February 2005 Entries

Some cool checkins just happened:
The New Options Dialog landed.
Read all about the new option dialog in the wiki at mozilla.org or Read the bug report. View the different dialogs in the new redesigned options. You can even watch a movie with the new option dialog.

Retrieve proper display name for application handlers
Currently the Opening dialog for Firefox looks something like this. This will now change a bit due to the landing of this bug Retrieve proper display name for application handlers. The bug was depending on another bug which also landed today. Screenshots of the new Download Actions dialog are here, here and here.

After the news about Copernic Desktop Search 1.2 Supports Mozilla Firefox now comes even more Mozilla support from Copernic:
Copernic announced the availability of a new version 1.5 of Copernic Desktop Search. The latest version supports Mozilla Thunderbird, including indexing of emails, attachments and contacts. It also announced support for indexing Eudora emails and attachments, besides other new features. David M. Burns, CEO of Copernic, said, CDS 1.5 is jam-packed with lots of cool new features that are fun for everyone to use, and it's the only free desktop search that fully supports Mozilla's Thunderbird email application and Firefox browser.

For the hardcore nerds:
The Solaris crypto group at Sun has decided to donate optimizations assembly optimizations for the bignum library for the AMD64 instruction set. This code roughly doubles the RSA performance. On a v20z with opteron model 248 CPU at 2.2 GHz, using gcc and -O3 optimizations on Solaris 10, rsaperf goes from 585 ops/s for the pure C implementation, to 1186 ops/s with this code. This is for 1024 bit RSA keys, with rsaperf running single-threaded, ie. it is a per-CPU ops number.
Even more in the bug report

Hearing public discussions of Firefox by geeks and non-techies, and reading reports of the rampant growth of the Mozilla Foundation's browser, one has to wonder whether we may be witnessing the emergence of the first open source application with enough enticement -- in safety, efficiency, and "anything but IE" -- to draw everyone from enterprise users to proverbial IT grandmothers and pave the way for mainstream open source use. Despite some skepticism of the idea from industry analysts and observers, others indicated that regardless of the degree to which Firefox displaces Internet Explorer or the Redmond desktop grip, there is no hiding the fact that Firefox is hot. The trendy open source application -- which promotes another pillar killer in the form of the lightweight Thunderbird email client to replace Outlook -- is taking advantage of the kind of viral spread and buzz that moves software to the mainstream. The Google-like appearance of Blake Ross on this month's cover of Wired only reinforces the idea. And while 5 percent of the browser market still leaves a long way before anything Microsoft-related is supplanted, it does represent a start. It only took a few months of Firefox gains at IE's expense for Microsoft to take pause and pivot on its plans for IE, which will now get updated this summer.
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Pete Collins, founder of the Mozdev Group writes:
After a couple of days of pain, I've decided to write up a doc on how I was able to successfully sign an xpi using a test cert. For no better reason than I know I will forget by next week and honestly I wouldn't want to wish the pain I endured doing this on others. These docs are focused on Unix'y type systems. This doc is intended as an exercise to show how to sign an XPI package, you will need to obtain a valid certificate from an established certificate authority (CA) such as Verisign if you want to distribute signed XPI packages.
Read more

Good old Jamie Zawinski has written yet another hardcore nerd document. This time is about the announcement of Novells new calendar server project called Hula. Hula is a new project to build an open source mail and calendar server.

And like always Jamie doesn't hold back:
And I said, "Jesus Mother of Fuck, what are you thinking! Do not strap the 'Groupware' albatross around your neck! That's what killed Netscape, are you insane?" He looked at me like I'd just kicked his puppy. If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy. I said, instead of trying to build some all-singing all-dancing "collaboration server" where you're going to throw in all kinds of ridiculous line items like bulletin boards and task tracking and other shit, let's suppose you narrow your focus to just calendars.

Read the document.

Nokia has denied reports that it is to migrate 55,000 desktops from Internet Explorer to the Firefox browser. Last year, the Finnish handset-maker invested money in the Mozilla Foundation, maker of Firefox, to fund the development of a phone-based browser. The friendly relationship between the two organisations lent some credence to the rumours of a switch. A spokeswoman told us: "It is just a misunderstanding. We have no deal with Firefox and there is no transition in progress." Further, she said, the company has no plans to make any such change in the future. The denial comes just a week after the phone maker announced a deal with Microsoft to sell phones with the company's Windows Media 10 music player installed. Nokia and Microsoft have historically been rivals, with each trying to grab a share of the other's market.
Read more and more.

One problem that many people have been seeing is this. Opening lots of tabs and then closing them do not free memory. This should now have been fixed by checkins yesterday and today. This fixes some memory leaks in Mozilla Firefox. For more information please turn to the bug report:
Memory use does not go down after closing tabs (resources not released)

StarOffice software is affordable, easy to use, and based on open standards. It offers word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database capabilities. Its familiar interface enables quick productivity and results for the business user, and elegant output for the consumer. StarOffice 8 software increases usability and MS Office compatibility, adds productivity increasing wizards and tools and supports select Lotus and WordPerfect versions. It also introduces a new database engine and front-end tool, easier multilanguage installation and two new scripting languages for developers.
Read more and download
What is new in StarOffice 8 Beta software?

But you can also download the latest developer release of OpenOffice.org here and see what's new.

Checkin of the weekend. Actually it got backed out again, but hopefully it get's checked in again soon.
Finally, it's time to get rid of contents.rdf for chrome registration, in favor of simple text manifests. This will fix a whole series of bugs relating to chrome registration and the extension manager (see dep list), as well as make authoring extensions and xulrunner apps less painful. This includes a backwards-compatibility layer so that existing extensions (and even the core apps) which use contents.rdf will not notice the change.
Read more in the bug report.

Read more about Chrome Registration in Mozilla
The new Configurable Chrome

Students go for ad-blocking Firefox. While Microsoft's Internet Explorer rules the Web surfing realm, the rising popularity of Mozilla's Firefox browser among computer buffs and university students may be a cyberspace coup in the making. From the pages of technology magazines to dorm hallways, Firefox has obtained a positive reputation for its protection against adware, its no-frills appearance and other special features. The browser's 1.0 version has been downloaded 25 million times since its introduction in November, a Mozilla spokesman said. Before November, Firefox was an obscure browser in developmental stages.
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AOL says Netscape 8 beta will be available at the end of February. America Online is delaying the release of the first public test version of a new Netscape Web browser until the end of the month so that it can fix some last-minute bugs, the company said today. The beta version of the Netscape 8 browser had been scheduled for public release tomorrow, but that date will slip by a week or two, an AOL spokesman said in a statement sent via e-mail. An early version of the browser that the IDG News Service saw late last month crashed many times under normal use. The new Netscape browser is designed to protect users from scams and malicious code while surfing the Web. One feature, for example, adjusts the browser security settings based on a list of known malicious Web sites to protect users from phishing scams.
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A beta, or test, version of Internet Explorer 7 will debut this summer, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect said in a keynote address at the RSA Conference 2005 here. The company had said that it would not ship a new IE version before the next major update to Windows, code-named Longhorn, arrives next year. In a reversal of policy, Microsoft will ship the next update of Internet Explorer separately from the next version of Windows.
Read more, more and more and even more about it

Stelian Pop writes in the netscape.public.mozilla.calendar newsgroup:
Hi all. I'm pleased to announce that I started working on connecting Sunbird to OpenGroupware. This integration should add some groupware features to Sunbird (mainly the ability to add attendees to an event, and to query the free/busy status for all the attendees). Technically Sunbird will talk to the OGo server using GroupDAV, a super set of WebDAV Ogo has defined here. There is no code yet as I'm just starting, but all feedback, thoughts and help will be appreciated.

Ask Jeeves and the Mozilla Foundation have begun discussions on the twin possibilities of a Firefox-based Jeeves browser and of donating Jeeves' desktop search technology to the open-source group. The discussions come as relations between Mozilla and search king Google become cozier. Key Mozilla volunteers now also work for Google, and the browser showcases Google search in its interface. Ask Jeeves, which made its name as a "natural language" Web search engine, has recently expanded into areas including blog aggregation and desktop search.
Read article

Please help us choose a new splash screen for the upcoming OpenOffice.org 2.0 release. Choose the new splashscreen for the upcoming OpenOffice.org 2.0! You need to be a registered community member to vote. Login, and from your My start page, cast your vote. Voting is open for two weeks and closes 15 February 2004 at 00:00 UTC.

Go ahead and vote

Gennem DR har jeg vundet billetter til The Raveonettes den 10 februar 2005 i Gimle, Roskilde.

Jeg kan desværre ikke, s&aering; derfor hvis du vil til koncert kan du komme det, ganske gratis. Det drejer sig om 2 billetter.

Så smid en kommentar og kom gratis til koncert.

På gimle.dk beskrives de således:
The Raveonettes + Viva Vertigo
The Raveonettes er sofistikeret coolnes. The Raveonettes er sexy rock & roll. The Raveonettes er Sune Wagner og Sharin Foo, der tilsammen har skabt et band der spiller over hele USA og får opmærksomhed i Rolling Stones.

Two really nice checkins happened for Mozilla Thunderbird yesterday.

Backend for stripping mail attachments
The backend for stripping mail attachments from messages got cheked in. This is an important step in the direction of getting bug 2920 fixed. Bug 2920 is "Delete attachment from mail message in folder (remove/strip attached files from email messages)". The front end for this has not landed yet.

New feed subscription dialog
The other checkin is about the news feed subscription dialog. The dialog lacked a lot and it seems that the new dialog have all the stuff I missed. Read more about the new redesigned dialog in bug 281237. A screenshot of the new dialog is also available.

According to a comment made at one of Asa's blog entries the University of Oslo have just selected Thunderbird as their new default e-mail client.

They have used Eudora for years, but due to Eudoras poor IMAP-support, they were forced to look at other options after migrating all users to IMAP. That means potentially 50.000 new Thunderbird users!

According to this page Mozilla Thunderbird will be the default email client in June.

Mostafa Hosseini from the Mozilla Calendar project writes:

As some of you may already know, Sunbird/Calendar development on the trunk has gone through a major refactoring in order to provide a much better codebase for proper server support and implementation of various calendar data sources. As the number of major blockers decrease, you may slowly be seeing new nightly builds here and there as well as the start of more frequent official nightly releases. This is to inform you that as much as we need testers and feedback on the new Sunbird/Calendar, we need you to understand that there will be all sorts of regressions, incompatibility, new bugs and possibly confusion ahead for those who upgrade to the nightlies. This shouldn't have been necessary to point out for a product still at its 0.2+ version but the amount of daily usage reports and the amount of calendar data seen to be trusted with Sunbird/Calendar obliges us to do so. So again, before the wave of excitement from a new release leaves you less time to decide, make sure installing and using the new nightlies is what you want and furthermore what you are ready for. It definitely is what we want; yet for those who are content with the current functionality there will be the final 0.2 release to use. In terms of incompatibility the new nightlies will not automatically read and recognize your previous data so it will be up to you to import or re-enter them from scratch. Providing a migrator was not possible since it couldn't have been justified for a 0.2+ version application. To speak about the good side of things, there will be a pretty solid CalDav support thanks to Mike Shaver and his team, a much better iCalendar standard support based on the new interfaces, thanks to Michiel van Leeuwen (mvl), more UI enhancements and hopefully extension and theme support, thanks to Matthew Willis and altogether a great codebase to build upon, thanks to all of our contributors.

The Mozilla Foundation today announced the beta release of the W3C's XForms 1.0 Recommendation. XForms is the forms module standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which enables developers to deliver the type of next-generation, rich, portable web-based applications desired by corporate IT. Developed in collaboration with IBM, Novell, and the open source community, XForms technology is now available as an extension to the Mozilla 1.8 and Firefox 1.1 web browsers which are currently under development. This release is intended for users in non-production environments who are interested in exploring XForms 1.0 technology ahead of the extension's general availability release later this year. The extension is available for Linux, Windows, and Macintosh platforms. Beta user feedback on this release is highly encouraged. Please consult the beta release notes for information on known limitations and how to provide beta feedback.
Press release
Technical stuff incl download and demos

This is really cool stuff. Note that this is the first time a XML language can be installed via an XPI. Not since JavaScript has there been such an revolution!

Even though I spend way to much time doing Mozilla stuff I still take the time to get some cultural input.
Watched A Very Long Engagement yesterday. A really really good movie. A bit long 134min but it's worth every minute.
A Very Long Engagement tells the story of a a young woman, Mathilde's relentless search for her fiancee, who has disappeared from the trenches of the Somme during World War One


In the more weird and experimental department I watched The Return. It's a beautiful movie but I just didn't get it. Must be one of those movies that critics and interlectuals gotta like no matter what.
In the remote Russian wilderness, two brothers face a range of new, conflicting emotions when their father--a man they only know through a single photograph--resurfaces.


For the Danish readers:
Forleden så vi teaterstykket Camping på Kaleidoskop. Rigtigt godt stykke. Alene beskrivelsen er cool:
En campingplads grænser op til en kirkegård med rester af tyske flygtninge fra 40'erne Ingen kender til disse ar i den jyske hede, så Else og Werner folder forventningsfuldt deres campingplads ud til ferie. Mellem strygejern, TV og mikrobølgeovne fastholdes den lave komfort og de tynde vægge i forteltene. Ingen døre kan lukkes, alle kan høre hinanden hviske om natten i en polyfonisk symfoni af stemmer og lyde.


På en boglige front er jeg lige blevet færdig med I spidsen for Europa som beskriver hvordan og hvorledes de store aftaler bliver forhandlet. En utrolig god og let læselig bog:
Denne bog fortæller historien om de seks måneder med Danmark I spidsen for Europa. Ikke kun om udvidelsen, men også om de seje forhandlinger om Kaliningrad, krisen i forholdet til Rusland, amerikanernes tillid til danskerne, det skrøbelige håb om fred i Mellemøsten, Europas tvetydige forhold til Tyrkiet og meget mere.

I sent an email to Dave Massy, chief developer on the Internet Explorer (IE) Team at Microsoft, asking him what Microsoft had in store for the next release of IE. The next major update is expected in 2006 with the release of Longhorn. I put it to him that IE may need to see some major updates and features in order to catch up with more popular (and free) alternative web browsers, like FireFox. His reply, although giving little new away, did sum up the current Microsoft position - the fact that 'it will get better'. Dave offered thought about just what Microsoft can actually do with IE to satisfy consumers and yet keep competitors from filing law suits similar to the Netscape debacle in the 90s.
Read the article