Nikoport

Mozilla has released the final version of the most anticipated and celebrated browser : Firefox 3. This is the second “true” release from Mozilla, as the Firefox 2 was actually a kind of small update to Firefox 1, and at the time of the development Firefox 2 number was set on 1.5, but then basically to compete with the Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7, they decided to increase the version number.

This time there was no need in doing it, Firefox 3 is a brand new release with quite a number of new features and functionalities. Codenamed “Gran Paradiso” it has been under development for more then 1.5 years, and it uses the newest version of layout engine – Gecko 1.9, which has quite a number of difference in comparisson with a Firefox 2, which was Gecko 1.8.1 based. The most important features of the Firefox 3 are: Gecko 1.9 (it passes the ACID 2 test, opposite to the Firefox 2, which fails; it implements some of the HTML 5 upcomming features), APNG (animated PNG: besides Firefox, Opear 9.5 is also supporting it), completely reworked url address bar (which will truly search visited urls as you type the address to show you a list with urls to select), verified pages (the icon before the url bar, which allowes to consult the certificate, reworked bookmarks system : one-click addition bookmarks (a golden star, which allow you to add a page to your favourites with just one click on it) and tags for the bookmarks (the social part is getting even inside your browser), completely reworked add-ons system (a number of plugins even stopped working with the new version, but i believe that in a couple of weeks those problems should be addressed by the developers of the respective plugins).

Also there are some serious improvements in memory-management area, at least the first impression, is that Firefox 3 consumes much less memory then it predecessor. It appears to be more stable, especially when opening multiple google pages (gmail, analytics and docs for example), which is quite important since the Firefox 2 required a lot of attention while working with multiple tabs with google pages open.

A number of pages appears to have some serious bugs — the layout engine is quite different to the elder one of Firefox 2, and i currently see a lot of pages which rendering wrong, one of the most famous examples is Google Analytics, where the second date of the range “falls” down below the start date and breaks the interface. I have noticed, that various pages reendering in a very similar way as a Opera 9.x and opposite to Opera 9.5, i have one of such examples in a current project which should go online next month.

Another favourite feature of mine is a closing page controller, which will allow you to save and restore current tabs when closing Firefox. A part of this feature on Firefox 2 has already working when shutting the computer down, but without a message box to confirm if you want to save it. It is very usefull, when you wish to close Firefox while starting some memory-consuming applications as a graphical editors for instance. Opera 9.5 recently released has this feature as weel.

Firefox 3 has finally abandoned support for Windows 95 (yeah, a product which is 13 years old), Windows 98, Windows ME and Windows NT 4, and if you are still using one of those systems (insane thing because of the security problems and the fact that all of them are more then 2 years are not supported), then Firefox 2 is your best friend. You won’t miss anything groundbreaking on the web in the next couple of years, so if you stick with the elder “brother” you will still be quite safe. As for the Mac OS X version – the OS X 10.4 is required and its a typical situation for macintosh software – i don’t really thing that any real Mac user will be affected by this fact. The reason of using the OS X 10.4 was implementing Firefox natively, so it will have a native Cocoa widget interface, and such things as transparency when overlapping with Flash elements on the page, for example (it has bugged me for quite some time). It is also much faster as a native application, there is no doubt about it.

After 1.5 years of the development, 4 beta versions and 3 release candidates the final version has finally arrived. Take a look at it, and while some graphic bugs and incompatibilities are unavoidable, this is not a future browser – this is a browser of the moment.

Registering a .pt domain sucks big time — its expensive (20 euros, about 3 times more expensive then .com) and complicated. If you do not have a registered trademark or its not your enterprise name, then forget it – it is impossible. Of course if you are a public entity with such name, than you may have it, but i will just skip this rules part, because in a common case that all does not make any sense. Also, because of such rules you could not actually sell any domain, which from one side stop the cybersquatters but from the other side if FCCN would rule the internet, then everyone would go to amazon.on.sapo.pt and ebay.iol.pt at best. I always lived in the countries where domains are free to register, and i do not see any reason why in Portugal it should be any different. And no, i do not like the com.pt domains at all, though i know some people who has such domains and i did site for such domains, but why should someone need .com.pt, when .pt is still available ?

If you have a business or want to start on in Portugal, or you are thinking about starting any online community — start with registering a trademark (think time and money), and only after your have all the papers you may initiate the register process. The FCCN — the authority, responsible for the internet promised last year to open the registration on the 1st of May 2008.

A lot of people started pre-registering .pt domains paying some money to the clever internet providers. Of course when the time came, FCCN announced that they would delay the liberalization for an undefined period of time, which was not such a big surprise remembering the history of the .pt domains. I was one of those who while being close to register a couple of .pt domains decided to give it “some time”, or in other words to wait and see. Well, it was worth of not doing anything, and for sure i wont enter in any such scheme involving FCCN anymore.

I am angry on the stupid attitude of the FCCN, the liberalization of the .pt domains in Portugal would help the development of the internet, and by preventing the liberalization they only help those who have enough money and time to register a trade mark or found a firm, but in the big sense preventing portuguese internet from growing. I just think that this attitude is completely stupid.

In the recent news one thing that should be noted, is that Microsoft after announcing that they do not want to buy Yahoo anymore, and that does not correspond their interest at all have announced that they are looking into forming an alliance with Yahoo. Is it me or does anyone here the world famous microsoft “3E tactics” — embrace, extend and extinguish ?

My point of view is that we do not need less sharks (big enterprises), but much more of them — more big fishes in the business, means more real concurrence and better products and prices. If someone wants less options, than more merges is your area. I hope that they will fail, as well as the Google will fail to do any kind of merge with Yahoo – i may like or dislike them, being a client of Yahoo for more then 10 years, but i want them to continue to be an important player on the scene. This way the internet will only get better.

Randy Pausch is a well known professor at Carnegie Melon University, working on 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. This project is called Alice, and EA has already announced that they are helping with the creation of the third version of this project by giving the characters from their game “The Sims”.

Randy Pausch has pancreatic cancer and was given just a couple of months to live, and thats where he has shown a character by giving his “Last Lecture” to his students. In his last lecture he is talking about different subjects, but mostly about the time which is quite finite for all of us. I urge everyone to take a look at the videos on his page, they are quite emotional and inspiring, his “time management” lecture is an instant classic. You might disagree with some of the things that he is presenting, but it is quite a way of managing the time.

There has been a lot of things written about him, a number of television stations have made interviews and specials. He is quite an impressive person, he is doing all this public things at the moment as a way of leaving a message for his 3 kids. I feel that he is a very special person capable of inspiring those who are around him, and watching his videos leaves me quite an inspired for doing better things in this live

I have learned about him some time ago, and by now i have seen all the videos that i could find on the internet and i am waiting for his book, which should arrive next week.

To all the people from the VOD human resources and reporting departments — thank you so much for your efforts and patience — you were the greatest students i have ever had. I hope, that in the passed weeks you have learned something useful, that will improve your webdesign skills and will bring some speed enhancements into your work efforts.
I am grateful to you, that i had the opportunity to spread the word about the web standards beyond the Dreamweaver means, and that i feel that i didn’t waste my or your time.
Thank you once again.

This week, Apple has released much awaited and anticipated new version of their Safari web browser – 3.1, which brings quite a number of improvements to this already quite competitive browser.

Through the system of automatic upgrades for OS X Tiger and OS X Leopard, as well as through the Apple Update for Windows, everyone on those platforms can have their own copy of Safari 3.1. Interesting is that Apple actually distributing new Safari version through the ITunes for Windows – for OS X there is no need, because it is already pre-installed. It is quite unusual and may be even considered disturbing, but there is no doubt, that Apple is going to test and to push the limits of their money cow – ITunes.

Lets get back to the browser itself. Besides speed, and all the usual small stuff, there is a number of very delicious improvements, which are putting Safari in front of the other browsers are: HTML5 Client-site database storage(creating basically a real database at the client side with SQL commands), Downloadable fonts (think of supplying your special font to the site visitor – here is an article at “A List Apart” on this topic), CSS transforms and CSS animations (scale,rotate,translate,skew etc – from this one there can be some interesting animations, though one should be always careful with this one, otherwise we will end all blinking, scaling and flipping our heads), HTML 5 video and audio tags (no other descriptions are needed, i believe), SVG graphics inside IMG tags.

Not to forget, the most anticipated and awaited feature of Safari for web developers – “Web Inspector”. To enable it goto Safari Preferences, select “Advanced” tab and there enable “Show develop menu in menu bar” – and voilá, your have this feature enabled. It should remind you of Web Developer toolbar for firefox and its microsoft IE6/IE7 copy, though i might add an advice of exploring “Web Inspector”, there are some small delicious things, which will make your work easier. So – play the trumpets, we finally have a tool to work and develop websites on Safari – my deepest bow to its developers, cause it was right on time (being the late one, does not take away the sensation of happiness of web developers who can see their job getting a bit easier.)

Ah one more thing – the native “getElementsByClassName” javascript function just rocks!

I like the idea of putting to test new HTML and CSS standards, because all the standards in the world are dead, as long as they are not supported. One could only hope, that other browsers will follow with more complete support of the new HTML and CSS features. No words just thumbs up for “Web Inspector”.

I am not quite an “early adapter”, according to the scheme of Seth Godin – i belong to the “early majority” (guys who get not state of the art technology, but when it is already being used by some innovators).

Looking at the first versions of anything i see so many troubles because software/product was not being properly tested and was rushed out in order to comply with the promised release dates/dead lines. My idea of any product is that 1.01 or 1.02 are the best place to start. I won’t install Vista SP1 until i see that it is really compatible with existing software/drivers and there are no more data losses, as well as only now i am considering upgrading to Leopard, after 2 patches have been released.

I think it was at User Friendly that i have seen quite funny cartoon some 5 years ago, about star trek ship not being able to shoot because of the beta software installed. Pity can’t find it in archives. =O(

Using the first release makes you a beta tester, and if i need something to work properly without troubles – i have no luxury of using a beta product. When i have time( time, what is it ?), i may take a look at a beta version (i check out new versions of GIMP and Inkscape on regular basis, because i can easily fall back to the final release/stable one). Being excited about a product that can easy your daily life can take you into beta testing (1.0 included).

p.s. take a look at one of Seth Godin books, for example Purple Cow to understand what i am talking about.

p.p.s. Joomla has recently launched Joomla 1.5, after many month of testing and developing, and a couple of days later appeared 1.5.1, the same situation happened with Drupal 6.0 (6.1 was in 2 weeks here) which once again prove, that first version is always a beta version.