May 2005 Entries

It looks like Firefox is unstoppable. In spite of the vulnerabilities discovered lately, the open-source browser continues to rise in the top of the user's preferences. According to W3schools, a site known amongst web developers, Firefox reached a market share of 25%, while Internet Explorer plummeted to 64.8%. If we take into consideration the entire browsing solutions suite, Mozilla Foundation now owns a market share of almost 30%. A study of the Secunia security company shows that regardless of all the security bugs recently discovered, the users haven't lost their faith in the "Internet's sly fox", but quite the opposite, the speed at which the open-source developers took care of these problems was highly appreciated. In November 2004, Internet Explorer had a market share of 95%, in January this year it had dropped to 84.1%, and now, according to the w3schools website, the "almighty" browser's share of the market reached 64.8%.
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Now that the web developers (the primary users of W3schools) are using Mozilla Firefox we still have a big task ahead of use in getting the normal users to use Mozilla Firefox. People who dont care about security or understands it. People who dont care about W3C standards but just wants web sites to work. People who are not among the 60 millon which the Firefox Counter is now at.

I was trying to update the Launchy entry at Mozilla Update but I kind of gave up. Getting these very unuserfriendly error messages:

Error! The MaxAppVer for Firefox of 1.1 in install.rdf is invalid.
Error! The MinAppVer for Netscape of 0.1 in install.rdf is invalid.
Error! The MinAppVer for Nvu of 0.1 in install.rdf is invalid.
Error! The MaxAppVer for Nvu of 1.0 in install.rdf is invalid.

Why cant it at least tell what the valid choices are? Damn programmers! When will there be a new and better release of Mozilla Update?

Netscape's turn from wonderful to woeful last week set a new Internet speed record for embarrassment. Hours after the once-proud Web browser's Version 8 upgrade hit the streets, it limped back into the garage for an overhaul. Turns out the new browser had old parts from a rival browser, Firefox, and those parts were faulty. The flaws allowed dishonest types to sneak into computers through online connections and snatch user passwords and other personal information. We've all heard reports of browser security trouble before; they're as frequent as rain clouds over St. Louis in summer. But somewhere close to the problem's description usually are the words "Microsoft" and "Internet Explorer." That's what made the Netscape-Firefox mess-up so significant: This time, Microsoft's once and future rivals for the online market were the ones encountering trouble, not its own quirky Web tool. After all, Netscape and Firefox had pinned their reputations on being more secure than Internet Explorer, the dominant browser since 1998.
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A developer on the IE team writes about IE7 tabbed browsing implementation. His role was to re-architect IE to support tabbed browsing. This work began last year and includes building a new frame (top-level window and chrome), sorting out how to host and switch between multiple instances of the browser, and managing communication between the various internal components.
Read the blog posting

Endnu en gang har jeg vundet et par billetter (2 stk) til en lille koncert, men kan desværre ikke selv komme.
Så har du lyst til at komme til X-fest #4 imorgen fredag 27 maj 2005 kl 20 på Studenterhuset ved Københavns Universitet så skriv fluks en kommentar. Først til mølle, får først billetterne.

På X-fest #4 kommer Screamin Eric(DK) + The State(DK) Pushtwangers(S) + Rock-dj: Crophead (ex. The Burnouts)

Gervase Markham has a nice blog post where he describes the difference between two XML user interface languages. XAML from Microsoft and XUL from Mozilla. The three big differences are: Portability, Localization, Licensing.
Read the blog posting

First they reinvented the browser, now they're rewriting the rules of advertising -- Firefox's guerrilla marketing has gone straight to video, and it's taking over the web. The collaboratively written application has hit more than 50 million downloads, spurred primarily by word-of-mouth advertising. Minus the deep pockets of archrival Microsoft, the Mozilla Foundation relies on an army of volunteer marketers to spread the word -- users so loyal they devise their own DIY promotion ideas, from painting sidewalks with the browser's logo to e-mailing sales pitches to the White House. The latest tactic for the 100,000 members of the Spread Firefox movement is to make commercials. Funnyfox, three humorous video clips showing web surfers using the browser for the first time, is the slickest contribution to date. Designed to be e-mailed to friends, the videos -- one of which shows a user's head falling off -- have proved so popular that extra servers had to be set up to cope with the load.
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Extensions developers look no further. Be sure to check New Extension Developer Features in Deer Park Alpha 1.

I fx like to see someone develop an extensions that allows setting priority for HTTP connections. Another really really nice thing is the Toolkit chrome registry change. Bye bye chrome.rdf/overlayinfo cache! Another important change is the New Scriptable Windows Registry Interface which I have to update Launchy to use

Ben Goodger, a former top Mozilla Foundation developer who now works at Google -- albeit still at least part time on Firefox -- used his blog to blast Netscape. Goodger posted a link on his blog to a demonstration of exploit code that the original Netscape 8 was vulnerable to when it first rolled out early Thursday. "If security is important to you, this demonstration should show that browsers that are redistributions of the official Mozilla releases are never going to give you security updates as quickly as Mozilla will itself for its supported products," Goodger wrote.
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Another article that quickly concludes Mozilla Foundation to ban Firefox derivative browsers?

But before anybody jumps to stupid conclusions please read what Christopher A. Aillon writes on his blog:
I was able to release patched versions for RHEL[234] within 20 minutes of the official release (builds were done previously, we were doing QA on them, etc.), Fedora[23] within two hours, and rawhide shortly thereafter

Microsoft's Internet Explorer Product Unit Manager Dean Hachamovitch recently confirmed in his weblog that Internet Explorer 7.0 would have tabbed browsing integration, a feature that's also available in Mozilla's Firefox browser. One of the many reasons Firefox has become popular is due to tabbed browsing. It was a different concept that let users open numerous windows in a single parent window. It's useful, it's popular, and it works. But I don't see how this is a major feature in need of promotion. While Hachamovitch didn't intentionally promote it himself, he did confirm it as if this is the next thing in browsers.
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Rapidly forcing IE from desktop dominance is Mozilla Firefox. This open-source browser receives our highest rating, in part because it includes tabbed browsing and RSS feeds, is very easy to use, and is well supported with a variety of third-party plug-ins. Firefox's popularity has recently helped unearth a few vulnerabilities, but we've been impressed with the speed and forthrightness with which Mozilla has patched its browser. In short, we just don't feel as vulnerable surfing the Web with Firefox.
Read why Mozilla Firefox wins over Internet Explorer 6, Netscape 8, Deepnet Explorer, Safari and Opera 8

A lot of people, inclucing myself have, long wanted a way to customize parts of Mozilla Firefox. The old Netscape 6 browser had a Client Customization Kit that was designed for ISPs and others who want to distribute a branded version of Netscape 6. Using the Netscape 6 Client Customization Kit you could easily configure popular customizations such as animated logos, default homepage, bookmarks, and installer settings. You can see screenshots of the Netscape 6 CCK here.
There's a project with the aim of offering the same for Mozilla Firefox and now they have release a document describing a preliminary CCK for Mozilla Firefox.

From Overview of the CCK 0.1 for Firefox:
The goal of the first release of Firefox is to produce an XPI file that when installed customizes parts of Firefox equivalent to the Netscape 7 Client Customization Kit. This document will describe how those customizations are achieved. Note that for demo purposes, we have created a Client Customization Kit that customizes the browser as if it were distributed by A9. This is a preliminary Client Customization Kit - use at your own risk.
The zip file is available here

Using my nightly build of Mozilla Firefox I typed "netscape.com" as was created with an webpage saying:
"Alert: Your current browser is outdated!" Then "blablabla upgrade to Netscape 8"

Well my browser cant be more up to date then a nightly build!

I'm not sure why anyone would want to use the Netscape browser but Netscape 8 has been released. It hasn't yet hit the ftp server but it should be underway. The Netscape browser which once ruled the world wide web, is now full of weird activation stuff and AOL/Netcenter crap. But at least they cleaned up their act since Netscape Browser Prototype. But my advice still is: Just stick with Mozilla Firefox!

Netscape has released the final version of its Netscape 8 Web browser. The browser toggles between the Internet Explorer and Firefox rendering engines as needed to satisfy compatibility and safety requirements. The revived browser is based upon Firefox 1.0.3, bundling Firefox's advanced features with a Netscape interface and many other custom enhancements such as integrated RSS feeds and Netscape portal content, as well as enhanced privacy features and a selection of optional toolbars to install.
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To help people avoid phishing frauds, the updated browser automatically adjusts security settings while they surf, based on lists of sites that are known to be malicious and of trusted sites. The lists will be updated three times a day and automatically downloaded when a PC connects to the Internet, Liew said.
Netscape update takes aim at phishing

Opera Software recently released version 8.00 of its eponymous Web browser. I decided to see how the new version of the popular commercial browser compares to the open source Mozilla Firefox 1.0. I found both Firefox and Opera are capable browsers, and though they are very different, they each has much to offer any user. While Firefox is widely known, the Opera browser may need an introduction. Opera is known for its speed and its multitude of features. It's available for a wide range of platforms; in addition to Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, Opera runs on FreeBSD, Solaris, Windows Mobile, and OS/2, among others. Opera includes an embedded chat client and mail client, the latter of which includes support for RSS news feeds. (In this review, I will focus only on the RSS features of the mail client, for the sake of a fair comparison with Firefox, which lacks email capabilities.) Because it's not open source software, Opera has no "extensions" like those of Firefox. Despite being closed source, Opera is very customizable, via both the preferences menus and the manipulation of the plain-text configuration files.
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I live on the edge. At least when it comes to Mozilla. I use a script to download and install the newest nightly build of Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Sunbird.

With regards to Mozilla Firefox this means that I run the latest trunk build of it. The trunk build has a lot of exiting new stuff in it. Using nightly builds can of cause sometimes result in crash of the browser. But I must mention that I have been downloading and running the latest nightly builds for almost a year now and I never had any data loss.

Sometimes I'm asked what is the difference between Mozilla Firefox 1.0.4 and Mozilla Firefox 1.1. The answer for that question is right here. What's new in Firefox 1.1

One thing I really really like about Mozilla Firefox 1.1 is it's new Extension Manager. The old system with overlay files inside the chrome directory has been removed. Normal users are properly not gonna see the difference but being an extension developer it easies up the installing/upgrading/uninstalling of extensions.

Read the interview with Lightning developer Mike Shaver. Lightning is the working project name for an extension to tightly integrate calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird.

You can also see some screenshots of Lightning

Two years after it selected open-source rendering engine KHTML as the basis of its Safari Web browser, Apple Computer has proposed resolving compatibility conflicts by scrapping that code base in favor of its own.
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Before you scream Gecko you should also read Ben, the lead engineer for Mozilla Firefox, entry on the matter. And the press already got carried away and posted this.

Like Boris writes in a comment on Ben's blog:
I should point out that KHTML was chosen over Gecko by Apple to start with _precisely_ because it was a simpler codebase that was cleaner and less of a pain to work with, even though Gecko was more compatible and all that. This wasn't exactly an accident. It was a direct consequence of the difference in approach we see highlighted here.

Slashdot also have an entry about it.

Now that Mozilla Firefox has proven itself to be a success, we need to get it into the corporations. Getting IBM to endorse Mozilla Firefox is a big step in the right direction!

IBM is encouraging its employees to use Firefox, aiding the open-source Web browser's quest to chip away at Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Firefox is already used by about 10 percent of IBM's staff, or about 30,000 people. Starting Friday, IBM workers can download the browser from internal servers and get support from the company's help desk staff. IBM's commitment to Firefox is among its most prominent votes of confidence from a large corporation. Based on development work by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, Firefox has been downloaded by more than 50 million people since it debuted in November. Internet Explorer still dominates the overall market by far, though, with Firefox's share in the single digits.
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It's nice to see companies are starting to release products for Mozilla Firefox as well. This will convert even more people to Mozilla Firefox.

Just in time for one of the first serious security flaws to be found in Mozilla's Firefox, two companies, Anonymizer and FraudEliminator, have released new security products for the popular open source Web browser. Anonymizer's Total Privacy Suite is designed to safeguard Firefox users from spyware, keylogger software, and other online snooping programs. The suite integrates three Anonymizer programs -- surfing, anti-spyware, and digital shredding -- into a single product. Although Firefox is a secure browser, users are still extremely vulnerable to ID theft on the Internet without Total Privacy Suite in place," said Lee Itzhaki, director of product management for Anonymizer.
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As part proposal/planning materials in preparation for Mozilla 2.0 you can now read about the new CAPSSecurity.

An attempt at defining the goals, parameters, and suggesting an implementation for a unified security system for the XPCOM object model. Goal: provide a security model and API for the XPCOM component model which. Defines and minimizes the "Trusted Computing Base" of code which must be audited for security. Has no impedance mismatches with the CAS/CLR security model. Doesn't require changing existing frozen interfaces, if at all possible.
Read the document

According to a screenshot making its rounds on some forums, Microsoft's answer to Mozilla's Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, might be in its alpha stage. The about IE shows a build of 0719, and another screenshot shows what appears to be tabbed browsing. No mention of a leak yet, but if these screenshots are confirmed to be real, then a leak is definitely inevitable. Read more for screenshots.
See screenshot and comments

People are saying that this is perhaps a fake. A Firefox with some photoshop.

Find out what stuff like Chrome, Gecko, Livemarks, Overlays, XPI and XUL means.

Some companies have started to switch, extension authors have adopted the Mozilla platform for writing their tools and applications, and web developers are being turned on by the high level of web-standards support. This glossary is by no means exhaustive--it is meant to be a teaser to lead you to explore more.
Read glossary