Oct 07

Nokia shows off N900’s sweet web browsing skills on video

Posted in: maemo, Mozilla, nokia, operating system, OperatingSystem, os, preview, smartphone, Today's Chili, video, web browser, WebBrowser

Eager to get your pulsing palms around Nokia’s N900? Yeah, we feel your pain. As if the phone itself and Maemo 5 haven’t been talked about enough, Nokia itself has published a new video showcasing the Mozilla-based web browser. Only time will tell if said browser lives up to the hype, but if the video posted up after the break is any indication, we’d say things are looking good. Six minutes may be a long time to look at something you can’t touch, but we’re guessing you’d listen to six minutes of the host saying anything. Have a listen — you’ll see.

[Via HotHardware, thanks dafrabbit]

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Nokia shows off N900’s sweet web browsing skills on video originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 05:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 26

Mozilla Denies 10-Day Firefox Patch Policy

Posted in: Freeware, Mozilla, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 07, 2007 by CyberNet.

Mike SchaverRobert Hansen, a security researcher, received a business card from Firefox’s Mike Schaver at a late-night party last week during the Black Hat conference. The card Hansen received, which is pictured to the right, used some colorful words to say that it takes just 10-days for Mozilla to patch critical security bugs that have been disclosed. Here is a snippet from Hansen’s blog post:

He gave me his business card with a hand written note on it, laying his claim on the line. The claim being – with responsible disclosure Mozilla can patch and deploy any critical severity holes within “Ten [F**king] Days”:

I told him I would post his card – and he didn’t flinch. No, he wasn’t drunk. He’s serious. I’ve always been a fan of Mozilla and Firefox however this is a pretty bold claim for a company of any shape or size. I shopped the business card around to some various people while I was at the Microsoft party the next day to get people’s reaction. The consensus was that it was funny, very difficult to achieve and in one case, one of the head guys of security at Amazon simply doubted that the patches would be of sufficient quality.

Apparently this was all taken the wrong way. Window Snyder, Mozilla’s security chief, responded to the 10-day claim:

This is not our policy. We do not think security is a game, nor do we issue challenges or ultimatums. We are proud of our track record of quickly releasing critical security patches, often in days. We work hard to ship fixes as fast as possible because it keeps people safe. We hope these comments do not overshadow the tremendous efforts of the Mozilla community to keep the Internet secure.

Schaver was simply saying that their latest security patch only took them 10-days to make publicly available after the vulnerability was disclosed. Schaver was therefore trying to tell Hansen that he didn’t need to publish the details about vulnerabilities before Mozilla has had a chance to fix them. For some software vendors posting the details about a vulnerability gives them some motivation to create a patch as quick as possible before it becomes widespread, but Mozilla says that they fix security flaws whether or not the details are published.

Source: Infoworld

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Aug 28

Thunderbird 2 vs. Outlook 2007: Who Will Wear the Crown?

Posted in: Mozilla, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

Outlook 2007 With the consumer release of Office 2007 nearly two-weeks away, there are some details that are emerging that might keep you away from using the popular email client that has been around for a long time: Outlook. The newest version is fancied up to look pretty and I have actually been playing around with the last Beta release for a few weeks now. There are a lot of really nice features that it has, especially since everything is in such a tightly integrated package. However, there is also something that I didn’t realize.

Campaign Monitor has pointed out that Outlook 2007 switched from using Internet Explorer as its rendering engine to using Microsoft Word. Anyone that has used Microsoft Word for the simplest HTML tasks knows how bad it is at generating HTML…it is really one of the ugliest things a Web developer will ever see. Application’s like Dreamweaver even have built-in tools to help clean-up the Microsoft Word HTML, which demonstrates just how bad it really is.

Here is a list of things that’s “new” in Outlook 2007:

  1. No background images – Background images in divs and table cells are gone.
  2. Poor background color support – Give a div or table cell a background color, add some text to it and the background color displays fine. Nest another table or div inside though and the background color vanishes.
  3. No support for float or position – Completely breaking any CSS based layouts right from the word go. Tables only.
  4. Shocking box model support – Very poor support for padding and margin, and you thought IE5 was bad!

This quote from the site really sums it up well:

Imagine for a second that the new version of IE7 killed off the majority of CSS support and only allowed table based layouts. The web design world would be up in arms! Well, that’s exactly what the new version of Outlook does to email designers.

I have had the pleasure of designing email templates for several businesses, and fortunately for me I created them using tables without any background images. I had thought about doing the designs using CSS, but I wanted to make sure that I would use something that almost all email providers would be able to render properly. I have checked the email templates that I created and they all seem to display properly, but for anyone who has already stepped into the CSS realm I’m sure there will be a lot of frustration.

I found this article via the Firefox Extension’s Guru Blog (who also mentioned it in the forum) and he brought up a good point. He said:

Granted right now Thunderbird is not as feature packed as Outlook. But Thunderbird 2 will be adding several new features such as the new message alert indicator, message tags and may be even tabs. Thunderbird 2 will also render incoming HTML e-mails via Firefox.

Since Thunderbird (version 2 Beta 1 available here) does use Firefox to render emails, is this going to be the next big push by Web developers? I haven’t met a single Web developer who has said the they prefer to design websites for Internet Explorer of Firefox because it is easier, and will email templates be the next big complaint? There are a lot of newsletters and weekly updates that I receive who use CSS for their formatting, and these people are probably going to be frustrated beyond belief with having to change their templates to use tables.

Mozilla Thunderbird might not have as many features, but I think it will be quickly catching up. It can already manage your emails, contact list, and with the help of an add-on (called Lightning) it can also handle your calendar. Outlook also manages your tasks/to-do lists which can be done with the ReminderFox extension in Thunderbird. The only other thing that I can think of which Outlook has is a note-taking application, and the QuickNote extension for Thunderbird should be able to add that feature.

So that just goes to show that Thunderbird might eventually take the reigns in the personal information management world, but hopefully an office productivity suite like OpenOffice.org will start to bundle it with their existing software. I would have to imagine that it would help out Thunderbird’s market share quite a bit.

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Jul 24

Mozilla Rallies the Troops for Firefox 3

Posted in: Firefox 3, Freeware, Mozilla, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on May 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

firefox download day.pngSince the release of Firefox 3 is right around the corner it comes as no surprise that Mozilla is trying to rally the troops community. Back in 2006 they celebrated World Firefox Day by getting people to invite their friends to try Firefox, and right about the time Firefox 2 launched Mozilla gave the much deserved acknowledgements. This is just one of the several campaigns Mozilla has come up with to help spread the Firefox browser, and it’s obvious that they know how to harness the power of the people.

This year they are doing things a little differently, and they are hoping to set a Guinness World Record for the number of downloads in 24 hours. As I sit here writing this they have over 125,000 people who have pledged to download Firefox 3 in the first 24 hours, which Mozilla says will happen sometime in June 2008. It shouldn’t be hard for them to crush the record… mostly because the record is currently non-existent. They are shooting for 5 million downloads, which is possible since Firefox 2 received 1.6 million downloads on the first day back in 2006. But they will essentially be making it in the record books no matter what.

If you are participating there is one thing you should know if you want your download to count. You actually have to download the full installation, and the download must complete. Updating the browser will not count towards the record, but then again they probably won’t release the automatic update on the first day. They’ll be using a cookie system to try and weed out any duplicate downloads.

You can help spread the word about the Download Day by placing any of these banners on your own site, or in the signature section of your emails. Oh, and there will be a certificate the you can print on Download Day to commemorate the event. ;)

Firefox World Record Homepage
 Thanks to Natmaster and Max for the tips!

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Jul 18

Firefox 3 Places Gets “Smart Folders”

Posted in: Features, Firefox 3, Freeware, Mozilla, Pre-Release, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on October 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

Mozilla has been working hard to get Places into Firefox 3, and they are making some good progress. Back in September we saw a nice mockup of what to expect from the Places Organizer, and about a week after that Oropher pointed out in our forum that the first major UI change occurred.

At the time the only modification was the move away from the classic Menu Bar that resides in the current Firefox 2 bookmark organizer, but just today another new feature landed in the latest nightly build. It’s one that I have been anticipating for quite some time … “smart folders” (I made up the name). There are 6 smart folders that come with Firefox 3, and the bookmarks listed in each are generated on-the-fly like the Smart Playlists in iTunes. Here are the six folders that you’ll see in the latest nightly build:

  • Recently starred pages
  • Recently visited starred pages
  • Most visited starred pages
  • Recently used tags
  • Most used tags
  • Most visited pages

Below is a screenshot of what the smart folders and redesigned Places Organizer look like. What’s left to do in Places? They still have to add the history and downloads to it, but other than that they just need to add some polish. Oh, and they need to get the “Preview” feature working as you can see in the screenshot below. It’s supposed to show a thumbnail of the bookmark you have selected, but right now it is just a place holder.

Overall things are looking pretty good for the next milestone that’s due out on October 30th.

Firefox 3 Places

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Jul 03

Mobile Firefox in the Works (No Release Date)

Posted in: Firefox Extensions, Freeware, mobile, Mozilla, Release Date, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on October 10, 2007 by CyberNet.

Firefox Mobile

Mozilla made an announcement today regarding their future plans to deliver a Mobile Firefox. This isn’t the first time that we’ve heard of something like this from Mozilla, but this time they sound extremely serious.

There are already mobile Mozilla browsers available today, one of which is pictured above and is only available to Nokia N800 and N770 users. It offers full AJAX support, RSS feed previews, add-ons, and more.

There is also the Minimo browser for Pocket PC’s, and the recently released Joey service. Mozilla plans on continuing to develop Joey further, but Minimo is unfortunately getting kicked to the curb. I actually use Minimo as my main browser on my Pocket PC because it is one of the few free tabbed alternatives for Windows Mobile. Mozilla has said that Minimo was a valuable experiment that has given them information on how Gecko (Mozilla’s rendering engine) operates in mobile environments, but it will no longer be developed.

The best news they posted is the idea of Mobile Firefox having support for extensions. This could make it easy to integrate the browser into services like Flickr, Twitter, email accounts, and more without needing to install additional applications. This can be pretty amazing depending on how well Mozilla is able to implement it, and what kind of control they are able to give to developers.

Mozilla is expanding the team of contributors for the mobile project, but when is the Mobile Firefox release date? That’s a good question, and Mozilla has said that it will certainly not be before 2008. The mobile project will use new technology that won’t be available until after Firefox 3 ships, but they can probably pump out some barebones test versions by the middle of next year.

The inevitable question that comes to my mind now is how will this affect Opera Mini usage? Opera has almost been alone in this market for quite some time, but will Mozilla be able to capture the large market that Opera Mini already has? For last month Opera Mini had a 0.39% market share, which isn’t bad when that’s putting it up against desktop browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Source: Mozilla Blog & Download Squad
Thanks for the tip “s”!

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Jul 01

Hulu still silent on PS3, Windows Mobile blocking – but there’s a free solution

Posted in: flash, hulu, Mozilla, playstation 3, Playstation3, ps3, streaming, Today's Chili

A few days after blocking PlayStation 3 users, Hulu has yet to respond to questions concerning the change which has only helped to fuel rumors it is related to the Microsoft ad campaign currently featured on the site, but that seems less likely now that we’ve confirmed it also began blocking the Flash-enabled Skyfire browser on Windows Mobile devices at the same time. Whatever the cause is, if you prefer a homegrown hack over something like PlayOn or TVersity, Eric over at ypass.net has put together a simple enough walkthrough for creating an “unblockable” workaround by setting up a locally connected PC running Linux or Windows with the freely available Squid proxy server software that will make your PS3 look like appear as a PC running a Firefox (or whatever you prefer) browser to any website that asks. Of course, just like the other solutions your computer will need to stay running to keep you connected, but we figure it’s a small price to pay for enjoying relatively low res Flash video running on an HDTV.

Read – Got a PS3? Want Hulu Back? Easy enough…
Read – Squid-setup for Windows NT /2k /X

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Hulu still silent on PS3, Windows Mobile blocking – but there’s a free solution originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 30

Firefox 3.5 arrives

Posted in: Mozilla, Today's Chili

After some rather impressive RC builds, Firefox 3.5 is all packaged up and ready for public consumption. Mozilla is saying its new browser is more than two times faster than Firefox 3, but what has us more excited is the support for plugin-free “open codec” video and audio playback using Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora– it’s still in its infancy, but the subtle glimpse we’ve seen so far of a world without Flash video reducing our CPU to jelly is rather compelling.

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Firefox 3.5 arrives originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 27

Big Oops: Mozilla Releases Compromised Vietnamese Language Pack

Posted in: Freeware, Mozilla, Software, Today's Chili


This article was written on May 08, 2008 by CyberNet.

firefox bomb-1.pngI think it’s safe to say that a lot of Firefox users associate the browser with security. It may normally keep you out of harms way, but that’s not the case if you downloaded the Vietnamese language pack after February 18, 2008. It turns out that Mozilla released a copy of that particular language pack which was modified by a virus on their system. Since November 2007 there have been over 16,000 downloads of the add-on, but they aren’t sure how many of those downloads came after February 18th.

The actual language pack itself does not contain the virus, but it was modified by a virus to load remote content. They believe that it was mostly used for showing the user ads, but they don’t deny that it could be used for more malicious purposes.

The script that was injected into the language pack will be detected as HTML.Xorer by most antivirus applications. It was first recognized as a virus on April 14th, but it wasn’t found sooner by Mozilla because they only perform scans when the add-ons are uploaded. There are no subsequent scans, but they assure us that this will be changing in the future.

This makes me a little leery of installing any add-ons now. Just because it is coming from a trusted developer doesn’t mean that the extension hasn’t unintentionally been compromised. We just saw it happen right here, and it affects all operating systems since it is merely a script that has to run. I guess this is even more of a reason not to install an abundance of extensions.

The Vietnamese language pack has since been removed from the add-ons site.

Mozilla Security Blog [via Heise]

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Apr 08

Firefox 3 Download Manager, Resizable Toolbar Items, and More

Posted in: Features, Firefox 3, Freeware, Mozilla, Pre-Release, search, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

Pretty soon Firefox 3 is going to be feature complete, and all that will be left for them to do is fine-tune the things they have implemented. As we build up to that big moment there are some new features that are coming out of the shop for testers. This includes a spruced up download manager, resizable toolbar items, a plugin manager, and better looking menus.

So let’s go ahead and take a look at all the enhancements that have come about since Alpha 7 was released:

–Download Manager–

The download manager has gotten a lot more useful with the features they’ve added. First off it sorts your downloads with the ones currently in progress up top, and those that are completed down below:

Firefox 3 Download Manager

For any of the completed downloads you can click on the blue "i" for more information, such as the location it was downloaded from.

Then there is also the search box located in the bottom-left corner. That does a live search of all your completed items, and the results are then immediately displayed:

Firefox 3 Download Manager

At first I thought this might be really really nice, except I always setup Firefox to clear my completed downloads after they are finished. The reason why I do that is because it’s supposed to improve the startup time of the browser, and this feature is therefore rendered useless for me. So if you have Firefox setup to clear completed items in the Downloads window, the new layout and features won’t really do much for you.

–Resizable Toolbar Items–

This is a super sweet feature that I’m glad Mozilla got implemented. There is now a "Resizer" item in the Customization screen that can be added to the toolbars. It is the most useful for placing between the search box and address box, where you will then be able to drag it back and forth to resize the two boxes.

Firefox 3 Toolbar Resizer

It also works when placed between toolbar buttons, but the results may not be what you expect. I noticed that the buttons scrunch together when trying to resize them, and if space gets really tight they are just hidden. It would be a lot better if Mozilla worked on a way to scale the buttons to a size that would allow all of them to remain visible, but that might be something they are working on.

–Plugin Manager–

Plugin management has been taken from about:plugins to the same place where you manage extensions and themes. One of the most notable things that I saw when opening the plugin management was that it easily lets you disable certain items. For example, if you don’t want Flash enabled you can disable it right from the plugin management screen.

Firefox 3 Plugin Manager

The only problem, which can’t be seen in my screenshot, is that plugins with more than one file associated with them show up repeatedly. For me the issue was with Java, which had about 10 entries all given the same title.

–Menu Appearance–

The menus have also gotten a slight overhaul. Now Firefox 3 supports a Vista-like menu appearance. Some things take advantage of this, such as the History menu which shows the site’s icon next to the entries:

Firefox 3 Menus

–Overall–

Still to come in Firefox 3 is integration with Vista’s parental control system, a visual refresh/new default theme, Places enhancements, as well as a few other things that are pretty high priority. The next milestone, which is due September 18th, could be either an Alpha or a Beta build. Mozilla appears to be picking up the pace and getting some much-needed features implemented, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to me if they are able to move on to the Beta releases.

Sources: The Burning Edge, Ars Technica, Mozilla Links, Firefox Extension Guru & Kyle’s Cove
Thanks for the tip Mohan!

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