Unhandled Perception

Link: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/new/

Get more global stats: http://gs.statcounter.com/…

Firefox 4 Beta includes an updated Windows interface that’s sleeker and easier to use. (Mac & Linux are coming soon!).

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

Starting today, Starbucks offers free Wi-Fi across US and Canadian cities. Free Wi-Fi hotspots have become a common method for connecting to the internet and sharing information, often private information.

Such hotspots attract the unwanted attention of hackers and others who are interested in capturing the information being shared on the hotspot.

Hackers use something called packet sniffers that if configured, captures each data packet that passes through the network. The captured packets are then decoded and analyzed to read the content they are carrying.

Link: http://tnerd.com/2010/07/01/…

Install multiple apps at once without toolbars or clicking Next.

1. Pick your favorite software below.
2. Click “Get Installer” and run it.
3. You’re done!

Excellent way to get your system all setup for web design / development.  Click through the applications you want, download the custom made installer and install the apps.  Couldn’t be easier.

Link: http://ninite.com/

In tests displayed on the Internet Explorer 9 testing center Microsoft is claiming IE9 beats all other browsers in every test they performed.  Why do I doubt that.  MS tweaked the tests to ‘allow’ IE9 to perform better.  Yeah, I think I’ll wait for some independent tests.

Link: http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/ietestcenter/

A complete list of the User Agent strings in use by Firefox. Why would you want a complete list? Who knows, but here it is – http://www.useragentstring.com/pages/Firefox/.

If you visit the site’s homepage your User Agent string will be displayed to you and broken down into its parts.

Link: http://www.useragentstring.com/

CSS Coverage is an extension for Firebug which allows you to scan multiple pages of your site to see which CSS rules are actually used in your site.

Keeping your CSS stylesheets clean…

Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/…

• Support for a new type of theme called Personas, which allow users to change Firefox’s appearance with a single click.
• Protection from out-of-date plugins to keep users safer as they browse.
• Open, native video can now be displayed full screen and supports poster frames.
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time.
• The ability for web developers to indicate that scripts should run asynchronously to speed up page load times.
• Continued support for downloadable web fonts using the new WOFF font format.
• Support for new CSS attributes such as gradients, background sizing, and pointer events.
• Support for new DOM and HTML5 specifications including the Drag & Drop API and the File API, which allow for more interactive web pages.
• Changes to how third-party software can integrate with Firefox in order to prevent crashes.

Link:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.6/releasenotes/

Mozilla’s stated goal for its next version of Firefox, first and foremost, is a perceivable improvement in the time it takes to do things, not just render pages. We saw a big performance jump in JavaScript execution and page rendering in Firefox 3.5; but for 3.6, the developers want to apply the same level of improvement to responsiveness and process activation.

Link:
http://www.betanews.com/…

This is a comprehensive, safe guide to optimizing Firefox 3.5 for speedy browsing. For each suggestion, your mileage may vary.

Link:
http://www.makeuseof.com/…

Mozilla just wrapped up the Firefox 3.5 release a few weeks ago, but they are already going to town on what they can do for future improvements. When they redesigned Firefox 3.0 I thought the new designs were okay, but they weren’t anything that seemed to be revolutionary.

What’s neat about Mozilla, however, is that they’re not afraid to show the world what they’re thinking about doing months or even years ahead of time. They aren’t afraid of the competition coming along and outdoing them, and as a result they can get a lot of quality feedback so that they can fine tune the various aspects of the browser before it gets shipped out to the world.

Link:
http://cybernetnews.com/…

Typically, there are two main ways of debugging server-side code: you can utilize an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) with a built-in debugger or log and perform your debugging processes in a web browser.

This article shares an elegant, simple, and more maintainable way of debugging Ajax apps via the web browser (more specifically for the Mozilla Firefox browser). You’ll learn the basics of leveraging Firefox in conjunction with Firebug and FirePHP to implement FirePHP libraries on web apps and logging messages in the Firebug console.

Link:
http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/…

Things move quickly online, and we’ve beefed up the engine that runs Firefox to make sure you can keep up: Firefox 3.5 is more than twice as fast as Firefox 3, and ten times as fast as Firefox 2.* As a result, Web applications like email, photo sites and your favorite social networks will feel snappier and more responsive.

Link:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html?from=getfirefox

Page Speed is an open-source Firefox/Firebug Add-on. Webmasters and web developers can use Page Speed to evaluate the performance of their web pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them.

Page Speed performs several tests on a site’s web server configuration and front-end code. These tests are based on a set of best practices known to enhance web page performance. Webmasters who run Page Speed on their pages get a set of scores for each page, as well as helpful suggestions on how to improve its performance.

Sounds like the ySlow addin released by Yahoo.

Link:
http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/