Firefox Lorentz Beta beginning to handle plug-in Crashes
I heard long time ago that Mozilla had planned to separate the tabs into different processes in Firefox 3.6 release similar to Google Chrome. Because of the time constraints, Mozilla plans to release this feature as well as other features in future release of Firefox as updates. I think Firefox Lorentz is the first feature that Mozilla plans to release. On its homepage, it states that
Firefox “Lorentz” provides uninterrupted browsing for Windows and Linux users when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins.
If a plugin crashes or freezes, it will not affect the rest of Firefox. You will be able to reload the page to restart the plugin and try again.
Firefox Lorentz will become part of a future release of Firefox 3.6.
Firefox Lorentz only improves plug-ins handling. According to Firefox roadmap, the process separation for tabs will be made into Firefox 4.
CSS 3 Rounded Corner Effect and its Problem
CSS 3 is the next version of CSS. It introduces many cool effects for web developer to use. I learned about CSS 3 long time ago, but had never tried it. As I read more and more about CSS 3 and HTML 5 tutorials around the web, I decide to try to learn CSS 3 first. The problem with CSS 3 and HTML 5 is that Internet Explorer doesn’t support these specifications. My personal solution to this problem is to display a warning message through PHP to encourage IE users to completely give up Internet Explorer and switch to other browsers.
When I first learned about CSS 3, I felt that the language is harder to learn than CSS 2. In fact, it is easier to understand once I tried it through hands-on. As far as I know, CSS 3 relies on two different engine: Mozilla and Webkit. That means that to make it cross-browser compatible (except IE), I need to add two CSS properties with same values but slightly different property names. One for the Mozilla engine, another for the Webkit engine. For example, the following produces a black rectangle that has three rounded corners with drop shadow:
width:550px;
height:500px;
background-color:#8a2bcd;
-moz-border-radius-topleft:200px;
-webkit-border-top-left-radius:200px;
-moz-border-radius-bottomleft:200px;
-webkit-border-bottom-left-radius:200px;
-moz-border-radius-topright:200px;
-webkit-border-top-right-radius:200px;
-moz-box-shadow:10px 13px 20px #000;
-webkit-box-shadow:10px 13px 20px #000;
Below is the result:
The problem with this effect is that it only displays the rounded corners as a background image. When I add content inside this div tag, the content overlays above the rounded corners instead of appear inside of the corners, as the following screenshot illustrates:
I haven’t found the solution to this problem yet, but I think I will find the solution eventually as I go through CSS 3 tutorials one by one. To learn more about the properties mentioned above and other CSS 3 properties, just google “CSS 3 tutorials“.
Mozilla Prism Running on my GNU/Linux System
Mozilla Prism is a Mozilla Lab product that available in both Firefox add-on version and stand-alone version. It has the ability to run web apps directly on the desktop using Firefox Gecko engine. Web apps that created using Prism can be placed onto the application dock and in the system tray.
This morning I remembered the use of Mozilla Prism is because of the performance of Ubuntu on my netbook. Firefox always freeze every time I refresh my Gmail webpage. I need to get rid of this issue, so it was the first to come to my mind to solve this problem: Mozilla Prism. I used Prism before on the Windows. I never tried it on GNU/Linux since I migrated to GNU/Linux one year ago. First I installed Prism as a Firefox add-on from Mozilla Prism website. It failed. The web apps created through this add-on simply failed to launch. It launched another instance of Firefox browser instead of a new minified version of Firefox. After its failure, I downloaded the stand-alone version of the app. It successfully launched the main conversion window directly in the extracted folder. However, it needs to manually type the URL address that you want to convert to a web app. After that, it launched a new minified Firefox version for each converted web app.
It runs and converts web apps on my 32-bit Ubuntu netbook without problem. However, the issues became to come up when I tried to run Prism on the 64-bit based Fedora. According to the Prism spec, it doesn’t have 64-bit version for GNU/Linux available yet. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t work even I installed 32-bit components on my Fedora system. As far as I know, it couldn’t run on the 64-bit GNU/Linux system because it couldn’t load XPCOM and I couldn’t find any clue about what is XPCOM.
The overall performance of Prism compare to the standard Firefox browser is faster response and less freeze during the use of my gmail web app. I felt opening gmail is quicker and JavaScript becomes more responsive.
Prism is a good application to get the most out of the web apps. I hope Mozilla would continue to improve the usability of this app. The features I would like to see in the future version of Prism are to have ability to open the new window link directly inside the web app window or open a new minified Firefox window instead open in the regular Firefox browser window, to have more options in the Prism preferences dialog box, and to enable the new tab button as sell as enable Ctrl-T keyboard shortcut to open a new tab in the web app window.
Still Solving Flash Problem in Second Life
Yesterday I successfully ran Second Life official viewer on Fedora x64. However, I discovered that I cannot view YouTube video and other Flash-enabled websites when testing the new Shared Media feature in SL Viewer 2 Beta. Today I found out there only have one blog post related to the Flash problem over Second Life blog. It talks about Flash and Firefox issues related to SL Viewer 2 Beta. You can view this blog post right here: https://blogs.secondlife.com/message/111720, and don’t be afraid to start a discussion if you have any problem with SL Viewer 2 Beta on GNU/Linux.
Ubiquity Experiment was Ended For Now
Ubiquity was an experiment Firefox add-on released by Mozilla back in 2008. It basically added a command line interface to the browser to search almost everything on the web using Google search engine. According to the Ubiquity homepage, the first phase of the experiment was successfully ended in 2009. Some of its feature has been integrated to Jetpack, another experiment add-on developed by Mozilla to allow web developers to develop Firefox add-ons more easily. Mozilla stated on the Ubiquity homepage that it will launch second phase of the experiment in “indefinite future”.
I used Ubiquity long time ago. In my experience, it is very easy to use, best for people who love using the command line. However, I always forgot to use Ubiquity by pressing Ctrl+Space when I was doing my research rather than use the search bar. Maybe sometimes in the future Mozilla should add the option to add Ubiquity onto the Firefox toolbar in their Phase II experimentation.
The future version of Youtube might not support Firefox
Recently, YouTube has opened its TestTube HTML 5 service to allow users to experiment with HTML 5 version of YouTube. Unfortunately, TestTube only uses H.264 codec to display the video which Firefox doesn’t support. H.264 is a non-free, licensed codec. In order to use the codec, video content publishers needs to pay $5 million license fee every year. Mozilla supports free and open solution. Its Ogg Theora codec is similar to H.264 codec. Not only its video quality is the same as H.264 (sometimes maybe better), but also it can easily convert to a large variety of video formats. According to “Will Idealism be Firefox’s Downfall?“, Google might use On2 codec on the future version of YouTube, which is better than H.264. If not, YouTube users will be switching to other web browsers that supports H.264 and Firefox will be history.