-moz-

The future of annoying ads

travis — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 17:50:00 GMT

Here's a little overview of the new <canvas /> element in Firefox 1.5. You can do some cool things with it, but I'm guessing that it'll mainly result in lots of more annoying — and harder to block — ads.

general.config.obscure_value=13

travis — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 22:27:00 GMT

I was just going through my about:config and I came across a key named general.config.obscure_value with and integer value of 13. WTF could Firefox possibly use that for???

This file is the only result google gives me: nsReadConfig.cpp, and if we skip down to around line #200, this is the block of code:


  // Once the config file is read, we should check that the vendor name 

  // is consistent By checking for the vendor name after reading the config 

  // file we allow for the preference to be set (and locked) by the creator 

  // of the cfg file meaning the file can not be renamed (successfully).

  

  PRInt32 obscureValue = 0;

  (void) prefBranch->GetIntPref("general.config.obscure_value", &obscureValue);

  PR_LOG(MCD, PR_LOG_DEBUG, ("evaluating .cfg file %s with obscureValue %d\n", lockFileName.get(), obscureValue));

  rv = openAndEvaluateJSFile(lockFileName.get(), PR_TRUE, obscureValue, PR_TRUE);

  if (NS_FAILED(rv))

  {

    PR_LOG(MCD, PR_LOG_DEBUG, ("error evaluating .cfg file %s %x\n", lockFileName.get(), rv));

    return rv;

  }

  

  rv = prefBranch->GetCharPref("general.config.filename", 

    getter_Copies(lockFileName));

  if (NS_FAILED(rv))

    // There is NO REASON we should ever get here. This is POST reading 

    // of the config file.

    return NS_ERROR_FAILURE;

Now I haven't programmed any C++ since my freshman year at RIT, but I can't believe there isn't an easier way to do this.

My mom uses Firefox

travis — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:28:00 GMT

My mom recently got one of those new cheap Dells, and she had me set up the software for her. I installed Firefox, put the icon on the desktop and removed IE from the desktop. After installing the Macromedia, Adobe, and K-lite Mega codec plugins, I installed a few basic extensions that I thought she'd like: ~~WeatherFox~~ForecastFox, Launchy, GMail Notifier, Image Zoom, and Webmail Compose (she has Hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail accounts). I think the only search engines I added were IMDB and Wikipedia. I put the BugMeNot bookmarklet on her bookmarks toolbar folder, as well as links to hotmail, yahoo groups and google news. Her new computer also had XP with SP2 preinstalled so it was going to be a radical change from the Windows 98 blue-screens that she got several times a day.

I wanted to give my mom a quick 5 minute demo showing her all the new features she had, and of course she wanted to write everything down so it took about an hour. She practically cried with joy when I finished. The two features that made her the happiest were ~~WeatherFox~~ForecastFox, the popup blocking and the block images features. She was also impressed with the tabbed browsing (she never knew about clicking with the mousewheel), bookmarking tabs into a folder, the recent headlines live bookmark, type-ahead find (she never knew a Find feature existed), and the Gmail notifier.

She's even a Firefox evangelist now. We had family over for pre-Thanksgiving and she told them: "You've got to try that Foxfire program Travis gave me, it's so awesome." That's a pretty common thing for my mom to do. I spent the rest of the evening correcting people on the name and telling them to google for it. I forsee Firefox apparel in my stocking this year ;-)

Firefox 1.0

travis — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 08:16:00 GMT

Firefox 1.0 is out, grab the torrent. Get other builds here.

Best Bug Ever

travis — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 13:13:00 GMT

I think this is the funniest bug I've ever seen. (from djst's nest)

IE vs. Fx

travis — Mon, 11 Oct 2004 17:39:00 GMT

Somehow I missed this Monday Matchup on Forbes last week. They have a little slideshow dealy in there too. I'm glad the article exists, because it will make more people aware of Firefox, but it could use a little more detail.

CSS/XHTML Validity

travis — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 22:50:00 GMT

This blog isn't 100% ~~CSS or~~ XHTML compliant. ~~The CSS is probably easily fixable, the following CSS is what's invalid:~~


form[id=Form2] input

{

	-moz-opacity: 0.50;

	background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 127);

}



form[id=Form2] input:HOVER, form[id=Form2] input:FOCUS, form[id=Form2] input:ACTIVE

{

	-moz-opacity: 0.90;

	background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 229);

}

I'm sure there's an alternative to -moz-opacity that's CSS compliant, but I haven't found it yet. I thought that the rgba(n,n,n,n) syntax was at least valid CSS3, but that didn't seem to validate either. I just switched to opacity and it validates and works fine in FF, yay!

The XHTML isn't as easily fixable. I'm pretty sure that this is about as valid as it gets without re-compiling the .Text source.

None of the pages with forms validate due to the way .Net renders out the <script> tags.
The main page doesn't validate due to an asp:literal in the Day control that spits out: Title = "x". (note the spacing and capitalization)
The Post pages have asp:literals that have <link> tags used for pingbacks in bad spots and they have end tags either.
The comments people post are converted to HTML instead of XHTML
The posts I make aren't always perfect either (damn those & in urls)

The last one is pretty much the only one I can control at this point. I could probably even eliminate the last two by hacking a few SPs. If anyone knows a solution for the others without recompiling, please let me know. I have to say that even though .Text wasn't XHTML compliant out-of-the-box, it really has a great architecture and it has been fairly easy to upgrade to XHTML compliancy.

$3USD Firefox plush dog toy

travis — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 19:01:00 GMT

On our ADK trip Sherry and I bought this squeaky dog toy at one of the stores up there:

Now the I know the description says "raccoon", but judge for yourself which it is supposed to be: raccoon or "red panda" aka firefox. Aside from the fact that the dog loves it, I think that the mozilla organization could prolly resell these cute lil F'ers to geeks and their chicklets everywhere for about 5x that price and absorb a bunch'o'capital.

I have some pictures of a red panda from the Syracuse Zoo: (1) (2) (3). (I can smell the 403.9 errors my crappy server is gonna get from those images already, damn RR and their limited uploads and damn 2000 Pro IIS and its limit of 10 users!)

[EDIT]: I forgot to mention that the firefox logo actually looks more like a red fox, than a red panda. Maybe it's some crazy hybrid of the two?

WebStandardsAwards.com

travis — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 10:50:00 GMT

WebStandardsAwards.com - I agree with most of their picks, but the two that really stuck out are: gedimo.lt and frozentoast.com. Both sites are beautiful, have decent source, do not render in quirks mode, are standards compliant, AND neither contain useless flash movies. They work in tnn, but obviously look better in a real browser.

Firefox User CSS

travis — Tue, 20 Jul 2004 18:40:00 GMT

I'll occasionally browse the Firefox Tips section of Firefox Help. Every now and then I'll come across something cool. Here're a couple of things that I've found useful (or at least cool):

These styles are in my userChrome.css. This first one changes the active tab's background color to white (irrelevant if your theme specifies the background as white) and makes sure the text is still black, I usually have eleventy-million tabs open so I needed some other way of telling which tab was active besides the title text:

/* Change color of active tab */ 
tab{
   -moz-appearance: none !important; 
} 
tab[selected="true"] { 
   background-color: rgb(255,255,255) !important; 
   color: black !important;
   font-weight: normal !important;
}

This next one reduces the padding around the icons of the browser:

/* Remove extra padding from the Navigation Bar */
.toolbarbutton-1, .toolbarbutton-menubutton-button {
   padding: 2px 3px !important;
}
.toolbarbutton-1[checked="true"], .toolbarbutton-1[open="true"], 
.toolbarbutton-menubutton-button[checked="true"], 
.toolbarbutton-menubutton-button[open="true"] {
   padding: 4px 1px 1px 4px !important;
}

This one makes the browser's menus look more XPish:

/* Make menus XP style */
menupopup, popup {
   border: 1px solid ThreeDShadow !important;
   -moz-border-left-colors: ThreeDShadow !important;
   -moz-border-top-colors: ThreeDShadow !important;
   -moz-border-right-colors: ThreeDShadow !important;
   -moz-border-bottom-colors: ThreeDShadow !important;
   padding: 1px !important;
   background-color: Menu !important;
}
menubar > menu {
   border: 1px solid transparent !important;
   padding: 2px 5px 2px 7px !important;
   margin: 0 !important;
}
menubar > menu[_moz-menuactive="true"] {
   background-color : Highlight !important;
   color: HighlightText !important;
}

These styles are in my userContent.css. Basically they just change the cursor if it will most likely open in a new window:

/* Change cursor for JavaScript links */
a[href^="javascript:"], a[onclick^="javascript:"] {
   cursor: move;
}

/* Change cursor for links that open in new window */
:link[target="_blank"], :visited[target="_blank"], :link[target="_new"], :visited[target="_new"] {
   cursor: crosshair;
}

Anyone else have any cool Firefox CSS hacks to share? (I really should make a Mozilla category for posts soon)

[EDIT]: Edit your user files with ChromEdit. Also, here's my user.js file:

// Disable tab bar autohide feature:
//user_pref("browser.tabs.autoHide", false);

// Instead of annoying error dialog messages, display pages:
user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enabled", true);


// More DOM/JavaScript options

// Make sure all pop-up windows are resizable:
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.resizable", true);

// Make sure all pop-up windows are minimizable:
//user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.minimizable", true);

// Always display the menu in pop-up windows:
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.menubar", true);

// Always display the Navigation Toolbar in pop-up windows:
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.location", true);


// Change to normal Google search:
//user_pref("keyword.URL", "http://google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=");

// This one makes a huge difference. Last value in milliseconds (default is 250)
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);

// Open links in a new tab
user_pref("browser.linkTarget", 1);

// (??? I'm not really sure if this works or not)
// Stop reusing active windows: 
//user_pref("advanced.system.supportDDEExec", false);

// Change language to Esperanto (default is "en, en-us") 
user_pref("intl.accept_languages", "eo, en, en-us");

// http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=4960
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.external.shell", false);
// pref("network.protocol-handler.external.shell", false);