Firefox 1.5 Released

Mozilla has finally released Firefox 1.5. A notable new feature is the new Software Update to easily get the newest updates for Firefox. No longer will you have to reinstall the entire browser to get the latest version; it’s all done within the browser instance. Pop-up blocking is also improved, and Firefox now has even stronger security.

I have been using Firefox 1.5 since the first Release Candidates were made available and I haven’t run into any problems with it. It actually seems a lot more stable than Firefox 1.0.7. And many of my favorite extensions have been updated for 1.5 (Google Toolbar, Bloglines Toolkit, Gmail Notifier). And the new version of Greasemonkey for Firefox 1.5 should see the light of day eventually.

Flock Has Landed on My Desktop

Flock is a cool new take on the browser experience. It uses Mozilla Firefox as the base and adds some neat enhancements. I will have some more information for you in the future, but I just wanted to test out its blogging feature.

Google Toolbar for Firefox

The Google Toolbar for Firefox has been updated and has come out of beta. Two great new features to note are: being able to customize your Toolbar layout, and having Google Suggest built-in to the Toolbar search box. You can move the Google search box to where the current Firefox search box is, and then you have Google Suggest at your finger tips. It gives you suggestions of search terms as you type in the box. You can also move the Pagerank display to a more convenient location in Firefox.

There are also the other features you would expect to find such as a Pagerank display, search highlighting, and spell checking. There is even a “BlogThis” button that loads up a Blogger popup that lets you easily login and blog about a URL. It passes the current URL as a field to Blogger.

Greasemonkey 0.5 Beta

Greasemonkey 0.5 beta is now available for download. It fixes the previously publicized security issues, and some bugs that were not mentioned. It also merges in the features that were planned for Greasemonkey 0.4. User script commands no longer get lost sometimes when switching tabs, user script commands can now have keyboard shortcuts, memory leaks were addressed, and there is a new API to open links in a new tab. Check it out, along with my Greasemonkey scripts.

Greasemonkey, a Lesson in Open Source Development

It has recently been reported that Greasemonkey, a popular addon for the Firefox web browser which allows users to modify the content of the sites they view, has a flaw that could open up users to attacks by malicious websites that they visit. The Greasemonkey developers quickly released a scaled down version of the addon while they fix the problem.

Mark Pilgrim discovered that a trio of bugs, when combined, could lead to the unwarranted access of local files. He announced his findings to the Greasemonkey mailing list and as Pilgrim says, “the GM developers, as well as everyone else on the list, immediately took the threat seriously and began discussing possible solutions.” He also created a detection script that uses Greasemonkey’s vulnerability to non-maliciously inform web visitors if they are running a vulnerable version. The script displays a warning which points them to the Greasemonkey home page to download the update, and to the mailing list message that explains how serious the vulnerability is.

Aaron Boodman, the creator of Greasemonkey, is hard at work fixing the bugs. As Jeremy Dunck, a Greasemonkey contributor, puts it, “he’s been unavailable because he’s snowed under trying to finish a working 0.4 release which fixes the vulnerabilities without sacrificing compatibility or performance.” “Aaron’s pretty much single-handedly been doing the code in this response.” But it’s not just about one person.

“I think the community fostered by an open source project is very important in terms of how responsive we can be. I’m trying to imagine Aaron hacking away on this code by himself without any feedback or contact with the outside world other than ‘deploy’, and I just can’t see it working at all” says Dunck. “There’s been a lot of useful feedback on how to address this issue in the last 2 days. The community wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t open, and now we’re pulling together.”

Google/Firefox Link Prefetching

Google has rolled out a new feature that uses a recently added feature in Firefox. Firefox 1.0.2 includes support for link prefetching, which “utilizes browser idle time to download or prefetch documents that the user might visit in the near future.” The documentation was written by Darin Fisher who was hired by Google at the end of January. Only Firefox 1.0.2, which was released a week ago, supports this feature and already Google supports it for the first search result in cases where they calculate you have a high chance of clicking on the first link.

While this may seem a bit sinister, it’s great to see Google really supporting Firefox and pushing more people to use it. The Google Blog post introducing their use of prefetch includes 2 links to Firefox. Mike Lambert says there is nothing bad going on and “Google’s Mozilla developers created a feature for Mozilla that enhances the platform for everyone.”

I Heart Bloglines

Well my free Bloglines t-shirt finally came. It’s pretty snazzy and came with a thank you letter from Ask Jeeves’ PR head. I have also started using Bloglines in earnest lately. It does a great job of allowing me to organize my feeds and the Bloglines Notifier for Firefox is a great tool. I am always bothered with having to open up all the sites I visit frequently and check for updates, but now Bloglines does it for me.

Add GoogleX to Firefox

I have figured out how to add GoogleX search to the Firefox search box. There is a link on GoogleX so that you can add the engine and easily search from within Firefox. The results are skinned to match the Shiwej.com theme along with a link back to http://shiwej.com/googlex/, and part of the ad revenue goes toward supporting this site. Let me know if you like it or not.

Google Suggest Firefox extension

GSuggest adds Google Suggest-like behavior to the browser’s search tool. It’s a proof of concept script that works pretty nicely.

And if you didn’t know already, Google Suggest is a recent feature from Google that gives you search term suggestions as you are typing a search.

it’s good to be the king

Pimp some hos (all in fun of course). Get a free alternative to Internet Explorer or find out why you should. Google’s Sergey Brin is still cryptic about a possible Google browser. And Google just released a tool that allows you to easily search for files on your own computer and O’Reilly has a review.

It seems that people are actually getting their free ipods. G4TechTV even investigated them and things "seem" legit. Though others are reporting that users get spam and delays.

And I will give out a Gmail invite to the first 2 people who comment on this post requesting one. More will be available in the future if all goes well. Don’t know what Gmail is? Find out what all the fuss is about.

And for all you game fans: Halo 2 might have been leaked online, ahead of its November 9th release date.