Ali Ebrahim on web standards, software developement, technology, politics and law.
You know you spend too much time thinking about Mozilla when you see the name ‘DoGZiLLa’ on IRC (not on moznet) and it takes you five minutes to figure out that it’s a play on the word ‘Godzilla’.
You know you spend too much time thinking about Mozilla when you see the name ‘DoGZiLLa’ on IRC (not on moznet) and it takes you five minutes to figure out that it’s a play on the word ‘Godzilla’.
Why should Firefox steal all the thunder? Now that Thunderbird 1.0 has been released, let’s get cracking and make use of the excellent promotional materials and start letting the world know about Thunderbird. Is it just me, or does the ‘Reclaim your inbox’ button look really sweet? I’ve got a button up on my blog. … Continue reading “thunderbird promotional resources”
Why should Firefox steal all the thunder? Now that Thunderbird 1.0 has been released, let’s get cracking and make use of the excellent promotional materials and start letting the world know about Thunderbird. Is it just me, or does the ‘Reclaim your inbox’ button look really sweet? I’ve got a button up on my blog. Have you?
If you haven’t already given Thunderbird a spin, try it today. You won’t regret it.
Congrats to Scott MacGregor and David Bienvenu for this excellent release.
I only recently learned about how you can use different style sheets based on the display media. Since I thought the idea was really cool, I thought I’d have a play around with it. The end result is an update to an article on Bohras. It has different style sheets for screen, print and handheld … Continue reading “stylesheets for different media”
I only recently learned about how you can use different style sheets based on the display media. Since I thought the idea was really cool, I thought I’d have a play around with it. The end result is an update to an article on Bohras. It has different style sheets for screen, print and handheld media, and not only applies different styles based on the media type, but even displays different elements depending on whether its being displayed on screen, on a handheld or in print.
While the implementation is pretty simple, I think it’s functional. I thought I’d post a link to it in case anyone out there is wondering how to do this themselves (it’s not that hard).
The major differences to note between the three versions are the following:
In other words, I’ve made some assumptions about what content and formatting is appropriate for each media, and used CSS to put that into effect using separate style sheets (see the <head> of the document). The HTML document itself contains only structural markup, and no presentational markup (except for <em> and <strong>). Because of this, the document has a useful parseable structure (see <h[123]> tags), and degrades nicely on browsers that don’t support CSS at all.
So says Scot Finnie, at least. He’s written an excellent review of Firefox that’s not only fair, but very detailed as well. In fact, out of all the reviews I’ve read of Firefox so far, this is probably the best one (not just because its positive, but also because of its comprehensiveness).
So says Scot Finnie, at least. He’s written an excellent review of Firefox that’s not only fair, but very detailed as well. In fact, out of all the reviews I’ve read of Firefox so far, this is probably the best one (not just because its positive, but also because of its comprehensiveness).
I just noticed that Firefox is the featured article on Wikipedia. It’s been like that for a few days now (according to the page history), but I thought I’d point it out anyway.
I just noticed that Firefox is the featured article on Wikipedia. It’s been like that for a few days now (according to the page history), but I thought I’d point it out anyway.
I have a question for webmasters out there who have some experience with SEO. How does Google treat the following? a) Text that has class=”foo” where class foo is undefined. b) HTML comments (including IE’s conditional comments). My expectation is that it that for (a), class foo will be ignored entirely (no loss or gain … Continue reading “google rankings”
I have a question for webmasters out there who have some experience with SEO. How does Google treat the following?
a) Text that has class=”foo” where class foo is undefined.
b) HTML comments (including IE’s conditional comments).
My expectation is that it that for (a), class foo will be ignored entirely (no loss or gain in terms of SEO), and that HTML comments (including conditional comments) are also ignored entirely.
Does anyone have evidence to the contrary? Maybe some Mozilla folks out there know about this. I’m not worried about this for my blog, but another site that is considering advertising Firefox in place of some normal header text. For them, even marginal loss in terms of SEO may place it below another competing site (which would be unacceptable). Thanks in advance for your input.
Take a look at https://blog.ebrahim.org/ using Firefox, Mozilla or Opera. Then take a look using IE. Notice any differences? 🙂
Take a look at https://blog.ebrahim.org/ using Firefox, Mozilla or Opera. Then take a look using IE. Notice any differences? 🙂
If you were browsing The Register on Saturday using Internet Explorer, and weren’t using Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installed, chances are your computer has been infected with a virus. One of their ad providers, Falk AG was compromised, and the ads they served exploited the Bofra/iFrame set of vulnerabilities in Windows/IE to install … Continue reading “view ads, get owned?”
If you were browsing The Register on Saturday using Internet Explorer, and weren’t using Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installed, chances are your computer has been infected with a virus. One of their ad providers, Falk AG was compromised, and the ads they served exploited the Bofra/iFrame set of vulnerabilities in Windows/IE to install a viral payload on viewers’ machines. Slashdot is also running a story on it.
The Register is apologising for the incident, and recommending that all their visitors who used Internet Explorer but were not using Windows XP with SP2 perform a full virus scan on their system and install SP2 immediately. They’ve also suspended Falk AG from their ad rotation system pending an explanation.
How’s that for security, Microsoft? If you aren’t using Windows XP with SP2, protect yourself by using Firefox 1.0 instead of Internet Explorer. Even if you are using SP2, it’s still a good idea. You never know what other exploits are lurking out there waiting to infect you.
Microsoft has made life too easy for would-be hackers. It used to be that they had to convince you to do something stupid. These days, even that’s not necessary. You can get infected just by visiting random websites that you trust. Imagine the impact if one of CNN’s ad partners had been involved here.
If you haven’t yet installed SP2, the best way to get it is by filling out this form. Microsoft will ship you a Windows XP SP2 update CD at no cost, to almost anywhere in the world.
Thanks to yusufg for letting me know about this.
UPDATE: Falk has issued a statement regarding the above incident. Apparently it was caused by a flaw in one of their load balancers that was exploited to redirect ad requests to search.comedycentral.com, which served the malicious ads.
Most people know that I’m a loyal Firefox user. Some people know that I’m also a loyal Opera user. Why do I mention this, you ask. There has been a fair amount of Opera-bashing within the Firefox community, and an equal amount of Firefox-bashing in the Opera community. Now with Netscape doing an about turn … Continue reading “opera, netscape and project goals”
Most people know that I’m a loyal Firefox user. Some people know that I’m also a loyal Opera user. Why do I mention this, you ask.
There has been a fair amount of Opera-bashing within the Firefox community, and an equal amount of Firefox-bashing in the Opera community. Now with Netscape doing an about turn and adopting Firefox/Mozilla as a codebase again, lots of people are bashing Netscape and questioning their motives and wondering what the point is of Netscape doing all this work when Firefox is already there.
I’m going to ask two questions:
1) What’s good for the web?
2) What am I looking for in a browser?
From the point of view of the first question, having all these alternative browsers around is an excellent thing because it drives adoption of standards compliant user agents. I only care that Netscape is releasing a new version based on Firefox insofar as it will drive adoption of Gecko based user agents. This is a good thing. Opera is our ally here. KHTML (and Safari) are our allies here.
In the end, an open web is good for everyone (except for the monopoly who lost out on monopolising the web with polluted ‘standards’). The more standards compliant user agents we have out there that don’t support proprietary technologies, the less people we will see relying on utilising those technologies for their services, and the more accessible the internet is for everyone. Driving adoption of open standards is the most important goal of the Mozilla Foundation (as I see it). Firefox is merely a tool that’s used to fight that war.
So onto the second question. To fight that war you need good weapons. Firefox is such a weapon. In order to get normal users to help you win your war you need to get them to care about it. The problem is that you can’t (and will never be able to) get normal users to care about web standards. You have to give them some other incentives. This is where Firefox really shines, because it offers incentives that most internet users can relate to. That’s why it’s so popular. And that’s why it’s such an effective tool. Presumably Opera’s goals are to turn a profit, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be an ally in creating an open web. Netscape falls under a similar category. Whatever people think about their settlement with Microsoft, and how they treated Mozilla, there is no doubt that driving adoption of Gecko based user agents is a good thing.
Different people want different things out of a browser. As many who use the Mozilla Suite will attest, Firefox is not the right browser for everyone. But that doesn’t matter. When there are alternatives like the Mozilla Suite, Opera, KHTML, Safari, et al., browsers have to compete on features, which is good. Better browsers means better productivity and happier users. If standards compliant user agents can offer this (and today they are), then we can use them as tools to get the average user to help us bring our goal of an open web to fruition.
I was browsing through SuprNova.org today as I sometimes do, and found this little gem. Thought I’d share it with others. It appears to be a copy of the Air Mozilla broadcast. The file appears to be in Ogg Vorbis format.
I was browsing through SuprNova.org today as I sometimes do, and found this little gem. Thought I’d share it with others. It appears to be a copy of the Air Mozilla broadcast. The file appears to be in Ogg Vorbis format.