September 2004 Entries

Many projects use bug trackers under which Bugzilla is a famous choice. Once invented to help the Mozilla team out of its maintenance nightmare it made its way into user support. Some projects do not even provide a user mailinglist anymore. Everything is to be written into the Bugzilla engine, even if it's not a bug but an idea, a comment or just a congratulation to the great product. However, Bugzilla wasn't made for that. It is not a support engine but a bug tracker. The user is forced to fill out complex forms with some unclear or just off topic questions only to receive an automated confirmation and wait. After some weeks, possibly, he receives another cryptic report only to find that somebody has changed the status of the bug message to "Not Replicable" or "Removed". No further word, no address of a person to discuss the case with. Is it completely wrong if one suspects that some projects push Bugzilla to front intentionally to hide behind undisturbed.

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When an OpenOffice.org file is browsed in Mozilla, the display mode is like that of text/plain mime type, which is not the desired mode. On Windows, OpenOffice.org has already provided a plug-in for Internet Explorer (IE), which enables IE to embed an OpenOffice.org window to display the OpenOffice.org file, while this kind of support is missing for Mozilla. By providing a Mozilla plug-in, OpenOffice.org files can be displayed inside the Mozilla window just as the same way it is been browsed in the IE.

This is currently only available in the 2.0 developer release (1.9.54 currently). To enable it you have to go to the Options in OpenOffice.org. Then choose Internet and Mozilla Plug-in and enable it.

- Specification
- Blog entry
- Planet OpenOffice.org

I believe that the primary purposes of the mozilla.org homepage should be (1) to generate Firefox downloads and (2) to direct people to the information they are looking for on our site. Secondary purposes should be (1) to promote additional key products (primarily Thunderbird), (2) to provide the latest Mozilla news, (3) to encourage people to get involved with Mozilla, (4) to highlight what's going on in our developer community and (5) to highlight blog posts by key Mozilla contributors. In addition, as part of our sponsorship agreement with the Mozilla Store, we are required to promote Mozilla merchandise in a prominent way from our homepage.

Proposal for changes to mozilla.org homepage

This evening I installed an SSL certificate for bugzilla.mozilla.org and started redirecting all Bugzilla URLs to their encrypted equivalents. You now need an SSL-enabled browser to access bugzilla.mozilla.org, and communication between the server and its users is encrypted while in transmission. All Bugzilla functions should continue to work as normal, although pages you loaded before the switchover may need to be reloaded before you submit forms on them. Contact sysadmins at mozilla dot org if you see any critical problems related to the change; file a bug in the Server Operations component of the mozilla.org product for non-critical issues.

Could there be a Google browser on the way? Some evidence is found.

A lot of people are blogging about it and it could be really really cool! And I even predicted it in April this year.

- Google Firefox image
- More evidence of a Google browser
- The Google Browser
- Google picks Gates brains
- Google Browser?
- Will Google Launch A Browser?
- Google 2.0
- The Google Browser

Some of the utilities I use on my Windows system has been updated:

4NT is now at version 6.0 - Download - Info

BSPlayer is now at version 1.0.2 - Download - Info

OpenOffice.org Developer Release is now at version 680m54 - Download - Info

SecureCRT is now at version 4.1.8 - Download - Info

UltraEdit is now at version 10.20c - Download - Info

WinAmp is now at version 5.05 - Download - Info

Servant Salamander is now at version 2.5 beta 6 - Download - Info

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack is now at version 1.11 - Download - Info

XnView is now at version 1.70.4 - Download - Info

Around the time OpenOffice.org 1.1 RC was released, I was migrating a small company from Corel WordPerfect to OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org by itself does not support reading or writing WordPerfect files, but a tool called wpd2sxw can convert WordPerfect files to OpenOffice.org format (SXW). After conversion with wpd2sxw, which was rather good but had problems with some formatting features, I applied macros to documents based on different templates to make more than 2,000 converted documents look very similar to original WordPerfect files they were generated from. This article presents some macro "building blocks" you can use to modify a document's formatting or to generate well-formatted documents from plain text files.
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Today a site called LinuxElectrons posted a story categorizing Sun Microsystems' recent 10k filing as "probably as close as Microsoft can legally get to buying OpenOffice.org." Sun, however, strongly disagrees with this characterization and listed several clarifications for us. In short, it's just not true. The 10K filing, submitted as the result of a landmark, $1.6 billion agreement last April Fool's Day between the two companies, lists three exhibits that deal specifically with the highly publicized Microsoft settlement agreement. The meat of the document states that Microsoft reserves the right to pursue patent infringement claims against OpenOffice.org, but allows for indemnification against such claims against StarOffice. StarOffice is a commercial office suite sold by Sun that is based on the free OpenOffice.org project.
Sun denies report that it is 'selling out' OpenOffice

To milliarder kroner. Så meget anslår Teknologirådet, at kommunerne vil kunne spare ved at skifte til open source. I november kommer den rapport, som vil give svar på om de beregninger holder i praksis. Det sker, når resultatet af det hidtil mest omfattende forsøg, hvor et skifte til open source testes direkte op i mod en opgradering til en nyere version af Microsoft Office, foreligger. I november kommer resultatet af den hidtil mest omfattende undersøgelse, af hvor stort besparelsespotentialet på open source er i praksis. De foreløbige resultater er positive.
Ny open source-rapport på vej

84 procent af de danske kommuner vender ryggen til open source, viser en ny ComON-undersøgelse. Det sker selv om Teknologirådet for to år siden vurderede, at kommunerne kunne spare op mod to milliarder kroner årligt ved at gå over til open source.
Open source lagt på is af kommuner

I'm a Windows man, but this sound really nice and cool. Read the PDF file since it's quite interesting.

Red Hat has been prototyping an OS-wide collection of changes we call "stateless Linux". Some of the changes have started to appear in Fedora Core. Based on our experience so far, this is an exiting direction to take the operating system and we want to propose it to the wider Fedora community.

Overview document
HOWTO document and a couple associated RPMs

Launchy version 3.3.0 has been released! Launchy is an Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape and Mozilla Thunderbird extension that will enable you to open current page, links, mailto, images and view source with external applications. Both browsers, media players, FTP clients, download managers and editors are supported. That's applications like Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla, Outlook, BSPlayer, Windows Media Player, GetRight and others. Screenshots.

What's new
- Added Launchy toolbar button in Mozilla Firefox. Right-click on your toolbar and select Customize...
- PSPad support added
- Full version history

Get Launchy

I've always liked Mozilla Mail -- when I have to use Windows, it's my preferred email client. So naturally I've kept an eye on the Mozilla Thunderbird standalone email application and given it a test drive or two. When the latest release hit the Internet a few weeks ago I decided that perhaps, as with the Firefox browser, it was finally time for me to make the switch. Switching Web browsers is a comparatively easy task; essentially the only data you have to worry about moving is your bookmarks. An email client, on the other hand, may archive thousands of old messages you can't just leave behind, and you need to move your server settings and address book to the new program as well. Here's how I migrated away from Ximian Evolution to Mozilla Thunderbird. I'll point out some of the pitfalls you'll want to avoid when making such a move yourself.

Complete story

I've reflected on possibilities offered by famous behavior HTC under IE. I think it would be perhaps possible to interpret a small part of specifications of XUL.

Check out the posting

Michael Dickopf, spokesman for the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), has told the Berliner Zeitung that internet users should switch from Internet Explorer to Mozilla or Opera. Dickopf says Internet Explorer is hazard-prone, attracting too many viruses and worms. BSI already uses a combination of alternative browsers, Dickopf told the paper. Dickopf's comments are bad news for Microsoft. BSI is the central IT security service provider for the German government. Its recommendations are usually taken extremely seriously. The Federation of German Consumer Organisations (Vzbv), a non-governmental organisation acting as an umbrella for 38 German consumer associations, also warns users to be careful when using Internet Explorer. Online banking scams and identity theft are proliferating in Germany due to security exploits in Microsofts browser or in its email client Outlook (Express). Recently, several customers of Dresdner Bank have fallen victim to a Trojan horse program, which snatched their banking passports.

Full story

I need some Mozilla help:

My extension, Launchy, gives the user the ability to view the source of a webpage in an editor of the users choice. To do this I use the saveDocument function. But when I do this, HTML entities like fx © gets converted into a real copyright char.

I thought that if I just use the ENCODE_FLAGS_RAW flag it would work. But it doesn't seems to work.

My code:
const nsIWBP = Components.interfaces.nsIWebBrowserPersist;
var persist = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/embedding/browser/nsWebBrowserPersist;1"].createInstance(nsIWBP);
persist.persistFlags = nsIWBP.PERSIST_FLAGS_FROM_CACHE | nsIWBP.PERSIST_FLAGS_NO_CONVERSION | nsIWBP.PERSIST_FLAGS_REPLACE_EXISTING_FILES | nsIWBP.PERSIST_FLAGS_NO_BASE_TAG_MODIFICATIONS | nsIWBP.PERSIST_FLAGS_DONT_FIXUP_LINKS | nsIWBP.FLAGS_DONT_CHANGE_FILENAMES;
var encodingFlags = nsIWBP.ENCODE_FLAGS_RAW;
persist.saveDocument(doc, f, null, null, encodingFlags, 0);

Can anybody help? If you can, please can leave a comment here or add a comment to the bug report here.

You can test it yourself if you install my Launchy extension and then right click on a gemal.dk page and say Launchy -> View Source in blabla. Then the © symbol at the end of the source will be converted, which it shouldn't.

The "Kecko Team" has announced a port of Gecko, Mozilla's rendering engine, to Qt and KDE, by bringing it in as a KPart. Done as part of the week-long aKademy Conference, the hackfest was completed in a mere four days. This will allow Konqueror users to use either the KHTML or Gecko renderering engine in their browser. A browser's engine is the main component that handles the rendering of a page itself. This allows for projects to use existing code and build different applications around it.

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This document outlines the Mozilla Foundation's policy for making localized versions of Firefox, Thunderbird and future products containing our trademarks. What we are trying to do is offer a set of guidelines that will be acceptable to localization projects but also pass legal muster: in order to protect our trademarks, we must have processes in place to guarantee the quality and the source of origin of products that use our trademarks. This is why, in some areas, there is less flexibility here than has traditionally been the case.

Read the whole document

We went to see the container vessel Albert Mærsk, which docked at Langelinie for a presentation of the vessel. We didn't enter the ship since the line simply was way too long. Albert Mærsk is 352 meters long and 44 meters wide. See the pictures of the impressive vessel.

Albert Maersk is, with an overall length of 352 metres and a breadth of 43 metres, placed among the largest container vessels in the world. Albert Maersk is at the same time one of the most modern container vessels ever built thoroughly monitored by advanced computer systems, enabling a crew of only 15 to operate the ship and all the facilities.
More info

I also bought myself a new tool. A Scalextric race circuit. The GT40 Sport set. More information here (in Danish) and here (in English). I've haven't had time to play with it yet though. The really cool thing about this set is that it includes the Race Management System. This include a special track that allows you to interface your PC with your Scalextric circuit. This enables you to time your laps on the race curcuit on your PC. This really rocks!

Sunbird is the new cross-platform calendar application from the Mozilla foundation. It is based around the existing Mozilla Calendar component and is the latest in a string of standalone applications from the foundation, which are gradually replacing the current Mozilla suite of applications. The aim of the project is to create a standalone calendar for someone who uses either Mozilla Thunderbird or Firefox as their email client or browser. Sunbird hopes to offer a reduced footprint and performance enhancement over the original Calendar component. Sunbird is still in the early stages of development and is certainly experimental software with version 0.2 having been released recently. Nonetheless Sunbird is a promising application for those of you already using Thunderbird or Firefox. A word of warning though, as of the moment Sunbird does not integrate with Thunderbird or Firefox. It is purely a standalone project, although this is one of the tasks to be solved in the near future.

Read the review

The conclusion is:
It must be seen then, that Sunbird is a promising application from the Mozilla Foundation. It is not a perfect application by any means but it has great scope for improvement alongside some already great features such as the webDAV server support. The real test for this application will be whether or not it is able to build upon its already solid foundation or whether it will only focus on quashing bugs to become a pure standalone version of Calendar. I heartily recommend that you give Sunbird a whirl if you already use Firefox or Thunderbird as it may just be what you were looking for.

Miljøministeriet har som den hidtil mest markante offentlige institution valgt at droppe Microsoft. Afløseren hedder Open Office. Beslutningen er truffet efter benhårde forretningsmæssige overvejelser. Benhårde forretningsmæssige overvejelser ligger til grund for Miljøministeriets principbeslutning om at droppe licensbetalingerne til Microsoft og gå open source-vejen. Besparelsen er i et konservativt skøn opgjort til 3,6 millioner kroner over tre år. Vores analyser viser, at der er en god business case for at skifte til Open Office, selv om det naturligvis ikke er gratis, og vi også skal bidrage til fællesskabet. Det, der interesserer mig, er forretning. For os handler det her ikke om religion, siger Henrik Studsgaard, direktør for ministeriets Center for Koncernforvaltning.

Læs mere:
Computerworld

The slogan for Mozilla Sunbird seems to be "It's about time". And it is about time that we got an alternative to Microsoft Outlook. But there's still a long long way for Mozilla Sunbird to get there. But the cool Mozilla Calendar people are doing a great job. Mozilla Sunbird already has some really really nice features that Microsoft Outlook doesn't have.

Check out the logos here:
With slogan
Without slogan

And the bug

Microsoft's head of security, Stephen Toulouse, has accidentally revealed that he uses Firefox. In an interview with Wired here, Toulouse was chatting about how security was an industry wide problem and not Internet Explorer specific. Then he mentioned that only that morning he had to download an upgrade to Firefox to block a flaw that would've allowed an attacker to run a program on his system. While he meant to point out how other browsers have the same problems as IE, he just happened to reveal that he surfs using the rival browser. Of course it is unlikely that he does not find IE a particularly secure proposition and there must be a really good reason he has Firefox on his computer.

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