Mozilla Links Newsletter - 21 - August 7, 2004

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Mozilla Links - English Edition
Issue # 21 - August 7, 2004
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According to the roadmap, Firefox 0.9 was supposed to be feature
complete, leaving the time between this and 1.0 to be dedicated to
final touches. However, during the last weeks several nice
enhancements have been added including a trio of new features:

- Livemarks are special bookmarks that point to RSS/Atom feeds. When
 you visit a site with a declared RSS feed, Firefox displays an icon
 in the status bar that you can click to add a Livemark to that feed.
 Livemarks' contents are automatically expaded in the Bookmarks and
 refreshed according to user's preferences. Similar support is being
 developed for Thunderbird and, of course, synchorization with
 Firefox Livemarks is in the wish list.
- A new Find toolbar will replace the "Find as you type" feature. But
 don't miss it. It's just a better UI for this much praised feature.
 You press "/" or "'"  to search in the text or links only, and the
 "Find Toolbar" will rise in the bottom with handy buttons for
 "Find Next", "Find Previous" and a new "Highlight" button whch will
 mark all occurances of the searched string.
- A whitelist of trusted websites. Only websites on this whitelist
 are allowed to install extensions. If you click on an XPI link at a
 non white-listed website, a block will appear below the toolbars
 notifying on the block and offering to add the website to the
 whitelist.

Among the enhancements:
- Quick access button to download folder added to Download Manager.
- Bookmarks Manager now includes a left panel for easier exploration
 of bookmarks.
- In addition to the security icon in the status bar, secure sites now
 are better identified by a yellow background in the location bar.
- Updates to the default Winstripe theme.
- Profile migration support for Konqueror, Epiphany, Omniweb and
 Camino.

A new website has been launched for Mozilla Links. Past issues will be
added for future reference. A new portuguese (Brazilian) edition is
now available. Subscribe to it at http://newsletter.mozdev.org/home

Thanks for reading and please send any comments to
[e-mail:newsletter-feedback@mozilla.org] 

Percy Cabello
Mozilla Links

----------------------------------------------------------------------
In this issue:

1. BETTER MOZILLA
     - Review: WebMail Compose 0.3.5
   - Tip: Master The Search Bar
     - Tip: Stay Tuned To New Extensions And Themes
     - PowerTip: Restore "Ask Before Closing"

2. MOZILLA COMMUNITY

3. NEWS

4. AROUND MOZILLA
     - Independent Status Reports

5. POLL

6. CONTACT INFO


1. BETTER MOZILLA
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Review: WebMail Compose  0.3.5
(developed by Jed Brown)

Chances are you have a web mail address and it is your most used
account. But every time you click an e-mail link (mailto:), your
operating system will try to launch your e-mail client.

Enter WebMail Compose a tiny but powerful extension for Firefox,
Mozilla and Netscape that evolved from the GMail Compose extension.
When installed, clicking e-mail links (mailto:) will open your
favorite webmail service compose screen in a new tab.

WebMail Compose supports Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Gmail and Mail.com out
of the box, and you can add a link to your own webmail compose window
through the extension's options. You may choose to use more than one
service at a time and define a default service. Then, right-click on
an e-mail link and select the service you want to use from a context
menu. Left-click and WebMail Compose will open your default service.
You can also middle-click to open your default e-mail client.

Note that not all webmail clients work. For example, I tried to setup
IPswitch-based PRW.net's webmail client with no success, apparently
because it generates a new hash every time you log in, so the links
won't work between sessions.

Forthcoming versions will feature more webmail services (OperaMail,
Netscape, etc.), support for the "Send Page" menu item and an option
to send images as attachments.

WebMail Compose website:
http://jedbrown.net/mozilla/extensions/

Screenshots:
http://jedbrown.net/mozilla/extensions/WebMailCompose/Screenshots/

mozillaZine Forum:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=98841

----

Tip: Master The Search Bar
(contributed by Percy Cabello)

Firefox's Search Bar becomes more powerful once you learn the
available hot keys:

Action                                  Hotkey
======================================  =============================
Go to the search bar                    Ctrl + K
Change the search engine                Ctrl + Up, Ctrl + Down
See previous search entries             Down (it will also
                                       automatically display matches
                                       as you type)
Delete an entry in the search history   Shift + Del
Open the search results in current tab  Enter
Open the search results in a new tab    Alt + Enter

Remember that adding a new search plugin is a snap: click on the
search engine icon and select "Add engines...", or go directly to
http://mycroft.mozdev.org, where you will find more than 1200 search
engines available.

----

Tip: Stay Tuned To New Extensions And Themes
(contributed by Percy Cabello)

If you are a themes and extensions junky, you wil be happy to know
that Mozilla Update features several RSS feeds listing the newest,
most popular and top rated extensions and themes for main Mozilla
products: Firefox, Thunderbird and the Mozilla Suite.

Check them at:
http://update.mozilla.org/faq/

Then syndicate them with Sage (for Firefox):
http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=77

Or Forumzilla (for Thunderbird):
http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=133

----

PowerTip: Restore Ask Before Closing
(contributed by Percy Cabello)

Mozilla asked you if you wanted to confirm before closing windows with
more than one tab opened. You said no. You just closed a
window with more than one tab opened, including a two page e-mail.

Mozilla will not say "I told you!" but you can easily restore the
warning:

- Enter "about:config" in the "Location Bar"
- Locate the "browser.tabs.warnOnClose" setting
- Right-click on it and edit to TRUE

----

You can also visit http://www.mozillatips.com for more fun tips for
your favorite browser.

Have a Tip or a PowerTip? Let other users know about it by sending it
to [e-mail:newsletter-feedback@mozilla.org]  .

2. MOZILLA COMMUNITY
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This month, Jed Brown, author of the QuickNote, WebMail Compose
(featured in this issue) and BBCode extensions, shares with us a
little about himself and his experience as an active member of the
Mozilla Community.

Mozilla Links: Tell us a little about yourself.

Jed Brown: I'm originally from the USA, but have been in Mexico now
for 10 years and study Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering.

ML: What's your involvement with the Mozilla project?

A voluntary contributor. I started the Extension Room project at
mozdev.org (http://extensionroom.mozdev.org) which was the sole
Mozilla Extension Database on the net for a long time.

I now help out at Mozilla Update (http://update.mozilla.org) in
getting extensions listed. I've also made a few extensions for
Mozilla and Firefox http://jedbrown.net/mozilla/), and a few for
commercial use (private companies).

ML: How did you learn about Mozilla technologies and become able to
create extensions?

JB: I started following the Mozilla project when Netscape decided to
open the source of it's Navigator code (what would have been 5.0).
I tested all the milestone releases, and started using Mozilla as my
default browser sometime around M18 (milestone 18) I believe.

Once Mozilla hit 1.0, I dug into other authors code (Tagzilla,
Multizilla, etc.) and with the help of XUL Planet
(http://www.xulplanet.com) wrote my first extension, QuickNote.

ML: Tell us about other extensions you've developed or are working on.

JB: The first extension I wrote was QuickNote, which is a note taking
extension for Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird. At first it was very
simple, but has grown allot thanks to other contributers like Nickolay
Ponomarev. Just recently I wrote BBCode which adds common PHPBB
BBCode to the context menu for easy mark-up in phpBB based forums like
mozillaZine. I also developed GmailCompose which then branched off
into WebMailCompose.

ML: Plans for the future?

JB: Not really sure yet. I would love to distribute Firefox throughout
my campus and perhaps develop an extension that would be useful for
other students.

I need to improve WebMailCompose and add some requested features like
send page and send image. I have some good ideas on how to improve
BBCode and add HTML/XHTML/etc. support.

I someday would like to make a Kiosk type extension that only allows
one to browse a whitelist of URL's. These may or may not happen. Only
time will tell.

Thanks to Jed for taking the time to share his thoughts with us. We
hope he gets those cool extensions coming.

3. NEWS
----------------------------------------------------------------------

WinPatrol To Add Support For Mozilla Firefox
--------------------------------------------
On June 20th, BillP Studios announced that upcoming WinPatrol 8.0 (due
later this month) will add support for Mozilla Firefox. WinPatrol
software monitors and detects changes on computer systems that may
indicate attacks by dangerous programs.

"I've never enjoyed being a lemming so I think it's important to
support alternative technologies", said Bill Pytlovany, owner of BillP
Studios. "The main reason we're adding support for Firefox and
possibly other [browsers] is user feedback via e-mail and on our
community forum."

WinPatrol will extend some capabilities of Firefox like cookie
management. "Instead of blocking or allowing particular cookies or web
sites, the WinPatrol Nuts feature provides wild card filtering. This
will allow one entry to block a wide variety of tracking cookies."

Since many Firefox users also have Internet Explorer (a main source
for malware) installed, Pytlovany warns that even "running IE just
once could download code that searches Firefox settings and changes
them."

Asked about the Mozilla Suite, Pytlovany said there are no plans at
this time to extend support for it.

BillP Studios Press Release:
http://www.winpatrol.com/winpatrol8pr.pdf

New Releases To Fix A Handful of Security Issues
-------------------------------------------------
On August 4, Firefox 0.9.3, Thunderbird 0.7.3 and Mozilla 1.7.2 were
released. These include fixes for a number of security issues 
discovered during the last month.

On the same topic, the Mozilla Foundation announced the start of
the Security Bug Bounty Program which will reward with $500 to users
that discover and report security flaws in Mozilla software.

Security Center:
http://www.mozilla.org/security/

Firefox 1.0 Preview Release Scheduled For Late August
-----------------------------------------------------
Ben Goodger, Firefox lead software engineer, announced in a recent
post to Inside Firefox, his Firefox devoted blog, that a preview
release (internally called 0.10) of Firefox 1.0 is planned for the
second or third week of August.

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/006075.html

In a previous post, Goodger, announced that they the Mozilla
Foundation is aiming for September 14 as the release date of Firefox
1.0. However he also warned that it's just a target date and very
likely to be slipped past.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/roadmap.html

Happy Birthday Mozilla Foundation
---------------------------------
"It's already been a year since the Mozilla Foundation was created,
and it's been quite a year. The Mozilla Foundation has prospered,
our products are receiving rave reviews, consumer and enterprise
interest in Mozilla products is at an all time high, the awareness of
the importance of choice in browser software is growing and our
community remains vigorous and energetic."

Mitchell Baker on Mozilla Foundation's First Anniversary:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2004/07/time_flies_when_1.html

4. AROUND MOZILLA
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Independent Status Reports
(contributed by Brian King)

The independent status reports include news and updates from
Mozilla application and extension projects hosted on mozdev.org
and elsewhere in the Mozilla community.

Mozilla usage and adoption is on the rise
(http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=5038). This can be
attributed to a number of factors. However, the primary factor is that
it is cutting-edge, quality software. With this in mind, take in the
variation of Mozilla development projects below, check some of them
out, install and support them. At mozdev.org, we are seeing a sharp
increase in new proejcts created, and this we see as a vindication of
the time and effort we put in to provide this service to talented
Mozilla developers.

The latest report was posted on August 02, 2004 and includes:

cuneAform - 0.2.7DE CC, the HTML Editor for Everyone!
For: Mozilla 1.4-Trunk, Firefox 0.7-Trunk
Platform: All Platforms
cuneAform now supports the CC GNU GPL lincence.  We are encouraging
everyone to make editations to the core and submit those changes.  
Also, we are looking for a co-developer for the project.
http://cuneAform.mozdev.org/

Flipper - v2.5, a Gallery Flipper.
For: Firefox
Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX
It's now compatible with Firefox 0.9 and later releases.
http://www.aliquam.org/flipper.html

MAF - 0.2.20, Mozilla Archive Format.
For: Mozilla, Firefox
Platform: Windows, Linux
MAF can now save pages in an MHT format that is IE compatible. There
were also a few usability improvements including an alert notifying
the user when a single page archive is complete and browsing through
local archive pages using rewritten links. Check the changelog on the
install page for a complete list of changes.
Notable Highlights: Improved MHT decoding code, added MHT encoding
code, can now save additional Meta-data in MAFs and improved the
archive URL rewrite code.
http://maf.mozdev.org/

MAB - 1.2.0 a Tool for searching Amazon catalogs and browsing products.
For: Mozilla 1.7, Firefox 0.9
Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX
Installed MAB 1.2 can save the results on your local hard drive.
Other Notable Highlights
- Show product description, reviews, images, ISBN/ASIN, sales rank and
 all useful information about the selected product
- Add selected products to shopping cart
- Use label to categorize your results
- Compare price between different Amazon store (com, co.uk, de, jp)
 showing the results on the same list
- Export result list in XML and HTML
http://mab.mozdev.org/

Mozilla Enterprise, Information and links related to the use of
Mozilla in the enterprise environment.
For: Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, Camino
Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX,
This is a new project dedicated to providing information of use to
people who need to install or support Mozilla in the enterprise. The
inital web pages have been created and numerous information links
added.
http://mozillaenterprise.mozdev.org/

MozManual - v1.1, an Introduction to Mozilla - A Manual for First Time
Users.
For: Mozilla
Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX
The Web version 1.0 is now available. French version now available.
Versions in Dutch and Spanish are in progress. Seeking help for German
translation.
http://mozmanual.mozdev.org/

HONcode Status / HONlookup - v1.3 / v1.2, Extensions to support the
Health On the Net Foundation (HON).
For: Firefox
Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX
Released HONcode Status v1.3 and HONlookup v1.2 to make them
compatible with Firefox 0.9.x. The Mozilla versions should work with
Mozilla 1.7.
http://hon.mozdev.org/

Autofill - v0.1, bringing Autofill to Firefox.
For: Firefox
Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX
The first Release, V0.1 is now available. Notable Highlights include:
- Creation of an unlimited number of user profiles
- Automatically highlight all the fields in the current form that can
 be filled in
- Manifests as an additional toolbar button that can be added to any
 existing toolbar (like the Navigation Toolbar) to save screen real
 estate
- True support of RFC3106 (E-commerce field specifications,
 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3106.txt), unlike Google's Autofill.
http://autofill.mozdev.org/

DerBrowserTimer - v0.3.1, a Timer/Clock/Alarm addon for Mozilla
Firefox.
For: Firefox 0.9 and up
Platform: All
DerBrowserTimer 0.3.1 was released on 7/22/04.
Der Browser Timer is a timer/clock/alarm add-on for the Mozilla
Firefox browser. It places a digital time readout on the right side
of the browser menu bar, allows you to set an alarm with an audible
alert and/or visual notification, and can also be configured to signal
the hour or half hour with an alternate tone like a cuckoo clock. This
alpha version includes multiple time display formats, three alarm
types, autonomous shut off, auto reset, choice of alarm sounds
including user-specified file, cuckoo function, and rudimentary help
documentation.
http://derbrowsertimer.mozdev.org/

Read more about each of these projects in the full report at
http://www.mozdev.org/status/2004-08-02-status.html

5. POLL
----------------------------------------------------------------------

On our last issue, we asked what kind of application do you use the
most?:

- Web browser           74%  |]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
- E-mail client         14%  |]]]
- Word processing        0%  |
- Spreadsheet            2%  |
- Development tools      4%  |]
- Other applications     3%  |]

This issue poll: Have you converted some people to switch to a Mozilla
product?

- Yes, more than 20
- Yes, more than 10
- Yes, more than 5
- Yes, less than 5
- Nope, I am selfish and evil
       
Let your voice be counted at http://newsletter.mozdev.org

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****

Donate your old cell phone to the Wireless Foundation. Proceeds from
the sale of phones help fund agencies that fight domestic violence.
Other phones are refurbished and become lifelines for domestic
violence victims. Your donation (you value it) is tax deductible.

http://www.wirelessfoundation.org/CalltoProtect/index.cfm

****

Feel techie? Check DevLinks, the newsletter for Mozilla developers:
http://newsletter.mozdev.org/devlinks

****

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for more details on how to reach our 7000+ worldwide subscribers!

6. CONTACT INFO
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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Mozilla Links is currently translated into Traditional Chinese, Czech,
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Copyright 2004 by the Mozilla Links Contributors.
The Mozilla Links Newsletter is released under the Creative Commons
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