Archive for the 'Firefox' Category
PGO In Nightlies
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
Sunspider results:
Safai 3.1 Total: 3108.8 ms +/- 3.8%
Firefox Beta 5 Nightly Total: 2660.2 ms +/- 0.9%
Oh dear, it looks like somebody is going to have to update their web site. Related - Fx3 nightlies now being built using PGO.
Cairo
Saturday, September 15th, 2007
All that really needs to be said - cool fracking open source 2D Vector library! It’s interesting to note Cairo is currently used in WebKit, and will be used in as the primary renderer in Firefox 3.0. Wikipedia has more information. There’s nothing better than a simple c based rendering library that doesn’t use a ton of memory to get the job done.
Fun Feature
Friday, September 14th, 2007
I’ve been working on implementing drag images for Firefox on Windows. It hasn’t happened without a few bumps in the road. Most windows apps are, naturally based on windows common windows classes, which have built-in support for rendering drag images. Not so in Firefox, so the image needs to be generated by hand. I’m about 50% of the way there, I’ve got application -> desktop drag implemented, now I need to add inter-application support (for dragging tabs and the like) and touch up some other things, like sizing, orientation (obviously) and maybe play around with adding a nice border around certain element types like images.
I have to say though, aside from the hassles, implementing new features like this is really fun, especially in a popular app like Firefox.
The Miscreants Attack
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
“Security researchers have disclosed a zero-day vulnerability in the latest version of Firefox that gives miscreants complete control of Windows-based computers when the Mozilla browser visits a booby-trapped website.”
Really? What security level was the application in question running under, and doesn’t that have an effect on whether or not these ‘miscreants’ can actually take “complete control”? Apparently The Register runs 98, otherwise they might have pointed this out. I’d suggest they switch to a modern OS like Vista, or even OSX, they might learn something, and improve their reporting in the process.
4 Years Ago
Sunday, July 15th, 2007
“How poetic is this: the death of a Web 1.0 poster child (Netscape), ironically killed by a bloated bigco, led to the birth of a Web 2.0 standards bearer (Mozilla/Firefox) and the amorous attentions of the main Internet bigco today - Google. Shakespeare couldn’t have scripted it better.”
Was Netscape really killed by a “bloated bigco”, or did Netscape kill itself with it’s own bigco bloat?
4 Years Ago Today - Netscape Corporation Killed, Mozilla Foundation Born
Internet Explorer 8
Sunday, July 1st, 2007
Interesting little blurb on IE8, due out in Beta sometime in the fall of 2007, possibly October al la IE7. There’s no source on the post below so there’s no knowing it’s valid, but it is the most detailed post I’ve read yet on IE’s future features. The blog source is odd in that it’s pretty much anonymous, and the only post is the IE8 article -
The keyword for IE8 at this point seems to be “semantics”, focusing on the context rather than simply the content. When you go to a website, IE8 scans and analyzes the content of the page to find out what the page is about, and then looks for additional information, whether it be ratings for a movie or the download link for software. The retrieved information can be viewed in the sidebar, a new tab, or a pop-up window. It is also extensible so, although by default when you go to a page about a movie, you get information from IMDB only, with third party add-ons, you can add that movie in your NetFlix cue, buy it from Amazon or eBay, or simply download it using BitTorrent.
The UI is also undergoing significant changes, becoming somewhat a hybrid of the tradition browser UI and the Office Ribbon. When visiting certain websites the UI morphs to display new buttons and options. For example when you visit MSN Soapbox, a button that allows you to upload videos, appears on the toolbar.
IE8 also improves the RSS Reader, and finally adds a download manager that can continue downloads across multiple sessions. Support for CardSpace and microformats also contribute towards making Internet Explorer 8 true competition to Firefox.
This seems a little over the top - time will tell.
I’ve also heard the extension model will undergo changes, although from what I’ve read, and from my experience with IE’s COM based extension model, making IE as easy to extend as Firefox is going to be well, quite the challenge, most likely impossible. It’ll be interesting to see what direction Microsoft takes when the final IE8 is released (maybe) later next year.
Job’s Graph
Thursday, June 14th, 2007
Having recently started contracting with Mozilla on Firefox - I can say for sure some folks in Mozilla didn’t take too kindly to that graph. The COO recently posted on the subject. I’ll avoid comment other than to say - Job’s should know better than to anger a bunch of Mac faithful. 
