April 2008
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As promised, we’ll continue to highlight some of the incredibly cool and useful Firefox 3 features you can expect to see. Today’s installment on Firefox 3’s new bookmarking system is brought to you once again by Deb Richardson, the author of the about:mozilla newsletter. Deb provides a clear explanation of the many improvements you’ll see, including:
- bookmark stars which allow for one-click bookmarking
- tags that allow you to add extra relevant information to a bookmark so it’s easier to find and organize
- smart bookmark folders or “saved searches” that automatically update when you add new items matching that search to your bookmarks
Firefox 3’s bookmark dialog box
Take a look at her post for more details, as well as a great how-to. I’ve found that I am using Firefox 3’s bookmarking with renewed gusto thanks to the little star and intuitive organization and search!
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Written by mary on April 29th, 2008 with no comments.
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For all of you who missed it, which is pretty much everyone, FIBA, the international basketball body modified many of their rules to parallel those of the NBA. Here is an overview:
"BEIJING - International basketball is going to look more like the NBA after two major rule changes take effect.
The three-point line will move back and the three-second area will change shape starting in 2010, the sport's world governing body announced Saturday.
After Oct. 1, 2010, FIBA will begin using the new rules for major events such as the Olympics and world and continental championships.
The three-point line will move from 20 feet, 6.1 inches to 22 feet, 1.7 inches. The NBA line is 23-9.
FIBA general secretary Patrick Baumann said it was likely FIBA would move toward the NBA distance in the next 10 years.
FIBA also will reconfigure the three-second area to match the NBA shape, going from a trapezoid to a rectangle. "
The only major disparity that won't change is that there will be no "cylinder" above the rim as there is in the NBA. The current FIBA rules will stay in place.
This is important news for several reasons:
1. Maybe with American kids growing up playing and practicing by rules that closely mirror NBA and college rules, we can use younger, amateur players rather than having NBA owners pay for the salaries of players so that GE can make millions of dollars and show a couple games on CNBC at midnight. Do I sound bitter here ? I of course am. Nothing dumber. The Olympics is not about national pride, its about billions of dollars. Ok, off that soap box.
2. If the rules are close enough, it creates the remote, but still possible opportunity for international officials to become NBA officials. That would expand the talent pool by thousands , which is a good thing.
3. What I am guessing is the real reason behind the change is that it makes it easier to franchise the NBA brand of basketball internationally and for American basketball fans to get understand it and get behind it. That is a good idea. (I'm all for international use of NBA players when we get paid for our players to participate. It's that old American capitalistic concept of I Pay, You Pay)
4. It creates an additional development league for the NBA. If players who are too young for the NBA want to earn a living playing basketball, they can go to Europe, prove themselves, get paid and learn the game in an environment comparable to the NBA. That again is a good thing.
4.
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Written by Mark Cuban on April 27th, 2008 with no comments.
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Look out for Firefox…he (or is it a she?) is on the loose at ROFLCon! ROFLCon is a fabulous celebration of all the goofiness that the Web has helped unleash. Mozilla stepped forward to help the conference because it’s just this type of creativity (or bizarreness depending on who you talk to!) that makes the Web so wonderful!
Firefox has been seen rubbing elbows with the Tron Guy and more. You never know where Firefox will show up next!
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Written by mary on April 26th, 2008 with no comments.
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Have you ever seen this dialog while surfing the web in Internet Explorer?
You browse to your favorite news site. The content starts loading, you've already started reading the headline, and then it happens. Those of you familiar with the operation aborted dialog know that it spells sudden doom for the website you're currently viewing. Unsuspecting users have no idea what it means and simply click 'OK' and then watch in horror as the web page they were just reading disappears; only to be replaced by an navigation error screen. More savvy users move the dialog out of the way so that they can finish reading what was visible before they too accept the inevitable...
This dialog (and its side-effects) is gone in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1.
What caused the operation aborted error?
The operation aborted dialog in Internet Explorer 7 is triggered by an HTML parsing exception that occurs when all the following specific conditions are met:
- The HTML file is being parsed
- Script is executing
- The executing script attempts to add, or remove an element from an unclosed ancestor in the markup tree (not including the script block's immediate parent element).
You can see that each of these conditions is true in the following example markup:
<html>
<body>
<div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var newElem = document.createElement('foo');
document.body.appendChild(newElem);
</script>
</div>
</body>
</html>
The HTML file is being parsed, and encounters a script block. The script block contains inline script which creates a new element and attempts to add it to the BODY (document.body.appendChild(newElem)) element before the closing BODY tag has been encountered by the parser. Note that if I removed the highlighted DIV element, then this problem would not occur because the script block's immediate parent would be BODY, and the script block's immediate parent is immune to this problem.
Unfortunately the operation aborted dialog was always thrown at the top-level of a web page, even if the problem occured in an iframe. In fact, in most scenarios that we encountered, ad injection in an iframe was usually the root cause of this error. After the user dismissed the error dialog, Internet Explorer would navigate away from the page.
What we did in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1
In Internet Explorer 8, our goal is to change the behavior that previously caused the following problems:
- The operation aborted error was a modal dialog. The dialog was not actionable by any user.
- Dismissing the operation aborted dialog caused Internet Explorer to navigate to an error page. This prevented any potential debugging of the affected page.
When the HTML parser throws the operation aborted exception, rather than announce this error to the world, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 discreetly tucks this information away into the list of script errors associated with the webpage and stops parsing HTML and running script at that point. We also tried to provide a little more help to those developers who encounter this error (but don't read the IE blog) by including the KB article number in the text that describes this problem:
HTML Parsing Error: Unable to modify the parent container element before the child element is closed (KB927917)
A simple web search for "KB927917" in major search engines will usually turn up the corresponding Knowledge Base article as the first hit. That article describes the specifics of this problem and available workarounds.
Interoperability observations and feedback request
It's intriguing to observe the parsing behavior of various browsers in these situations, as it's not universally consistent. For the scenarios involving adding elements to an open container (e.g., appendChild), the appropriate behavior seems very straightforward--just add the element. Future markup encountered by the HTML parser (after execution of the script block) should then be appended to the existing in-memory DOM. Other browsers tend to agree on this point.
In the case where a parent element is removed (e.g., removeChild, innerHTML, outerHTML) and parsing resumes, the big question becomes: what is the parser's new context? Different browsers answer this question differently. By and large, most other browsers invalidate the parsed context from the point of deletion in the DOM, and "remember" what was deleted such that future parsed markup is ignored until the containing tree (now deleted in-memory) is closed. You can start to see the complexity in this approach, especially if the tree is not well-formed. On the other hand, other browsers take a different approach and "re-base" the parsing context of the current markup at the point of deletion. This results in future markup being inserted in "the wrong place" (a matter of perspective) in the in-memory DOM. For illustration purposes, consider the former as "approach A" and the latter as "approach B." Given the following markup, what do you as web developers expect? I tend to think that approach A is the saner model to follow:
<html>
<body>
<div id="container1">
<div>
<span id="span1">First block of text</span>
<script type="text/javascript">
document.body.removeChild(document.getElementById('container1'));
</script>
<span id="span2">Second block of text</span>
</div>
</div>
<div id="container2"></div>
</body>
</html>
Final DOM tree constructed using each approach mentioned above:
|
Approach A |
Approach B |
html
|-body
|-div#container2 |
html
|-body
|-span#span2
|-div#container2
|
What can you do?
In any case, the moral of the story is to avoid getting yourself into this scenario if possible. Granted, in some cases it may be inevitable, especially if the content is not under your direct control (like ad-injection scenarios). Knowledge Base article 927917 mentions some workarounds, but additionally to avoid the problem, you simply need to ensure that your script doesn't meet all three of the conditions I outlined earlier. So, if possible, do the following to avoid an operation aborted error:
- Moving your script execution to a function that is invoked after parsing is complete (e.g., onload)
- Adding the defer boolean attribute to the script block (this defers execution of the script content until parsing is complete)
- Limiting your tree modifications to the script-element's immediate parent
- Moving the location of your script block to a child of the body (this usually solves most problems, while allowing the most flexibility in terms of scenarios).
Always a pleasure,
Travis Leithead
Program Manager
IE8 Object Model
Written by ieblog on April 24th, 2008 with no comments.
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Mitchell Baker, Chris Hofmann, Chris Blizzard, Taras Glek, Marcio Galli and myself just wrapped up an amazing visit to Porto Alegre for FISL, Brazil’s largest open source conference. The conference drew over 6,000 people from Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, Angola and more! I wanted to extend a huge thank you to Bruno Magrani, Ronaldo Lemos, Mario Rinaldi, Clauber Stipkovic Halic, Giullermo Movia of Argentina, Felipe Gomes, Antonio Gomes, Andre Pedralho, Fernando Silveira, Marcelo Terres, Juliano Bittencourt and everyone else who helped make our experience so great!
Some of the highlights:
- We met many, many, many passionate Firefox users. In fact, 6,000 of them and not nearly enough Firefox t-shirts to go around. You can imagine the stampede!
- Our Brazilian contributors helped conduct a workshop on the various ways to get involved with Firefox and Mozilla. Despite the heat and far off location we had a great showing of people. Stay tuned for video!
- In line with the Brazilian culture, we had a great community party to thank our Brazilian contributors and get to know some new people.
- Juliano Bittencourt of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project took us to a local deployment where we met students who’ve been enjoying, customizing and learning with the computers. It was pretty amazing to see OLPC project coming to life.
It was great to see all the contribution that is going on in Brazil and to meet new volunteers. Thanks for the hard work!
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Written by mary on April 23rd, 2008 with no comments.
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If you’re a developer, there’s an easy way to give your eyes a rest and make yourself more productive. Use the Consolas font Microsoft developed specifically for you.
When we began work on a project to create a new set of fonts which would take maximum advantage of ClearType, we decided to develop a fixed-pitch font for developers - because no one ever thought of their needs, and we realized a highly-readable fixed-width font would make their lives a lot easier.
We call them the C* fonts because their names all begin with C (for ClearType), and we spent a lot of research and development time making them as readable as possible.
Look at the difference Consolas makes, for instance, in the CMD.EXE window. Here’s what the standard 8 x 12 pixel raster font looks like…
… and here’s Consolas
You’ll see Consolas doesn’t get you as many lines on a screen – but it’s so much clearer and better to read that it’s well worth the tradeoff.
Bryn Spears on the Internet Explorer team gave me the following simple instructions to turn on Consolas in the CMD Window:
reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont" /v 00 /d Consolas
logoff
Note: In Windows Vista, you need to run the reg command from an elevated command prompt.
When you log back in, Consolas will be an option in the “Command Prompt” Properties. (n.b., Bryn tells me it actually shows up before you relog, but it won’t work.)
You can install Consolas on your Windows system even if you don’t have Vista or Office 2007 with a free download from Microsoft.com
The Windows International fonts team is working on another version that’ll support Vietnamese, and also the line draw characters that we made to support the console window.
Bill Hill
Program Manager
Internet Explorer
Edit: changed logout to logoff
Written by ieblog on April 23rd, 2008 with no comments.
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Deb Richardson, author of the about:mozilla newsletter, wrote one of the better explanations I’ve seen on the “AwesomeBar,” Firefox 3’s revamped URL bar. It’s not the most humble of names, but if you check out Deb’s post you’ll see why it’s earned it.
In Deb’s words, here’s a quick snapshot of what makes Firefox 3’s URL bar just so awesome:
Dubbed the “AwesomeBar”, it lets you use the URL field of your browser to do a keyword search of your history and bookmarks. No longer do you have to know the domain of the page you’re looking for — the AwesomeBar will match what you’re typing (even multiple words!) against the URLs, page titles, and tags in your bookmarks and history, returning results sorted by “frecency” (an algorithm combining frequency + recency).
Not only that, but the drop-list results show you the page’s favicon, the full title, the URL, and whether you have bookmarked and/or tagged the page in a richly formatted two-line display.
Example: I start by typing “ginger”, and AwesomeBar searches through my history and bookmarks to return everything that matches that keyword, showing the first six and letting me scroll through the rest. You’ll notice here that several of the results are bookmarked (blue star icon on the right), and tagged (tag icon). The sites’ favicons are displayed on the left, making it really easy to scan through the results if you know what site you’re looking for in particular.
Check out Deb’s post for more on the AwesomeBar and check back here for more on the cool things to expect in Firefox 3!
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Written by mary on April 22nd, 2008 with no comments.
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Is it possible for the shot clock to have more time on it than the game clock ?
Those of you paying close attention to the Suns vs Spurs game might have noticed during the 2nd overtime, Ginobli grabbed a huge rebound and while he was expecting to get fouled, the shot clock turned over to 24 secs and seemed to be stuck there.
Then as the game clock continued to wind down, an interesting thing happened. The time left on the shot clock was HIGHER than the time left in the game. The shot clock was showing 24 secs while the game clock was at 23.6 seconds and counting down.
How can this possibly happen ?
By Design. This is right and exactly the way the NBA clocks are designed to work
Its because of the way the software for the shot clock is designed to work. When the shot clock starts counting down, it doesn't start counting at 24.0 seconds. It actually starts counting at 24.9 seconds. So when the shot clock changes from 24 to 23, that means the shot clock has counted down from 24.9 and has changed to 23.9.
This also means that when the shot clock shows 1 second left, there can be anywhere from 1.9 seconds to 1.0 seconds left. This approach allows the shot clock to go off and sound the horn as it turns from 1.0 to zero, having counted down 24 seconds from 24.9 to .9 . So there could be 1.7 seconds showing on the shot clock, .9 seconds left in the game and there still could still be a shot clock violation if a shot isnt off before there are .2 seconds left in the game.
If it wasnt done this way, we would have to have tenths of a seconds on the shot clock. Which could be better or worse , depending on your point of view.
Either way, the one ever present fact in NBA games is that the end of any quarter, its very possible to have more time on the shot clock than on the game clock, with the shot clock still in effect. So when you see this, it doesn't mean that there is a clock problem, it means the software is working as designed
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Written by Mark Cuban on April 21st, 2008 with no comments.
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The biggest challenge for advertisers today is to get people to watch their commercials. With all the technology and alternatives to watching commercials on TV I would think that advertisers would do everything humanly possible to eliminate any elements that would immediately trigger a viewer to fast forward to change the channel.
Is this not commen senese ?
If it is, then why in the world do advertisers
JACK UP THE VOLUME OF THEIR COMMERCIALS ?
This annoying "feature" is more pronounced in home theater and surround sound based systems. I can't think of anything that pisses me off more than to be watching a TV show and to all of the sudden be blasted by a commercial from all sides of the room. Its the ultimate command to change the channel or fast forward.
SO WHY ARE ADVERTISERS SO STUPID ? Turn down the sound, maybe people will lean forward and listen !
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Written by Mark Cuban on April 19th, 2008 with no comments.
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Editor’s note: Mozilla released a security and stability update for Firefox 2.x users today. Check out the Mozilla Developer News announcement reposted below for more details.
Firefox 2.0.0.14 security and stability update now available for download
As part of Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 2.0.0.14 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download from http://getfirefox.com.
We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 2.x, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.
For a list of changes and more information, please review the Firefox 2.0.0.14 Release Notes.
If you are still running Firefox 1.5.0.x, you are highly encouraged to upgrade to the Firefox 2 series as Mozilla ceased supporting Firefox 1.5.0.x in May 2007. Simply choose “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu to begin the upgrade process.
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Written by Paul Kim on April 17th, 2008 with no comments.
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