Messages

301

General Discussion / Firefox 3 Beta 1

« on: November 24, 2007, 02:38:31 pm »

When I installed Firefox 3 beta 1 all my url icons changed (that you see in your bookmarks) perhaps it's a bug that needs fixing. It's not that it bothers me but how do I restore those icons; I'm sure I can figure it out over time but perhaps someone already has. Images are posted below:

Before and after images:

That's funny, because I've struggled with this on and off and it was all nicely fixed when I did a clean install of Firefox 3.

So I had a quick look as to how they're stored so you might be able to reset them. They are stored in the same file as the bookmarks, in ASCII format (that's right, the image is saved in text, pixel by pixel). So the only way I see you can reset them without just doing a clean install is to make a backup of your bookmarks, wipe your bookmarks, edit the favicons out of the backup in a text editor and then  import your backup.

That said they probably have a better solution on mozillazine forums.

302

Bugs & Feature Requests / Re: Araditracker.com not working

« on: November 24, 2007, 02:28:13 am »

Woo! The legendary build 60, *all bow down and hail* 

But seriously, if all the features are implemented it's going to be very deserving of a version number bump.

303

Computers - Technology / Re: Is vista better than windows XP?

« on: November 22, 2007, 07:38:27 pm »

I recently bought a high end pc, 6600 quadcore, 2 gig DDR3 mem and Geforce 8800 GTX Ultra, bit I kept my mem that low because XP can't handle more, unless I get xp 64 bits which has the same problems vista 64 bit recently has (drivers, drivers, application problems and... drivers).
So I stick to xp until Vista is a little older and more adult.

Reasons to get Vista: 64 bits, so alot more memory build in possibility, DirectX 10 (nice to see that little more FX) and Basicly because eventually it will run games faster as promised (in a year or so that is)

Reasons not to get it: still is in a baby state, haven't learn how to walk yet and well drivers and software support isn't that great yet, but will be eventually, just like with xp when it first came out.

So if you really want to use your 4 gig mem and really want to run directx 10... get vista (maybe in duel boot so you can run old games and software on xp still), if not, just wait a little like I do 

XP x64 has much better performance than Vista x64. I've been using XP x64 for over 2 years now and its gone from hardly supported at all by many drivers to being a perfectly fine OS to use. It's also the best OS in terms of real time performance, it allows the faster 64 bit applications to run without the huge overhead of Vista.

That said, in the long run, Vista x64 is probably worth getting for such a high end machine. Because most people will probably end up on Vista at some point, now more applications are being written for it.

304

Computers - Technology / Re: 8800GT - The only graphics card that matters

« on: November 22, 2007, 07:34:48 pm »

For my card GTX ultra I could build in 2 GT cards... just was a little too early with buying my card I guess lol

It happens, new and better stuff always comes out, it's just surprising when it's more than the usual "10% faster" or "10% cheaper", but when it's "10% faster and 40% cheaper" lol. Now that AMD have launched the 3850 and the 3870, the 8800GT has serious competition.

305

Bugs & Feature Requests / Re: Proposed new tab controls screen shot

« on: November 21, 2007, 01:05:36 pm »

Ahhh, that's pretty cool 

Yeah Firefox has 3 arrows in total, 1 left arrow to the left and 1 right arrow to the right, that do the same that yours does. Then a down arrow to the far right that opens a pop-down menu showing all the possible tabs you can click on so you don't have to scroll if you don't want.

Well done on the coding, it's pretty cool 

306

Bugs & Feature Requests / Re: Proposed new tab controls screen shot

« on: November 21, 2007, 12:37:31 pm »

Yeah, devising a system for when to show multiple tabs is a bit of a pain the ass isn't? I know the Firefox team threw about 40 different versions in the bin before they decided what they liked.

It's quite cool, but a "tab number" for each tab seems a little unprofessional to me, I quite like the tab counter at the far left or right to show how many are to each side though.

If you're scrolling through them, does it show the tab numbers to each side?

307

Computers - Technology / Re: Wireless router speeds

« on: November 21, 2007, 12:33:06 pm »

what kind of internet connection do you have?

i used to have a similar problem a while ago using a Motorola Cable Modem.. anytime someone would try to download torrents, the modem would die out (but not the router)..  so i'm wondering, you said you can still get to 192.168.1.1, is that your modem or your router? obviously you cant get to your modem if your wireless router is down (unless you plug straight in with a patch/usb cable). but if you can get into your modem, you can check its status page to see if its still connected to the service provider..

modem, i have a discontinued 3Com HomeConnect...  umm.. how do i get to the modem's status page...

Eeek a modem? Well this usually works for routers, go to:

Start > Run

Type "cmd" and hit enter

In the new Command Prompt type: "ipconfig" and hit enter

Take note of "Default Gateway" address. Type that address in to your browsers address bar and hit enter. You now should be presented with your modems status page, if you have to login, the the typical set-ups are:

Username: admin
Password: password
or
Password: admin

308

Bugs & Feature Requests / Re: Araditracker.com not working

« on: November 21, 2007, 06:38:32 am »

I've sent my details to Chip

309

Bugs & Feature Requests / Re: register bitche

« on: November 21, 2007, 05:25:10 am »

Your account profile says:

"Guevara Access:     Not Enabled"

What have you done that makes you think you should have Guevara Access?

310

Computers - Technology / Re: Wireless router speeds

« on: November 21, 2007, 01:37:08 am »

what kind of internet connection do you have?

I used to have a similar problem a while ago using a Motorola Cable Modem.. anytime someone would try to download torrents, the modem would die out (but not the router)..  so i'm wondering, you said you can still get to 192.168.1.1, is that your modem or your router? obviously you cant get to your modem if your wireless router is down (unless you plug straight in with a patch/usb cable). but if you can get into your modem, you can check its status page to see if its still connected to the service provider..

192.168.1.100 is the address to the router. Now I have been tinkering with a wired router (Linksys) just to gear myself up for a wireless router (also a Linksys) and I have learned quite a bit in the last 72 hours; including the UTMOST built in firewall this router has and to get Zonealarm to work along with this router.

TheHalf™

To be honest, hardware built in firewalls put software firewalls to shame. Most people only ever need a hardware firewall, they're extremely effective and don't waste your CPU or other computer resources. But up to you if you feel a software firewall is worth it.

I've not run a software firewall in over 2 years now I know about hardware firewalls in detail.

311

General Discussion / Firefox 3 RC2 (out of beta!)

« on: November 21, 2007, 01:34:30 am »

Firefox 3 RC2 has just come out, you will almost not notice any difference between RC1 and RC2 unless your running Firefox in conjunction with certain other applications on a Linux platform and you don't get your Firefox from your distributor.

Get it here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

RC2 will likely be renamed to Final Release and officially launched before the end of the month.

Firefox 3 is finally out of beta have just released their first (and maybe only) release candidate.

Download here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

There's not been very major changes between beta5 and rc1, just lots of polish, general bug fixes, visual tweaks, security fixes, minor performance improvements, and crash fixes. The idea of a release candidate it to get the code tested across a very wide number of people as possible, then if the code still holds up to release it, if any major bugs appear when testing it across so many people then to fix any critical things like security holes and frequent crashes.

Firefox 3 Beta 5 just got released: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

This is the final Beta, the number of Priority 1 Blocking Bugs for Firefox hit 0 the other day, which gives them the clear to start working on the first Release Candidate (they need to get the number of priority 2 blocking bugs down to 0 until they can release that). This Beta the main work has been on:

• Further improving JavaScript Performance
• Improving XP / Vista / Mac / Linux integration based on user feedback
• Polishing off the AwesomeBar
• Expanding the number of languages it's ready for (now at 45, expects to be at 50 for final release)
• Implementing JSON Backup, to fully backup the whole of Places (history and bookmarks), so in event of error there will be full restores to backup from
• A lot of general polish, security features and reduction in the number of crashes

Known issues with Firefox can be found here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0b5/releasenotes/#issues

Firefox 3 Beta 4 just got released: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Major improvements include:

• New Vista theme and polished Mac theme
• New improved memory allocator to reduce long term memory fragmentation (Firefox shouldn't increase in memory too much over a long period of time)
• PGO enables much faster JavaScript, currently beating all other browsers in benchmarks by a long way
• Improved support for HTML 5 features
• Awesome bar (the address bar) now includes full adaptive learning
• Better search of the download manager and of bookmarks

Also for fellow British users, now includes a British localisation.

Very interesting read about memory usage improvements: http://blog.pavlov.net/2008/03/11/firefox-3-memory-usage/


There will be one more beta, beta 5, just to polish things off and then they will be heading towards RC1. Code freeze for beta 5 is already scheduled for just 1 week, so hopefully will be out in about 3 weeks.

Firefox 3 Beta 3 just got released: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Improvements for Beta 3 include:

• Refresh of visual theme with XP, Vista, Mac and Linux (or at least the GNOME variety) (more coming in beta 4 later this month)
• Improvements to download manager's easy of use (more coming in beta 4)
• Improved security against phishing
• Location bar and autocomplete improvements (much easier to find stuff
• 'Get Add-ons' integration
• Huge improvements in speed and memory management, including getting rid over about 100'000 allocators and jumps in the performance JPEGs are rendered

Beta 4 is still to come, it will provide polish to the visual theme and also introduce a new memory allocator called jemalloc which should speed things up significantly and keep total memory usage under tighter control.

Firefox 3 Beta 2 just got released: http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/2007/12/18/firefox-3-beta-2-now-available-for-download/

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Improvements given on the development centre pages are:

    * Improved security features such as: protection from cross-site JSON data leaks, tighter restrictions on site-specific content using effective TLD service, better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, version checking for insecure plugins.
    * Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.
    * Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart bookmark folders, location bar that matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
    * Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, JavaScript 1.8, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
    * Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 330 memory leak fixes, a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks, and reductions in the memory footprint.

Also the bug of opening JavaScript in a new tab use ctrl click or middle click has been fixed  , this one used to annoy me no end.

Various visual improvements all over the place, particularly 'awesome bar' (the codename for the replacement of start bar, where you type urls in at the top).

There also seems to be a lot of memory and performance improvements going on: http://blog.pavlov.net/2007/12/18/bye-bye-allocations/



Anyway, all looks to be going well on track for a very improved version of Firefox.

It's been a very long road to Firefox 3 Beta 1, but it's finally here, you can download here:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Remember this is not final release, bugs are expected, please go through the big finding process if you do catch one.

Some key improvements:

• Introduction of "Places" an SQLite based background manager which now controls your Bookmarks, History and Download History. The old system used an extremely bizarre system to store History, which was only secure in how difficult it was to learn. This unifies a large part of Firefox, so improvements made to Places affect a large part of the browser.
  
  
• Introduction of "Cairo" a new internal graphics library so Firefox doesn't need depend on OS dependent rendering, this should mean speed improvements made in rendering will uniformly affect all versions of Firefox
  
  
• Fix of the 'reflow' bug, a bug which affected Firefox's correct rendering of tables and CSS objects by +/- 1 pixel, Firefox 3 now conforms to Acid 2 test, try it here and see how well your browser performs: http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2
  
  
• Huge focus on memory leaks, no longer plaguing the browser. Over 300 have been fixed and a new C++ implemented garbage collector has been introduces.
  
  
• New Offline Support Api, so online tools like Google Docs can actually integrate themselves on to your desktop using only Firefox
  
  
• Improved address searching
• Full Page Zooming, not just the increase of text size
• Easier Password manager (no pop-up anymore, instead a nice non-intrusive bar that comes up at the top)
• A more unified GUI ( e.g middle clicking works on more and "open in new tabs" on the books marks doesn't kill all your current tabs)
• Plug-in management (no messing about with about:plugins)
• Better integration in to Vista and Mac OS X
• You can now highlight text word-by-word by double clicking and dragging, clicking and dragging, will highlight letter by letter.
• Support for Animated PNG (APNG)
• Support for Web Apps 1.0, the predecessor to the up and coming HTML 5
• Improved Support for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)
• Loads of improvements for Extension Development including FUEL: http://wiki.mozilla.org/FUEL
• Over 11'000 Bugs fixed in Bugzilla, including some which have been around since before Firefox 1.0

What's upcoming:

As well as the usual 100s of fixes that go on during a regular Beta life cycle there should be a couple of things of particular note. There should be a visual refresh of the browser, the look of the password manager in particular has been a little controversial, so we may see improvements to the look, especially if a lot of people think the same who start Beta testing it. A new focus on memory fragmentation improvement before final release, read about it here: http://blog.pavlov.net/2007/11/10/memory-fragmentation/


Firefox 3 in the news:

Firefox has made 2 big splashes in the news recently. 1 was digg saying Firefox 3 Beta 1 was released some time ago, this unfortunately was a RC of the Beta. Firefox has gone through extensive Quality Assurance to get to Beta 1, part of the reason for the huge delays.

It was reported in the New Your Times that they had a leaked 'meeting notes' that only 1/5 of current bugs would be fixed before final release. This is somewhat out of context as the reporter didn't really understood what a bug meant for Firefox 3, to add proper context to the situation you can read here: http://shaver.off.net/diary/2007/11/16/what-makes-firefox-3/

But simply but, it was bugs for Beta 1, and it was of the 700 remaining bugs, over 11'000 have already been fixed. And the meeting notes weren't 'leaked', Firefox is a completely open project, all meeting notes are freely available: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Main_Page



Well if you download, I hope you like, I'm off to do a clean install to Beta 1 (I'm currently on the nightly build). 

312

Help and FAQ / Re: Bit Che - Torrent Client

« on: November 20, 2007, 09:45:03 am »

ok, looks like TorrentBox site is no longer providing .torrent files for download but rather linking over to a page at IsoHunt.com. thus, when you try to download it with Bit Che, its actually only saving the .html file from IsoHunt.com (which is why you'll notice nothing comes up when you try to view the .Torrent Details in Bit Che)..  so unfortunately, it looks like the results from TorrentBox will need to be address as (ext) links, which will require you to actually visit the webpage to track down the .torrent like some of the results at BTJunkie.org (ext).

there might be something that I can do about this in the future builds of Bit Che but it doesnt seem likely since you have to jump through several webpages to find the actual .torrent..

To be honest, for sites that start doing this, once build 60 is out and you do proper analysis of whether a site adds anything new to the search or not, knocking such sites off Bit Che (or at least not leaving them as default).

313

General Discussion / Re: Web Games

« on: November 19, 2007, 11:28:06 am »

Sorrry Quantum, Just got a quiet slap on the head for forgetting the zero. Level 70 soon to be 80 when Lich King comes out shortly (european server). Any chance of a preview.lol
cheers

Lich King looks pretty awesome, I'm tempted to grab it and go back to WoW, but then again I'm not sure. Doesn't quite grip me like previous MMORPGs have.

Though I've not seen anything indicating it will be out this year...

314

General Discussion / Re: Download Speeds

« on: November 19, 2007, 03:50:31 am »

Speeds are advertised in megabits per second, but download speeds are calculated in megabytes per second.

There are 8 megabits in 1 megabyte.

So 110kB/s is 110 kilobytes per second is 880 kilobits per second, so that's about 88% of your current maximum theoretical download rate, so that's very good.

315

General Discussion / Re: Web Games

« on: November 18, 2007, 08:12:59 am »

Quantum, as you know all this is above my station, But my daughter is currently playing World of War Craft and on level 7. Seems like its taken over her life.lol As long as I keep up the wireless connections I am in the good books.
cheers

I was really meaning of the small flash variety.

World of Warcraft is pretty good, especially if it's your first MMORPG. I've been MMORPGing for somewhat over 10 years now and WoW comes off a bit weak in some areas I'm used too, so I have a bit of an on-off relationship with the game. Level 7? Even a new gamer will get to level 7 in about 3 hours max, I think you might mean something else .

I've done an average of 6 hours a day, easily, when I was back in college devoted to MMORPGing. Was good days