Say no to slow (re-)startup

One of the most annoying bugs in Mozilla/Firefox is that the browser is almost freezing after a period of inactivity (e.g. minimized) as the memory taken by the browser was released back to the OS. Apparently, this will be fixed in Firefox 1.1 (and "SeaMonkey" 1.8) as Brendan Eich is taking this bug and marked it as blocking 1.8b3.

Take back the memory!

Internet Explorer - We discover the web

That's kuso... e.g.

Tabbed Browsing

Screw that. It will only confuse basic users, so instead of making it an option, we just didn't implement it at all. Oh wait... there goes our browser market share. Our next release will have tabs.

Richer web application with SVG and Canvas

That's just so cool! Be sure to watch the presentation (in S5 format) and the demos inside (requires Deer Park Alpha 1 candidate or recent nightlies).

The support of SVG and Canvas in Firefox 1.1 gotta be revolutionary!

What? Another reason to avoid Netscape Browser

According to IEBlog, apparently the Netscape Browser would mess up your Internet Explorer's XML support by doing nasty thing to IE's registry entries. ^^:

Let's forgot both of them to switch to a better one.

Higher order programming with JavaScript now even cooler

With the upcoming Firefox 1.1, a dozen of method will be introduced to the Array object. These includes every, filter, forEach, indexOf, lastIndexOf, some, and map (not part of ECMAScript specification). You may need to take a look of higher order programming before proceeding this simple code example demonstrating the every method:

function isBigEnough(element, index, array) {
  return (element >= 10);
}
passed = [12, 5, 8, 130, 44].every(isBigEnough);
// passed is false
passed = [12, 54, 18, 130, 44].every(isBigEnough);
// passed is true

Sounds evil? Not. JavaScript was invented by Netscape, currently maintained by Mozilla, and will be continued to be improved by the Foundation. Like it or not, it is not intended to be a cross-browser scripting language. :-P

Object inside a form?!

When I was browsing through the Deer Park Alpha 1 changelogs, I found one interesting line:

Object should submit

In accordance with the HTML4 specification, <object> elements can now be submitted as part of a form.

My first reaction is: what?! What would be submitted?

I quickly google myself and found the relevant pieces inside the specification. However, I still don't get it.

In the specification of object element, it defined the name attribute of object element as:

  name        CDATA          #IMPLIED  -- submit as part of form --

Oh well, then it is just like other form controls! But hey, that's not the end of story:

Please consult the section on form controls for information about OBJECT elements in forms.

Oh well... let me consult it then:

Each control has both an initial value and a current value, both of which are character strings. Please consult the definition of each control for information about initial values and possible constraints on values imposed by the control. In general, a control's "initial value" may be specified with the control element's value attribute. However, the initial value of a TEXTAREA element is given by its contents, and the initial value of an OBJECT element in a form is determined by the object implementation (i.e., it lies outside the scope of this specification).

and

object controls

Authors may insert generic objects in forms such that associated values are submitted along with other controls. Authors create object controls with the OBJECT element.

and also

• The current value of an object control is determined by the object's implementation.

Now I'm confused. Appearantly user agent is free to implement in whatever way it wants. How would a web developer know what value would really be submitted? Sound like a rather useless form control to me...

It would be nice if someone would point me to the corresponding bug report. I tried searching it myself and the closest bug in bug 178026, which is bearly related.

Deer Park Alpha 1 candidate builds available

It is not supported to be widely spreaded, but if you are a developer, try Deer Park Alpha 1 candidate! It can co-exist with your Firefox 1.04 as it will be installed in a different location (but sharing the same profile). As I mentioned before, the 1.8 core where Firefox 1.1 is based on fixed some of the bugs I discovered earier when I implemented my final year project which is XUL-related. That includes:

• Title is not displayed in remote XUL.
• Scrolling of max-height'd menulist is flaky.
• text-decoration: blink doesn't start or stop.
• Favicon used in frame override favicon used in parent document.

The more complete changelog is also available. And if you are interested in Mozilla's implementation of SVG and using Windows other than XP, make sure you've downloaded the required GDI+, and simply extract the content to C:\Program Files\Deer Park Alpha 1 (the Deer Park Alpha 1 installation path). You're now ready to try those cool SVG demos, including the SVG Tetris!

Yet another reason to avoid Netscape Browser

Netscape Browser introduced a brand new spy feature which is turned on by default. This hidden option allows Netscape to gather anonymous browser usage statistics at its will. Most causal users wouldn't be smart enough to turn it off.

Main site closed

My main site: Just Another Wiki is now closed, probably forever. This is mainly due to the fact that the site is almost abandoned by me. Another reason is that many websites were stealing files from the server. I hate that selfish action very much! Yet another minor reason is that I'd like to replace its OS to Win9x, so that I can play those old DOS games again. DOSbox is too damn slow for my slow machine.

Thanks for your support, if any. For the ones who look for information, I think the Wikipedia hold much more useful information than my Wiki. I'll keep the files, e.g. Bloglendar, No IE Information Bar, until the end of days. So if you need them, feel free to ask me. Oops... I accidentially overwritten the partition table. They are... gone...

P.S. This blog will continue. So no need to worry. ;-)

My browser is "outdated"

Today, when I visited the Netscape website, I got this ridiculous message:

And I was using Firefox 1.0.4 (Netscape 8 is based on Firefox 1.0.3). So, which is the outdated one? ;-)

I'd recommend the web master to revise that page as follow:

ALERT: Stick With You Browser

Five Reasons To Stay Away

1. Netscape Browser 8.0 provides more security holes than any other browser (at least both holes from Internet Explorer and Firefox).
2. 8.0 displays websites with the buggy Internet Explorer for the list of known websites in the whitelist.
3. Tabbed browsing has been manipulated so Netscape will spam you with 7 to 8 webpages on startup.
4. Multibar gives you one click access to unwanted information and taking up your valuable screen space.
5. To optimize your user experience, there are even triply nested tabs in the option panel.

Firefox coin (and ballpen) received

Today I finally received the "25 million downloads" Firefox coin, together with a ballpen. Iconically, the download counter has already broken through 53 million today. :-)

The cool little coin:

The ballpen, with a light bulb (for what?):

Thanks! That's a thing to treasure... ;-)

The "Legend" returns

Our favorite heroine Lara Croft returns (again)! This's how she looks in the next installment (Tomb Raider: Legend):

Looks pretty ugly and old, isn't it? :-S But more importantly, hope it will not be as buggy as the Angle of Darkness (TR6). The quality of TR6 is analogous to that of Netscape 6 (based on the pre-1.0 Mozilla Suite)

See also these pretty still images and an exciting trailer.

Google ready to take up the World's traffic

Google has just announced the WebAccelerator, a tiny Windows(-only) tool that redirects all the URL requested to Google server, which acts as something like a proxy server: using page compression (presumably gzip), prefetching, and other optimization techniques.

But it was reported that the tool only saved fractions of seconds. I'd better not to try it. :-P

Related news:

• Time waits for no one
• Google WebAccelerator
• Web Accelerator