Today I was reading a web page, (something I do allot). The page had reams and reams of text, and not allot of formatting, so it was very hard to work though.

Now those of you that know me, know I am extremely partial to the web browser Mozilla FireFox.
I’m about to show you a couple of the reasons why I love it so much.

One of the benefits of FireFox is its extensions, these are small browser plug ins that easily add extensive extra functionality to FireFox. My two fav extensions are:
– Web Developer.
– EditCSS.

I’m going to focus on EditCSS in this little story to show how it can help you with every day browsing as it did me.

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Totally unreleated to anything web design. (sorry) but I found this so interesting, that I had to share.
Apparently numerous signs of WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) have been found in Iraq, but because there was no huge stockpile found (a figurative smoking gun), the worlds media have mostly ignored it. Where as the report that no massive stockpile had been found made headlines around the world.

WorldNetDaily report

—— update——–
20 tons of chemical agents look to have come from Iraq.
washtimes.com
———————

rgds

Franki

This new link is for those times when you really need to come up with a fresh new page design, and you just can’t seem to come up with anything you like.

Lose that stress immediately.

I could use that for hours.. I am thinking of making it my home page.

rgds

Franki

While doing my weekly check of securityfocus.com for news of any new vunerabilities, I came across this excellent article on Web application security:

Securing web applications (session management).

I’m paranoid as anyone that knows me is aware of.. so this sort of thing really appeals to me..
The session management of both the downloader and stats counter both already roughly follow the suggestions made by that story. It would not really be possible to steal a session from one of the scripts because the session files and cookie strings are extremely long and random, the cookies are “session” cookies that disapear when the browser is closed, and the script itself removes any old session files each time its run, and in fact even if someone did manage to create a session the same as a previous valid session, they will still need to know the hash inside the session file that is based on the user and password of the login, (which is checked for, in every access of the admin screens.). Ironically, all of that is just protecting a screen of download counts (in the downloader script) and a bunch of web user statistics (in the stats counter and the advanced stats counters), for that sort of data, such protection is probably massive overkill, but I plan to use the same lib file (with some updating) as the basis for some e-commerce apps later on.

regards

Franki

In 2002, a company that has the patent on the JPG technology started enforcing their patent.

They did so after waiting till JPG had become the industry standard and up till that point had kept quiet about it to make sure the prospect of patent enforcement did not hamper its uptake.. Once JPG reached maximium usage, out comes the lawsuits “you owe us millions”.

In a very similiar move to the SCO debarkle.. company has sliding revenue and not much in the way of future prospects, company buys some IP from another company, company goes after other companies for IP infringment, and sue them for millions and companies original business goes down the tubes in favour of lawsuits.

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Recently Google have created a new webmail service that looks likely to make both yahoo and MSN hotmail look really lame by comparision.
For one thing you get a massive 1 gig of data storage for free, when both yahoo and hotmail charge you around $50 a year to give you just 100mb,
(and only 4 or 2mb respectively if you pay nothing).

The downside is that the Gmail service is paid for by text ads, and google spider your emails to target the ads to the emails contents.. (it should be said that the spidering is done by computer not person.. its still private.. the spider program just looks for words in the emails and finds relevant ads to display, its really no less intrusive then what people get from hotmail and much less obtrusive then yahoo. (which occasionally makes you click “continue” on a full page ad to get back to your email.)

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Yahoo announces that it uses “web beacons” to track people around the web. Because you are registered with them, they can tell where you go when you visit sites containing their beacons. See their disclosure for more information.

They also indicate that they use web beacons in html formated email to tell if you have opened your email. Spammers use this technique too, so if you have not already made the switch to plain text email, now is the time. I use Thunderbird in text mode and only switch to html for a particular message to avoid such intrusions.