I narrated a tour of Firefox. Check it out.
October 2009 Archives
Hey friends. I need some help. As many of you know, we're coming up on the 5 year anniversary of Firefox 1.0 and as part of the celebration, I'm trying to get together the evolution of the Firefox brand (from way back in the Phoenix days through Firefox 3.5).
For the Firefox logos, we've got vector art, but unfortunately the Phoenix original art was lost long ago.
So, I'm hoping that someone reading this, with decent Illustrator skills, would be willing to re-create the old Phoenix logo for me.
update: Yeah, I tried Illustrator's live trace but there's just not enough data in this small bitmap to produce something that looks solid.
We're on a bit of a tight schedule so if this is something you'd be able to get to this weekend, I'd be eternally grateful. (my gratitude comes with a free classic mozilla "Hack" t-shirt if you're interested.)
This is good news. VideoPress supports Ogg.
Brilliant.
Reporter: "What do you say to parents who think the Wild Things film may be too scary?"Sendak: "I would tell them to go to hell. That's a question I will not tolerate."
:D
I love Maurice Sendak.
Microsoft silently installed a security vulnerability in Firefox. Not only was the install not requested by users (malware) but it opened Firefox users to a critical remote exploit flaw. Thanks, Microsoft. Appreciate that.
update Read more about this:
Microsoft exposes Firefox users to drive-by malware downloads by Ryan Naraine
Microsoft Plug-In Makes Firefox Vulnerable by Robert Evans
Microsoft plug-in for Firefox patched byPaul Mah
Sneaky Microsoft plug-in puts Firefox users at risk by Gregg Keizer
"Nothing in the design and implementation of the Ballot Screen and the presentation of competing web browsers will express a bias for a Microsoft web browser or any other web browser...."
That's the text of of the first sentence of the tenth paragraph of Microsoft's proposed settlement with the European Commission over its illegal tying of Internet Explorer with Windows.
The same proposal specifies the actual layout and design of the "ballot screen" that will be presented to approximately 170 million European Windows PC users sometime in the next few months and probably another 200-300 million users over the next 5 years.
Unfortunately, the proposed design of the ballot expresses a huge bias for one of the 5 browsers listed. The ballot, as described, will list the browsers in a static and alphabetical order.
And. It is common knowledge among usability experts, explained in quite solid detail and well cited by our very own Jennifer Boriss, that the first item in a list of choices will receive very disproportionate attention.
It is for this reason that the ballot cannot be static, regardless of criteria for ordering, and also be unbiased. The ordering of the choices on the ballot must be randomized. Failing to randomize those choices expresses a clear and strong bias to the first item on the list leading hundreds of millions of users to favor that item over all others.
There is simply no other way to eliminate bias. Anything short of randomizing is just shifting from one bias to another.
The tech savvy among you know that web browsers are no longer the number one target for malware and other online scams. Browsers are all getting much safer much faster since Firefox entered the market so the bad guys are targeting the less frequently updated and often times far less secure browser plug-ins. Most browser vendors don't control those plug-in so your browser can't completely cover that aspect of your Web safety. (Some browser vendors even knowingly ship insecure plug-ins.)
Well, at Firefox, we're not just punting and telling our users to contact their plug-in vendors. We're going that extra mile to try to help you keep those plug-ins secure.
The first step was our Flash Plug-in check that we rolled out with a recent Firefox 3.5 update.
Today, we're helping you take the second step with a much more comprehensive plug-in check.
Right now this page only works with Firefox, but we care about all of you and we're working to support those of you on other browsers as well. We're also working on integrating these checks directly into Firefox.
Outdated plug-ins are the number one source of crashes on the Web and leave more users open to security exploits than any program. Please tell your friends, family members, and co-workers about this new Plug-in Check service from Mozilla. The Web thanks you.
