Hey... Do you read me?

Uh oh... right after updating to Firefox 0.9.1, it shows a critical update notice about Firefox 0.9.1!!!

Hey, what happened? I am using Firefox 0.9.1 already... Is this the problem of update.mozilla.org or the Firefox itselfs?

By the way, the new theme looks great!

P.S. I was using Mac OS X for about half an hour today. I found that many of the Firefox design is very very similar to that of Mac OS X, for example, the rolling trobber and the sliding customize menu. Will Apple sue us? LOL...

Firefox 0.9.1 and Thunderbird 0.7.1 are out

Save yourself from troubles by upgrading from Firefox 0.9 (or other browsers especially IE) to Firefox 0.9.1 and Thunderbird 0.7 (or other mail/new reader especially OE) to Thunderbird 0.7.1 now!

FireAMP?

Cheah Chu Yeow found a little Firefox extension called FoxAmp which embeds your WinAMP control on your Firefox. Wow...

Personally I don't need that. But you might like to have a try.

Firefox 0.9.1 Screenshots

Neil had taken a few screenshots of our lovely Firefox nightly build.

The Winstripe looks more Windows-like. Not bad. But somehow I find the shadows of the Qute theme, especially the Home button. Is it just me? :-P

By the way, Lim Chee Aun had made some Luna-like buttons in Winstripe-style:

• Back
• Stop
• Reload
• Home

P.S. I wonder if the buttons in the screenshots are small icons or normal size icons... Because the buttons in the screenshot looks larger than the current "small icons". Hmm...

Bloglendar 0.4 is out

Bloglendar 0.4 is out. It is a simple script made by me for use in Blogger (take a look of your right-hand side). There are many changes under the hood. The most noticeable change is probably that the active table cells are now (finally) clickable in IE.

The changes from 0.3 to 0.4:

• Fully rewritten as a class, instead of scattered funtions.
• File size reduction: from 11.2KB (0.3) to 8.85KB (0.4) by removing the unnecessary date splitter function. Hopefully this will gain some performance...
• The active cells are now clickable in IE too.
• Added/improved readme, installation instructions, change log and license.

Also, the downloadable archives are now in 7-ZIP format because I like its high compression ratio. Besides the official 7-ZIP software, I'd highly recommend IZArc which is also free.

Well, I don't know if there are any 7-ZIP compatible software for Linux and Mac. So tell me if you know any... :-P

Gmail/Mozilla Integration

doron is working on a great extension that integrates Gmail with Mozilla. Cool~!

By the way, if you are looking for way to read your Gmail emails with POP3 email clients like Thunderbird and Outlook Express, Pop Goes the Gmail is the solution. :-P

Firefox 0.9.1 is coming

Oops, Firefox 0.9.1 is coming. Just like what some of you may think, it features mostly (critical) bug fixes:

• Bug 248071
• Bug 246687
• Bug 246014
• Bug 245335
• Bug 247322

There will also be some updates in the Winstripe theme. So prepare yourself for an (yet another) upgrade of Firefox... :-P

Edited: Thunderbird is not alone: Firefox 0.9.1 and Thunderbird 0.7.1 branches were just created.

Thunderbird Preview

bugzilla.mozilla.org now has a great screenshot of the Thunderbird nightlies.

Apparantly Thunderbird will have a search bar just like Firefox (The current one looks very much like the one in Mozilla Mail).

What's more is that the search keyword will be highlighted in yellow (like Google). WOW!

I'm back!

^__^

I'll be back!

The wiki site will be resumed to normal after 20 June 2004, 22:00. Please look forward!

By the way, my download bandwidth will be doubled (from 3M to 6M), but you probably won't see any effect as the upload bandwidth should remain the same. The new plan also features a broadband TV, with 6 free channels and 1 paid channel (but as a free gift) by default.

Mozilla-naam... Mozilla-gerelateerde...

Any Dutch visitors here? Can someone do a better translation?

Original:

Een uitleg over de herkomst van de Mozilla-naam in OpenWiki. In dit artikel staan ook heel veel Mozilla-gerelateerde links. Let op de poort 8080 die hier wordt gebruikt. Als de link onverhoopt niet (43 keer bezocht - detail)

Direct translation with Babel Fish:

An explanation concerning the origin of Mozilla-naam in OpenWiki. In this Article also a lot of Mozilla-gerelateerde stand left. Pay attention to the poort 8080 that here is used. As the link unexpected not (43 time visited - detail)

An improved version by replacing "-" inside "Mozilla-naam" and "Mozilla-gerelateerde" with a space after translation:

An explanation concerning the origin of the Mozilla name in OpenWiki. In this Article Mozilla also a lot of stand related left. Pay attention to the poort 8080 that here is used. As the link unexpected not (43 time visited - detail)

"Mozilla-naam" means "Mozilla-name" and "Mozilla-gerelateerde" means "Mozilla-related"? =P

Firefox is aging?

Apparantly Firefox is keep losing my location history like an old man.

I found that sometimes when I start Firefox, nearly all history is got! I experience that on both a Windows 2000 and Windows XP machines. That's weird.

How to reproduce the bug? I don't know. Just keep using Firefox, when you find that it doesn't auto-complete your recently visited URLs, you know it happens again.

Fortunately other stuffs like cookies are still there...

Mozilla 1.7 is out

Finally no more RCs, Mozilla 1.7 is out. You might as well like to view this change log of about 1700 issues (wow...) compiled by Asa.

Well, but I agree with doron that a 1.7.1 would probably be needed thanks to the bugs, especially the horizontal rule bug that I concern.

Hey... Thunderbird 0.7 is out?

Thunderbird 0.7 is out just 2 days after Firefox 0.9! Hey... it is still using the Qute theme... Are they sure this is right? @__@:::

Gmail invitations everyday

Gmail is pushing its service to more and more (innocent?) people!

In these few days, we the Gmail users got free invitations to use every single day (5 invitations yesterday; 3 the day before yesterday)... I think I have invited 14 people (3+3+3+5) since I started using Gmail 2 months ago. Hmm, what about the day after tomorrow...?

Gotta think about who else I want to invite... 3__3|||

P.S. Drop me a message here. I would probably invite you if I recognized you... =P

Mozilla: Behind The Scene

Ars Technica did a great interview with Scott Collins, a former software engineer from Netscape. The interview is about some of the Netscape/Mozilla's histories and the latest development/direction of Mozilla.

The wiki site will be down

The wiki site will be down (to save $$, see below).

It will only be available 3-4 hours (probably 10:00pm to 1:00am HK time) per day starting from 16 Jun 2004 until further notice. This blog is unaffected as this is not my server.

Apparently we've forgotten that the "unlimited broadband" ISP plan was ended in the previous month. As we were continue using the broadcast, the bill for the last month is 1369 HKD (2 dollars per 1 extra hour)!!! O__O

This blog is unaffected however, as it is not hosted on my server. But all the external files (e.g. CSS, JS, images) used in this blog will not be avavilble when the wiki site is down.

Easy Migration from 0.9 RC to 0.9 Final

I think many people are now upgrading from Firefox 0.9 RC (having some 0.9-compatible extensions installed) to 0.9 Final as it is just out today. However, if you didn't remove your old 0.9 RC profile, you might run into the problem of starting up Firefox 0.9.

If you startup Fx, it will load for a while, but no window appears then. You can find "firefox.exe" running by viewing the Task Manager. Of course you should kill the process now.

This weird problem is caused by some of the 0.9-compatible extensions you installed (e.g. Launchy).

To upgrade to Fx 0.9 without removing your old 0.9 RC profile with lots of settings, it is as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Uninstall Fx 0.9 RC and install Fx 0.9 Final.
2. Start Fx under "save mode" using the Start Menu.
3. Uninstall the extension(s) that cause the problem.

Now the problem should be solved. Restart Fx under normal mode and re-install your favorite extensions again!

Firefox 0.9 is out

After a delay of one day, Firefox 0.9 is finally out!

It looks almost the same as Firefox 0.9 RC, but at the first time starting Firefox, it will ask you which browser's setting to import (you can choose NOT to import any settings), which I think is very nice (as I don't want to import my IE settings).

Again, Launchy 2.7.0 didn't work very nicely with Firefox 0.9. I installed this extension several times to get it works. I need to went to Firefox's safe mode several times to remove this extensions because it screwed up Firefox. Now it still have a minor bug: icon of Launchy not displayed in extension manager.

P.S. A minor problem: a friend of mine (not the one in this mozillaZine forum thread) found that the user agent string is

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.8

while it WFM:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.9

Maybe different mirrors are serving different copy of the Firefox installer?

Edited: I found a domain name "getfirefox.com" from "Inside Firefox" which would redirect people to mozilla.org's Firefox page. The domain name owner must have too much pocket money to spend...

Thunderbird 0.7 RC is out

Surprisingly, Thunderbird 0.7 RC is still using the Qute theme (i.e. you can still see the name Arvid Axelsson in the theme manager). Maybe that's because Kevin Gerich and Stephen Horlander are still busy improving the Winstripe for Firefox 0.9 RC.

Like Firefox 0.9 RC, there are some similar changes on it.

P.S. When the Winstripe for Thunderbird is out, I might post a screenshot here! ^__^

Mozilla Store Redesigned

The new site design is (again) brought to you by the Mozilla visual identity team. Can't resist buying this cute Firefox?

Pirated Firefox

While waiting for Firefox 0.9 final, why not take a look of a pirated Firefox? You might also like to read the discussion thread in mozillaZine forum.

Personal Holiday Programming

In this 2 weeks I have been writting PHP4 frequently. Here are some of my thoughts and feels:

The basic:

1. IMPO, A hybrid of C, Perl and JavaScript.
2. Control structures and operators from C.
3. Predefined functions from Perl.
4. Weak typing, function/class structures from JavaScript.

The good:

1. Easy to learn for C family (C/C++/Java/JavaScript/C#) programmers. Should be easy to Perl programmer too... not sure though as I'm not. :-P
2. Easy to output strings. Even that I didn't use the C-like printf, echo can be pretty amazing already:

   $word = "Hello World";
   echo "<p>I want to say $word to all of you</p>";

3. Amazing "array":

   $arr = array(
       "firstName" => "Martin",
       "lastName" => "Ng"
   );
   echo "<p>I'm $arr['firstName'] $arr['lastName'].</p>";

   As you can see, array is not just an "array", but a rather complex data structure (ordered map).

The bad:

1. Cannot declare variable before using it: don't PHP guys know implict variables can lead to subtle errors? e.g. mistyping a variable name will create a new variable. When you can "Dim" a variable in ASP and "var" a variable in JavaScript, why can't we do the same in PHP?
2. Everything in a class is public! I thought classes are used for information hiding. PHP's class only have encapsulation, but little information hiding. I know the public, protected and private keywords are introduced in PHP5, but PHP5 is not backward compatible with PHP4... While even JavaScript can have private member (thanks to closures), I wonder why PHP can't emulate this. I know putting things private is not good to performance as we need to write lots of get and set functions.

The ugly:

1. Weak typing.
2. Magic quotes, which escapes single quote, double quote and NULL in GET/POST/Cookies with a backlash, is turned on by default. I think this is a big mistake.
3. The member accessor in C family languages are well known as the dot operator (or "->" if the class is defined as pointer). e.g. document.createElement( "hr" );. However, PHP uses "->" only (because everything is called by reference? I'm not sure...).
4. The dollar sign for variables. I just hate it. Frequently forget to type "$" when using variables.
5. The $this pointer. Why do I need to type $this->something when I'm just referencing some member variables/functions?
6. While all C family languages use "else if", PHP uses "elseif".
7. String concatenation operator is ". (a dot)", rather than "+" in C family languages.
8. I prefer "<% ... %>" (as seem in ASP and JSP) over <?php ... ?>.

Look like I hate it more. Anyway, can't complain too much to a free software...

Want Gmail?

Any active blogger can (again) apply for an Gmail account:

Remember my screenshot 2 months ago?

Let's see if I can apply one for my sister... =P

Edited: I can't:

You have created the Gmail account minghong @ gmail . com.

From now now on, you can log in directly to your Gmail account by going to http://gmail.google.com.

It doesn't let me to select username...

Hackles.org was hacked!

Our beloved (though ended) web comics in hackles.org was hacked by a stupid person called ][MaRvOl][. If you visit hackles.org now, you should see something like this:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Its Google cache should show you the same content as the homepage of that "hacker".

Our poor hero...

Back to normal

Well... almost:

Update your extensions now!

update.mozilla.org is now up and running, as I've just updated Launchy through the update server. The new Launchy 2.7.0 fixed the bug I mentioned earlier and a bug with Opera 7.5.

What's more is that like Windows update, it shows a information box at the bottom right corner of the window:

Oops... still have one more update to go.

Edited: There is something wrong. It can't find anything to update, but still show "1 update available". And in Launchy homepage, it is still showing 2.6.0 as the latest version...

The traffic remains high

Let's see how long it can retain...

P.S. The traffic did have good effect: Firefox's market share in my site was raised from 2x% to 3x%. Nice... =^__^=

Yet another bug

It is a bug day. Yet another bug filed by me. See it yourself.

I wonder why so many things that work before are now broken... -___-|||

Edited: someone found a similar bug on 27 May 2004. Look like the root of problem is the same!

Googlebar with PageRank

Sw33t!!! Finally we have a Googlebar with PageRank! I got the news from MozillaNews.

A screenshot of it under Firefox 0.9 RC:

It doesn't work sometimes. But what can you expect from a hack?

Actually Firefox doesn't need Googlebar. I did that just for fun. Don't try this at home, kids!

Firefox 0.9 RC is still buggy

I filed my first bug of Firefox. I know this bug sounds similar to bug 243324, but the file I downloaded is 149KB, much larger than ~30KB as mentioned in that bug report. Also, if I save a file (~3KB) not yet downloaded as "Save Link as", the download manager always close.

My first day with Firefox 0.9

I was using Firefox 0.9 RC yesterday for the whole day. Don't expect any big improvements, but here are something new:

New theme: Winstripe

Probably the most debatable change. Like it or not, it is now the default theme. As said before, I found it ok. Also I rarely use the toolbar anyway thanks to the mouse gesture.

New extension manager

Allow user to uninstall or update extensions, enter extensions' preference window, and view information about the extensions (e.g. homepage). The update server isn't up yet. Let's just wait for a few days.

Extension directory

All extensions are installed in your profile directory. I like this arrangement because some extensions force people to install them into the application directory. If you don't have the permission to write file to the application directory, then you can never install those extensions.

New theme manager

Nothing really special here.

Copy image to clipboard

Finally we can copy image to clipboard! Nice.

Delete selected location history

Sometime you may want to remove some (but not all) of the location history. Now you can do so by Shift + Del when you mouse over the location. Again, nice!

HTML Help

Finally Firefox has something like the HTML help in Mozilla Application Suite (Seamonkey), through I don't never it anymore.

Mail button

Firefox now have a mail button (but you need to add it yourself). But I found it not so useful...

Preview before setting wallpaper

Before setting an image as wallpaper, it now show a preview window and some options like stretch, tile and normal. But unfortunately there is a bug for "tile". The bug was filed at 4 April 2004 and still not fixed... T__T

I feel comfortable in this new release, except a bug that's annoying me (See my next post). Hope the newbies won't be really scared away from using Firefox just because of the new theme (I don't know so...).

P.S. Launchy (2.6.0, the latest version) stopped working in Firefox 0.9 RC. I filed the bug immediately. Hope this will be fixed asap because Launchy is really what I always use...

Edited: Oops... I found that someone have filed that bug already! Sorry for the duplicated bug report, Gemal...

Edited: Forgot to add this link: Neil has a better article than I.

Mozilla Release Candidates

Today we have two release candidates: Mozilla RC 3 and Firefox 0.9 RC. Go and grab them!

See also the provisional release notes of Firefox 0.9...

Am I slashdotted?

Because of my comment at Chris' Corner about Review of new Firefox theme and the June 7th build, my blog's traffic was suddenly increased by N-folds. Take a look of the page view:

And here are the referrers:

AWStats, which keeps track of my wiki's traffic, also indicates a hit rate of 1351 for my blog entry (the table header is added by me):

External page	Page view	Page hit
- http://minghong.blogspot.com/2004/06/winstripe-is-cool.html	7	1351

Because images used in this blog are put in the server of my wiki, the page view and hit rate are not equal...

Apparantly this is driving my IIS server a litte bit crazy. So files like CSS and images sometimes can not be delivered to your correctly. I'm sorry for any inconvience... ^^::

P.S. Unfortunately, no one leave a single comment to me, and there is only one trackback of "I hate Winstripe"... T___T

Winstripe is COOL~

After reading those annoying complaints about changing the default theme for Firefox 0.9, I installed the official nightly build 20040607 on one of my machines (OK, I know the release candidate should be out tomorrow and final should be out next Monday, but I just can't wait... =P). The new Firefox didn't depress me...

When you just started the freshly installed Firefox, it'll import your IE stuffs (preference, history, cockies, etc) to your Firefox profile (Like it or not, I can't find an option to turn it off...).

Unlike the current setting, the default setting of this nightly build is to use "normal" size icons. I found them look too big:

Fortunately one can always customize and use "small" icons instead, which now looks MUCH better:

The new theme DO blend with Windows nicely (at least Windows Classic, I didn't (and can't) try Luna as I do NOT use Windows XP).

OK, be patient. Firefox 0.9 will be out very very soon!

Is Winstripe really THAT bad?

In these few days there are lots of discussion about the Firefox's new default theme: Winstripe.

Most of the feedbacks are negative. I wonder why people hate this theme so much. Personally I think it is OK, and it looks brighter than the current (Firefox 0.8) Qute theme (that's the good thing)!

Some the the related blog entries:

• Firefox Gets New Default Theme, Qute Author Notified Ex Post Facto
• Another default theme coming
• Firefox gets a "new" look
• Winstripe - for Windows?
• New Default Theme Coming to Firefox 0.9
• theme drama
• Stephen Horlander: Winstripe is "a 0.1 release at best"
• Firefox 0.9 and Themes

If you can't wait for Firefox 0.9 (or Winstripe), either install one of the nightly builds, or take a look of Chris' Corner » Review of new Firefox theme and the June 7th build.

MSNBot is beating Googlebot

At 8 Jun 2004, my AWStats shows that MSNBot is beating Googlebot (in terms of hitrate)!!! Here is the snapshot of the Robot / Spider Visitors:

8 different robots*	Hits	Bandwidth	Last visit
MSNBot	1524+22	339.32 KB	07 Jun 2004 - 15:32
Googlebot (Google)	265+21	69.41 KB	07 Jun 2004 - 15:58
Inktomi Slurp	247+38	60.70 KB	07 Jun 2004 - 15:50
Alexa (IA Archiver)	23+3	3.53 KB	03 Jun 2004 - 15:01
Openfind data gatherer	5+9	3.39 KB	07 Jun 2004 - 10:28
Unknown robot (identified by hit on 'robots.txt')	0+3	333 Bytes	05 Jun 2004 - 02:18
Jeeves	1+1	347 Bytes	04 Jun 2004 - 04:33
BaiDuSpider	2	384 Bytes	06 Jun 2004 - 03:15

* Robots shown here gave hits or traffic "not viewed" by visitors, so they are not included in other charts. Numbers after + are successful hits on "robots.txt" files.

Look like I am not the only case. Probably because MSNBot has nevered crawled me before...

What's wrong with Mozilla?

Next version of Firefox may have a new default theme because of the "licensing issues". Hmm... and people in that thread feel that Mozilla is not open enough (not just open-souce, but also open developement).

Well... Things are not perfect. r__r

My First ATM Friend

Today I was waked up by a phone call. When I pick up the phone, no one answered. So I went back to sleep (immediately :-P).

But just a few minutes later, someone called me again. Like the first call, no one answered. I took a look of the call register and found out it was called from 2273-4635. I have no idea who he/she/it is.

So I dialed that number. After connected, I heard nothing but some sound like the modem machine!

I was so confused. OK, let's me Google about it. Know what? It is an ATM machine (FAX line) at Olympian City Branch (奧海城分行), owned by The Bank of East Asia (東亞銀行)...!!!

Life is just amazing... @.@::::