading the word.

Read all about the mozilla.org redesign and the fight against that company from Redmond.

See the new beta site.

It's time to update!

Mozilla 1.5 has been released! Better, faster and just greater!
Get it at mozilla.org

Mozilla Firebird 0.7 has been released. Smaller, faster and super great.
Get it at mozilla.org

Mozilla Thunderbird 0.3 has been released.
Get it at mozilla.org

Once upon a time on a dreary October day in 2002, Phoenix Help was born, having little sections such as a baby FAQ, a small Tips & Tricks section, and a wee Keyboard Shortcut list. Phoenix Help grew amazing fast, however, and soon because popular all over the web community and linked to from many other sites. Today, the site is the biggest, baddest end-user resource for support, FAQs, themes, and extensions for the Mozilla Firebird browser.

Read the blog entry or go to Mozilla Firebird at texturizer.net

Peter Amstutz writes:
I have some preliminary code for new gfx and widget components that
implement off-screen rendering into a memory buffer. You can see it in action at http://interreality.org/software/crystalzilla/. I'm seeking to submit this code into the main codebase, so I guess that means I need someone to download it, play with it, and review it for submission?

MozillaConsulting.com writes:
Whether you need to add new technology to the core Mozilla engine or need custom enhancements for your Mozilla-based application, we provide Mozilla experts in virtually every area.
It consist of Kevin McCluskey, Rod Spears, Chris Karnaze, Peter Lubczynski and John Keiser.

Mozilla Charts an Independent Course
Mozilla, the open source Web browser project recently freed from its corporate creator, wants to become more than a techie's tool. It wants to become part of a regular user's online surfing.

Mozilla news? Keep up to date with Google news.

AOL Communicator for Mac OS X released
America Online today launched AOL Communicator for Mac OS X, a stand-alone, advanced communications application for AOL members that brings together enhanced e-mail, instant messaging and a full-featured address book into one integrated suite. AOL Communicator can consolidate e-mail from multiple AOL Screen Names--as well as POP and IMAP accounts--into a single application; it can be used alongside AOL internet services. Other functions include spam filtering, email management, a full-featured address book, and integrated AOL IM functions.
More more and more.

To my best knowledge AOL Communicator is based on the Mozilla source code.

The truth is, I never use IE any more. On Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, my weapon of choice is Mozilla Firebird. In fact, both IE and Mozilla can do more sophisticated things than many people realize. My Weblog has a search feature, for example, that works by pulling XML content into the browser, querying it locally using XPath, and dynamically updating a rich results display. But while IE and Mozilla can both perform this magic, Mozilla has some other tricks up its sleeve. One I've been exploring lately is the DOM Level 2 Traversal and Range API, which Mozilla supports but IE doesn't.

Read Why Mozilla matters

Sun Microsystems Inc.'s StarOffice 7 productivity suite is a capable cross-platform alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Office that comes at a price too attractive for enterprises to ignore.

Sun's StarOffice 7 has the interface familiarity and file-format compatibility that enable it to coexist with Microsoft's Office. Add to that great cross-platform support, both in file formats and in operating systems, and a cost that starts at $79 a copy, and StarOffice may manage to displace Microsoft Office at many companies.

Sun's StarOffice 7 Shines

Igen i år var vi med i Kulturnatten. Denne gang gik vi efter en bestemt bydel, nemlig Christianshavn. Vi startede dog i indre by hvor vi, som altid, så håndarbejdets fremmes seminarium, som igen i år var super cool. Dernæst videre til Skatteministeriet hvor man fik skattefrit slik og fadøl! De havde også et par narkohunde, men vi undgik at blive taget.

Ved den Den Nordatlantiske Brygge var der Magisk Kulturnat med en masse artiviteter bla polarnatten, rundvisning, hundeslæde etc.

Aftenens bedste event var helt klart besøget på Statens Teaterskole ude på holmen. De lavede små forestillinger, performances og happenings. Skide godt!

Vi var også på Institut for Samtidskunst hvilket desværre var aftenens absolut dårligste sted. Kedelige futuristiske billeder på væggen.

På vejen hjem cyklede vi lige fordi byggeriet af den nye opera. Derefter forbi Amaliehaven og igennem Amalienborg. Så er man sgu glad for at bo i København. Det et helt sikkert et af de smukkeste steder i København.

Jesse Ruderman blogs:
New features since 0.6.1:
- Advanced preferences panel
- Download/helper apps preferences panel
- Cookie whitelisting (through the new Cookie Exceptions window)
- New password manager
- Web panels (like Mozilla's sidebar panels)
- Alternate stylesheet support (through a status bar button)
- Close other tabs (tab context menu)
- Domain is shown for image blocking (image context menu)
- Send Page, Send Link, Send Image (various context menus)

Mozilla wins again!
Linux Journal Announces Winners of Ninth Annual Readers' Choice Awards:
Favorite Web Browser: MOZILLA
Favorite E-mail Client: EVOLUTION

Darin writes:
FYI, the cookies backend (from mozilla/extensions/cookie/) is moving into netwerk/cookie/ today. This means that you no longer need to build the cookies extension unless your embedding app utilizes mozilla's permissions system (cookie blocking, image blocking, etc.). If your application does not need to use cookies, then you may want to add pref("network.cookie.enable", false); to your all.js file.

Please see bug 210561 for more details.

Security experts are blaming known but unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer for the theft and distribution of the source code for a much anticipated new video game. This is what happens when you have 31 publicly known unpatched vulnerabilities in IE.
Read the whole thing

More trouble for Valve:
- Valve Continues to Leak
- HL2 Leak: What this means for DoD
- Turning The Valve Off: Effects Of The Half-Life 2 Source Theft
- What's Next for Valve and Half-Life 2?

Robin Miller writes:
We see dozens of 'Migrating from Windows to Linux' stories that talk about features Windows users miss when they switch, but we rarely see articles about moving from Linux to Windows, and what kind of pain that can cause.

he also talks about Mozilla:
One program that does come with Windows XP Pro is a Web browser called 'Microsoft Internet Explorer.' I have heard that over 90% of all Web-connected people in the world use this browser, but I find this hard to believe. It doesn't have the tabbed browser feature that makes work-related research (and pleasure reading) such a pleasure in Mozilla, Opera, and other modern browsers.

and sums it all up:
Any Windows user who goes on using Explorer after he or she learns that Mozilla is available is a masochist who should seek immediate psychiatric help -- in my non-medical opinion, anyway.

Mozilla Mail is also mentioned:
Unless you have a tiny penis and/or breasts, want to look at lots of porn, need a new mortgage to finance Viagra purchases, and love to help Nigerians (and others) con you out of your hard-earned, you should get rid of Outlook or Outlook Express NOW and get a sensible email program, hopefully one like Mozilla that has easy-to-configure spam filtering built in.

Read the entire article.

Developers gripe about IE standards inaction
Web developers want to light a fire under Microsoft to get better standards support in the company's Internet Explorer browser, but they can't seem to spark a flame.

Eolas Seeks to Stop Microsoft IE Distribution
Eolas Technologies is now asking the U.S. District Court in Chicago to permanently enjoin Microsoft from distribution of the browser.

Microsoft tweaks Explorer to address ruling
Microsoft on Tuesday released what it called "modest changes" to Windows and Internet Explorer as a result of the patent suit brought against it by Eolas Technologies.

So perhaps it's time to get a real modern browser.

The last couple of days I've been going through loads of bugs in the mail & news component part of Bugzilla. The buglist is just never gonna stop growing, which is both a good and a bad thing.

A good thing since it means that people are using Mozilla and also using Bugzilla.

A bad thing since a lot of bugs are just simple to vague or simply lack information to reproduce them. Stuff like "I sometimes crash when sending email."

Well for new users of both Mozilla and Bugzilla I can understand why such bugs are filled. I think I even filled such bugs myself. Sometimes you just have no clue why Mozilla crashes.

So here I try to provide you with some good advice on how to make better bug reports.

For those who doesn't know it the Danish crown prince Frederik is to marry the Australian-born Mary Elizabeth Donaldson on May 14 2004. Today was the first press conference and she did great. She has almost learned Danish which is amazing, since Danish is quite a difficult language.

Well read the rest of the news about the subject.

An official Mozilla Firebird Installer is gettting closer by a big checkin by Ben Goodger. The installer is like the Mozilla Installer build on the XPI install engine.

The checkin comment is "Firebird Installer Component XPI Install Scripts, default installer wizard ini files, and installer configuration script."

There's already an unofficial installer around using NSIS.

Information for Developers about Changes to Internet Explorer:
This section describes changes to Internet Explorer's handling of ActiveX controls and Java applets. Developers who build ActiveX controls, Web developers who use ActiveX and Java Applets on their Web sites, and developers who host the Web Browser OC or MSHTML should consult this documentation to understand how the user experience is changing, and also how to modify their pages to manage the user experience for their content.

This is all happening following the jury verdict in the patent infringement case of Eolas Technologies and the Regents of the University of California v. Microsoft Corporation.

Today, developers compose most of the Web in stand-alone web editing applications or in simple text editors. Modern browsers render, but they don't allow users to edit what they see. There is no fundamental reason for this gulf between editing and viewing. After all, the Web is about interaction, not dumb page flipping, so you should be able to hit "edit" in your favorite browser and manipulate content as easily as you view it, WYSIWYG style. Mozile, which stands for Mozilla Inline Editor, is a new Mozilla plug-in for in-browser editing. This article provides an overview of Mozile and what in-browser editing means today.

Read the article

With this checkin vCard support is now once again in Mozilla. At least bug 14373.

I'm not 100% sure what this checkin adds, but there are of course still a lot of vCard bugs to be fixed. Currently 26 bugs.

There's also a vCard project at vcard.mozdev.org. But that's about exporting and importing Address Book contacts in the vCard format.

Read the guide for optimizing the Mozilla Firebird browser. The guide includes, creating a profile configuration file, enabling pipelining, adding Mozilla Firebird to the registry and enabling fast rendering.
Read the guide

Son of Napster - One Possible Future for a Music Business That Must Inevitably Change:
I don't like the current situation in the recording industry where power is concentrated in the hands of executives who are doing all they can to stop the rotation of the Earth. Technology has already changed the economics of music creation and distribution, but the record companies are resisting with every weapon they have.

Merrill to Sun: 'Cut and Focus' or Be Acquired
Merrill Lynch is urging Sun to slash as much as 15 percent of its workforce and focus on being a niche player in mission-critical computing.

RDF Net API
A simple network interface to remote RDF models

Free IPod

The source code for Half-Life 2 has been posted on the net!

One of the developer writes:
Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree. At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane. This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools).

Read the whole thread!

Perhaps this can learn people never to run Microsoft Outlook. Use a real mailclient where security is not just an entry in the help file. Use Mozilla Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird.

8Bit Joystick.com reviews Mozilla Firebird and comes to the same conclusion as everybody else:

What you get is a damn fast and peppy browser that has all the pop up blocking, advanced HTML rendering, tabbed interface and stability goodies that you get with Mozilla Classic but in a light bite size form with the taste of lime!

Read the entire review

So if you are a still a lame Internet Explorer user get some reasons why you should switch to Mozilla Firebird.

OpenOffice.org 1.1 can be downloaded now. It represents months of testing, improvement, innovation. There is no other office suite like it, either in terms of features or code. And it's free. Right now, it's only availble in English. Different languages will be ready shortly.
- Download
- Press release
- Features

Also remember to get the Dictionary Installer which makes it easier to install spell checker dictionaries.

I use IMAP for all my mails and love it. Mozilla is a very pretty good IMAP client, so I frequently scan through all of the IMAP bugs in Bugzilla trying to resolved some of the very old ones and duping some of the more common ones.
So if you file a IMAP bug please take the following steps before filling the bug:
- Search to see if the bug is already there
- Make a IMAP Protocol Logs
- Write a detailed bug report

Here are some statistics about the IMAP bugs:
- Unconfirmed: 121
- New: 244
- Assigned: 24
- Reopened: 10
- Resolved: 365
- Verified: 560
- Total: 1327

A couple of nice checkins:
- Allow SMTP over SSL
- Fix failure to authenticate when copying message to sent folder
- Make biff not fire when junk mail arrives
- Webclient 2.0

Releases:
- Mozilla 1.5 RC2
- Mozilla Firebird 0.7 RC
- Mozilla Thunderbird 0.3 RC2