Firefox: Dramatic change in release version patterns

History of Firefox starts in 2002, when a new flavor of Mozilla was released under the name Phoenix. With the release of 0.6 it was renamed as as Mozilla Firebird, but it lasted only for two releases. This most popular name "Firefox" was introduced with the 0.8 release, and it continues as of the time of this post. Initially, Firefox made a major release every two years with minor releases in between.

Two yearly
Version 0.1 - 2002
Version 1.0 - 2004
Version 2.0 - 2006
Version 3.0 - 2008

However in 2011, the release pattern completely changed which resulted in major releases within every one or two months duration as shown below.

 Monthly
 4.0 - 2011/03
 5.0 - 2011/06
 6.0 - 2011/08
 7.0 - 2011/09
 8.0 - 2011/11
 9.0 - 2011/12
10.0 - 2012/01

Particularly within first 6 months of 2013, there were 5 major releases (18.0 to 22.0).

So it is worth finding the reasons for this dramatic change in the release process. As per my understanding, this change had a direct relationship with the new comer Chrome browser in 2008. First major release of Chrome (1.0) was done few months after the Firefox 3.0 release. However in early 2010 Chrome started making major releases every few months and when Firefox 4.0 was out in 2011 March, latest Chrome release available was 10.0.

Mozilla team seems to have identified a potential problem when introducing Firefox over Chrome; release number of Chrome is way beyond Firefox (which may look as related to number years of existence by someone). So Firefox releasing pattern also seemed to follow this fact track, but the latest Firefox version 22.0 while Chrome is 30.

As a side note, I think it is worth mentioning a summary on this battle.
When Firefox was so popular in around 2006, Google funded Firefox and in return became the Firefox's default search engine. Interestingly, 2008 born Google owned Chrome became the most popular browser sending once most popular Firefox into the third position behind Internet Explorer. I personally believe Google did it perfectly, they had a great plan and won the battle well ahead where as Firefox team could not resist a lot.

[Wikipedia] Updated 'Terms of Use' Effective from 25th May

Wikipedia, the One-stop website for most of the queries ranging from a tiny cell to the universe has a notice on top of the site claiming the 'Terms of use' (ToU) is changing tomorrow. Even though I am a regular user of Wikipedia, was never worried to read their 'ToU'. However this noticed lead me to compare the older with the new version.

Most noticeable change is the structure ; new version is more organized under different sub-sections which makes it easier for us to pick the required information rather than reading the whole. A summary is provided at the start as
"a human-readable summary of the Terms of Use" which is quite handy.

One key point to note is the legal bindings that is added with details and the emphasis is more towards the legal information related to American laws; this make sense since the Wikipedia foundation resides in America.
See below extraction...

"If you seek to file a legal claim against us, you agree to file and resolve it exclusively in a state or federal court located in San Francisco County, California. You also agree that the laws of the State of California and, to the extent applicable, the laws of the United States of America will govern these Terms of Use, as well as any legal claim that might arise between you and us (without reference to conflict of laws principles). You agree to submit to the personal jurisdiction of, and agree that venue is proper in, the courts located in San Francisco County, California, in any legal action or proceeding relating to us or these Terms of Use."

Another change is the licensing mechanism. Wikipedia has clearly mentioned that the content is from the community, so the writers must grant the license for free distribution and reuse, but with the attribution in place. Availability of 'GNU Free Documentation License' only will not be sufficient under this new ToU.

Even though we are not quite clear about the effects from these updates in ToU for us as Wikipedia readers; someone may feel that Wikimedia Foundation has tried to avoid most of the legal issues that they may face in future (if there are any).

Winning Plus grows and loosing Buzz dies at Google

Google has decided to shutdown Buzz in few weeks raising the closed product count to around 20. With the growing popularity of GMail, Google introduced Buzz in February 2010 as an integrated product to GMail which could easily attract users into Google's Social Networking product.

However Buzz failed to attract much users; may be because it was something in between a Twitter and a Facebook. At the early stages, Buzz faced a privacy issue causing user's to think twice because using it. Though Google resolved the privacy issues, it was too late. According to our experiences this is an expected news which Google postponed till a better replacement is found. Both Google Plus and Buzz are catering the same requirement for Google; creating a Social Networking product into Google product base.

As Google mentioned;

"We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+".

As a proof of above statement, Google Plus considered Privacy as the main concern and came up with a feature named Circle. Google Plus web interface made it simple to understand how this new privacy feature functions. Another good restriction is the age limit; only users over 18+ are allowed to create Plus accounts as Google is still working on proper safety additions.

According to early analysis, Plus is definitely growing well unlike Buzz. However Google has a long way to go, as the required user base is huge. According to social networking giant Facebook's statistics, it has 800 million user base while Google has around 40 million (within 3 months). According to statistics, 800 million is still bigger compared to Google's GMail user base; but let's wait and see.

Related: Google redirect to incorrect country domain: Fix on Firefox

Subversion 1.7 Released - Under Apache Software Foundation

Subversion 1.7, first feature release after moving to Apache Software Foundation is announced. Starting from this, Subversion will be released under Apache License, version 2 instead of the modified Apache license used by Tigris.

Interesting features

One single .svn folder

This is the most interesting feature for us. In Subversion 1.7 meta data will be stored into a single location at the root directory. As you are aware, currently there are .svn folders inside each and every folder of the working copy of your project. Instead of that there will be just one .svn directory in the root of the working copy.

New Command: svn patch

In Subversion 1.7 a new sub command is introduced named "patch" (i.e: svn patch) which can be used to apply patch files to a working copy. This command supports newly created files as well as deleted files.

Compatibility with 1.6

Older clients and servers will work fine with 1.7 even though new features will not be functional.

Download distributions

Distributions can be downloaded from following locations.

• subversion-1.7.0.zip
• subversion-1.7.0.tar.gz
• subversion-1.7.0.tar.bz2

Related Articles

• Attempted to lock an already-locked dir: Subversion issue
• svnadmin create a new empty project repository in subversion (svn) in Linux

Steve Jobs - Most innovative genius is no more

October 5th is going to be a sad day to technology lovers. As you all are aware; Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc. has passed away at the age of 56 on 5th October 2011. As common to everybody, he also did not have a smooth flow of nicely organized stages in his life; but Steve was praising that as the most important part that created the path to his innovations. One such example is the tragedy of getting fired from the Apple company which he co-founded. You already know this fact, but how would you have responded?

You will survive if you are fired from the company that you work for!! right? But what if you are fired from the company that you built from the scratch; and interestingly by the CEO recruited by yourself? Do you have the strengths to survive which Steve had?

Steve explained this situation later as;

"The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

Many people would explain this as "by the sadness of being a looser", but Steve said "lightness of being a beginner again".

Young Steve Jobs introducing the Macintosh

After getting fired from Apple, he founded NeXT Computer Inc. which Apple Inc. happened to buy after another 11 years because NeXT was doing so good; and Steve became the head again. At NeXT so many innovations came out; like an email where images and videos can be shared, a web framework called WebObjects which was later used in Apple applications like Apple Store. Most importantly NeXT's NeXTSTEP evolved as Mac OS X.
Under Jobs guidance, Apple created so many attractive items like iMac, iPod, iTunes Store. The revolutionary invention of multi-touch display iPhone changed the mobile phone industry dramatically.

Does "i" stand for Innovation?

According to Apple, "i" was initially used in iMac which stands for Internet. Later Apple used it for branding all consumer machines. However I prefer to consider this "i" to stand for "Innovative"; where iPhone would mean Innovative phone.
With the death of Jobs, people has started using "i" in front of the word sad (as iSad), does it make scene?

Stanford Commencement - The great speech

Let me finish this tribute with a quote from the Stanford Commencement Speech.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Since this genius is a Buddhist, may Steve attain Nibbana.

Facebook notification email settings can be customized

Facebook notification emails are received for most of the follow up events like comments on photos, tags in photos, wall comments and many more. For a regular Facebook user, it might be difficult to manage the amount of emails received; even some are a bit of less useful. Have you already started to hate these notifications? One such annoying instance is receiving notifications like "Xman commented on your friend Y-friend's image, video or status". This is useless (at least for us) if Xman is not a known person.


By identifying this fact Facebook has come up with a new feature to manage the notifications. According to Facebook team

"We're trying out a new feature to reduce the amount of email you receive from Facebook. Starting today, we are turning off most individual email notifications and instead, we'll send you a summary only if there are popular stories you may have missed."

All notification events including Photos, Videos, Links even Wall comments can be customized individually. This is not going to be too handy initially, but will be really useful later when this feature is familiar to users. To start with, there is a default-notification-list that Facebook team has created for us. This can be enabled with a check box selection at the top of notifications page.

With this Facebook users can enable/disable notifications according to individual interests while making sure the inbox contains only the important emails.

Related Article

• Gmail Multiple Sessions Alert: This account is open in 1 other location

Thunderbird 3.1.5 Release with Critical security fixes

Mozilla Thunderbird 3.1.5 version released today. This free and open source email client is one of the better standalone ones available. Since development is done by a community of developers with the help of security experts; issue identification and resolution process is so efficient. Thunderbird 3.1.5 can be downloaded from here for any platform (Windows, Mac OS and Linux) in around fifty languages.

This release has fixes for five critical security vulnerabilities as shown below.

• Unsafe library loading Vulnerabilities
• Dangling pointer vulnerability in LookupGetterOrSetter
• Use-after-free error in nsBarProp
• Buffer overflow and memory corruption using document.write
• Miscellaneous memory safety hazards (rv:1.9.2.11/ 1.9.1.14)

An upgrade to latest 3.1.5 version is advised to avoid any security issues. All credit goes to those great people who devote their time and effort on getting another release out.

Gmail Multiple Sessions Alert: This account is open in 1 other location

"This account is open in 1 other location at..." Gmail user interface provides this message when your account is used in multiple locations simultaneously. One of the most important and interesting security feature that any web mail service would wish to provide. I suppose Gmail is the only web mail service that has this type of security feature (let us know if any other does). Users become aware of any misuse of their Gmail accounts.

Gmail is countering the number of active sessions per account in providing this information; so "open in multiple locations" means that there are multiple active session for this particular account. Gmail also provides more details about each session making it easy to track the misuser. Access Type, IP address and Date/Time are displayed as details.

Effectiveness

All these details are visible to all web sessions including misuser's session; so the effectiveness of this feature is in doubt. For example, a misuser can sign out as soon as this information is displayed in Gmail account. However a solution for this will not be simple and easy. In the meantime, these information is not displayed in a very prominent place (shown at the very bottom of the page), only the misuser will use these information rather than actual (innocent) account owner.

Improvements

We are not highlighting the weaknesses by neglecting effort made in providing this feature. However, as an improvement; active sessions count can be shown at the top bar; so that all users will notice the multiple session usage. However this should be displayed only when multiple sessions are active.

Sun suspends NetBeans IDE DVD Starter Kit distribution program

Sun has suspended their NetBeans IDE DVD Starter Kit distribution program indefinitely. Yes, you read it correctly; they have done it. So many developers used to get most of Sun (free) products through the distribution program. Students with less bandwidth (in some colleges & universities); specially users without Internet access to home computers are fond of this service as NetBeans DVDs are freely delivered to their hands at no cost.

According to NetBeans.org;

"Since August 30th, 2005, NetBeans.org has shipped more than 225,000 CDs & DVDs to developers around the world through this initiative! During this period, NetBeans has experienced explosive growth as a download, media kit, and a community. To stay ahead of this encouraging trend we are looking into ways to effectively satisfy increasing demand for NetBeans software worldwide."

For sure this service played a huge role in helping so many Java developers. Also the program is a good marketing option for NetBeans since Eclipse (the best free Java IDE) provides no such services, rather than allowing free download. Sun also has decided to follow the same; stick only for free downloads. However the Starter Kit is available for download as an ISO image. In near future may offer downloads via mirrors and bit torrent; but not sure how near that future is. Anyway we are grateful to service Sun provided us.

Chrome or Firefox - which browser to choose?

Chrome is the newest baby in browser family or the next competitor in browser war. What ever it is, Google released their browser named Chrome. But Mozilla Firefox is the most popular browser in the world right now and Google was the major supporter for Firefox. Even while supporting it, they have built their own browser free and open source. Here we are looking at the two browsers and trying to compare them to decide whether to switch to the new one or not leaving our old but fascinating friend Firefox?

Interesting features

1. One Process per each tab
Tab is not another thread running inside the browser process; there is a separate process per tab. Even if one tab crashes, the rest of the tabs will be running as nothing happened; which was not available in Firefox. This is one of the most interesting features.

2. New tab is filled with useful links
For a new tab in Firefox, you can load a predefined page, a blank page or a predefined set of page links (using an extension). But you would be much happier to see a set of links that you dealt with in recent past; Chrome comes exactly with that. The new tab will show a set of links;

• Most visited pages
• Recently closed
• Recently Bookmarked

I do not think the last one will be much useful, but the other two will be pretty handy.

3. Rich Location bar
Location bar in Chrome is a combination of location bar & search bar. You can directly type a url or a search keyword, also it comes with suggestions.
Using separate location bar per each tab is also an interesting move, each tab looks like individual browser instances; while in firefox you have single location bar shared by all tabs.

4. Speed
Stephen Shankland at CNet has posted an article on speed, and it tells most of the details. However Brendan at MozillaZine has published another set of testing statistics. So we'll have to check some statistics done by an independent party to get a clear view. Anyway Chrome is starting up so fast compared to any other browser.

Some complains

Since Chrome is still in beta, this may be a good time to suggest some features or improvements. Following are some complains that we have.

1. No warning in closing
When multiple tabs are opened Firefox is used to show a warning in closing the browser, but Chrome does not and closes immediately. Since people can accidentally close the browser better to add it soon.

2. Displaying different fonts
Some of the fonts are not displayed smoothly as Firefox used to do. Above image shows how the same content is displayed in two of these browsers.

3. No XML viewer
May be it is not a must to have a XML viewer in a browser, but we are used to it. Firefox and IE both have good XML viewers, but Chrome lacks it. Similar to this Opera and Safari also do not have this feature. Many people happened to work with XML files every day and having an XML viewer in the browser is an added advantage.

4. Security issues
Chrome has exposed to a set of known security issues by using an older version of WebKit, which had already been fixed. Anyway we expect Google to fix it soon.

Main Concern

Above all of these our main concern is the lack of support for extension development. We are used to live with some great extensions with Firefox, which we are not experiencing with Chrome. Since it is still in beta version, we should wait for extension support. However no API is released for extension development, users will have to wait longer than expected to see some useful extensions. There are so many extensions that makes our lives easier and better. Few of them are;

• NoScrip
• Adblock
• Gmail Manager

What are the other reasons that you are not switching to Chrome straightaway?

If Michael Phelps is a country himself alone

What if Michael Phelps is a country himself alone rather than representing United States of America? Michael Phelps has already gathered 8 Gold medals in Beijing Olympics 2008 including 3 relays. Most of the participating countries happened to go back empty hand, so many players are participating knowing they are not up to the level of winning a medal. But consider this man, he's breaking world records in most appearances.

If he is playing himself alone as a separate country named "Phelps" he would still have 5 Gold medals and ranked as 11th country in Beijing Olympic medal table. Around 200 countries will be behind him. Medal table would look as follows.

Rank	Country	Gold
1	China	35
2	USA	14 (19-Phelps)
3	Australia	11
.....
11	Phelps	5

He is creating new history with a set of world records and we are really proud to see such a person in this planet. We doubt any one living right now in this planet will be able to witness another performance like this in their lifetime. If they could, it will be again only by this big man. This is fabulous! one person winning 8 Olympic Gold medals while so many countries are trying at least to win one bronze medal for their country to mark their presence.

Now Michael Phelps has 14 Olympic Gold medals in three Olympics becoming the most Olympic Gold medal holder in the world. As he is only 23 years, this is going to be just the beginning in his career and all of us wish him to swim more than 10 years to create so many world records to raise the standards in this planet into a superior level.

We love to see an amazing man like Michael Phelps in this planet.

[Cricket] Most wickets in debut Test series - World record by Ajantha Mendis

Most wickets by a player in his debut 3-match Test series; a 60+ years old world record has been broken. By whom? By Sri Lankan newly found precious mystery spinner Ajantha Mendis. He produced this new world record yesterday, 2008-08-10 with the wicket of Sachin Tendulkar, another master of cricket. Up to now, he has got 25 wickets in this series, and he has passed the 24 wickets record held by English bawler named Alec Bedser.

Ajantha Mendis has so many variations, and so difficult to read from the hand. Most of the Indian batsmen are still struggling to play against him while he is improving with his variations and accuracy.

In the current India-Sri Lanka Test series he played in all 3 matches (and 6 innings) and performed fabulously. Still he is bawling in the 2nd inning of the last Test match and 5 more wickets are left in Indian team. So we wish Mendis to get some more wickets out of those and improve his record into an untouchable one in history.

Well done Menda.

Update:
Ajantha added another wicket to his record, now it's 26 wickets in a 3-match Test series. He is the man of the series in his debut.

Write Java with JDK 1.5 features and run on JRE 1.4

Have you being writing your Java code on Java 1.5 (JDK 1.5) with new features like auto boxing, generics and enums? And suddenly realized that your customer's servers are still using Java 1.4 (JRE 1.4)? This is not a surprise since most of the customers are not in a position to take a risk and try the newer versions as they are running live/online businesses. But as professionals in the software development field, we have to move with the latest/stable versions available in the market. That's where the conflict occurs.

Now you must deploy your Java 1.5 codes into a 1.4 Java runtime environment (even may be 1.3 or 1.2). Even if the Java code has not used any of the new features of Java 1.5, you still can not run your code in 1.4 JRE as the runtime throws an error saying "java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError".

Compile 1.5 codes for 1.4 JVM

Java compiler provides an option to specify the target JVM of the generated classes like 1.5, 1.4, and 1.3 as follows.

public class MyClass {
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        System.out.println("Main Method");
    }
}

> javac -source 1.4 -target 1.4 MyClass.java

Even if your JDK is of version 1.5, above command will compile your class so that it can run on a JRE 1.4. But the above option only works if your class does not use any of the new features in Java 1.5 (like auto boxing, enums etc).

Check the following class. Compiling it with "target" option will result in a compile time error.

public class MyClass {
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        Integer count = 1;
        System.out.println("Main Method");
    }
}

> javac -source 1.4 -target 1.4 MyClass.java

The compiler error is shown because auto boxing is not supported in 1.4.

This means that we can not use 1.5 features if we are going to run the programs on an older version. So this is not a real solution for our issue.

Can not run/deploy code with new features on 1.4 JVM?

There is an open source free solution to this issue. The tool is named "Retroweaver", and it can generate class files for older JREs using classes with new features of the 1.5 version. This is a nice tool and it supports most of the Java 1.5 features.

Retroweaver site says;

... supports most 1.5 features while running on 1.4.

• generics
• extended for loops
• static imports
• autoboxing/unboxing
• varargs
• enumerations
• annotations

Also this has a good documentation (even though it's not up to date. Don't blame them; they are doing it for free).

This tool can convert .class files of 1.5 version to another older JRE version. Also it has the capability of converting a complete .jar file.

Six sixes in one over in Twenty20 Cricket - World record

Six sixes in one over in Twenty20 (Twenty Twenty, T20) Cricket? Oh! World record!!! It was an amazing over; all the balls went over the rope like rockets. The Start was Yuvraj Singh from India, and the poor bowler was Stuart Broad (England). This happened on 2007-09-19, in Twenty20 world up match. Yuvraj did this in the 19th over.

Unsurprisingly, he scored 50 runs in 12 deliveries, creating another world record. And think for a minute? He scored 50 with 3x4 and 6x6, which adds upto 48 runs in 9 balls. This world record will not be broken for a longer time and will stay than any other record?

With this six sixes, Yuvraj joined the club of Six Sixers as the 4th person. Before him; West Indies great Sir Garfield Sobers and India's Ravi Shastri joined there while Herschelle Gibbs joined this club this year in March. Well done Yuvraj.

QuickTime security issue fixed with Firefox 2.0.0.7 new security release

Firefox 2.0.0.7 has released a new security release again. As addicted users of FF, we are really happy how Firefox progresses. When ever some issues are fixed, they provide us with a new release. Also user does not need to think twice in installing the new release as it does not add more issues to your existing installation. When Internet Explorer (IE) 7 came out users had issues; also still we have so many issues with IE7, but not with Firefox.

With this release they fixed the bug related to QuickTime; "Code execution via QuickTime Media-link files".

QuickTime Media-Link files contain a qtnext attribute that could be used on Windows systems to launch the default browser with arbitrary command-line options. When the default browser is Firefox 2.0.0.6 or earlier use of the -chrome option allowed a remote attacker to run script commands with the full privileges of the user. This could be used to install malware, steal local data, or otherwise corrupt the victim's computer. Read more

We really appreciate quick response to security issues like that.

Yahoo! Photos closing on different dates for different users

Today I got a mail from Yahoo informing that Yahoo Photo is shutting down. But why? As you may guess they are going to stick only to Flickr, which is one of the best solutions if someone wishes to share photos. It will be closed on 2007-10-18 for some of us while the date differs from one user to another. But anyway make sure you transfer all your photos in Yahoo Photo is moved to Flickr or download them to some other place as you will loose them for ever. Only 41 days left for me.

GWT releases 1.4 and is no longer beta

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) has released a new version, 1.4. With over 1 million downloads GWT is moving forward well; and it's no longer beta. The user group is really active and well established; so if you haven't tried GWT yet, it's time to have a look.

Read more about GWT and news release at GWT blog.

For any issues visit the GWT user group here.

Adsense Ads between blogger posts

If you have switched your blog from older blogger to new blogger platform (which uses layouts) and looking for adding adsense advertisements in between posts; Blogger has created a new widget for this purpose. And they have made it such that any non-tech blogger even can use this. This widget lets you specify number of posts between an adsense advertisement. You can see the full guide here at Get inline.

If you haven't switched to new blogger yet, don't worry. You still can put adsense ads between your posts. You have to put the adsense code inside the tags that shows up the blog post. My home page has done like that. If you need any assistance on that, just drop me a mail or write below as a comment. I would be happy to help you.

New Firefox release 2.0.0.6 - Security update

A new version of Firefox, 2.0.0.6 has been released today. This is another security update. And they released the 2.0.0.5 version just 13 days ago. That's why I really love Firefox. When ever an issue is reported, they work on it and provide us with a new version so that we are on the safe side always. And this is not the case with some other browsers where people have to wait months and years for some fixes. So thanks guys for all your dedication on making a better product.

Read the release note for more info.

[Cricket] Sangakkara joins the "five double hundreds" club

Today Kumara Sangakkara become the seventh cricketer to reach five double hundreds in Test. This is a real achievement and it shows Sangakkara's patiences as well as the talents. Sri Lanka is the only country to have more than one player in that list of seven players.

Here are the seven players with five or more double hundreds.

1. Donald Bradman (AUS)- 12
2. Brian Lara (WI) - 9
3. Wally Hammond (ENG) - 7
4. Marvan Atapattu (SL) - 6
5. Javed Miandad (PAK) - 6
6. Kumara Sangakkara (SL) - 5
7. Rahul Dravid (IND) - 5

Well done Sanga.