Archive for September 1st, 2008

« Older Entries

First looks: A day with IE8 beta 2

Monday, September 1st, 2008

First looks: A day with IE8 beta 2

There’s plenty to like in Microsoft’s new browser, but is it enough to stem the FireFox tide?

I have used Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) intensively since its beta 2 release on 27 August, mostly with good results.

The improved HTML and CSS standards support in IE8 does break pages, and I found plenty of examples, but Microsoft has minimised the pain with a brilliant instant-fix compatibility button.

Speed improvements are real as well and, even running in a virtual machine, IE8 feels brisker than its predecessor. The updated user interface feels polished and smooth.

Microsoft has also done some good security work. By default, ActiveX controls only work on the site from which they are downloaded, with the exception of a few widely-used controls like Adobe’s Flash.

The new option for InPrivate Browsing, known colloquially as ‘porn mode’, seems to work as promised by not recording site visits in browser history; and its partner, called InPrivate Blocking, lets users block content from third-party sites.

Users may not realise that their activity can still be tracked outside the browser, for example by proxy server logs, but I expect this will still be a welcome feature.

Microsoft’s efforts to “reach beyond the page”, as the blurb promises, are not so compelling.

Accelerators are pop-up menus that appear when you select text, with options like translating the text or searching for a word definition. It is mildly useful, but nothing special.

Web slices bring you content from other sites in a miniature window, but the difficulty here is that the toolbar soon gets cluttered.

Suggested Sites is meant to recommend pages like the current one, but has so far failed to come up with anything remotely interesting; mostly it is not even sensible. This should improve as Microsoft gathers more data.

All credit to Microsoft for a strong upgrade from IE7, and for improved standards support that will eventually help the web to move on from the IE6 deep-freeze.

Still, is it good enough, given the fast pace of browser development elsewhere? There are nagging doubts.

Microsoft in 2008 seems less nimble than the company that won the first browser wars. It will be a full two years since IE7 when this new one finally gets released.

There is plenty more to do, standards are moving on with HTML 5.0, and IE8 will not satisfy developers for long. Exciting features like just-in-time JavaScript compilation in FireFox alphas will make IE8 seem slow.

Another weakness is that Microsoft lacks the vibrant third-party add-on community enjoyed by its main rival.

IE8 promises to be an excellent browser, but it will take more than this to win back real momentum on the web.

source:vnunet.com

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Internet Explorer, Web Browsers, softwares - news | No Comments »

Google secures Firefox search box until 2011

Monday, September 1st, 2008

Google secures Firefox search box until 2011

If you are a regular user of the Firefox browser then you are used to seeing the search box in the top right hand corner of the window. You are also used to the default search engine for that box being Google.

That default option didn’t just happen and Google pay to be the first choice. Until this week, however, that option was only set to continue to November 2008, but Google and Mozilla have renegotiated to extend the relationship between the browser and the search engine until November 2011.

What this translates to is a lot of money for Mozilla to continue developing their many software projects, while Google retains the important default search option in the browser that is increasingly taking market share from Microsoft.

News of the new deal came in a blog posting by Mitchell Baker, chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation. She posted:

We’ve just renewed our agreement with Google for an additional three years. This agreement now ends in November of 2011 rather than November of 2008, so we have stability in income. We’re also learning more all the time about how to use Mozilla’s financial resources to help contributors through infrastructure, new programs, and new types of support from employees.

Source: geek.com

Tags: , ,
Posted in Firefox, Web Browsers | No Comments »

Naturally Firefox

Monday, September 1st, 2008

Naturally Firefox

A way of joining up different uses of the web so when you want to invite someone out to dinner, say, a browser finds a restaurant, finds a review and then emails it all over with a map. Iain Simons reports

For the early adopters amongst you, Mozilla Labs have released a very early version of new Firefox (you are using Firefox, right?) extension Ubiquity, which they describe as “an experiment into connecting the web with language”. Like most 0.1 releases this is a long way from a tool you can rely on, but there’s enough here to warrant a download to get a hint of what could be possible.

Ubiquity aspires to providing a natural language solution for bringing together uses of the web which are currently disconnected. The example they offer, of trying to invite a friend to a local restaurant for dinner using the internet is persuasive. Currently, you’d need to locate the restaurant on map, perhaps find some reviews and then copy and then paste them into an email before sending it on. In other words, lots of ‘trundling between sites’ as the developers would have it. In Ubiquity, the aspiration is to be able to invoke the window and type something like ‘find a map for restaurant x, find some reviews, then email it to Britney’. It’s a long way from being able to do that yet but still has enough functionality to be meaningful. For more information, head of user experience at Mozilla Aza Raskin has published an in-depth overview on his blog.

One of the core problems with a project such as this is always the extensibility of it, the ability for contributors to create Ubiquity commands for their web services. Being an open-source project, that was foremost in the developers’ minds when it was created. A rapidly growing selection of third-party commands are already being posted at the commands in the wild page which bodes well for the sustainability and adoptability of the project.

Natural language input has featured in a number of system level projects, Enso on windows and Quicksilver for Mac – but the core difference here is the move to the browser itself becoming the platform. Ubiquity has a long journey ahead to convince mainstream users of the value of that, but it’s a great start and chance to get in on the ground floor of what could become a hugely important application in the future.

Source: newstatesman.com

Tags: , ,
Posted in Firefox, Web Browsers | No Comments »

Google and Firefox Together Until 2011

Monday, September 1st, 2008

Google and Firefox Together Until 2011

Mozilla, the makers of Firefox internet browser (the only notable competitor to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer), has extended its deal with Google – meaning the search giant will continue to be the default search engine on all its Firefox installs until 2011.

The deal, which was first agreed on in 2006, represents the single biggest income stream for Mozilla, almost 85% of its total income (approx $57M in 2006).

Users of the Firefox browser are able to change their preferred search engine once it’s installed, however complacency by users often sees the default remain in place permanently.

Last year, Mozilla’s former CEO was adamant that the company would walk away from the lucrative deal, should it compromise the independence of the company – not wanting to become just another arm of the Google empire. Hard to believe when you’re talking about almost all your organization’s revenue.

Either way, it appears that Mozilla’s independence remains intact and Google yet again gets one up on its primary competitors Yahoo! and Microsoft.

Being the search engine default on browsers isn’t the “be all and end all” of market dominance. Google still reigns supreme even though Microsoft’s Internet Explorer holds over 70% of the browser market.

Though Microsoft dominates the browser world, Mozilla continues to gain ground, with recent estimates suggesting its share is closing in on 20%. When you consider how many internet users there are in the world – Google’s deal will ensure its the first search engine many millions of new Firefox users see.

Source: webpronews.com

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Firefox, Web Browsers | No Comments »

Red Hat hack prompts critical OpenSSH update

Monday, September 1st, 2008

Red Hat hack prompts critical OpenSSH update

Red Hat has warned that hackers were able to commandeer its systems and tamper with code – but said that since its content distribution was not hit, it is confident that polluted code has not served up to users.

The first hint that something was wrong came last week when Fedora rebuilt its systems, a reconstruction that was accompanied by extended outages. Red Hat sponsors the Linux distribution. Fortunately Fedora packages weren’t interfered with following the attack, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages were touched up by as yet unidentified miscreants.

“Last week Red Hat detected an intrusion on certain of its computer systems and took immediate action,” Red Hat said in a critical security advisory issued on Friday. “While the investigation into the intrusion is ongoing, our initial focus was to review and test the distribution channel we use with our customers.”

While checks on its content distribution networks came back clean, it did turn up some problems.

“An intruder was able to sign a small number of OpenSSH packages relating only to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (i386 and x86_64 architectures only) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (x86_64 architecture only).

“As a precautionary measure, we are releasing an updated version of these packages, and have published a list of the tampered packages and how to detect them here.”

In a parallel posting to the Fedora announce mailing list early on Friday morning Paul Frields, Fedora project leader, confirmed that an intrusion by computer hackers had prompted the unprecedented rebuild by the Linux distribution, which is sponsored by Red Hat.

“Last week we discovered that some Fedora servers were illegally accessed. The intrusion into the servers was quickly discovered, and the servers were taken offline.

“Security specialists and administrators have been working since then to analyze the intrusion and the extent of the compromise as well as reinstall Fedora systems.”

Among the compromised Fedora servers was a machine used for signing Fedora packages. Following a forensic examination, the Linux distribution is convinced that hackers were not able to capture the passphrase used to secure the Fedora package signing key. “Based on our review to date, the passphrase was not used during the time of the intrusion on the system and the passphrase is not stored on any of the Fedora servers,” Frields writes.

Nonetheless, as a precaution, Fedora has changed its signing key. Access to the key would have potentially allowed hackers to offer up code with built-in backdoors carrying the Fedora hallmark, the risk Red Hat is grappling with in the case of the doctored OpenSSH packages.

Fedora has carried out checks that suggest the integrity of its packages and source code have not been affected by the breach. It said it was simply playing it safe when it advised users to hold off from downloads last week, a piece of advice that stoked speculation that a security breach was behind the then unexplained outage.

“The effects of the intrusion on Fedora and Red Hat are not the same,” Frields added. “Accordingly, the Fedora package signing key is not connected to, and is different from, the one used to sign Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages.”

Source: theregister.co.uk

Tags: , ,
Posted in Linux, Red Hat | No Comments »

« Older Entries