Mozilla

9th November 2006

Tamarin

On Tuesday, the Mozilla Foundation and Adobe announced the Tamarin project, an open-source ECMAScript virtual machine based on the ActionScript engine used by Flash Player 9. Frank Hecker's overvie...

11th September 2005

Firefox 1.5 developer highlights

Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 is out, and is the most exciting browser release in a very long time. It comes with the Gecko 1.8 rendering engine, which includes a ton of interesting new features. New in this ver...

8th July 2005

Dissecting the Google Firefox Toolbar

Google have finally released a Firefox version of the Google Toolbar, with some nice praise for XUL in to the bargain. Of course, the most interesting part of the toolbar from a geeky point of view is...

28th April 2005

A Firefox observation

There are (to my knowledge) around 80 people on my undergraduate computer science course. Of those 80, I know of at least fourfive who's final year project involves writing a Firefox extension of some...

30th March 2005

Greasemonkey as a lightweight intermediary

In The architecture of intermediation, Jon Udell discusses the need for a mechanism for a high-level tool for adding custom features to web applications. In Jon's case, he wants to add a private bookm...

8th January 2005

Fixing MSDN with Greasemonkey

Site specific browser customisations have been a a recurring theme on this site over the past six months. Thanks to the ever inventive Aaron Boodman that problem is pretty much solved. Greasemonkey is...

16th December 2004

A quote

Ramez Naam, group program manager for MSN Search, declined to say whether or not search functions would be integrated directly into Microsoft's Internet Explorer. But a Microsoft executive, who aske...

14th September 2004

Browser innovation is alive and well

Here's a feature that caught me by surprise (maybe I haven't been keeping my ear close enough to the ground): the new Firefox 1.0 preview release supports Live Bookmarks, a novel twist on RSS aggregat...

19th August 2004

Site specific stylesheets in Mozilla

New in Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 3: bug 238099 - implement at-rule for matching on site/document URL. Here's the example: @-moz-document url-prefix(http://www.mozilla.org/) { #q { background: white ! im...

20th July 2004

Site-specific extensions

I've been thinking about per-site user stylesheets for a while now, but my colleague Adrian has gone one better: his All Music Guide Corrector extension for Firefox fixes their horrible JavaScript lin...

15th July 2004

Per-site user stylesheets

I've been thinking a lot about per-site user stylsheets recently. Eric Meyer's CSS signatures are great for sites that support them (as this site does), but the sites that really need altering are hig...

22nd April 2004

Mozilla 1.7 RC 1

There are some interesting tid-bits hidden away in the release notes for the new Mozilla 1.7 RC 1 release. The following in particular caught my eye: Mozilla 1.7 size and performance have improve...

5th March 2004

Two handy FireFox extensions

Just a quick plug for a couple of FireFox extensions I've been digging recently. Chris Pederick's Web Developer toolbar / menu extension combines ideas from a whole bunch of other extensions and bookm...

29th October 2003

PCs for non-geeks

A couple of interesting links about the security problems faced by the vast majority of the home PC using public, who don't know how to install security updates (or even what they are) and don't have ...

26th October 2003

Capturing the power of re.split

A couple of Python tips. The first is really a tip for Mozilla/Firebird: You can set up a Custom Keyword for instantly accessing Python module documentation using the string www.python.org/doc/current...

24th October 2003

Microsoft's XUL

According to this Microsoft blogger the reason IE development has seemed quiet of late is that they've been working hard on XAML, an XML Application Markup Language which is a way to create applicatio...

10th October 2003

Firebird URL shortcut tips

I've been using these for ages, but in case you haven't heard about them here are some handy shortcuts involving Firebird's URL bar: Enter a word (or several words) and hit Enter; Firebird runs ...

5th September 2003

Thunderbird 0.2

Thunderbird has to have the most deceiving version numbers of any software I've ever used. I avoided version 0.1 for ages because I incorrectly assumed that a 0.1 release shouldn't be trusted with my ...

18th August 2003

Firebird sidebars coming soon

Mozillazine are carrying a preview of the next release of the excellent Firebird browser, with the most exciting new feature being the new support for Mozilla style sidebars (previously known as web p...

12th August 2003

Firebird and Mozilla chrome URLs

Jesse Ruderman (of indispensible bookmarklets fame) now has a blog. It's off to a good start: here's a useful summary of the different chrome URLs available in Firebird and Mozilla....

3rd August 2003

Marketing Firebird

Blake Ross has published a page on Marketing Firebird. He makes an interesting comparison between Firebird and Kazaa, pointing out that Kazaa has over 3.1 million downloads a week with promotion only ...

23rd July 2003

Mozilla 1.5a and Firebird 0.6.1

Mozilla 1.5 alpha is now available for download from Mozilla.org. Changenotes here (it looks like mostly improvements to Composer, but the ability to jump from the javascript debugger straight to the ...

17th July 2003

The Google Browser

Anil Dash suggests Google should start sponsoring the Mozilla project, and use it as a basis for releasing their own browser. He makes a very good case: Firebird is, finally, a usable browser, an...

15th July 2003

Netscape R.I.P.

Chances are you've heard this already, but Netscape is no more. MozillaZine are reporting that AOL has cut or will cut the remaining team working on Mozilla in a mass firing and are dismantling what w...

18th June 2003

Thunderbird supports extensions

I've been pretty unexcited by Thunderbird so far: I'm pretty picky about my mail clients (so far Evolution is the only client I've really liked) and Mozilla's never really lived up to my expectiations...

15th June 2003

Aha!

Well that explains an awful lot. I was getting a huge number of complaints about lost comments when people were told off by my comment HTML checker, so it's nice to know that the problem wasn't entire...

Phil Ringnalda on Firebird extensions

Phil Ringnalda writes about Firebird extensions: Don't get me wrong: Firebird by itself is a wonderful browser. Just the standard tabbed browsing, so you can easily switch between several differe...

19th May 2003

New Gestures Build

There's a new nightly build of the Mozilla mouse gestures plugin which supports Firebird 0.6 and has a preferences panel, complete with options for setting up custom gestures. I missed the customise b...

6th May 2003

New mozgest soon

AndyEd on the Mozilla gestures project: We're actually on the cusp of a huge new release with awesome customization features including complete customization of rocker (mouse button) mappings. ...

1st May 2003

XUL and PHP

XUL: rendering GUIs with PHP and XUL to PHP-GTK, both on the excellent phpPatterns(). If you're using a Gecko-based browser be sure to check out the XUL Interface to phpPatterns() proof-of-concept, wh...

Firebird Switch Campaign

Why You Should Switch to the Mozilla Firebird by Ben Goodger is an excellent overview of Firebird's advantages over other browsers, hosted on the Phoenix project site. I'm really looking forward to th...

28th April 2003

More fun with Search

While browsing around my phoenix/ directory I spotted a sub-directory called searchplugins, which appears to control the list of search engines available in the very useful search box at the top right...

Phoenix / Firebird nightlies hotting up

Word on the street is that Phoenix 0.6 (or Firebird or Mozilla Firebird or Mozilla Browser or whatever else you want to call it) could be out within the next week or so. I'm using the 28th April night...

8th April 2003

LiveHTTPHeaders

Via Sam Buchanan, Daniel Savard's incredibly useful LiveHTTPHeaders addon for Mozilla and Phoenix. It adds an extra tab to the Page Info dialog with the full HTTP headers sent with the page, and also ...

2nd April 2003

Mozilla changes focus

The Mozilla project is shifting focus to concentrate more on standalone apps such as Phoenix and Minotaur. Cool. The full story can be found on MozillaZine, with further details on the Mozilla.org Roa...

8th March 2003

Spell check in web applications

Sam Ruby has enabled spell checking for the preview comment tool on his blog. I wonder how it works... I've lost track of the scripting language Sam uses for Intertwingly (PHP? Python? Perl?) but I kn...

4th March 2003

Mozilla for bloggers

Matthew Haughey (freshly redesigned) has published a Mozilla advocacy article explaining why Mozilla (and variants) are excellent tools for bloggers. Spot on....

20th February 2003

Get a better browser!

Via Scott, this oh-so-true quote from a Microsoft "next-generation technology" consultant: Internet Explorer hasn't had any revolutionary features for over 3 versions now. And it's now surprise ...

6th February 2003

A better phoenix icon

And over on Blogzilla, Lim Chee Aun has finally solved the niggling bug with Phoenix 0.5 on Windows where the icon shown in the taskbar is an ugly default Windows image....

Better mouse gestures

Optimoz have released Version 0.3.5 Release Candidate 3 of their mouse gestures add-on for Mozilla based browsers. I hadn't tried the version 0.3.5 series before and the improvements are impressive to...

14th January 2003

Apple snubs Mozilla

News.com: Apple snub stings Mozilla. Surprisingly comprehensive coverage of the Mozilla communities reactions to Safari. What impressed me was the number of links to weblogs in the news story. It look...

6th January 2003

A great year for Mozilla

The MozillaZine Review of the Year 2002 shows just how far the Mozilla project progressed in 2002. From a 0.9.8 milestone in January, the open source browser bounded on past version 1.0 and span off p...

20th December 2002

Debugging HTTP headers

Tantek has released two new favelets for revealing HTTP information, using Mozilla's ever useful Web Sniffer and Delorie's HTTP Header Viewer. I spotted a similar tool on a recent trip to MozDev: Live...

8th December 2002

Phoenix 0.5 and mouse gestures

Phoenix 0.5 has been released, and so far it's an absolute dream. The Windows installer is a paltry 6.1 MB and it is noticable faster than Phoenix 0.4 - the initial speed boost was so impressive I spe...

29th November 2002

OSAF hire Robin Dunn

If you weren't already exited about the OSAF, maybe it's time you were. I just spotted on Mitch Kapor's blog that they've hired Robin Dunn (of wxPython fame, and winner of the ActiveState 2002 Python ...

12th November 2002

DOM inspector tutorial

An Introduction to the DOM Inspector (via Scott Andrew). The DOM inspector is a powerful but little-known tool that comes packaged with Mozilla and can be used to interactively browse through the DOM ...

6th November 2002

Hide Mozilla Flash ads

Michel: How to hide Flash banner ads in Mozilla using a few lines of CSS added to the userContent.css file. A great example of CSS2 selectors at work....

31st October 2002

Phoenix usurps Mozilla

Phoenix 0.4 is out, and it's so good it has replaced Mozilla as my default browser. Type Ahead Find makes browsing links and searching pages a dream (I've really come round to it after my initial whin...

24th October 2002

Tweaking sites for readability

Jeffrey Zeldman's new design continues to develop, but remains virtually unreadable on my monitor (without extensive tweaking of the settings). I'm not griping though as this was an ideal opportunity ...

Uzilla

Uzilla (via SurfMind) is a commercial product built on top of Mozilla: The Uzilla suite is a set of tools for web based usability testing. It decreases the time and effort required set up and do ...

22nd October 2002

Mozilla small screen rendering

Yesterday I blogged Opera's impressive looking small screen rendering technology. Now take a look at this (via Blogzilla). Daniel Glazman has created a Mozilla bookmarklet that does everything Opera's...

17th October 2002

contentEditable in Mozilla

ContentEditable for Mozilla is a hot topic at the moment. The main focus of the debate is this bug on Bugzilla, which gets pretty heated. Blogzilla has a good explanation of the principles behind the ...

Mozilla prefetching

The Mozilla Link Prefetching FAQ (via Blogzilla). Prefetching is a browser mechanism, which utilizes browser idle time to download or prefetch documents that the user might visit in the near future. W...

30th September 2002

XML transformations with CSS and the DOM

Scott Andrew: XML Transformations with CSS and DOM. Forget about XSLT, Scott demonstrates how CSS can be used to visually style XML documents while a bit of Javascript can add additional behaviour suc...

Utter muppets

KPMG.com still sucks in Mozilla....

24th September 2002

How to install Mozilla on Bath University PCs

Since I'm using the University Library computers at the moment I'm having to reinstall Mozilla on a daily basis. Here's how I do it: Download Mozilla 1.2 Alpha for Windows (11 MB), taking advantage...

13th September 2002

Mozilla 1.2 alpha

The first alpha version of Mozilla 1.2 has been released, with the most notable new feature being Type Ahead Find. I've played with this on previous Mozilla builds (it was available as an addon) and i...

Mozilla web-sniffer

Because I keep on forgetting where it is, View HTTP and HTML Source, a handy tool for debugging HTTP type stuff courtesy of those fine Mozilla folk....

12th September 2002

The float label bug

Strange Mozilla bug: In some versions of Mozilla / Netscape 6+ <label> elements that have a float applied to them will vanish. Tom Gilder's test case can be viewed here. I tried it in Mozilla 1....

10th September 2002

Composite for Mozilla

A few days ago, I blogged the following:Imagine a textarea element that, when double clicked, spawned a brand new editing environment in a new window with all of the tools of a modern text editor. Or ...

7th September 2002

Solution to the timezone problem

Hixie has a brilliant solution to the time zone problem in the form of a clever piece of XBL by Nicolás Lichtmier. The small script can be bound to an element containing a date in UTC and will ...

6th September 2002

Why Scott needs Mozilla

Judging by the screenshot on this page, Scott really needs Mozilla :) I'm currently running Windows XP on a Pentium II with 128 MB of RAM but thanks to Mozilla's tabbed browsing I have over 20 web pag...

Leonard's Mozilla links

Leonard Lin has blogged a whole bunch of useful Mozilla links. He also has this to say about mouse gestures: OK, some people like gestures. I don't because I like dragging my mouse around and highlig...

4th September 2002

Browser based rich text editing

Scott wants a rich text editor for Mozilla. What's more, he's willing to put his money where his mouth is and organise a fund drive to give developers a real incentive to do a good job. At Incutio we...

1st September 2002

Yay for <links>

Aquarionics has joined the Mozilla <link> element party....

31st August 2002

External link icons in CSS

Stuart has put together a nice demonstration of how Mozilla's CSS3 selectors can be used to automatically add icons to external links, in response to Mark Pilgrim's guide to achieving the same effect ...

30th August 2002

Marquee in Mozilla

News to me: Mozilla supports the <marquee> element (marquee test page)! Support was added a couple of months ago in light of the fact that nearly 30% of top 150 sites in China use the marquee e...

Mozilla pie menus

I've installed a brand new shiny copy of Mozilla 1.1, and thrown in the new Pie Menus addon for good measure. The new build seems a fair bit speedier than the 1.1 alpha version I was using before, but...

3rd August 2002

The Register and browser share

The Register: approximately 25 per cent of readers access our site using non-Microsoft browsers (mentioned in passing in an article on Alexa). Now for some pure speculation. I can't imagine that this ...

30th July 2002

Tabs are not MDI

Dave Hyatt explains why Mozilla's tabbed browsing is different to (and better than) Opera's MDI model:Tabs are not a replacement for window management. They are an enhancement that can be used in conj...

16th July 2002

"Erect me a great golden pyramid"

David Hyatt's neo-cortical implant is holding out just fine....

15th July 2002

Via Blogzilla...

A couple of Mozilla pieces, courtesty of Blogzilla. First up is the news that Dave Hyatt is leaving Netscape to work for Apple (Hixie mentioned this the other day). Blogzilla's jeffp wonders if this c...

14th July 2002

Mozilla web author FAQ

The Mozilla Web Author FAQ answers questions on doctypes, broken stylesheets, image table gaps and javascript detection - the most common problems faced by web developers new to developing for Mozilla...

11th July 2002

Lovely PNGs

Here's a treat for anyone with a browser that supports alpha transparency in PNGs (Mozilla and IE5/Mac do, IE/Win doesn't). Click on one of the little magnifying glasses under a thumbnail and the skin...

9th July 2002

Mozilla oddity

Mozilla oddity - if you rename a bookmark to the the same name as it's shortcut keyword the shortcut keyword will stop functioning. I couldn't see it in Bugzilla so I've submitted it as bug 156418....

6th July 2002

Mozilla sidebar added

Thanks to another excellent suggestion from Micah, this site now has an experimental Mozilla sidebar. Click here to try it out (only Mozilla or NS6 owners need apply). UPDATE: For some reason visit...

4th July 2002

New Mozilla rendering mode

Evolt: New DOCTYPE sniffing in upcoming Mozilla releases. If you weren't confused enough by Mozilla's standards and quirks modes, the next release of the browser will include a third rendering mode ca...

1st July 2002

How Wolfenstein 5k works

I linked to the 5k entry Wolfenstein 5K the other day. Lee Semel, the author of the entry, has written an article describing how the impressive Javascript first person shooter works. The principle met...

26th June 2002

XML in Mozilla

WebReference: XML in Mozilla 1.0. A quick summary of the XML technologies available with Mozilla 1.0, code samples not included....

24th June 2002

Mozilla page info

I've been playing around with Mozilla's "Page Info" feature, available in the View menu, the right-click context menu and through the Ctrl+I shortcut. I'd never really lookd at it before, but the info...

22nd June 2002

Two things about Mozilla

New project in the works - details to follow soon. In developing it I've learnt two new things about Mozilla: Mozilla requires XBL files to be served with a text/xml Content-Type header. Mozilla d...

20th June 2002

Mozilla versions

Peter-Paul Koch on evolt: One browser, many names - an invaluable guide to the many different version numbers and user-agent strings resulting from the Mozilla project....

13th June 2002

Mozilla alpha

Mozilla 1.1 Alpha was released yesterday, and after reading Scott Andrew's recommendation (especially with respect to the mail client) I decided to give it a go. I found the ability to turn off images...