DougWeb – Doug's home on the Web

This link [bbc.co.uk] points to an article on BBC News about the latest Internet Explorer security flaw – but this one doesn’t have a patch to make your computer safe again! (the patch mentioned is for web servers – not home users) Because of this security experts are strongly suggesting either disabling JavaScript (which a huge percentage of web sites require) or using an alternative browser.

As I’ve said before – use Firefox/Opera/Safari or any other browser – anything but IE!

I just finished watching this on DVD – it was a US TV series made in 1999 revolving around the lives of High School Kids in 1980’s Michigan. Only lasted for 18 episodes, but has apparently become cult viewing. I bought it after reading some good reviews and am very glad I did – the shows creators did a brilliant job (many episodes were based on their own lives), and it is very easy to see the parallels between the shows setting in the 1980’s US and your own life at school. I’m not sure if the series ever aired on UK TV though… The series also makes the best use of other peoples music I have ever seen – from the Rocky theme tune, right down to ‘Monster Mash’.

Linda Cardellini has since got a regular part on ER as well as starring in Scooby Doo, and James Franco has a major part in both Spiderman movies – testamount to the good casting of the series!

Definitely recommended viewing if you can get hold of a copy.

I now have a Gmail address if you want to send me email using that – dougwright a t gmail dot com

If you haven’t heard of Gmail – its a webmail service like hotmail, but has 1gig of storage compared to a measly 2megs. It is provided by Google – but is still in early days so you need a special invitation to sign up.

The latest incarnation of my favourite web browser was released in the early hours of this morning (late last night US time), featuring lots of new features as well as numerous bug fixes. This is version 0.9 – which now contains every single feature that is wanted before the all-important 1.0.

The only work left now before version 1.0 is a bugfix-bonanza to ensure the greatest stability possible. The browser is not unstable by any means – it has been suitable for use as a main browser ever since about version 0.7.

If you want to know why I think you should be using Firefox instead of another browser like Internet Explorer then you should read this.

Below is a list of the most significant changes to Firefox between 0.8 and 0.9. This isn’t a complete list of changes made during that time, because some changes caused new bugs which then had to be fixed in turn, and some changes are so insignificant, I couldn’t be bothered to note them (an example of this being the renaming of “Save Link to Disk…” to “Save Link As…” and other similarly trivial things).

Front-end refers to the appearance of the application itself (i.e. what end-users care about most) – browser refers to anything related to how web-pages are displayed (what web designers care about most).

New front-end Features

• A new default theme. At the moment this is looking a little basic, but there will be many enhancements to it before the next release. You can still download the old theme if you prefer it. Look for a theme named ‘Qute’
• The installer now asks where you want icons placed – not just creating them on the Start Menu/Desktop/Quick Launch
• Help
• “Set as Wallpaper” now triggers a dialog box with various options such as tiling and stretching. Also prevents a mis-click changing your wallpaper to something unwanted
• Add “Copy Image” to image context menu
• Now shows a warning dialog when closing a multi-tabbed browser window. Expect a lot more of this type of small-but-nice-to-have improvements before 1.0
• New document icons
• Mail Integration UI. Added “Mail” button to toolbar palette, with a submenu providing access to mail.
• Add option to prevent pages from disabling context menu
• Now imports bookmarks, passwords, cookies, form history, history, and options from Internet Explorer, Opera etc
• Right-click a form textbox and select “Add keyword for this search” to set up bookmark keywords easily
• New Extension and Theme managers
• New ‘Safe Mode’ in case you install a buggy theme
• Mozilla Update – a new Mozilla-hosted site where you can easily find and download extensions and themes for your Mozilla applications.

Improvements to existing front-end features

• Now downloads directly to chosen folder once this has been chosen
• Much better pop-up blocking. Now has list of what pages can do, rather than what they can’t. Of course exceptions on a per-site basis are still available.
• Newer versions of Windows Media Player now work properly with Firefox
• 4% faster!
• 24% smaller download!
• Download manager now shows the actual icons of downloaded programs, instead of a generic icon
• Can now installing more than 2 extensions without restarting – previously installing #3 would cause #2 to reinstall etc
• New improved code to display JPEG images.
• Now sends HTTP referrer when using “Save Link As…” Some sites check this referrer before permitting the download
• Improved performance when scrolling
• Loading links in background tabs now works for bookmarks.

Bugfixes within the front-end

• Fixed various crashes/hangs
• Fixed varous memory leaks
• Various autoscroll issues now resolved
• When any sidebar was active, a 5-pixel spacer appeared on the left of all popups
• Find missed matches in some cases
• Add Bookmark” window became wider each time the arrow button was hit.
• Titlebar wasn’t updated while browsing with multiple tabs
• Bookmarks menu was missing submenu arrows.
• History didn’t sort properly
• Empty “tooltips” appeared as little yellow squares
• Dragging text to search bar should search for it (it didn’t)
• Open Location dialog was mostly busted
• URL Bar history drop down displayed newest entires at the bottom
• “Copy Email Address” didn’t unescape or strip leading space
• CSS list item and background images loaded even if image loading was blocked or disabled
• Opening options from Download Manager opened General tab not Downloads.
• Web page progress bar in statusbar rarely worked
• Never let sites position windows outside the screen
• Shift+Mousewheel (scrollwheel) behavior was backwards
• Options window was too narrow
• Loading lots of images made Firefox stop repainting
• Right-click now works properly in bookmark sub-folders
• Links opened in new tabs were added to History as hidden entries
• Clearing history/all in options didn’t clear session history.
• Internet Keywords were triggered by “connection refused” errors.
• Ensure Password Manager isn’t disabled when form fill is disabled

New browser Features

• Support for cursor:progress (CSS2.1)
• Support for indirect adjacent combinator selector (CSS3)
• Support for the JavaScript onBeforeUnload event
• Support for opacity (CSS3)

Browser bugs fixed

• CSS selectors with adjacent sibling combinator were missed by dynamic style reresolution
• Elements with overflow:auto and clip: were damaged when scrolled.
• Failure to display content with certain combination of background-attachment: fixed, vertical-align, and <a>
• Background images didn’t load in background windows
• JavaScript Slide-In Menus didn’t slide in
• Table (with relative positioning) disappeared on resize
• List item marker images drew incompletely
• Tables with a width specified by a percentage were 1 pixel too wide (rounding error).
• Java applets sometimes failed to get some of their parameters
• Quotes nesting didn’t work (CSS “quotes” property, <Q> elements)
• <tr style=”visibility: collapse;”> looked like hidden and collapsed

SECURITY improvements

• HTTP authentication cache should include URI scheme in its key.
• Lock icon was not updated properly on redirect of HTTPS request. This is the only major security bug in my opinion – this is the sort of thing Internet Explorer gets updated for several times a month
• Check trust bits before examining certificate fields when classifying certificates.
• Only prefill usernames into text inputs and passwords into password inputs.
• Removing a page from history does not remove it from history.dat
• Untrusted web content can use the “chrome” flag to open a new window
• Delay to enabling confirmation buttons for extension install
• InstallTrigger should CheckLoadURI.
• Remove Microsoft Word, Excel & Powerpoint from “safe” handlers list
• Added lots of potentially dangerous file types to warn about.
• Warn when HTTP URL auth information isn’t necessary and/or is provided.
• Onload XPI installs blocked by default.

Still here? Just go get it!

According to The Register, a recent study has found that 80% of spam is produced by Windows machines whose owners haven’t kept up-to-date with with the latest Microsoft and anti-virus updates, and so have become infected with all kinds of trojans.

Since I have been asked by many at work how to make their machines safe, I’ll post my advice here as a permanent resource.

I know this is a long list, but when you have done everything on it, you can sit back and feel smug whenever a news story about the latest ‘Internet Worm’ appears on the news. And your machine will probably run faster without 20 different unwanted programs sending personal information to various unsavoury individuals…

• Download (and then run!) Stinger from here [nai.com]. Stinger is a small piece of free anti-virus software that looks for the top-30 or so viruses – things like the Sasser worm that recently infected so many machines. If you have an antivirus program, but haven’t kept it updated, then Stinger is still worth downloading.
• Then take a trip to Windows Update (you can find the link on the Start Menu, and under the ‘Tools’ menu in Internet Explorer. It may take a while to update if you haven’t done it recently, but you’ll thank me for it. It’s the section marked critical you should be interested in. The other sections contain nice extras like an updated Media Player, and pointless cruft like a Euro Conversion tool. Download them later.
• If you use Windows XP, you can have Windows update itself whenever a patch is released (so you don’t have to remember yourself). For instructions on how to do this, visit this page [microsoft.com]
• Next on the list is to get some proper antivirus software if you don’t have any. An excellent piece of free software is AVG [grisoft.com]. No matter what antivirus software you use – keep it up-to-date! All software varies, so consult the help file on how to do this.
• If you haven’t got one – get a firewall. ZoneAlarm [zonealarm.com] is generally considered one of the best free firewalls.
• To detect and remove adware, download a copy of AdAware [lavasoftusa.com]. I recommend you run this every month or so.
• And finally – to check for spyware, install Spybot Search and Destroy [safer-networking.org].

Special note for those using Internet Explorer – please read any kind of prompt – especially those concerning installing software!

Troy is a brilliant film. It quite rightly ignores half the plot details of the original tale, in order to give us an enthralling 3hr journey into the world of ancient Greece. Do we care that Helen’s father was Zeus? Do we care about a 10-year siege of Troy? Not in a summer blockbuster we don’t!

In Helen of Troy, the story is told in such a way that the role of Achilles is confined to ‘bring-on-the-beefcake’. Troy on the otherhand manages to combine that and elevate the story of Achilles to prime position, which provides much more entertainment. The differences in casting also make the 2 adaptations stand apart quite widely. Not just the emphasis on different parts of the plot, but the physical differences between the two (never mind acting ability) means the the audience treats them differently. Look at the hair on Achilles!

Role	Helen of Troy (2003)	Troy (2004)
Achilles
Paris
Hector
Menelaus
Agamemnon
Priam
Helen
Trojan Horse
Ships		Can’t find a picture – but much better quality.

As for The Day After Tomorrow… Just go see it. It’s that good.

Tomorrow I’m going to see the 2 of the big summer films – in one trip. These being The Day After Tomorrow and Troy.

To ‘prepare’ I picked up Helen of Troy from my unwatched DVD pile. This was a 2-part miniseries made in America last year. It was passable, but Helen (supposedly the most beautiful woman in the world) was not exactly ravishing. The ’state-of-the-art’ CGI was something I’d expect from 5 years ago, as for the number of slowed-down/speeded-up shots…. The acting was awful from 90% of the cast, and during one scene where the world stops moving except for 2 characters (Helen and Menelaus) – I saw 2 actors blink, 3 arms move and 1 grimace.

Not exactly top-notch entertainment.

Hopefully Troy will be much better.

It was back on the 3rd of December when Internet Explorer finally annoyed me enough to do something about it. Some pop-up advert had gotten through the Google Toolbar pop-up filtering, and had resized the default window – everytime I opened up IE, my windows was incredibly small, and needed resizing. There are many ways to supposedly remedy this problem, but none of them worked. One suggestion was to leave Internet Explorer, and try another browser. Mozilla, Opera and Firefox (called Firebird back then btw) were the main ones suggested. Having used Mozilla at uni and hated it I wasn’t too convinced about the prospects of Firefox, but I tried it anyway and haven’t regretted it. In fact I haven’t used Internet Explorer at home since except to test the web site!

• It’s a small download – and getting smaller. The latest official release (0.8) is 6.4MB, whilst the bleeding-edge version from last night is 4.7MB. IE6 was a 70MB download.
• It’s faster than Internet Explorer
• It has better support for web standards such as CSS – meaning fancier web pages can be produced – without using Flash or similar.
• It has built-in pop-up blocking – no need for external blockers. It’s also better than most of the blocking that various toolbars do.
• It’s extremely customisable – hundreds of themes and extensions are available.
• Tabbed browsing – the ability to have multiple pages open within a single window. It’s more useful than it sounds.
• Easier searching – a built in search box that can link to hundreds of different search engines – from Google to Amazon!
• Built-in download manager
• Doesn’t let spyware through
• and more…

When version 0.8 was released in February, there were over 2.1million downloads within the first 2.5 weeks.

Just try it!