Rubénerd!

So I wanted to to download the Firefox beta. I tried half a dozen times, and was either given a "connection reset by peer" error, or a stub file that's clearly too small to be a web browser. Well, links aside.

Fortunately, the public Mozilla FTP server works just fine, and seemed faster anyway.

For what it's worth, the Mozilla FTP server is fun just to browse in. There's a treasure trove of classic software there, including the original Phoenix browser us early adopters eagerly downloaded back in the day :).

Update: Typos pointed out by Clara.

If you still use Google services regularly, it's worth noting they allow you do disable some of the tracking they perform. Browser plugins can help to block the rest.

Disable Web History

Most people I talk to don't realise Google records all the sites they visit through their searches. They bill it as a way to "tailor search results". The DuckDuckGo people call it "search bubbling". I deem it "unnecessary". Fortunately, Google lets you turn it off:

1. Log in, the go to history.google.com
2. Click the gear button on the right hand side
3. Choose "Settings"
4. Click "Pause"

To confirm, go back to history.google.com and notice the bright blue "Turn History On" button. Isn't it interesting that Google lets you turn web tracking on with one click, but it takes three clicks and loading a menu behind an untitled button to turn it off? ;)

It should be noted here that web history is merely being "paused". Whether Google can turn it back on, or can be compelled to, would be reason enough to logout when you want to use their search.

Adorable Hyouka detective image by こよる on Pixiv

Set DoubleClick tracking opt-out cookies

Google's advertising arms and subsidiaries track you across sites by default, but you can disable it with a cookie by visiting:

https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/html/opt-out.html

Google now even offer a plugin for Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer to store your desire not to be tracked. I haven't tested this, so I can't vouch for it.

https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/plugin/

In both cases, these opt-outs are stored in your browser, not your account. Therefore, to prevent this kind of tracking you need to have the opt-out cookie and/or plugin installed on every browser and on each computer/smartphone. Cumbersome, I know, but it's currently the only option Google allows us.

Browser extensions

To further prevent tracking, there are several different plugins you can use.

For Mozilla browsers, Gprivacy forces sites to respect the do-not-track header by sanitising links in search results. Any links that it modifies in your browser are shown with a green shield, and the original link with a red shield is included alongside it.

If you're not interested in maintaining a cookie whitelist with CS Lite Mod or Cookie Monster, the Beef Taco extension maintains opt-outs for hundreds of advertising networks, including Google. I've blogged about this before.

Done

As I've said with all cloud computing services, the key isn't to abstain from them, but to use them wisely. As Professor Frink would say, MMMMMMMM-HIVEN MAVEN!

I got this irritating message on Firefox and SeaMonkey constantly, mostly because I don't have Flash. Fortunately, it's easy enough to disable.

Go to about:config and set this option to true:

plugins.hide_infobar_for_missing_plugin

Reading Mozilla's announcement of their new mobile OS had me quivering in my seat with excitement! Don't read to far into that.

Finally, an HTML5 phone?

From the official Mozilla blog yesterday:

Industry support is growing behind Mozilla’s plans to launch a new fully open mobile ecosystem based on HTML5. The operating system, which Mozilla today confirmed will use its Firefox brand, will power the launch of smartphones built entirely to open Web standards, where all of the device’s capabilities can be developed as HTML5 applications.

According to the post, Mozilla have signed up support with manufacturers, and a dozen or so global carriers. The part I was most interested in:

Device manufacturers TCL Communication Technology (under the Alcatel One Touch brand) and ZTE today announced their intentions to manufacture the first devices to feature the new Firefox OS, using Snapdragon™ processors from Qualcomm Incorporated, the leader in smartphone platforms. The first Firefox OS powered devices are expected to launch commercially in Brazil in early 2013.

Terms like "announce" and "expected to" trigger my vapourwear fear engine, but if these folks are serious and deliver something, I'll be onto it faster than a gecko sticking to a wall.

I can has sync?

I've been using Firefox since the Phoenix days, the Mozilla Application Suite before that, and Netscape before that. My pseudo-netbook ThinkPad runs SeaMonkey with my browser (which is the UI to my university note taking wiki), RSS feeds, email, newsgroups, SQLite interface, Sunbird calendar, contacts and tasks. I've run Thunderbird and Camino.

I've often joked on Twitter that SeaMonkey and Firefox are my OS, and that my Linux, BSD and Mac boxes largely exist just to support them running! If I could have this stack on a phone and have it sync reliably (something I can't do with Mozilla stuff and my iPhone without going through Google first, which I'd rather not), I would serve the developers in... unspeakable ways. By which I mean make tea.

Some other considerations

Originally, Android was sold as such a device. We were told HTML5 would be powering Android devices, and that native apps were just a stop-gap measure to compete with iOS. 5 years on, it doesn't seem like native apps will be going anywhere any time soon. It's perhaps a little ironic that it took Mozilla to deliver an HTML5 based mobile platform, rather than one being released by arguably the most influential internet-based company!

Speaking of Google, it's also no secret that Mozilla derives much of its funding from its partnership from Google for search. This phone could allow for some desperately needed income diversification, if it comes to pass.

And finally, the mockup picture of the phone had it in orange and red to match the Firefox logo. I'd go for a purple phone first, but something other than black, white or dark blue would be fabulous! :D

Installing extensions into a new SeaMonkey install this morning, I got quite a shock!

Simple Clocks :: Add-ons for SeaMonkey
This add-on has been removed by its author.

As someone with friends in multiple timezones, Simple Clocks was the simplest way to see at a glance whether or not I'd be waking anyone up with my tweets, newsgroup messages and the like. It's a shame the developer couldn't keep it going.

I guess it's back to FoxClocks; another excellent plugin but with extra features I don't really need.

Having moved from the Mozilla Application Suite to Phoenix 0.2 in the mean old days, I'm giving SeaMonkey a try and am really liking it.

Sea-what?

Aside from those on Twitter who asked me why would you do that lol!111!!eleventy!, many didn't seem to know what SeaMonkey was. As well as an adorable aquatic critter, SeaMonkey is a web browser, email client, html editor, address book, IRC client, newsgroup client, RSS aggregator, positron accelerator, coffee machine and working implementation of the Haber Process. Believe it.

SeaMonkey is the community driven continuation of the Mozilla Application Suite which Mozilla originally spun off Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox and Thunderbird from. The Mozilla Application Suite in turn was based off the original Netscape Communicator, the dominant WWW client software for much of the late 1990s.

SeaMonkey Mail

I've been a heavy Thunderbird user for years, predominantly because it allowed me to easily import my existing Mozilla data at the time. Unfortunately, I've haven't liked some of the changes in the 3.x series. The new tab UI feels inconsistent and confusing. I preferred the old way of searching which quickly returned results in the same view, and without expensive indexes being constantly built. And so on.

SeaMonkey Mail reminds me of the Thunderbird 2.x series, which in my opinion was the best graphical email client since that one that was bundled with Cooee (whatever that was called) and the older versions of Eudora. It detected my Thunderbird user data, and had all my accounts and gigs of messages imported in a few short minutes. Understandable given they largely share a common codebase, but still impressive.

I've added all my email accounts from Thunderbird and [[re-]al]pine, subscribed to all my newsgroups from Pan, and have even replaced the now unusable (in my opinion) Google Reader with it for web feeds and whatnot. Four applications in one! ^^

SeaMonkey Navigator

Given I'm using SeaMonkey for my mail, I figured I'd try using it as my browser in place of Firefox as well. The current 2.5 release is based off Firefox 8.0, and as such supports the same HTML5 and CSS3 goodies.

I was impressed at how many of my critical Firefox extensions like NoScript, Ghostery and Simple Clocks work flawlessly in SeaMonkey. Unfortunately, Tree Style Tab doesn't, and currently I haven't been able to find an available replacement extension that puts my tabs on the side, ala Opera. For someone who has dozens of online docs open at a time, this is really important! I have a newsgroup thread and a post on mozillaZine about it, we'll see if anyone can help out.

Functionally, I've noticed no difference using SeaMonkey Navigator over Firefox other than perhaps in memory usage. SeaMonkey uses less memory than Firefox and Thunderbird combines, which again I suppose makes sense.

What are we up to now? Five applications in one! ^^

Conclusions

Over all (is what people wear on farms) I'm surprised by how quick I've taken to this software.

The minimalist in me likes that I've replaced two icons with one in my dock. I like that with a CMD-1 I can get to a browser, and CMD-2 I can read practically all my internet communications in one window. It even comes with the "Modern" theme from the old days, which contains so much retro win I have it set as my default theme for now.

I'll be keeping Firefox for now just in case, but I haven't launched it since last Thursday.

Heartfelt thanks to Philip Chee, Karsten Düsterloh, Jens Hatlak, Robert Kaiser, Ian Neal, Neil Rashbrook, Andrew Schultz, Justin Wood, and all the others in the SeaMonkey community for your tireless efforts :).

Admittedly these version updates were bigger news before Mozilla got Chrome envy, but still Firefox just got updated to 7.0. I just downloaded it for my Macs, and I'm sure the tireless maintainers of the FreeBSD Ports system and Fedora repositories are hard at work at adding it.

I'd already been using the 7.0 nightly builds given I was one of the unlucky few bitten by the severe memory leaks and CPU hogging with 6.0.2, as you can see in the screenshot above.

Presumably to satisfy some warped sense of humour, my lecturers set this week as the due date for a dizzying number of assignments and class tests. As a result, I've had far less time to write blog posts, including my Gurren Lagann reviews. By Wednesday this week I'll be free again, and rather exhausted!

I belabour this to say I took a quick study break to Webify myself. Aside from the car magazine instead of a Linux Journal or similar (see what I did there?), I'm liking it!

That silly story that Internet Explorer users have lower IQs than others may have obviously been a hoax, but even comical exaggerations need a kernel of truth to them to be funny, however small such a kernel is. A microkernel, if you will.

I see your Linux, raise you a Mach

For those who haven't seen the story, a report recently surfaced and went viral that Internet Explorer users have a lower IQ than those who use competing browsers. Opera users were graphed as being the most intelligent, and IE6 users the least.

The story had all the hallmarks of a successful viral campaign. The story exploited existing preconceptions about people who refuse to move to newer versions of IE or to more standard compliant browsers, and successfully played on the anger and frustration web designers and developers feel when having to bend over backwards to accommodate Microsoft's browsers. All the story needed to be perfect was a couple of quotes from a mental healthcare professional working in Minnesota.

Photo of the Mayo Clinic by Nephron on Wikimedia Commons

Wasn't Alexander Downer from Mayo?

As you probably did too, I didn't buy the story from the start, but it did get me thinking. We all know IQ is as effective at gauging intelligence as the BMI is at calculating your health (Adolphe Quetelet would probably have endorsed Atkins), but what does browser use say about the person using it?

Since IBM handed Microsoft their monopoly in the early 1990s, and since Microsoft decided to illegally leverage their clout to drive browser competitors out of business, most internet users accessed sites through a flavour of Internet Explorer. That's now changing, on three fronts:

1. Since Firefox (arguably) ignited the second browser wars and Microsoft realised they were no longer able to rest on their laurels and stifle the growth of online applications that posed a competitive threat to their expensive desktop software, most technically advanced users have jumped ship to Gecko and Webkit.

2. Windows, the system that Microsoft used to move people to IE, is under threat on the consumer desktop. The profitable, high end market has been secured by Apple now, and technically advanced users run flavours of [GNU/]Linux. Neither of these platforms run IE natively; at least not any more!

3. In the mobile space, the fleeting dominance Windows Mobile and Pocket Internet Explorer had is also over, and their efforts to break out of this rut are largely being ignored in the face of iOS and Android devices.

The slip is the dip

For all but the most die hard Microsoft fans, it's pretty obvious to us what's happening here. With the high end and tech savvy markets slipping away from them, users of Internet Explorer now mostly consists of those for whom the blue e is "the internet" because it happened to come with their cut throat priced beige box, or for those who have no choice on their business machines.

While Microsoft's sudden change of heart with regards to standards has convinced a few to move back, for others its too little, too late. It's hard to find a nerd now not running either Firefox or Chrome, and to a lesser extent Safari and Opera. Web stats on many high profile technical sites are all being reported as favouring these browsers. Not to put too fine a point on this, but those who claim otherwise are ignorant of this, wilfully or otherwise.

What browser a person uses now says nothing about their IQ, but its a safe bet it speaks to their technical proficiency (knowing of alternative browsers, running [GNU/]Linux) or income (Apple hardware), something advertisers might be very interested in.

Provided they have, I see six potential reasons why, some of which would be the result of doing no evil!

No more extensions

Firstly, have they really discontinued the toolbar? From their download page:

Google Toolbar for Firefox is compatible with Firefox version 4 or older. To find out what version of Firefox you're using, click the Help menu and select "About Firefox" (on the Mac, the option is located in the "Firefox" menu).

If you use Firefox version 5 or newer, you won't be able to use Google Toolbar.

While technically this isn't an admission that the software is discontinued, relegated to the alarmingly large pile of dead Google projects (or Lab if you will), it may as well be.

I hardly used thee

Apparently the Google Toolbar had many great features, including links to Google Reader, an unread email count for Gmail, an easy way to share discovered sites, a Google search box.

Despite this, I never got around to installing it. Not because I was afraid, but because I felt no need to have it. I already had third party extensions for many of the features the toolbar provided, bookmarklets for the rest, and the all important search box was already in the top right hand corner.

That said though, there seem to be enough people who did use its features who are willing to run insecure, older versions of Firefox just to keep it. Those are some dedicated (if foolish) people!

But... why?

As with the closure of Google Labs, the end of this toolbar leaves us with lots of questions; or at least it leaves a lot of questions with me. Which is to say, I'm thinking of lots of questions, if I asked these out loud right now there'd be nobody here to answer, and I talk enough to myself as it is.

The first possibility is financial, though I have a hard time buying (see what I did there?) a company with Google's resources couldn't keep a person or two on the payroll to keep their toolbar efforts current.

The second is the inevitable streamlining middle managers and shareholders start to demand of companies that have reached a certain size and can no longer justify frivolous things like R&D and customer service. Google is certainly not the nimble, informal creature it once was, perhaps this is just a sign of its "maturity"... though I hope not its peaking.

The third potentially paints Mozilla as the evil folk. Part of the allure for Google having people running their toolbars in Firefox must have been that searches didn't incur a referral fee to Mozilla. Perhaps with increased competition, Mozilla needed the cash and twisted Google's arm. There's no evidence of this, and it seems silly Mozilla would go out of their way to screw their primary source of revenue, but the speculation is irresistible.

The fourth is a technological one. The Mozilla team have promised greater sandboxing of extensions, perhaps by doing so Google can't track browsing behaviour anymore, therefore killing the real reason for the toolbar's existence.

The fifth reason is feature duplication, and the fact Firefox mainline now has many of the toolbar's features. This was the only reason entertained by the Google folks officially, though I can't help but think it's not the only one.

Which brings us to number 6

While all these are possibilities (remote or otherwise!), I reckon this has more to do with Google wanting more holdouts on Chrome. The Google Toolbar collecting information about browsing habits in Internet Explorer and Firefox is valuable, but not as valuable as people surrounded by Googlyness in Chrome.

In the words of Dave Winer, this was purely a business decision. Perhaps the Google team figured the carrot of faster rendering and program execution had failed to entice everyone, so the stick of a reduced Google experience may persuade the rest. If Google+ takes off, one can imagine deep integration with Chrome that could also be partly achieved with a toolbar, but without one available it'll give people more of an excuse to switch. Anti-trust?

I trust Google more now than I did Microsoft in the 1990s, but I'm not as sure that I'm wrong about this as I wish I was.