Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on September 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

 
Web Browser Wednesday

Both schools and corporate workplaces are blocking websites apparently without knowing what all of the services do. No, I’m not talking about blocking sites like MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, or Meebo…what I’m referring to are things that can help make you more productive. Just last week I read that some schools were starting to block most Google services including Google Docs, News, and even Google Calendar!

If I was in school right now I would absolutely be loving Google Docs. I could write my papers on the computer, and not have to worry about carrying around some sort of method to store the files on. I really don’t see how that deserves to be blocked, nor do I understand why Google Calendar would be banned? It’s not like these services are bandwidth hungry like YouTube, and they surely don’t deserve to be matched up to the likes of MySpace.

So I thought today I would put together a list of ways to view blocked websites. Most of them are fairly easy and require very little work on your part. Here’s how you can access blocked pages:

–Using Proxies–

I don’t think there is any arguing that free proxies are among the most common solutions to view blocked sites, and searching Google for “MySpace proxies” returns over 1.5 million results. These work by sending the request for a website through a different computer, thereby thwarting any efforts to block a site.

These proxies are normally successful in browsing blocked sites, but they can often go pretty slow or be cluttered with ads. If you’re in desperate need of finding a proxy, you should head over to Proxy.org where you can find hundreds of proxies listed. My personal favorite proxy, however, is Hujiko because it’s super fast and only has one small banner ad located at the top.

–Using Translators–

One of the new (and better) ways that I learned about while writing this article was using translators for viewing blocked websites. No, you won’t be viewing the sites in another language…instead you’ll be doing translations back into the native language. For instance, when viewing an English site you would have it “translated” back into English. It sounds pointless, but you’re essentially using the translator as a free proxy.

The easiest way to do this is to copy the URL below, and replace the “cybernetnews.com” at the end with the site you’re looking to visit:

http://google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=cybernetnews.com

It will load everything as expected, and you are still able to login to the sites and services just as you normally would. The best part is that Google doesn’t show any ads while using this!

–Using Mobile Browsers–

As crazy as it may sound, you can actually view blocked sites using services geared for web browsing on your mobile device. They are optimized for small screens, and don’t have any CSS applied to them, but there’s no doubt that they still work. The two most popular are probably Google and Phonifier, both of which produce similar results. Again, the sites aren’t gonna look very pretty, but they’ll work.

–Using IP Address Lookup–

Another thing you can do is lookup the IP address of the site you’re trying to access. When most websites are blocked, the admins only think about blacklisting the domains, and don’t take into account that the sites can still be accessed using their IP address.

To do this one you’ll want a service that will let you provide a host name, and have it lookup the IP address for you. Host2IP is a good example of that, and it’s extremely fast.

–Using the Anonymous Tor Network–

The Tor Network is similar to using proxies, except it distributes the load and is supposed to have slightly better performance. There are specialized versions of both Firefox and Opera that utilize Tor to access blocked sites, but I don’t think this would be one of my first resorts. It’s more for anonymity than anything else, but on the plus side portable versions of those browsers are available.

–OverView–

I’m sure there are plenty of other ways to beat the system, so feel free to drop us a comment below with your thoughts and ideas!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on August 01, 2008 by CyberNet.

July 2008 has come to a close, and as always we enjoy taking a look at how the browser and operating system market share changed from the previous month. July was actually a big month for monitoring web browser usage because it’s the first full month that the browsers have had to bake onto the machines of millions and millions of users. Were the new releases a success?

Judging by the stats from Net Applications I would say that they’re not doing quite as well as I expected. In fact the differences from June to July are minimal. What about the operating systems? The OS realm is as slow at changing as it has ever been. Here’s a quick overview of the browser and operating system standings for July 2008:

–Web Browsers–

Firefox was able to gain some ground this month, but it wasn’t at the expense Internet Explorer. It looks like most of the users were making the switch over from Safari, which might mean that dedicated Safari users are finding Firefox 3 to be a more acceptable browser. At this point almost 1/3 of all Firefox users are running Firefox 3, which isn’t bad considering it’s only been out for 6-weeks.

You might have also seen TG Daily’s claim that Firefox has surpassed a 20% market share, and that IE has dipped under 70%. Their stats are from one day only, and don’t represent an entire month’s average. We’ll have to wait until next month before we see whether there’s any substance to those stats.

–Operating Systems–

Surprisingly Windows made a slight jump for July, up 0.13% over the previous month. Windows is currently sitting at a 91.02% market share, but despite its dominance it is still on a slow decline. A year ago it sat at 93.28%, and that 2% difference has been slowly but surely transferring over to the Mac and Linux side.

Another interesting note is that the iPhone has hit its all-time high at 0.19% market share, and the iPod (Touch) is at 0.04%. Pretty soon they’ll be more people on the web using an iPhone/iPod than those running Windows ME.

So there’s not much to see here this month, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed that next month’s stats will be a bit more exciting.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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We know how Mozilla must feel. It spends every waking hour tweaking and perfecting Firefox to eke out as much performance as possible, only to see it all ruined by lousy add-ons that weigh the browser down like a block of cement. It’s apparently now had enough, however, and has gone as far as to publish a list that exposes the worst offenders. As of this writing, the two biggest drags on the browser by far are the FoxLingo translator / dictionary and Firebug developer tool add-on which, according to Mozilla, each make the browser 74 percent slower to start up. That list is just part of a broader crackdown on poor performing add-ons. Mozilla says it’s also instituting automated performance testing of the top 100 add-ons in its gallery, and that it will begin reaching out to developers directly to get them to improve performance (and even provide them with some new tools to help out). Hit up the link below to see how some of your favorite add-ons stack up.

Mozilla shames developers with list of slow performing Firefox add-ons originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Apr 2011 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Download Squad  |  Mozilla, Slow Performing Add-ons  | Email this | Comments

This article was written on July 09, 2009 by CyberNet.

Ever since we did a browser comparison test last year there have been a lot of emails and comments asking if we were going to update the article to reflect new releases. I thought about adding in the new browsers as they came out, but decided against it for one reason or another. Instead I thought it would be better to just do a fresh article, and include even more stats than last time.

The main reason that I thought this was worthy of its own article was because a lot has changed in the last year. Since March 2008 we’ve seen major milestone releases from each of big browser makers, and to top it off Google Chrome has come onto the scene. These browsers have also shifted focus from adding nifty new features to diving deep into the code trying to squeeze out every last ounce of performance.

We’ve got a lot in store for you today ranging from JavaScript speed tests to memory usage comparisons, and we’ll even throw in some Acid 3 coverage. Lets go ahead and dive right in.

Notes about testing:

• All of these tests were performed on the same Windows XP SP3 machine that is wired into a network to eliminate the effects of wireless disturbances.
• All browsers started with a clean profile and no add-ons/extensions were installed.
• All browser data, including caches, were cleared before each test was run.
• Only one browser was open at a time, and no other applications (other than standard XP services) were running.
• Internet Explorer 8 was used in the native rendering mode (“standards compliant mode”).
• No plug-ins (Flash, Java, etc…) were installed on the machine to ensure that slow performance wasn’t due to the loading of a plug-in.

–JavaScript Tests–

The main speed test that everyone seems to use for JavaScript is SunSpider. Last year we compared the browsers with the SunSpider test prior to writing our first comparison, and so we wanted to try something different. That’s when we turned to the MooTools SlickSpeed Test. It tests various operations against a lot of common JavaScript libraries including MooTools and JQuery.

So which one did we go with this year? Well, we did both. We ran each test, SunSpider and SlickSpeed, a total of three times each. Then we averaged the results together to get the pretty little graphs you see below. For both of them the goal was for the browser to complete the tests as fast as possible, and so a lower number is better.

Sunspider Test:

1. Safari 4: 603ms
2. Google Chrome 3.0 ^Beta: 636ms
3. Google Chrome 2.0: 720ms
4. Firefox 3.5: 1278ms
5. Opera 10 ^Beta: 2975ms
6. Opera 9.64: 3931ms
7. Internet Explorer 8: 5441ms

MooTools SlickSpeed Test:

1. Opera 10 ^Beta: 330ms
2. Safari 4: 355ms
3. Opera 9.64: 375ms
4. Google Chrome 3.0 ^Beta: 464ms
5. Firefox 3.5: 580ms
6. Google Chrome 2.0: 763ms
7. Internet Explorer 8: 1901ms

–Website Rendering Tests–

I used the same method for testing website load times as I did last year. It’s a website called Numion Stopwatch that uses some fancy JavaScript to monitor when a page has finished loading, and then spits out the amount of time it took to complete.

We used two extremely popular sites for these tests: ESPN and the Wall Street Journal. Each site was loaded up three times in each browser, and then the results were averaged together. Obviously we were targeting which browser could load the websites the fastest, and so a lower number is better:

ESPN Load Time:

1. Safari 4: 1.936 seconds
2. Google Chrome 3.0 ^Beta: 2.194 seconds
3. Firefox 3.5: 2.380 seconds
4. Internet Explorer 8: 2.604 seconds
5. Opera 10 ^Beta: 2.605 seconds
6. Opera 9.64: 2.651 seconds
7. Google Chrome 2.0: 2.873 seconds

Wall Street Journal Load Time:

1. Google Chrome 3.0 ^Beta: 1.612 seconds
2. Opera 10 ^Beta: 1.989 seconds
3. Opera 9.64: 2.141 seconds
4. Safari 4: 2.166 seconds
5. Google Chrome 2.0: 2.552 seconds
6. Firefox 3.5: 2.886 seconds
7. Internet Explorer 8: 3.292 seconds

–Memory Usage Tests–

I’m sure this is what many of you were looking for. As geeks we like to have a lean browser that knows how to handle itself without us having to keep a watchful eye over it. That’s why we ran numerous different tests to see just how well a browser controls its memory usage when loading a decent number of sites, and also whether it’s able to release that memory once you’ve closed the tabs.

Here’s a rundown of the order in which we ran the tests to collect the stats:

1. We started the browser, and took a memory usage reading.
2. Loaded 10 predetermined sites in tabs, and took a memory usage reading after all the sites finished loading.
3. Loaded 15 more predetermined sites in tabs (totaling 25 sites), and took a memory usage reading after all the sites finished loading.
4. Let the browser sit for 10 minutes with the 25 tabs open, and then took a memory usage reading.
5. Closed all the tabs except for Google.com, which was always the first site opened. Then we took a memory usage reading.

And here are the results. The best browser for each test is highlighted in green, and the worst is highlighted in red.

–Acid 3 Tests–

Last year we also took a look at how the various browsers scored on the Acid 3 test. At the time a Safari nightly build was the closest to perfection by reaching a score of 86 out of 100. Today, however, is a different story. A few browsers can handle the test perfectly, some are very very close, and others (yeah, IE) have some work cut out for themselves.

Note: Click on any of the thumbnails for a full-size rendering.

1. Safari 4 (100/100) – It gets a perfect score and renders everything correctly.
   
2. Opera 10 ^Beta (100/100) – It gets a perfect score and renders everything correctly.
   
3. Google Chrome 2.0 (100/100) – It gets a perfect score, but not all tests are executed successfully.
   
4. Google Chrome 3.0 ^Beta (100/100) – It gets a perfect score, but not all tests are executed successfully.
   
5. Firefox 3.5 (93/100) – It gets a near perfect score.
   
6. Opera 9.6 (85/100) – This is the oldest release we tested, and it comes as no surprise that it doesn’t pass the test. It should be noted that the next milestone, version 10, does pass the test perfectly as seen above.
   
7. Internet Explorer 8 (20/100) – While they still have a ways to go before they get a perfect, I do have to give them credit for at least making the image look halfway normal. You know what I’m talking about if you remember what IE7′s rendering of the Acid 3 test was like.
   

–Conclusion–

So which browser is the winner? I wouldn’t really say any of them outshine the others. The problem that we are going to face with performance tests from here on out is that the browsers will all come very close to each other in the standings… often within a fraction of a second from one another. As the browsers continue to get optimized we will see these times get even closer, and performance might become less of a concern which picking which one we want to use. So I’d say to pick the browser you feel the most comfortable with, because it’s getting hard to distinguish one browser from another when it comes to performance.

What’s your take on the stats? Anything stand out to you? Will you be switching browsers based upon anything you learned here?

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on September 05, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

One of the major reasons Firefox is approaching 400 million downloads is because of how customizable the browser is thanks to extensions. In a way Firefox extensions are bittersweet, because they can provide some unique and useful features, but at the same time they can cause some unwanted problems.

It’s been well over a year since I last took a look at the issues some popular Firefox extensions caused. Most of the extensions listed there caused crashes, memory leaks, and excessive CPU usage. Since then, a Leak Monitor extension has been created to notify users when a certain type of memory leak occurs. This has successfully helped dozens of developers eliminate memory leaks in their extensions.

Unfortunately not all of the problems have not been solved when it comes to the extensions. Some can still cause Firefox to crash, leak memory, or make your CPU usage skyrocket. Today I thought that I would revisit the current status of extensions to see which ones are still causing the problems.

To find the extensions that have problems, I turned to the Mozilla Knowledgebase as well as their bug tracker. I was able to uncover more than a dozen extensions that have performance related issues, and I’m assuming you’re using the most recent versions of the extensions as well as the latest version of Firefox. You’re sure to have even more problems if you’re using older versions of Firefox or extensions that are outdated.

Below is the list that I came up with, and along with each extension I mention the issue along with any known fixes.

Note: You may or may not experience the problems mentioned. If you haven’t had a problem with an extension there is no sense in removing it.

• Adblock
  Issue: Has been known to crash Firefox when trying to use Gmail Chat.
  Fix: None available right now. It’s recommended that the extension be removed if you use Gmail Chat.
• All-in-One Gestures
  Issue: Can cause Firefox to crash, and conflicts with the inline spellchecker on Linux and OS X.
  Fix: None available right now. It’s recommended that the extension be removed if you’re using Linux or OS X.
• Fasterfox
  Issue: Can interfere with website access, and problems may continue even if Fasterfox is removed.
  Fix: Reset the defaults or start with a new profile in Firefox. Also make sure that you have prefetching disabled in the extension.
• Firebug
  Issue: Causes excessive CPU usage
  Fix: Disable Firebug when it’s not being used, or create a separate profile to use it in.
• ForecastFox
  Issue: Memory leaks due to satellite imagery.
  Fix: It’s recommended that the extension be removed, or you can install an older version without the satellite imagery.
• Google Browser Sync
  Issue: Causes excessive CPU usage with GIF animations.
  Fix: None available right now. It’s recommended that the extension be removed.
• Google Web Accelerator
  Issue: Crashes Firefox when closing the browser.
  Fix: None available right now. It’s recommended that the extension be removed.
• IE Tab
  Issue: Memory leaks
  Fix: It’s recommended that the extension be removed, or you can install IE View Lite as an alternative.
• Loki
  Issue: Memory leaks
  Fix: None available right now. It’s recommended that the extension be removed.
• Media Player Connectivity
  Issue: Causes Unresponsive Script Warnings
  Fix: None available right now. It’s recommended that the extension be removed.
• Mouseless Browsing
  Issue: Causes excessive CPU usage
  Fix: None available right now. It’s recommended that the extension be removed.
• SessionSaver
  Issue: Memory leaks
  Fix: Use Session Manager instead.
• Tabbrowser Extensions (TBE)
  Issue: Slows down Firefox, conflicts with other extensions, and can stop Firefox from working.
  Fix: It’s recommended that the extension be removed, or you can install Tab Mix Plus instead.

People running Firefox 3 right now should be careful if using the ForecastFox or FoxClocks extensions. Both of those are known to have memory leaks (ForecastFox report here and FoxClocks report here).

The extensions that I’ve listed above are all currently known to have some sort of problem. The bad news is that not all of the extensions have been as thoroughly tested as the ones mentioned here, and that’s because Mozilla relies on people like you to submit bug reports when you encounter an issue. If you frequently notice memory leaks, try a fresh Firefox profile, and then install the extensions one by one until you find the culprit. The odds are pretty good that the leak will be the result of one of your “more complex” extensions, and so you may want to start with those.

Additional resources from Mozilla include the Reducing Firefox Memory Usage page and the long list of Problematic Extensions.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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