Mar 21 2011
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Firefox 4 Arrives to Propel the Web Forward

The Web Browser Built For Users

Very soon Mozilla will release the fourth version of the Firefox web browser. A lot of work, innovation, and amazing ideas are built into this product and I think people are going to thoroughly enjoy the upgrade. Firefox is a web browser built for users because it’s designed from top to bottom to be a customizable program that you control. If you don’t like some of the new features, there is a great chance you’ll be able to change them to suit your tastes. Firefox is a browser built by people who care deeply about user privacy and user experience. Firefox 4 has impressed me and I think it will impress the millions of people who rely on Firefox every day.

Propelling the Web Forward

Mozilla is a company that cares deeply about the web as an ecosystem for innovation and openness. Firefox is built with that mentality in mind. Firefox 4 propels the web forward because the browser is built with current and next generation web technology. Mozilla cares about web standards and believes that Firefox is an example of what a web-centric web browser should be. Firefox 4 supports the latest web technology including HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and WebM video just to name a few.

The Features

Let’s go over some of the new features that Firefox 4 users will see when they fire up the browser for the first time.

The Firefox Button

One of the first things you will notice about Firefox 4 on Windows and Linux is the Firefox Button. The traditional menu has been deprecated in favor of a new streamlined button which gives you access to common functions of Firefox. Open a new tab, start private browsing, bookmarks, history, options, and add-ons are a few of the more common items that you will access with the Firefox Button.

The New User Interface

Firefox 4 has had a major redesign of the user interface. Aero glass is now fully supported on Windows Vista/7 which gives Firefox a more native OS look and feel. The toolbars have been refined, simplified and now take up less space which gives more of your screen to the web page. Windows, OS X, and Linux integration have improved significantly and I think it’s a very positive change for the UI.

Tabs on Top

By default tabs are now placed at the very top of the browser window. Google Chrome and Opera also place the browser tabs on top and it’s not just for cosmetic reasons. Check out Mozilla’s Alex Faaborg for more on that.

Fast just got faster

Firefox has always been a very fast web browser, and Firefox 4 is no different. Depending on your hardware and what versions of other browsers you’re running, Firefox is either on par with the speed of Chrome, IE9, Opera, and Safari, or very close behind. This is a huge leap forward for Firefox in JavaScript speed. Competing in the JavaScript speed race is something I don’t think will end in the near future, so sit tight and enjoy the ride. For now, I realize that while Chrome is more often than not the fastest web browser out there, Firefox is closing in and the difference is almost imperceptible. I use Firefox for more reasons than just speed, but make no mistake — Firefox 4 is a super fast web browser.

Firefox Sync

Firefox Sync provides users with an identical browsing experience wherever they are. You can sync your browsing history, passwords, bookmarks, preferences, personas, and tabs across devices. This means that if you’re using Firefox 4 on your desktop at home, your desktop at work, your laptop on the go, and your mobile phone on the go, you will have the same Firefox experience. Pretty awesome. I use this feature daily because I have Firefox installed everywhere and it makes keeping things consistent a breeze.

App Tabs

Do you keep Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, or Pandora open all day long while you browse the web in other tabs? If so you will love Firefox App Tabs. You can sort of “pin” these common web apps on the left side of your tab strip and keep them there all day. Very nice to have and it saves space on your tab bar.

Tab Groups (Panorama aka Tab Candy)

If you often have long browsing sessions where you end up with 20 or 30 tabs, often because of research or browsing many different topics, then Panorama will rock your world. It’s a new feature in Firefox 4 that allows you to organize a tab workspace and separate tabs into various groups.

These are just a few of the many enhancements built into Firefox 4. Take it for a spin, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

New Add-ons Manager

Search for new add-ons, manage your existing add-ons, view your themes, and see what plugins you have installed with the new Add-ons manager. The manager is built into the browser and opens as a tab. It’s a streamlined interface for dealing with all of the customizations that make Firefox an awesome web browser.

Privacy and Security

Mozilla has always been one of the most dedicated companies when it comes to protecting user privacy and security. All of your Firefox Sync data is encrypted and Mozilla can never view it or manipulate it. They design Firefox from the ground up to be a secure web browser, and patches for issues that do come up are issued extremely fast. Mozilla respects your rights as a user of the web and they build Firefox around the user.

Cutting Edge Web Technology

If you want to be able to experience the best that the web can offer, then grab Firefox 4. The new browser supports the latest web technology like HTML5 and CSS3. They even include WebGL for experiencing graphics on the web, and hardware acceleration to make all of that faster.

Watch Johnathan Nightingale Preview Firefox 4

Why Firefox is Better than Chrome

Google has done some amazing work with their Chrome web browser and it has reignited the browser wars. The revived battle for the best web browser is fierce and I don’t see this fight letting up any time soon. I love what Google has done with Chrome, but at the end of the day I use Firefox. It’s been my primary web browser since version 1.0 and I don’t see any reason to stop now. Especially with how awesome Firefox 4 is. You will find that a lot of people still prefer Chrome and find it to be the best web browser for their needs. I use Firefox for three main reasons:

  1. I admire the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Manifesto
  2. It’s as good, if not better, faster, and more powerful than any other web browser
  3. It works everywhere and I can make it my own. I’m the user and Firefox works for me.

Enjoy Firefox 4.

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Mar 14 2011
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JavaScript Benchmarks: Round 1

For this particular test, I’m running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit with an AMD Phenom Quad-Core CPU at 2.5GHz with 4GB of RAM

According to Neowin.net: “Compared to other browsers, Internet Explorer 9 outperforms in JavaScript benchmark results. IE9 also includes hardware acceleration to help improve overall speed.”

This is, of course, not true as you can see in my results posted below. I’ll do more tests to see what happens.

SunSpider
354.2ms FF4 RC
311.3ms IE9 RTM *win

Kraken
12474.4ms FF4 RC *win
21908.0ms IE9 RTM

V8Bench
2822 FF4 RC *win
1855 IE9 RTM

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Feb 28 2011
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Convert WAV audio to FLAC audio

I’ve been experimenting with high fidelity audio recently. I primarily use Linux so I thought I would mess around with FLAC audio. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec and it is precisely that. FLAC is “an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality.”

What you get when you rip a CD to FLAC or convert an existing audio file to FLAC is a completely free and super high quality file. The bit rate of such a file gets as high as 1000 kbps or more.

A couple of interesting points to keep in mind:

Music as we know it today is digitally recorded using extremely sophisticated recording equipment in a fancy music studio. At least as far as I understand it, this original recording is digitally recorded using 24-bits per sample at a sample rate of 96 kHz. However, when the engineers transfer this original sound to a CD, it is converted to 16-bits/44.1 kHz. This standard for audio on CDs is defined as the Red Book CD Standard.

At first I thought, well if I want the “best” possible version of my music I should accept nothing less than 24-bit/96kHz audio files. However, the difference between Red Book (16/44.1) and master (24/96) is really not that great. You can read a great article by Ars Technica on the subject. Apparently iTunes is thinking about offering 24-bit audio as an option for their digital music files. The argument against is simply that the difference between master and CD is just not significant enough to warrant a massive change like that. (Side note: it’s not easy to play back 24-bit audio either. Many popular audio playback devices will not recognize or play 24-bit audio).

Now, what is a significant change that is worthwhile in my opinion is listening to audio files in lossless quality at 16-bit/44.1 kHz. This can be achieved using a lossless audio codec instead of lossy one like MP3 or OGG. What’s the difference?

MP3 is a popular (albeit patent encumbered) audio codec for storing digital audio files. MP3 audio is a heavily compressed audio file which strips some of the quality and data from the original recording. This provides a file size that is very small compared to lossless audio while sacrificing some quality in the process. OGG on the other hand is a free and open source audio codec that while lossy like MP3, doesn’t suffer from patent restrictions.

Takeaway: Use MP3 or OGG if you want a small audio file.

FLAC is a popular (free!) audio codec for storing digital music files that are compressed without any loss in quality. FLAC audio files are identical to the sound you hear from an actual CD.

Takeaway: Use FLAC if you want to keep your audio files in high fidelity. You can also record them back to a CD at the same level that they were ripped. This is useful if you want a replica of your CD collection on your computer without any reduction in quality.

Warning: You should never convert an audio file of a particular quality level to one of a higher quality level. Technically you can do this, but you’ll lose quality in the process and it just doesn’t make sense. Think of it like trying to convert an old VHS recording to DVD or Blu-ray. You could do it, but the picture quality isn’t going to get any better).

So anyway, at the end of the day here is what I’ve decided. I plan on ripping or converting my audio collection to FLAC audio so that I can have a digital replica on my computer in high fidelity. I’ll keep my iTunes collection in MP3 for roaming around, but I’m going to store all of my music in FLAC as well so that I can listen to the sounds as the artists originally intended.

For example, Radiohead just released their groundbreaking new record “The King of Limbs“. They offer the eight amazing new tracks in either 320 kbps MP3 or high fidelity WAV audio. I downloaded the WAV version of the album and converted the files on my Linux desktop to HiFi FLAC audio. Here is the command I used:

$ flac --fast --delete-input-file -V originalfile.wav -o newfile.flac
  • –fast means it will perform minimal compression
  • –delete-input-file means it will remove the old file if it’s successful
  • -V verifies that the conversion was successful and identical to the original
  • -o just means that I wanted to rename the new output file

You can also use a program called sound converter if you want to use a GUI tool. Just change the preferences so that it uses FLAC as the output. You can use a program like Audio CD Extractor (sound juicer) to extract the audio straight from your CD using a GUI tool. Again, remember to choose FLAC for the output.

Update: Use EasyTag as a tag editor for FLAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis files and more. Editing the tags before importing your music into your favorite music player makes life much easier.

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Feb 25 2011
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Final planned beta of Firefox 4.0

Mozilla has released the final planned beta of Firefox 4.0. The open source browser maker hopes to have the final version out before the end of March. They’re saying final planned beta because Mozilla subscribes to the “when it’s ready” mantra. In other words, Mozilla won’t actually ship until they agree that the code is actually stable and ready for mass consumption.

The list of bugs fixed with beta 12 is upwards of 650 and most of them deal with stability, performance, and security fixes.

I will be testing beta 12 on Linux, OS X and Windows to primarily determine how its overall fit and finish compare to beta 11. I am very impressed with all of the new features the browser has in store. I am going to be specifically focused on Panorama and overall stability.

Download it

Release Notes

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Feb 16 2011
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Microsoft’s Tim Sneath on IE9, Modern Web Browsers, and Mozilla

If you skim my blog it’s pretty clear that I am an ardent supporter of Mozilla, web standards, the open web, and specifically the Firefox web browser. This blog post is about defending Mozilla, and I think it’s important that I do. Tim Sneath doesn’t understand the greater picture here. He’s viewing the web through Microsoft’s eyes…

On February 10th, a blog post showed up on the MSDN IE Blog regarding the IE9 release candidate and web standards. In the first paragraph the post states, “reflects our unique approach to building the best experience of the Web on Windows.” With that short statement it’s clear that Microsoft is saying two things about IE9: 1) it is a different type of web browser (unique) and 2) it is the Microsoft’s view of the web on Windows.

So I want to dive right in here and say something painfully obvious. Internet Explorer is a Windows-only product. Right away you know that it is only available on Windows and for all we know it always will be. You can’t use IE on OS X and you can’t use it on Linux. Microsoft expects users who would want to use IE, you use it on Windows. To get their unique approach to the web, to get the IE9 web, you have to use Windows Vista or Windows 7. The latter being the only usable version of the OS. Windows users will *not* be able to use IE9 on Windows XP.

The XP debate is interesting and there’s a lot to it. In my opinion, Microsoft should be supporting an OS that they still support in other ways. What they are saying here is that if you use Windows XP, you should either pay them to upgrade to the latest version or you only get an old version of their web browser. Obviously the Internet as a whole would benefit greatly if Windows XP was deprecated and every single Windows user was on Windows 7. But that is not the world that we live in. For various reasons businesses and home users still use Windows XP. Therefore, it’s simply appalling that Microsoft is leaving them out in the cold by refusing to support the aging OS completely.

Will Mozilla and Google support Windows XP users forever? No. But right now they do. They support Windows XP users more than Microsoft does. And that says something.

The next section of the blog post talks about how IE9 has improved their performance and support for web standards greatly. They even have a nice little graph for you. It’s misleading, but there you go. They want you to see how awesome IE9 is (in their view) with regards to web standards.

I want to jump right in here too. Microsoft has a very specific and predictable view of web standards. They don’t view web standards as a system to move the web forward, they view them as a rigid set of rules that once finalized should be cautiously and carefully, lightly, softly, gently migrated to a web browser. Microsoft’s unique view is that web standards are nothing until they are “done”. Once the W3C finalizes a particular set of web standards, then and only then is it appropriate to integrate them into the product.

You can see this ridiculous approach in Tim Sneath’s defense of Microsoft and web standards over here. In his post, Sneath is defending the company he works for from a blog post by a Mozilla employee, Paul Rouget. In his post from February 15th, Rouget states that in his view, IE9 is most definitely *not* a modern web browser. He also happens to go to pretty great lengths to prove it.

Rouget talks about how in a more objective sense, in a more universal sense, Microsoft’s latest incarnation of IE is not a modern web browser. When web developers talk about a modern browser, they usually refer to either Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, or Safari. Why? Because these browsers, in their own unique ways, have a completely different view of web standards.

Mozilla and Google believe that web standards are something that allow for the construction of powerful, innovative, and sometimes absolutely amazing web sites or web applications. In order for creative human beings to channel this creativity, they want to have access to web browsers that give them all of the tools available to do so. The web standards that are built into Firefox 4 and Google Chrome are not yet complete, not yet baked, not yet finished by the W3C. Microsoft sees this as something to be afraid of. Mozilla and Google see this as something to embrace and integrate, in order to learn, in order to give users the best tools, in order to provide web developers with the everything they might want in order to create.

Web browsers need to test web standards to find out what works and what doesn’t. To work the kinks out. To find out what web developers want to use. Microsoft sees this as something scary. Mozilla and Google view bleeding edge web standards as the modern web. The kind of tools that propel the web forward. What is the theme here? It is what the theme has always been. Microsoft is *not* innovative. They play it safe, and they take a long time to do anything of value. Mozilla and Google look to the future and take risks. Risks that they feel are necessary in order to determine what the future of the web will look like.

Does all of this “safe” talk mean that Microsoft’s IE is a more stable browser? No. It just means that when IE9 comes out it’s going to include the web standards and enhancements that Microsoft feels are “ready” for today. When Mozilla releases Firefox 4 it’s going to mean that you’re using a web browser for today and tomorrow.

I’m biased. I’ll admit it. I think Mozilla is an extremely important company. They shocked Microsoft into consciousness when they started the Firefox project and ever since then, IE’s market share has been dropping. Users wanted a faster, more powerful, more robust web browser and Mozilla delivered. Today, Mozilla is not only a defender of the Firefox web browser, they are defenders of the open web. While Firefox is the biggest and best tool they have to describe that view of the web, Mozilla means more than just Firefox. The organization works tirelessly, day and night to propel the web forward and describe how the web of the future might look.

They’re also about the people, the community, the users. Microsoft is about business. Microsoft is about a unique approach to a Windows-centric web browser.

You can come from the Microsoft camp and talk about how great IE9 is. You can use IE9 and talk about how much better it is than all other versions of IE. Honestly, I’m glad that Microsoft worked so hard at integrating web standards into IE. It’s about bloody time. But at the end of the day, Microsoft doesn’t care, and can’t claim to care about web standards. They only care about Windows Vista/7 users who want to use today’s web standards in today’s Windows Internet Explorer.

If you want to explore the beauty of the web on Windows, have fun.

If you want to explore the universe of the web today and tomorrow. Get a real web browser.

just sayin’ <== check this out

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Feb 08 2011
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Firefox 4.0 Beta 11 Arrives with Do Not Track header

Today Mozilla will release the 11th beta release of Firefox 4.0. The most notable features of Beta 11 are:

  • Support for the proposed Do Not Track (“DNT”) header
  • Connection status messages are now shown in a small overlay
  • WebGL has been re-enabled on Linux
  • The default homepage design has been refreshed
  • Firefox no longer switches into offline mode automatically

The Do Not Track feature is an important one because it shows Mozilla’s interest in protecting the privacy of Firefox users. The DNT feature is not a standard, however, and it does not work unless websites obey the wishes of the user. Since many websites use various methods of tracking user behavior there will certainly be some resistance to this proposal. In the end I believe it’s best that the web ecosystem ultimately respects the rights and wishes of users.

The connection status messages are now displayed in an overlay at the bottom left of the screen. This is very similar to how Google Chrome displays both connection status and URL previews. I’m not sure what the final implementation will be for Firefox. Currently in Beta 11, only connection status is displayed in the overlay while URL previews are displayed on the right side of the Awesomebar.

I’m glad to see that WebGL is still being pushed to Linux. Although, graphics drivers on Linux are not an easy thing to deal with. Both of the major graphic card companies, AMD (ATI), and NVIDIA make proprietary graphics drivers for Linux. NVIDIA is far superior in the quality of their Linux drivers as well as the frequency of releases. But I digress. Suffice to say that I can’t blame Mozilla for blacklisting drivers and cards on Linux. They will only want WebGL to be enabled on machines where the quality and stability of WebGL in Firefox will be good to excellent. Nothing less.

I worked with the QMO team last Friday to verify the bugs that have been fixed since Beta 10. Everyone did a great job and we had a lot of fun testing things out for Mozilla. Anthony Hughes wrote up a nice review of the Bugday here.

I still think Mozilla has a ways to go in order to get Firefox 4 ready for prime time. With the long list of new features like Panorama, the UI redesign, Firefox Sync, and the 2.0 release of the Gecko rendering engine they have a lot to do. The overall performance and polish of the browser needs to improve a bit more before it’s really done in my opinion.

On Linux I’ve had the most trouble with Firefox 4. Compared to Windows and OS X, it is a bit slower to respond to user interaction with the UI. For example, opening and closing tabs, rearranging tabs, or clicking between tabs feels clunky at best. Panorama, while it has made great strides, is still very buggy. On Linux it’s slow to respond to user interaction and stutters when it zooms in and out. I’ve noticed that Firefox 4 on Ubuntu looks pretty good, but on all other flavors of Linux it looks absolutely terrible. I can’t get over how mundane it looks on KDE on Fedora. Thank God for Personas!

Overall: Firefox 4.0 Beta 11 is an excellent web browser. I highly recommend this beta to anyone who is interested in what Mozilla has cooking. Firefox is now, and will continue to be, my primary web browser. I feel a great deal of energy, dedication, and excitement in the Mozilla leadership that Firefox will have an amazing journey in 2011. Enjoy!!

Release Notes

Complete list of changes since the previous beta

Mozilla Blog

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Feb 01 2011
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Firefox 4 Mobile Beta

If you have a modern Android or Maemo device, head on over to Firefox’s Mobile site to try the latest beta release. They are making great strides in the mobile space these days.

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Jan 26 2011
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Latest Firefox Betas

Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 was released on January 14th:

  • Overhaul of the bookmarks and history code to increase performance
  • Many bugfixes and enhancements

Firefox 4.0 Beta 10 was released on January 25th:

  • Flash should work better on OS X
  • Reduction in memory usage
  • Reduce support to very modern and capable graphics cards for WebGL
  • Many bugfixes and enhancements

Grab it now and help test! http://www.firefox.com/beta

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Jan 24 2011
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Site Maintenance Complete

My domain transfer is complete.  Site should be serving properly.

 

Jan 23 2011
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Site Maintenance

I am changing domain management companies and WilksNet.com may be offline for a short period of time. I will attempt to get the site back online as soon as possible.

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