Tip: Click here to scan for Windows Registry Errors and Optimize PC performance

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 final has been released. Why should you install update?

1. Fastest Firefox (20% faster than Firefox 3.5). Faster startup time. Better JavaScript performance e.g. load Facebook faster!
2. Get your Firefox in your language (available in more than 70 languages).
3. Support for new Personas theme which allows you to change Firefox theme instantly.
4. Automatic protects you from out-of-date plugins
5. Can display video in full screen
6. Support for HTML5 (watch Firefox HTML5 videos here, no Flash player needed)
7. Fewer crashes caused by 3rd party software
8. You are using Firefox!

Click here to download the latest Firefox.

(image credit: nois3lab)

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate (RC1) is now available for download.

Firefox 3.6 is build on the Gecko 1.9.2 platform (3.5 uses Gecko 1.9.1) with the following new features:

• Users can change the browser’s appearance with a single click using Personas.
• Firefox 3.6 alerts users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
• Changes to how third-party software integrates with Firefox to increase stability.
• Improved automatic form fill provides better options from your form history.
• Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
• Support for the WOFF font format.
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
• The ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load times.
• Support for the HTML5 File API
• Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

I installed Firefox 3.6 RC1 and “feel” (no serious testing done) that it is much faster than Firefox 3.5.7. The loading speed of Facebook homepage, which use A LOT of Javascript, is improved quite significant.

All the Firefox add-ons that I am using (20+ of them) are either support or compatible with Firefox 3.6 RC1. Great!

Have you installed Firefox 3.6 RC1 yet? Download it here.

If you can’t wait for the final release of Google Chrome OS (read: Google Chrome OS in plain english), now you can download Chrome OS VMWare/VirtualBox image and run it as virtual machine on top of your current operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux).

The Chrome OS image (300MB compressed / 700MB uncompressed) is compiled from the Chromium OS source code (developer preview 0.4.22.8) by Jon Ursenbach (gdgt.com engineer). You can use it in VMware, VirtualBox, and on a USB drive.

Please note that the Chrome OS is still in its VERY early development. It could be very buggy and very limited functionality.

Download it at your own risk! (although it can’t do much harm by running in virtual machine)

For geeks who installed Chrome OS, How is it? What do you like/dislike about Chrome OS? How’s the performance? Super-FAST?

Google Chromium OS (Chrome OS) login screen

Update: I downloaded the Google Chrome OS VMWare image and load it on VMware Fusion (Mac). But I can’t log into the OS because it cannot detect the network connection. A Google Account (Gmail) and Internet connection are required in order to login Google Chrome OS.

Google Chrome OS is a lightweight open source linux-based operating system developing by Google based on Google’s Chrome web browser.

The following video tells you “What is Google Chrome OS?” in plain english.

What do you need to know about Google Chrome OS

The Google Chrome OS IS the web browser. It has super fast start-up speed. All applications are web applications, no installation.

The OS has high security to prevent malware and virus. If anything goes wrong, it will reboot and fix itself.

Chrome OS only works with solid-state hard drives and meant for netbooks. It will not install on your notebook.

Update: Now you can download Google Chrome OS for free!

Google Chrome OS screenshots

To satisfy your curiosity, here are some screenshots of Google Chrome OS (by Engadget)

Google Chrome OS application menu

Google Chrome OS file browser

Google Chrome OS app preview like Windows 7

My two cents

Based on the current available information, a netbook with Google Chrome OS is an Internet tablet with fast start-up time and high security.

It is ideal for you who need fast access to Internet or those switch on computer mainly for online activities.

Quote from a YouTube video comment by xDubaRx:

“Its an OS exclusive for Internet addicted people. It will work really great for that kind of people. Useless for developers, designers and/or gamers.”

Over to You

What do you think about the Google Chrome OS? Will you install it? Will you buy a netbook with Chrome OS pre-installed? What features you wish to have in the OS?

Update: Now you can download Google Chrome OS for free!

WordPress, the most popular blogging platform, has won the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award 2009 for the first time in the past four years.

The other two finalists MODx and SilverStripe tied for the first runner up position. (Sorry, first time I heard of them!)

In addition, WordPress also won 2nd place of the Best Open Source PHP CMS Category in 2009 Open Source CMS Award, ahead of Joomla! (3rd place). Drupal won in this category.

Matt, WordPress Co-Founder, wrote about the news, too.

WordPress as CMS?

Personally, I still treat WordPress as a blogging platform and not a CMS. Yes, you can use it as a CMS but it is not a out-of-box CMS script.

What do you think? Do you use WordPress for your CMS site?

Some CMS books for you: Beginning Drupal 7, Joomla! 1.5: A User’s Guide: Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website (2nd Edition)
, WordPress: Visual QuickStart Guide

While Mozilla Firefox celebrates its 5th birthday, Cenzic, an application security vendor, claims that the Mozilla Firefox led the field of Web browsers in terms of total vulnerabilities.

This is certainly not a good news for Mozilla.

According to Cenzic, Firefox accounted for 44 percent of all browser vulnerabilities reported in the first half of 2009. In contrast, Apple’s Safari had 35 percent of all reported browser vulnerability, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was third at 15 percent and Opera had just six percent share.

Does it make Firefox a dangerous web browser?

The Firefox plug-ins are one of the main reasons of the vulnerabilities. Mozilla launched a plug-in checker in Oct 2009 to address the problem.

Ironically, while Firefox has the most vulnerabilities, Cenzic themselves use Mozilla technology within its own solutions.

[via InternetNews.com]

Tip: Install NoScript addon to make your Firefox safer.

I use Google Gears on WordPress admin panels. It really makes a difference, pages are loading much faster with Gears.

Firefox 3.5 was not supported by Google Gears when it was released. There was no update for Google Gears for months. No stable release.

I have given up. Then, today, when I clicked on the “Turbo” link on WordPress Admin and then discovered the new version of Google Gears!

Though not announced on the Google Gears official blog (the latest announcement is about Gears 0.5.21), the Gears has been updated to version 0.5.32.

Available for Windows, Windows Mobile, Mac, Linux and Android. Click here to download latest Gears.

Tested with Firefox 3.5.3 on Mac OS X, works great! Now my WordPress Admin panel is fast again!

Do you use Google Gears? Besides WordPress, where do you use Gears?

More Information:

• Introduction to Google Gears: Creating Off-Line Applications with Pre-built Components listing at Amazon.com

With the release of Firefox 3.5, Mozilla Store has added Firefox 3.5 t-shirt for pre-order.

The front of the tee features Firefox 3.5 tag cloud; back features Firefox logo and wordmark. The price is USD$ 19.15, exclude shipping.

The shipping fee for single shirt to Malaysia is USD$ 14.55 (registered mail). That’s expensive. Threadless only ask for USD$9 for shipping.

I would need to pay more than RM120 to get a Firefox 3.5 t-shirt…

Any Malaysian wants to buy the Firefox 3.5 tee? Maybe we can do a bulk order.

P.S. 24 millions (and counting) copies of Firefox 3.5 has been downloaded since released.

Mozilla released Firefox 3.5 on June 30th, 2009. What’s new about it? Should you upgrade/install?

According to Mozilla, Firefox 3.5 is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform, which has been under development for the past years. Firefox 3.5 offers many changes over the previous version, supporting new web technologies, improving performance and ease of use.

What’s new in Firefox 3.5 for ?

Super Speed — believe it or not, Firefox 3.5 is 2 times faster than the previous version Firefox 3. 10 times faster than Firefox 2!

Private browsing — now you can surf porn privately with Firefox 3.5 new private browsing feature. When it is enabled, you won’t leave a single browsing fingerprint behind for others to discover.

Location-Aware browsing — when you visit a location-aware supported website, Firefox can tell the website about your location, with your permission, so you can find more relevant and more useful information.

Play audio and video without plugin — Firefox 3.5 now support HTML5

Get Firefox

Click here to download free Firefox 3.5. Or click here for Firefox in 70 different languages.

My two cents

I am amazed by the speed of Firefox 3.5, even though I have been using Firefox 3.5 beta and RC versions before the final version. It is so much faster, but not the fastest.

ZDNet did a web browser speed benchmark and showed that Firefox 3.5 is still slower (but close) than Google Chrome and Safari 4.

Speed is not everything. Remember, Firefox has over 6,000 add-ons to make your web surfing experiences better.

I tried to test the location-aware feature but it did not work for me. Anyone got it working on a desktop computer?

The buildt-n support of embedded video is cool. The Ogg video has better quality than H.264 (video format used by YouTube). The problem now is how many websites use the open video/audio format? Not till YouTube make a switch or it as an alternative, I think.

What do you think about Firefox 3.5? Is it your default web browser now?

Update: Firefox 3.5 gets the best score in UA Profiler test. (hat tip: Gen Kanai)

At June 17th, 2008, I ordered a Firefox 3 t-shirt on Mozilla Store International but it hasn’t yet arrived after 5 months! I think I have lost it…

According to my account’s order information, the item has been dispatched on the next day of order (June 18th, 2008). But I received no news of my order until today.

I contacted the related parties, Mozilla Foundation and Merchandize Mania by emails but did not receive any reply!

The Mozilla Store contact page’s title is “Customer First” and stated that:

At the Mozilla Store the customer always comes first. It is our goal to make your shopping experience easy and pleasant.

Now I have a very unpleasant experience! I love Mozilla Firefox but I will not shopping at Mozilla Store anymore!

By the way, congrats to Mozilla Firefox’s 4th birthday!

WordPress 2.6.3 has been released to fix a vulnerability in the Snoopy library. Also, WordPress is looking for icon designers for version 2.7.

Snoopy is used to fetch the feeds shown in the WordPress Dashboard. It is a low risk vulnerability. Users can download the new version right now.

If you do not want to download the whole installation package for the minor update, you can download wp-includes/class-snoopy.php and wp-includes/version.php and replace the existing files of your WordPress 2.6.2installation.

WordPress icon designer wanted

The next major version upgrade, WordPress 2.7 will be released at November 10th, 2008. WordPress is now looking for icon designers to design the icons used in the menu of WordPress 2.7.

The icons should be subtle, with classic look. Thin lines. Grayscale by default and color version for active menu items. The icons need to be ready within two weeks.

If you are experienced designer and interested to design icons for world’s famous blogging platform, drop an email to WordPress.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 has been released for developer testing and community feedback. The new version includes many new features as well as improvements to performance, web compatibility, and speed. Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is now available for free download.

Some of the new features in Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 are:

• Web standards improvements in Gecko layout engine
• Added support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties
• A new tab-switching shortcut that shows previews of the tab you’re switching to
• Improved control over the Smart Location Bar using special characters to restrict your search
• Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, web worker threads, SVG transforms and offline applications.

My two cents

I installed Firfox 3.1 beta 1 when it was just released. It works well and no serious problem so far. I don’t feel any noticeable speed improvement. The tab switch preview is nice but I don’t really need that feature. I read my tab by its page title.

If your Firefox addons do not work, you can install Nightly Tester Tools to override all compatibility. It works well for all my installed Firefox 3 addons.

More Information:

• “Firefox For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))” (Blake Ross) listing at Amazon.com
• “Firefox Hacks: Tips & Tools for Next-Generation Web Browsing (Hacks)” (Nigel McFarlane) listing at Amazon.com

FOSS.my 2008 is Malaysia’s premier Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) event. It is purely non-commercial event about FOSS. There will be no marketing/sales talks. The vendors will be encouraged to speak on the FOSS technical aspects of their projects/tools.

Date: 8th-9th November 2008
Venue: APIIT, Technology Park Malaysia, Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur (map)
Register: RM20 before 25th Oct 08, or RM50 later. Register now!

The FOSS.my 2008 will be filled by 26 talks in 2 days as shown on the time table. They are still looking for speakers. If you are interested in giving a talk, please register for your participation.

Facebook user? Join the FOSS.my on Facebook. Or, follow @fossmy on Twitter.

[Hat tip: Colin Charles]

Google Chrome is the open source web browser developed from scratch by Google. Available in beta in more than 40 languages, Google Chrome is a new approach to the browser that’s based on the simplicity and power that users have come to expect from Google products.

Features of Google Chrome

At the first launch, you will notice that Google Chrome has a very simple user interface. It has no menu bar, no status bar, and no search bar. All you got is a window frame and a tab at the top of address bar.

Screenshot of Google Chrome with multiple tabs and most visited sites (click to enlarge)

What’s inside Google Chrome is the Webkit web browser engine (same as Apple Safari) and the fast javascript engine, V8. Here are some of the features of Google Chrome:

Address bar — the address bar is combined with search and history quickly takes you where they want to go in just a few keystrokes.

New tab page — when you open a new tab, you will see a page that includes thumbnails of your most visited sites, searches, recent bookmarks and closed tabs.Dynamic tabs — you can drag tabs out of the browser to create a new windows, gather multiple tabs into one window or arrange the tabs as you wish.

Crash control — In Google Chrome, every tab is an independent computer process. You can close the no responding tab and other tabs are not affected.

Incognito mode — use this mode if you want porn private browsing. In incognito mode, no track will be leave on the computer.

Safe browsing — web browsing is safe using Google Chrome. It protects you from malware (sandbox) and phishing sites. The browser continually downloading list of harmful sites from Google server to keep you protected.

Download Google Chrome

Google Chrome is available for free download here. The first beta version is for Windows Vista/XP only. Mac and Linux versions will be coming soon.

I will go to KL to attend the BarCamp Malaysia held on 26th and 27th July 2008.

What is BarCamp?

Frankly, I am not sure too. According to BarCamp.org,

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.

Get the idea? It is a group of people gather together and sharing with each others. BarCamp Malaysia is the 1st barcamp in Malaysia. Check out the interesting schedule.

When is BarCamp Malaysia 2008?

Date: July 26, 2008, 10:00AM-6:00PM. July 27, 2008, 10:00AM-2:00PM.
Venue: xTrain Sdn Bhd, Unit E-7-1, Block E, Megan Avenue 1, 189 Jalan Tun Razak, 50400 Kuala Lumpur. (view map)

BarCamp Malaysia was a registration only event but due to the overwhelming responds, they are open to walk in registration at 9am, 26th July 2008. So, if you are not registered but interested, make sure you are there early!

I am not giving any talk at BarCamp Malaysia 2008 but I am very much looking forward for it! Surely, you will meet many geeks and experts there and discussing geek topics with them is FUN!

I have a community site powered by Drupal but it cannot display chinese characters, even though it supports unicode by default.

All non-English characters are displayed as question marks (???). I tried to reinstall Drupal but without any luck. Yesterday, I finally discovered the problem and solved it!

The problem

Last time, I installed Drupal using the cPanel Fantastico script installer. The installer created database using Latin collation. That’s why Drupal cannot display Chinese characters because the database is not unicode (UTF-8).

Lesson learned: Do not install script using cPanel Fantastico.

The solution

The solution is simple, correct the tables’ collation to UTF-8 using the following SQL query (thanks to neo_fox):

ALTER TABLE table_name CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

I ran the query using phpMyAdmin found in cPanel hosting control panel. But the drawback is that you need to run the SQL query for every single table…

I modified 20+ tables and it works! Now my friends can leave chinese message on the community website.

We know that domain name is a branding, so do logo did. I would like to design a logo that could express my blog’s name and my blog niche. I am not an art guy, so I do not have much experience on how to design a logo.

How to design?

I know design is not an easy job, but there are few factors that you must consider before design a logo. The 4 main factors are simplicity, meaningful, creative and impressive.

Of course, to digitize your logo, you need a free vector graphics editor software called Inkscape to help you. You can download Inkscape here.

Ink your Logo

With the help from Inkscape software, I start to draw my logo and it just took me few minutes to complete. Inkscape is not a image editor like photoshop, but is an excellent free vector graphics editor. It is very useful when come to create logos that need to be printed on big banners. With this tool, you can not only create fine details, but also can scale the images to any size you want.

So, you want to see my first logo ?

I have designed a simple logo as picture above by using calligraphic line for LiewCF.com. It looks artistic, simple and match with harmonization colors.

As for myself, I used sharp colors that integrate with iPod touch in my logo. The large “T” and iPod touch in the logo represent its tech related blog.

These are my first artworks. How do you think?

[Contributed by: AhTim , the author behind AhTim.com, is an IT techie that have a dream to become a full time blogger. He blogs for dream, for fun and hopefully for life!]

*** Click here if you would like to write a guest post for LiewCF.com (and get a permanent bank link), too. ***

A month after Firefox 3 beta 1, Mozilla has released Firefox 3 beta 2 and available for download here.

What’s new about Beta 2?

Compared to Beta 1, the Firefox 3 Beta 2 has improved location bar that makea the search result easier to be identified. The results for the location bar are shown in 2 lines: page title and web address, in different colors. The matched keyword is bolded and underlined.

Image: Firefox 3 location bar search

You also notice that the Go button at location bar is hidden until you enter a website address in the location bar.

Firefox 3 beta 2 also has a better search panel that allows you search for history, tags, and bookmarks. You can add as many search rules as you like, and save the search as a dynamic folder, much like Thunderbird’s email search.

For more details, check out Firefox 3 beta 2 review.

Firefox Add-ons on Firefox 3 beta 2

Previously, I complained about the Firefox add-on compatibility on Firefox 3 beta 1. It has been improved on Beta 2. Many popular Firefox add-ons added support to Firefox 3.

For incompatible add-ons, I use Nightly Tester Tool to force them work with Firefox 3 and they work!

Now, I can stick with Firefox 3 beta, instead of switching back to Firefox 2.

Bonus: IE8 is coming!

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer development team has reached a milestone where IE8 renders the “Acid2 Face” correctly. Acid2 tests web browser with different web standards to see if it rendered correctly. IE8 will be the Microsoft’s most web standard compliant web browser.

P.S. I tested Firefox 3 beta 2 on Acid2, and it does NOT render correctly…

IE8, Firefox3, Microsoft, Mozilla

I just updated Firefox 2 to version 2.0.0.10 from 2.0.0.9. The minor update fixed 3 bugs to improve the stability of Firefox. No new feature.

On the other hand, Mozilla released the 1st beta version of Firefox 3 at November 19, 2007 — Firefox 3 Beta 1. It is the next generation of Firefox web browser with many new and improved features.

I tried Firefox 3 Beta 1. It looks great but is not compatible with many Firefox add-ons, even tried forcing to be compatible using Nightly Tester Tool. No choice. I reverted to Firefox 2 in just a few minutes.

One shall wait for the final release version of Firefox 3. According to the release roadmap, it will be released at late 2007 or early 2008.

Off topic: Just checked my blog taffic statistic yesterday, 42% site visitors are using Firefox!

browser, firefox, mozilla

Prism is an application that lets you split web applications out of your web browsers and run directly on your desktop. That’s cool isn’t? This means you could add your favorite web applications to your desktop environment. When you need the application, just run directly from your desktop.

This software do more than just a shortcut. According to Alex Faaborg (a staff of Mozilla labs and should be the project leader of this exciting Prism project) claimed that:

By being trapped inside the browser, Web applications are unable to fully integrate with a user’s computing environment, and when accessing Web applications, users are constantly forced to think about what underlying technology the application is based on.

Now with Prism , web users are jumping out from the browser’s trap and it simply allow us to use web applications with desktop experience!

Why use Prism?

The simplest reason of course is no hassle on software installation. You simply integrate the web apps into desktop and it works like desktop apps. Further more, Mozilla labs is working to increase the capabilities of Prism such as support for offline data storage and access to 3D graphics hardware (by using canvas3d in Firefox 3).

How to use Prism?

Since the Prism is still in the labs, this means it still in experiment phase. Eventually the Prism is going to integrate with future Firefox 3, but for current phase you need to download Prism as a separate software.

After the installation, simply start Prism. It will display an Install Web Application dialog just like the screen shot below.

Enter the URL of the web application you want to use in Prism (e.g. gmail.google.com), a name for the application (e.g. Gmail), and select where you want to create the shortcuts. After that, press the OK button. Prism will create your web application at where you choose. So what you waiting now? Download a copy Prism for yourself and start experience it! (Now only available for Windows version)

My two cents

I can’t wait to experience the early prototype of this new transition of personal computing technology. Since I use Gmail everyday, I prefer it to stay as my desktop application. I’ve downloaded Prism and create Gmail as my desktop application as screen shot below. Now I can access my Gmail with single click!

What else can you think of to integrate into your desktop application?

More on Mozilla Prism

• WebRunner becomes Prism
• Mozilla Labs Blog – Prism

[Contributed by: AhTim , the author behind AhTim.com, is an IT techie that have a dream to become a full time blogger. He blogs for dream, for fun and hopefully for life!]

mozilla, prism