Keeping Your Firefox Updated

Firefox is ever changing, there are lots of updates to the browser itself and depending on which extensions you use those can have frequent updates as well. Firefox by default wants to install ALL these updates automatically for you. Not a good idea, I prefer to have some control and know what I am installing so if there is a problem I can have something to work with. First thing we will want to do is to disable the automatic installation of Firefox updates. To do this:

• From the Tools Menu, select 'Options...'
• On top of the Options Window click the 'Advanced' Icon
  
• Click on the 'Update' tab
• In the section 'When updates for Firefox are found:", click the button for 'Ask me what I want to do'
• Click 'OK"
  

With this setting, Firefox will prompt you when there is an update for the browser itself and ask you if you want to install it. Now, if you decline the upgrade at first you can get the notification again by going to Help menu, 'Check for Updates...'

Prior to version 1.5, Firefox had its own built-in extension update notifier. With Firefox 1.5, that went away in favor of automatic updates. However with the Update Notifier Extension, it will check (from ever 6 to 24 hours) for new versions of your extensions and themes. Just make sure once you have the extension installed you go into the settings and disable the install options.

The Year Of The Suns? (Part 3)

What one word could describe The Suns this year? How about 'drama'! They pulled off a win on Monday against The Clippers in Game 7. Tonight, they lead the game...until the 3rd quarter then things started falling apart. Missed shot (especially 3-pointers) after shot by the Suns but the Mavericks kept scoring and took the lead. At one point the Mavericks had a 9 point lead. With minutes left the 'drama' unfolded... a couple 3-pointers including one from Nash, the Suns took the lead only to lose it again with 4.8 seconds remaining. At the last second, or more like 1/2 second Boris Diaw, scores the winning basket to give the Suns a 119 to 118 lead. But wait there's more! As if the Mavericks weren't already shocked that they had lost the game they managed to foul Thomas who tacked on 2 more points with free-throws. Final score 121 to 118. Sun's lead the Western Conference Finals 1-0.

The drama doesn't end here though, Raja Bell strained his left calf late in the 4th and was out for the rest of the game. Unknown if he will be back on Friday. Shawn Marion may have injured his left ankle also in the 4th quarter. But he plans on playing on Friday. Assistant Coach Marc Iavaroni, discovered being on the sidelines doesn't mean you are safe. While trying to save a loose ball in the 3rd quarter, Leandro Barbosa ended up sending the ball into Marc Iavaroni face. Iavaroni shook it off an appeared to be unhurt.

The drama continues on Friday with Game 2 in Dallas. Even if Bell is unable to play, The Suns have demonstrated they can play and still win without him. There are plenty of other players on the team that can fill in and keep the team in gear. Unlike last year with San Antonio, they are not dependent on a couple key players to win a game.

Meanwhile in the Eastern Conference Finals, the Miami Heat currently lead the series against the Detroit Pistons. Game 2 is on Thursday. Early prediction for the finals, but why not The Suns & The Heat?

silicon.com interview with Mitchell Baker

Mitchell Baker Talks to silicon.com About Mozilla in the Enterprise

silicon.com has an interview with Mitchell Baker, which focuses on the limited success of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird in the enterprise market to date. The Mozilla Corporation President attributes some of the lack of success to a reliance on proprietary technologies within some businesses. She singles out intranets that only work with Microsoft Internet Explorer as a particular problem. However, she claims that the fact that Firefox is open-source does not on its own hold back adoption in large organisations. [complete article]

---

I have to say this quote describes the issue very well:

"Enterprises have intranets that only work with IE. We can't fix their intranet" -- Mitchell Baker, CEO Mozilla Corporation

I work for a large organization that is very reliant on IE. Everything from our online manual to our scheduling and main systems as well as the intranet are all IE based. I have limited to access to the company's intranet from home, but I am unable to access directly via Firefox. In order to access the intranet I can still use Firefox but have to activate the IE Tab extension. This allows me to run IE in one tab on Firefox.

I know our techs use Firefox as I saw the familiar Firefox logo on one of our techs' desktop. When the main system (IE based) crashed he had remotely accessed his computer from my computer to check some settings. But I doubt it will ever be widely used especially since everything is design to run (or more commonly crash) on IE. The only way I could see thing changing would only be if the company the platform for our system suddenly decided to switch to Firefox, but that is highly unlikely given our organization's reliance on IE.

The article also briefly (a couple sentences) discussed FF 2.0 (set for release 3rd quarter 2006) as well as, Mozilla giving back profits to the community.

The Year Of The Suns? (Part 2)

The last couple nights have been 'do-or-die' for three of the match-ups in the NBA Conference Semi-Finals. Last night, the Detroit Pistons knocked out the Cleveland Cavilers to advance to the Conference Finals. This series with the Miami Heat will begin Tuesday in Detroit.

Meanwhile on the Western Conference there are two big games tonight, San Antonio Spurs and the Dallas Mavericks as well as the Los Angeles Clippers and our Phoenix Suns. Now recall last year the Suns made it to the conference finals after defeating the Mavericks in six games only to be stopped by the Spurs in five games. I had said prior if we can get past the Clippers, which I really thought was going to a lot easier than it has turned out to be, ideally we would like to matched up with the Mavericks. But since San Antonio is #1 and made a come-back starting in game 5 it looks as if we would have to play the Spurs in the conference finals.

In what could be described as an upset, the Mavericks manage to pull out a win 119 to 111 in overtime. The Spurs are out and the Mavericks move on to play against the winner of tonight's Suns & Clippers game. So far the Suns have managed to hold on to a 4-6 point lead throughout the first quarter, but the key is going to be holding on to that lead for the rest of the game.

R.I.P. Blue Frog

Blue Frog/Security is no more. For your safety UNINSTALL the extension(s) as well as the application. An alert reader on Go Firefox!, posted me a link to this Wired News Article: Under Attack, Spam Fighter Folds. Also check out: BlueSecurity, BlueFrog & BlueFreaks That Love Them: Blue Security Surrenders... Spammers Win.

Preview: Inline Spellcheck

Robert Strong created the SpellBound Spellchecker for Firefox and Mozilla Suite (now known as Sea Monkey) extension which enabled users to have a web based spell checker. He also part of the development team for Firefox 2.0. When Firefox 1.5 came out Robert created a 'developmental version' of SpellBound which was an inline or spell as you type of spell checker. The inline spellcheck is suppose to be one of the new features in FF 2.0.

I've had an opportunity to try it out. Right now it is only working for pages that have a text-area fields such as Yahoo!Mail. However it does not work for pages using I-Frames for entering text. This includes the Firefox WYSIWYG Editor for Delphi Forums, the Blogger editor and most other WYSIWYG editors.

FF 2.0 Inline Spellcheck
Click Image For Larger View

The above screen shot was from Yahoo!Mail. Misspelled words are underlined in red. Right-clicking opens the context menu with a list of suggestions or to add the word to the dictionary. This is going to take some getting use to as I have become so accustomed to the CTRL+Left Click used in SpellBound. Heck I have problems in Thunderbird, I keep CTRL+Left Clicking on those misspelled words.

Again it is important to stress at this time FF 2.0 is still being developed and the Bon Echo Alpha 2 release is more testing and development. I am sure at some point like its predecessor this feature will support/check text entered into an I-Frame.

This was the last of the major new features of FF 2.0, I wanted to evaluate. Although, I may take a look at the RSS handling improvements.

Preview: Session Managment

The next new feature for Firefox 2.0 is Session Management. First thing I noticed is this is NOT quite the same as the session management features available in Tab Mix Plus, Session Manager or SessionSaver. If anything it is more similar to Crash Recovery. So...what's the difference? Well, Session Management like these above mentioned extensions will recover your browser (tabs & windows) session exactly as it was in the event the browser crashes. However, unlike the above (Crash Recovery excluded) it does not recover your browser if you accidentally (or intentionally) close it. That is what I liked about Session Saver, it would save everything exactly as it was when I closed the browser. This is very useful when switching between FF 1.5.0.3 and Bon Echo (since I can't run both a the same time).

At least it will recover your browsing session in the even the browser crashes. I have already tested this by doing a force shut-down of Bon Echo. The browser treated this as a crash and it performed exactly like SessionSaver does in a browser crash. Also there is no 'snap-back tab/window' option as in SessionSaver if you accidentally close a tab or window.

Click Image For Large View
This Session Recovery Pop-Up Box will appear when your restart Firefox after a crash.

So the Session Management feature may not eliminate those above name extensions, but that could change. After all, this is only the Alpha 2 release. I'll have do some digging around mozillaZine and the Bon Echo forums and see what I can find out about the future of this feature.

Well, this just leaves the 'Inline spellcheck' feature to preview.

Preview: New search engine infrastructure and UI

Continuing my previews of some the new features with FF 2.0, I will now take look at the 'New search engine infrastructure and UI'. Firefox 2.0 will come preloaded with six popular search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Amazon.com, Answers.com, Creative Commons and eBay). You can easily add more and remove search engines. Click the arrow next to the magnifying glass will display all the installed search engines and give you the option to 'Manage Search Engines...'

Click Image For Larger View
New FF 2.0 Search Engine UI

The Manage Search Engine List allows you to re-order your search engines, add more AND remove search engines you don't want. Previously you either needed to hunt for the search engine plug-in and delete it or install an extensions such as Search Engine Ordering to remove unwanted search engines.

Click Image For Larger View
New FF 2.0 Manage Search Engine UI

Still to come:

• Session Management
• Inline spellcheck

Preview: Add-ons UI

On my May 1st entry: Excellent Move Mr. Schroepfer!, I listed some of new features for FF 2.0, including Extension/Themes UI (user interface) change. This new feature is part of the Bon Echo Alpha 2 milestone release. No more separate interfaces for extensions and themes. Instead there is a new Add-ons UI where the management of extensions and themes are integrated together into one simplified interface.

Click Image For Larger View
New FF 2.0 Add-Ons UI

Some changes to this interface include listing installed extensions and themes in alphabetical order instead of the order they were installed in. Note: Adblock Filterset.G Updater is out of sequence as it was just added and is not yet 'installed'. In addition, it is now possible to disable extensions without having to restart in safe mode. This is useful for problematic extensions or if you don't want to use an extension but rather not uninstall it. You will still have to manually restart Firefox for the change to take effect. While on the subject of restarting...

Click Image For Larger View
New FF 2.0 Add-Ons UI with Installation Tab

Whenever you install and extension or theme, the installation will appear in a new tab on the Add-Ons window. The 'Installation' tab will show extensions and/or themes that were just installed in this current browser session. A neat little feature is the 'Restart Bon Echo' (when FF 2.0 goes live it will be named 'Restart Firefox') button. When you are done installing click the button and the browser will close and automatically restart.

Some others features I am still checking out include:

• New search engine infrastructure and UI
• Session Management
• Inline spellcheck

A New Milestone for FF 2.0

On May 13th Bon Echo Alpha 2 was released. Now I am sure you are asking "Oh humble Guru what the heck is Bon Echo?". Bon Echo is the project name for FF 2.0, named after the park in Ontario, Canada. I have yet to play with this release yet but do look forward to doing so tomorrow. Some of the new features in this release include (click links below to see Blog entries):

• Links default to opening in new tabs, not new windows
• New user interface for Add-Ons (extensions & themes)
  
• Close buttons now appear on every tab, and the close behaviour is slightly different
  
• Inline spell checking in text boxes
  
• Automatic session restoration in the event of a crash
  
• New search (engine) plug-in manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
• Complete Listing

Now keep in mind FF 2.0 is not scheduled for final release until late summer or early fall. Further we are only in the Alpha releases at this moment. For those of you not familiar with the release progression:

• Alpha 1
• Alpha 2
• Alpha 3*
• Beta 1
• Beta 2*
• Release Candidate (RC) 1
• Release Candidate (RC) 2
• Release Candidate (RC) 3*

* If needed

Note: Release Candidates are nearly final releases. All the features have been completed, but there may be some bugs, security or other issues that still need to be fixed. The final Release Candidate becomes the live/production version.

Stay tuned for more details as I test and review this release.

about:config

As I've mentioned before, Firefox is highly customizable. You can add themes, extensions and plug-ins to add new features to your browser. But there are lots of configuration options that you can change as well. I am not just talking about those that you can get to via the Tools, Options...menu. Firefox has a 'control panel' of sorts, called about:config. To access, simply open a new tab and in the address bar type about:config.

But wait, there is another and 'easier' way to get tot this 'control panel'. It is the AboutConfig extension, once installed you can add a button to your toolbar (right click in a blank area on your toolbar and select 'Customize...", find the about:config icon and drag it on to the toolbar). Now you are asking "Oh humble Guru, if I can just type 'about:config' in the address bar, why do I need this extension?" Lots of reason, no need to open a new tab, nothing to type, but the best reason...it puts your about:config info in a new window.

This is useful when you are reading directions on changing settings in about:config. Instead of having to flip between tabs, you can make your Firefox smaller (than full screen) and be able to the directions and your about:config at the same time.

To change a setting, highlight the preference you want and then double-click. Note on 'boolean' type preferences, double-clicking will change the value from 'false' to 'true' or from 'true' to 'false'. For 'integer' and 'string' type preferences, a popup-box will allow you to enter the settings. Preferences in BOLD have been changed from default (user set). While changes are saved as soon as you double-click on a 'boolean' or click 'ok' on 'integer' and 'string' type preferences, you can restore a preference to its default by right-clicking and select 'reset' from the context menu.

Want to know more about the standard preferences in about:config? Take a look at the mozillaZine Wiki article, about:config entries.

InfoLister

One of the neat features of Firefox is the ability to customize the browser with Extensions, Themes and Plug-Ins. But sometimes there are problems a theme does something funky to your browser. Or may be an extension goes haywire and gets corrupted. Then there is the site you visit that just doesn't behave or display the way it should (missing plug-in). Finally, lets add into the mix, multiple builds & versions of Firefox. There are so many possibilities of what could be the problem. If you have a lot of extensions (last count for me was 40) installed, it is hassle to list them all.

Whenever anyone posts on Go Firefox! a more advanced problem they are having the first thing I recommend they do is install the InfoLister extension. In a matter of seconds the extensions generates a report with loads of information:

• The build/version of Firefox and your OS
• Complete list and a total number of extensions (including enabled & disabled)
  
• Listing of all the themes installed and which one is currently in use
• Simplified listing (compared to about:plugins) of the all installed plug-ins

With this information it is very easy for me to see if the user is running an outdated extensions, a problematic theme, a troublesome (Yahoo!) or missing plug-in. Below is the results when I run InfoLister on this profile...

Last updated: Wed, 10 May 2006 04:20:21 GMT

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060426 Firefox/1.5.0.3

Extensions (enabled: 40, disabled: 0):

• About:Config 1.0
• Adblock Filterset.G Updater 0.3.0.4
• Adblock Plus 0.7
• Blue Frog SRT 0.722
• Bookmark Duplicate Detector 0.4.0
• ChromEdit 0.1.1.1
• Clear Cache Button 0.2
• CoLT 1.3.2
• Colorful Tabs 1.4
• CustomizeGoogle 0.48
• DisableBackspaceNavigation 0.1
• Download Manager Tweak 0.7.1
• Ebay Negs! 0.6
• Fasterfox 1.0.3
• FireFTP 0.90.1.1
• Flashblock 1.3.3
• Forecastfox Enhanced 0.8.5.2
• FoxyTunes 1.2.5
• Greasemonkey 0.6.4
• IE Tab 1.0.9
• Image Toolbar 0.6.3
• InfoLister 0.9c
• Linky 2.7.1
• Map+ 1.0.0
• Nightly Tester Tools 1.0.3a
• Open Profile Folder 1.1.3
• PDF Download 0.6
• PoliticianSearch 0.8
• Popup ALT Attribute 1.3.2005092701
• Resize Search Box 0.0.7
• SessionSaver .2 0.2.1.030.4
• Slim Extension List 0.3.1
• Smiley Xtra 4.0.4
• SpellBound Development 0.9.8.20060108
• Tab X 0.9.2
• Tabbrowser Preferences 1.2.8.9
• Talkback 1.5.0.3
• Update Notifier 0.1.2
• Yahoo! Mail Notifier 0.9.9.2
• eWebMail Color and Graphics 2.5

Themes (4):

• Fireburn 1.5
• Firefox (default) 2.0
• Nautipolis for Firefox 1.5.0.3 [selected]
• Orbit Red 1.5 Beta

Plugins (12):

• Adobe Acrobat
• Java(TM) 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 Update 6
• McAfee Clinic
• Microsoft® DRM
• Mozilla Default Plug-in
• PCMan's IE Tab Plug-in for Mozilla/Firefox
• QuickTime Plug-in 7.0.3
• RealJukebox NS Plugin
• RealPlayer Version Plugin
• RealPlayer(tm) G2 LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-In (32-bit)
• Shockwave Flash
• Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library

Maps+

The Maps+ Extension has quickly become one of my favorites. I use Yahoo!Maps quite frequently as I do many of the Yahoo! tools. Yahoo!Maps is great but when it comes to finding an address listed on a website it is a bit of pain:

• Copy the street address for the site
• Switch to the Yahoo!Maps tab and paste
• Switch back to the other tab and copy the city and state OR zip code.
  
• Switch back to Yahoo!Maps tab and paste
• Click get map.

NO MORE! Once this extension is installed all you need to do is highlight the address (including city and state OR zip code) on the web page you are viewing. Right click and select from your context menu, 'View Map Of...' option. An I-Frame Windows (or tooltip) opens on top of the page you are viewing and displays a Yahoo API (beta version of Yahoo!Maps). You can pan by clicking and dragging or zoom in and out. When you are done viewing the map you can either click outside of the tooltip or close it via the X on the top right corner of the window The extension can be further customized via the options from the extension manager (Tools, Extensions, highlight Maps+, Click Options):

• Set a default address for driving directions (driving directions feature does not appear to be active at this time)
• Set the size (width and height) of the tooltip in pixels from 1 to the maximum allowed by your resolution. If your resolution is set to 1024x768 you can set the tooltip to a maximum size of 1024 (width) x 768 (height).

Below is an example of the map that is generated (note I have the tooltip size set to 400x400). From My Yahoo! Page, I had highlighted the address for East Valley Cinemas, 2140 North Arizona Avenue, Chandler, AZ 85225 and the right-clicked and selected View map of "2140 North Arizona Avenue, Chandler, AZ 85225" The orange outlined balloon shows the location.

This extension works on Firefox builds 1.0 and above including the nightly builds on Bon Echo (future FF 2.0).

PoliticianSearch

NOTE: This extension works only with FF builds/version 1.5 and above.

While looking around Mozilla Add-ons today I came across and interesting extension called PoliticianSearch. It was built off the DictionarySearch extension (advantages of open-source) and once installed will add an option to your context (right-click) menu to Search Project Vote Smart...

To use, simply highlight the (US) Politician's last name, right-click and select the 'Search Project Vote Smart' option. Once installed you can try it out now by doing a search on our Governor, Janet Napolitano. If you don't have the extension installed yet, click here to open the results in Project Vote Smart.

I could find this useful for news and newspaper sites. Complete information about the politician, only a right-click away!

The Year of the Suns?

A little something different today. As I mentioned in my bio, I am originally from California, Los Angeles area to be more exact. The plays off between the (Los Angeles) Lakers and (Phoenix) Suns has been tough for me. Granted, The Lakers are not the same team they were from back in the 80's, but then again neither are the Sun's as they were in 1993 (remember Charles Barkley!). June 1993, 'Suns Fever' as they had made it all the way to the finals.

However in 1993, the Chicago Bulls proved to be too much for the Suns. The play offs went well, at least the first game, the Suns won 107 PHX to 102 LA. The the next three games they lost by 1-7 points. Last Tuesday was 'do or die' for the Suns and they made a nice comeback with a 114 to 97 win over the Lakers. Thursday's game a bit of a 'nail bitter' but the Suns managed to stay alive (even without Raja Bell) with a win of 126 PHX to 118 LA in OT.

Saturday night was the game that would decide who would advance to Conference Semi-Finals. The game last night was incredible. Never did Suns lose their lead over the Lakers. By half-time they had a sizable 15 point lead, but that wasn't good enough, by the end of the forth quarter, the Suns had increased their lead by 30+ points!!! Was it a case of over-confidence on the part of the Lakers, how else would explain them losing to the Suns 31 points (121 PHX, 90 LA)?

This is not the first time an Arizona team has made a dramatic comeback to win a series. Flashback to November 4, 2001, AZ Diamondback and NY Yankees. The game had been going slowly, with the Diamondbacks being the first to score in the 6th. Then things made a turn for the worse in the 7th & the 8th as the Yankees not only scored but took the lead. It was almost over but a small shimmer of hope, as the Diamondbacks Grace gets in a run in the bottom of the 9th to the tie the game. Extra innings? Not quite, the Yankees made a critical error moving their infield in as 'Gonzo' batted in the wining run.

So it is on to the Conference Semi-Finals with the first game on Tuesday here in Phoenix against the Los Angeles Clippers. Wait, the Clippers?! How in the world did they get into the Conference Semi-Finals? A better questions, is how did they even get into the Conference Quarterfinals? The Suns and the Clippers have played each other only 4 times and each won half of those games. I don't see the Clippers being that much of a challenge as long as the Suns stay focused and keep playing like they did in Games 5-7.

The good news is, Miami took care of Chicago already so when we make it into the NBA Finals we won't have to deal with them. Based on who's left (Detroit Pistons, Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heat, New Jersey Nets) looks like we could face either Miami or Detroit. The bad news, The San Antonio Spurs are still in and unless the Dallas Mavericks can take care of them we will face them in the Conference Finals. This was the case last year with disastrous results (lost games 1-3 & 5). Last year we were able to take care of Dallas in the Conference Semi-Finals so should they happen to eliminate San Antonio they shouldn't prove to be too much of a challenge for us.

But, one big difference this year is the Suns as whole are good and they have shown they can adapt as demonstrated in Game 6 with the unjustified suspension of Raja Bell. Last year they were too dependent on a couple players and when they got hurt the team fell apart. This should be an interesting and exciting next few weeks!

I'm the Blue Security Spammer

A fellow member on Go Firefox! posted me a link to this article from Wired News today. An anonymous spammer wrote into Wired News claiming to be "one of the spammers behind (the) Blue Security scandal". There is one paragraph of the article that stands out and shows the effect that the Blue Frog is having on their business.

"The point of it is to get Blue Frog software to stop turning its subscribers' computers into zombies that attack our servers," the spammer wrote. "If you want to be removed from our mailing list, please opt out first."

If only it were that simple! Many users who have 'opt-out' via the links (if there is one) in these messages find they suddenly get more Spam, are directed to a non-working or bogus site and worse yet, have to jump through hops just to get their e-mail address removed. Here's a better idea Mister Russian Spammer, stop sending the e-mails to begin with, we never wanted to get them in the first place! Oh wait, that would put you out of business!

The comment on this article by kamikazi150, that is well worth taking the time to read. It may be a little long but this person is very through and to the point.

The Dust Is Beginning to Clear...

It has been quite a war... PharmaMaster (Russian Spammer) vs The Blue Frog.

• First they sent tons of spam messages with misleading information, threatening and extorting us Blue Frog Members to remove ourselves from the registry or get tons more spam.
• They repeated this again and again.
• Then they really started playing dirty, they sent more spam but disguised it as to look as the messages were from members of Blue Frog. Again, providing misleading information about Blue Security.
• To further up the ante, launched a denial of service (DoS) attacks against Blue Security sites.
• Another bombardment of Spam from May 4th to May 6th.
  

The end result? The Blue Frog is still standing (a little wounded but still holding its ground). For more detailed information on the May 1-5 Attacks, please visit the CastleCops Forums.

The main Blue Security and members sites are back up, but the Spam Reporting took some damage along with the Blue Security's Community sections. There are presently unavailable and Blue Security is asking for you to hold off on your spam reporting until they can get there areas fixed.

A Status On The Blue Frog

Well the good news it seems Blue Frog/Security's website is back up, the bad news...

Blue Security's servers are currently under attack.

Our staff is working around the clock to restore normal operation as soon as possible.

We are extremely happy to see the overwhelming level of support and global presence the Blue Community is showing.

Thank you for your patience!

We'll have to wait to see how this plays out in the next couple days. As for my spam count...getting more recycle and future spam on the Yahoo! account, but 99% of it is being caught and deposited into the bulk folder. My ISP's e-mail accounts have been spam free since this whole incident with Blue Security started earlier this week and YES they are registered. I am not sure though how much spam gets caught-up in my ISP's spam filter, but still usually a half dozen messages will slip through a day. Since Monday, nada!

The Blue Frog Is In Trouble

As of this evening, Blue Frog/Security's sites are completely inaccessible, more about this in a bit. Now allow me to back up to last night. A couple things happened that I found odd but would have had no idea they were related:

1. When I went to bluesecurity.com last night it took me to the their blogs site (bluesecurity.blogs.com)
   
2. Earlier in the evening I was experimenting with Live Journal when that site started becoming very sluggish and some points inaccessible.

I was thinking the troubles with Live Journal seemed all too similar to those at Blue Frog/Security, but these could not possibly be related...could they? The answer came tonight while searching the web for more news on Blue Security. I came across an article posted on the Q Daily News: The dishonor of Blue Security.

Now, back to item #1, the redirect to the blogs site...The Blue Security blog site is TypePad which is hosted by Six Apart, the same people who host Live Journal (item #2). Seeing the connection between what was thought to be two unrelated events? Now, the question is why would Blue Security do this? Simple, redirect the domain away from their server, which at that time was being bogged down by DoS attacks. So then the DoS attacks were hitting Six Apart's severs which is what caused Live Journal to go down last night. The Q Daily News author came up with an excellent analogy for what Blue Security did:

"You dealing with a water main break in your basement by hooking a big hose up to the leaking joint and redirecting the water into your neighbor’s basement instead." Link

It appears Blue Security is still trying to redirect their domain on to Six Apart's servers however Six Apart has found a way to block the redirect which is why users are now getting an "Unable to connect" (Page Can Not Be Displayed for you Folks using IE) error message instead of "Connection Timed Out"

Now you may be asking, "Oh humble Guru are you going to keep the Blue Frog or send it to that big blue lillypad in the sky?" To be honest I really don't know, I'll have to do more reading.

The Blue Frog Still Alive!

For a brief time last night I was able to access the blogs portion of Blue Security's site. Here is a portion of their Blog entry for 05/03: The Blue Independence War

"Today is Israel's Independence Day. It's a public holiday in Israel, but all of us in Blue Security are working. But we are glad we're working. We're helping the community fight the Blue Independence War. We fight for our freedom from spammers and cyber criminals. This is our big chance to reclaim the Internet. We must not let it slip from our hands.

Some desperate spammers are doing its worst to harm our community. They'd like us to back off, and agree to get their spam silently. Needless to say, that is not going to happen. We're not here to listen to their vile threats and fraudulent advertisements. We're here to stand up for our right not to be let alone."

Unfortunately, this morning the DoS attacks continue and even the blogs portion of Blue Security's site is inaccessible. Did a little search for some News on Blue Security and came across an article on MacWorld, Spammers turn on antispam vigilantes. Comments below are from Eran Reshef, CEO of Israeli based Blue Security.

"The spam campaign is a sign of Blue Security’s success and an act of frustration by a major spammer based in Russia, Reshef said.

“It’s one of the top spammers. We’re not sure which one at this point, but six of the top ten are complying with (Blue Security), so it’s one of the remaining four,” Reshef said."

Silly of me to think all this spam was originating from within the US. Of course who could forget those Nigerian scam emails, you know ones I am talking about...some high ranking person dies suddenly and tragically leaving behind millions upon millions of dollars.

A quick scan of my Yahoo! Mail box and I noticed haven't seen any of these lately. Wonder if they were one of the six top ten that have chosen to comply? As for the spam in general today, seems to be lighter than yesterday and no 'future spam' thus far.

Even though Blue Security's site is still down, Blue Frog is still reporting the e-mails. You can also obtain the Blue Frog software via download.com, but you will need to wait for the site to come back up before you can register.

FF 1.5.0.3 Released

In Mozilla's on going commitment to providing a safe and quality product, an updated version of Firefox (1.5.0.3) was released today. FF 1.5.0.3 previously was going to contain more fixes but due to the severity of a Denial of Service (Dos) vulnerability discovered last week this issue was addressed, fixed and put into this release. All the other fixes which were slated for the 1.5.0.3 release have been moved into the upcoming FF 1.5.0.4 release.

More information can be found in the Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.3 Release Notes. If you have Firefox configured to Automatically Install and Download Updates (default setting) you do not need to do anything but shut-down and restart Firefox when prompted to do so. If you have the Automatic Installation disabled, go to the Help Menu and select, 'Check For Updates...'

For those of you who may be running the older FF 1.0.8, there is no update at this time and unknown if there will be.

Colorful Tabs Just Got More Colorful

On April 27th, a new version (1.2) of Colorful Tabs extension was released. For those of you who are not familiar with this extension, it assigns each tab in your FF tab bar a different color. Some of the documented changes in this version included making it so that closing a tab did not change the color of the tabs around it. Also no longer is there the limitation of colored tabs after the 32nd tab.

Now this got me thinking, if you have 32 tabs open they have to be so narrow how could you even distinguish the colors? For that matter why would someone have 32+ tabs open?

A fellow member over at Go Firefox! was kind enough to confirm a theory I had about an undocumented change. It appears there is no longer a set color order for the tabs when you open new tabs. Now, when a new tab opens it is random color and there also seems to be more colors now (or least different shades).

Has Blue Frog Croaked?

Over the past 48 hours there has been a lot of 'rumors' and 'chatter' that just may be Blue Frog croaked and that the Do Not Intrude Registray database has been compromised. Their web site has been inaccessible since May 1st due to various DoS (Denial of Service) attacks. On to top of that, apparently a desperate group of spammers are claiming they sent out this message to ALL the registered users of Blue Frog on May 1st:

Hey,

You are recieving this email because you are a member of BlueSecurity (http://www.bluesecurity.com).

You signed up because you were expecting to recieve a lesser amount of spam, unfortunately, due to the tactics used by BlueSecurity, you will end up recieving this message, or other nonsensical spams 20-40 times more than you would normally.

How do you make it stop?

Simple, in 48 hours, and every 48 hours thereafter, we will run our current list of BlueSecurity subscribers through BlueSecurity’s database, if you arent there.. you wont get this again.

We have devised a method to retrieve your address from their database, so by signing up and remaining a BlueSecurity user not only are you opening yourself up for this, you are also potentially verifying your email address through them to even more spammers, and will end up getting up even more spam as an end-result.

By signing up for bluesecurity, you are doing the exact opposite of what you want, so delete your account, and you will stop recieving this.

Why are we doing this?

Its simple, we dont want to, but BlueSecurity is forcing us. We would much rather not waste our resources and send you these useless mails.

Its simple, we dont want to, but BlueSecurity is forcing us. We would much rather not waste our resources and send you these useless mails, but do not believe for one second that we will stop this tirade of emails if you choose to stay with BlueSecurity.
Just remember one thing when you read this, we didnt do this to you, BlueSecurity did.

If BlueSecurity decides to play fair, we will do the same.

Just remove yourself from BlueSecurity, and make it easier on you.

Gena Elmore

So what does this mean? Nothing! It just more spam and empty threats by a spammer. A few observations:

1. Looks like a typical spam/phising e-mail, poor grammar, misspelled words and the poor souls are using keyboards that don't have an apostrophe (') key!
   
2. Of the four address I have registered with Blue Frog/Security, NONE of them got this message (and others have said they have gotten it on some but not all of their registered addresses).
   
3. I have seen a slight increase of spam (more like future spam as the e-mails are dated 05/03-05/10) on my Yahoo! account
4. My ISP e-mail accounts appear to be getting less spam than it has before
5. The 'future' spam I am getting appears to be multiple copies or variation of the same spam, another words I am getting recycled spam, nothing new.
6. How are we suppose to 'remove' ourselves if they have taken down the Blue Security site with DoS attacks?
   

In the meantime while were waiting for the dust to settle from the DoS attacks on Blue Security's sites, check out this article: Enabling the Complaint Department, for more information about Blue Security.

Blue Frog

A while back on the Go Firefox! Forum, the humble Guru was asked about Blue Frog Anti Spam extension and software. The extension and software (about 4 MB) are suppose to reduce the amount of Spam you get by making spammers remove all Blue Community members from their mailing lists. The software will automatically run in the background when you access your web e-mail accounts (Yahoo!, G-Mail, Hotmail, etc) and go through your junk/bulk folder and report the spam. For Desktop mail clients (Thunderbird, Outlook, Eudora, etc.) you will need to forward the messages directly to a special address you will be assigned when you sign up.

Once a registered member, you can protect up to 10 e-mail addresses and one domain. Been registered for about a week now and have seen a slight but noticeable reduction in the amount of Spam I have been getting on my Yahoo! account. It actually seemed to be more effective on my ISP e-mail accounts, my Junk Folder in Thunderbird is piratically empty.

Over the next couple weeks I'll keep tabs on my Yahoo! account and see how much more of a reduction of Spam I will get. Speaking of Yahoo! if you are having issues with your Firefox crashing when trying to access Yahoo! Mail and you are running Blue Frog and/or AdBlock Plus there is a bug in the plug-in for Yahoo!Messenger. The workaround is to remove the plug-in by deleting the following file: C:/Program Files/Yahoo!/Shared/npYState.dll (or where your Yahoo! Messenger is installed).

Excellent Move Mr. Schroepfer!

Note: Some of this content I had posted previously on the Go Firefox! Forum. After some time to think this over and doing some in depth research I have decided to dig into this in more detail on my blog.

On Friday, April 28th, Mozilla announced they would be pulling a major feature from the forthcoming Firefox 2.0 (due out later this year). In the announcement on mozillaZine, there is a link to a news group post by Mike Schroepfer of Mozilla Corporation explains the reasoning for the feature removal.

There are two key points here:

1. The decision to remove an incomplete or non-functioning from FF 2.0
2. The justification of Mozilla in keeping the release as FF 2.0 without this feature
   

The first part of Mr. Schroepfer's comment really stood out...

"Places is a complex and exciting feature which changes the way people use bookmarks, history, and navigate through their private space of the web. Rather than rush it to market - we'd prefer to spend the time it takes to get it right."

First off a bit of rant, I am so tired of software developers trying to 'rush it to market' resulting in a crappy product. The paying end-user become beta-testers. While Firefox is free and being open source (resulting in the end-user being somewhat of a beta-tester), Mozilla still wants to present a quality product to the market, not something half working. You know it is bad when you get new software installed and the first thing you have to do in order to even get it to work is download patches.

Now before I start getting a ton of comments from folks asking the 'Oh humble Guru, what about all the updates to Firefox 1.5, weren't those patches?' True they are patches, but those were fix minor bugs and/or security/exploitation issues, not a patch to major new feature. Further Firefox could run without the said patches (although it is not recommended).

As Mr. Schroepfer said 'Places' is a 'complex and exciting feature' which also means a major change to the look and feel of Firefox. From what I have read in various Blogs from those who work and test the nightly releases the 'Places' feature had a lot of stability issues and they are glad to see it pulled. So to leave this feature in place (no pun intended) ,not fully developed or broken could really be bad news for Firefox. Bad news not only because it does not work correctly but also could cause the whole browser to malfunction. This could leave a bad taste in peoples mouths about the 'Places' feature as well Firefox in general.

Again before I get a ton of comments such as 'Oh humble Guru, but aren't end-users use to broken or incomplete features from other developers such as that big one in Redmond, Washington that also beings with 'M'?" or 'Oh humble Guru, Firefox is a free product, the end-user gets what they pay for!' Again, I stress quality product (less a few minor glitches) which is what the end-users are use to and expect from Mozilla. Besides, IE is free and then there all the problems Microsoft created by Tying IE Changes To Security Patch.

Now, if Mozilla were to go ahead and push forward FF 2.0 with the defective 'Places' feature the negative response (and possible backlash) to FF 2.0 in general could overshadow some of the other and functional features (see below). This could result in end-users rolling back to 1.5.0.* or whatever the most recent builds were, until a more stable 2.0 with a functioning Places (2.0.*) is released. Or worse yet, being so disappointed and/or frustrated end users just remove Firefox from their machines (nothing like shooting yourself in the foot).

The uproar in the Mozilla/Firefox community is not really the removal of 'Places' from FF 2.0, but keeping the 2.0 version number. Mozilla has quite an elaborate numbering scheme and to move up th next whole number (e.g. from 1.5 to 2.0) usually means a major change in the 'engine'. Many people feel 'Places' is that major change and therefore yanking it out of the next big release it shouldn't be numbered as FF 2.0. They would rather have it called FF 1.6. But there are plenty of other smaller yet 'exciting' features coming (see below) to justify the major release designation of FF 2.0. This issue is addressed in Ben Goodger's blog, Inside Firefox.

FF 2.0 New Features:

• Visual Refresh (new look and feel)
  
• Safebrowser anti-phising
  
• Inline spellcheck (something that is offered now with the Spellbound Extension)
  
• Session Management (SessionSaver)
• RSS handling improvements
  
• Extension/Themes UI change
• New search engine infrastructure and UI
  
• New installer
• Browser performance metric measurer

Okay, so we may have to wait for FF 2.5 (speculation on version/build number) before we get the new and improved look and feel of Firefox with 'Places'. I don't mind waiting a few more months for a working version, something to look forward to in that upcoming release. Further I really don't care if FF 1.6 or FF 2.0, I am just happy Mozilla is keeping their commitment to a quality product.

Multiple Profile Disorder

I appear to be suffering from Multiple Profile Disorder! With all the testing I do on Go Firefox! and with different versions of Firefox (1.0.7, 1.0.8, 1.5.0.*, 1.6a1, Bon Echo, etc.). I have way too many profiles and I am not even sure what some of them are and worse yet, what version of Firefox I was using them for!

So Guru, What is a "Profile"?

Simply put a 'profile' on Firefox is your settings or a non-technical term personality. Your profile contains all your Bookmarks (Favorites for you IE folks), Extensions (add-ons, more about these in another time), Themes (kinda similar to skins) as well as all your settings. You can learn all about profiles on the Firefox Help site which has these wonderful words of advice...

"Multiple profiles and profile management is an advanced feature, mainly intended for developers. Unless you are an extension developer or an advanced user, you should probably not be trying to use multiple profiles."

I am not an extension developer, although I have been tempted time to time to develop an extension. I guess that makes me an advanced user! I guess this means I should do some housekeeping in my profile manager. So the moral of this story, follow the advice above or you could end up like me, suffering from Multiple Profile Disorder!

A Blog is Born!

Well, I have finally jumped on the bandwagon and have created a blog! This blog is going to be primarily (if not entirely) about my experiences with Firefox. What the heck is Firefox you might be asking yourself? Well, it is a free, open-source web browser created by the folks at Mozilla. It is a great alternative to the buggy and security hole ridden IE browser.

I consider myself somewhat (only because I haven't done any development type of stuff) of an advanced user of Firefox. Over the past year and half now, I have done a lot (including crashing) with multiple versions of Firefox. This is a rough draft of topics I might discuss in here:

• Firefox Extensions
• Using (and Crashing) Firefox
• Mozilla/Firefox News
• and more!