Just Another Blog

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Saturday, April 30, 2005

16 million Firefox users still at risk?

With Firefox being download over 50 million times, it's the time to celebrate! :-) However, something popped out from my mind: how many Firefox users are still using those ancient versions of Firefox?

We all know that before the first counter was broken, the download count was 25 million. After that, Firefox 1.0.1, 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 were out. So let's assume that there are some royal Firefox users (like me) that download Firefox whenever there is new release (without using the software update feature). The number of such users will be (50-25)/3 million. Of course, I know that download count is NOT user count, but let's assume it is a one-to-one relationship, so as to make thing simpler. As a result, the number of users who are still at risk (that no one has exploited yet) could be about 16 million. WOW!

What can we do to these lazy users (including some of my friends who are still using Firefox 0.9.3)? They are simply too lazy to upgrade... ^^:::

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Alpha transparency... Finally...

The crappy browser will finally support PNG alpha channel, with a few CSS bug fixes. Well, better than nothing, right?

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Firefox T-shirts received

Today I went to the post office to receive my gift. It turned out that it is not the coin (yet), but the T-shirts that Marcia previously told me in the email.

The package is quite bulky. It seems that the sticker that she mentioned is used on the package XD. It doesn't seem to be reusable. But I don't mind anyway.

Package (front) Package (back)

The package contains two blue Firefox T-shirts: one small-sized and one medium-sized:

T-shirt (S and M)

And this is how it looks:

T-shirt (front) T-shirt (back)

It seems that the T-shirts received differ the one from the Mozilla Store a little bit. Take a look of the back, the Mozilla Store product image doesn't have the extra space between the word Get and Firefox.com:

T-shirt comparison

The medium-sized one is more comfortable, but small-sized one still fit me. :-P Here is a picture of me wearing the former one:

Me wearing the T-shirt

Too bad that the semester is just ended. But maybe I still have a few chances to wear it during revision period and exam. :-)

P.S. If anyone I know want to have the small-sized one, tell me. But probably only girls can wear it as most boys are taller and/or fatter. :-P

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Notification of mail collection

I'll get the Firefox coin really soon!

Correction: it's not the coin, but T-shirt. Yeah!

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Adobe acquiring Macromedia

Monday, April 18, 2005

When a bug is too old

When a bug is becoming too old, it turns into a feature, a tradition, and a religion... Orz

Friday, April 15, 2005

Creative spam of the day

I've just received a creative spam that uses ASCII art...

Hello,
 
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  # #    #  #    #  #    #  #   #   #    #          #     #  #  #    #  #       #  #    #                # #    #    #  #       #  #    #  #    #
   #     #  #    #   ####   #    #  #    #           #####   #  #    #  ######  #   ####                  #     #    #  ######  #   ####   #    #
 
And Many other.
 
Visit MEDlCATIOONS By MAIL SHOP and save up to   6 0 %
 
Have a nice day.
----- Original Message -----
Try us and you willl NOT BE DlSAPPOlNTED!

Yeah, I won't be disappointed. Shift + Del.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Internet Explorer is...

This's the fact:

Internet Explorer is slow

Just go to Google Suggest and type internet explorer is.

CSS image replacement with font-size

Yesterday I was writing my Firefox download counter. I wanted to do image replacement with CSS, without using complicated markup. My idea was to set the font-size to zero, and the padding to the half of the dimension of the image.

However, it turned out that only the Gecko renders what I intended. For Opera and IE, they both can't make the text of size zero to "invisible". Hence I was forced to use the uglier method.

Take a look of my code below. Are there something wrong? Or is my understanding of font-size wrong? :-S

Get Firefox

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

A Round Two guy from Hong Kong?

Hey... that's Admiralty MTR station!

At least, he had been Hong Kong.

Web Forms 2 submitted to the W3C

Web Forms 2.0 draft was just submitted to the W3C by Mozilla and Opera (on behalf of the WHATWG). It is expected to be supported by the various browser vendors (expect M$) very soon once the standard is revised and approved. In fact, from what said in Anne's blog, someone at Mozilla is already working on it.

It gotta be fun. ;-)

P.S. Hey, someone stole the Firefox autocomplete URL bar as an example of expected outcome of using the datalist element and list attribute. (Just kidding)

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

SVG coming soon to Firefox?

Apparently SVG (1.0 Full) will be available to Firefox 1.1 (based on Gecko 1.8b2/3) very soon. Since February, there is an option in about:config for turning on/off the SVG support. And today tor turned the flag of blocking1.8b2 of bug 122092 (Enable SVG support) to granted, with a patch waiting for review.

I really hope this is going to happen (even partially) in version 1.1, as Opera already supports SVG 1.1 Tiny in its 8.0 beta versions. This is the first step needed before we can burn all Flash. :-)

Monday, April 11, 2005

我敗了...

喂兄弟,不要在大廷廣眾OGC好嗎?Orz...

Via Mugenchitai.

Mike the Headless Chicken

Mike (The Headless Chicken) (1945 – 1947) was a Wyandotte rooster that lived for 18 months after his head had been cut off.

That's... horrible! Poor thing...

Via 2SIMPLE.

Friday, April 08, 2005

Angle Soft wants you

I got an exciting (yet disappointing to me) email from Angle Soft, which is now looking for XUL expert(s) from the New York City:

Hi Ming,

I saw your application on XUL Planet.  Very nice.  Since you're working on
this stuff, I thought you might be able to help me.  My team is currently
embarking on a rather ambitious XUL application.  My guys are pretty capable
at becoming great at any technology given enough time, but given that I
don't EVER have enough time, we could really use someone with some strong
XUL/RDF/Javascript experience.

Problem being, we're in NYC and finding someone like this is proving nearly
impossible.  It's a good gig.  I can pay good rates and we've got good agile
methodologies.  Do you know of anyone playing with this stuff who's looking
to get paid to play?  Obviously, I'd consider you for an internship or
something similar, but I really need someone in the city.

If you know someone who'd be interested, let me know.  I've attached a job
description.  Feel free to post it/pass it along at will.  And thanks for
your help.  It looks like you're doing some really great stuff.

Cordially,

Ryan

Ryan Janssen
VP Product Development
AngelSoft, LLC.

e: ryan (at) angelsoft [dot] net
p: 212.230.9823
m: 917.434.7482
f: 212.230.9886

The original attachment is in Word format. I've converted it into HTML format so that it would be more accessible:

We are a NYC-based, startup Application Service Provider that needs a senior software engineer, preferably with significant experience developing client applications. We are building the client using the Mozilla Foundation's XUL platform, so any direct experience with XUL would be a huge plus.

You will be joining a small, world-class team of software engineers, designers, and information architects. We are a progressive team that uses the latest in open source technologies in our development environment (Eclipse, Maven, Confluence, and Jira) and for our frameworks (Spring, Webwork, Hibernate, and Velocity). We take a pragmatic, agile approach to software development.

The engineer we are seeking should have the following technical qualifications:

  1. At least 6 years of heavy-duty programming experience using Java or C++.
  2. Client-side programming experience, including a minimum of 2 years experience using DHTML or XUL.
  3. Be an expert in Javascript.
  4. Have familiarity with RDF XML.
  5. Be an expert in XML technologies (XPath/XML Schema/XSLT).
  6. Be an expert in developing rich, dynamic DHTML or XUL business applications.
  7. Be an expert in W3C or Gecko DOM model.
  8. Be an expert in CSS, with specific expertise in dynamic layout of html content.

This person must also:

  1. Understand and enjoy the unique pressures and rewards of working at a startup company and owning a product from day one.
  2. Live in New York City.
  3. Be prepared to begin work on this project within the next 4 weeks.

We are committed to building a GREAT company. For the right applicant, we are willing to offer:

  1. A competitive compensation package (as a consultant to begin with, leading to full-time employment).
  2. A supportive, financially sound environment.
  3. A great deal of creative control.
  4. An opportunity to work with a team committed to building great software and having fun doing it.

Only qualified applicants should respond to this position by emailing their resumes to ryan [at] angelsoft (dot) net.

P.S. All those email addresses were hiden by me. By the way, I wonder if there is any company in Hong Kong/China that wants to hire me? ;-) An internship would be nice, but a full-time job would be even better.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Yahoo! Toolbar (HK)

Yahoo! Toolbar for Firefox now works in any platform! But what surprised me is that there is even a version for Yahoo! Hong Kong.

It is getting exciting. No, I don't mean that I'll install that toolbar. But this shows that more and more big names are embracing Mozilla technologies.

Show me your PageRank

Proud of your PageRank? Why not show it to your visitors? ;-)

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Google Maps with satellite

Google Maps now offer low-resolution satellite view of the whole planet. But is... is that Hong Kong?

Google Maps showing probably Hong Kong

P.S. This's the biggest zoom I can get. It can't zoom in anymore.

Saturday, April 02, 2005

Infinity+1

The upper limit counter has just passed 2000, but is still increasing... Maybe not just 2G? :-S

You are currently using 18 MB (1%) of your 2010 MB.

Edited: it stopped at 2050.

YaGoohoo!gle

That's fun.

Friday, April 01, 2005

Different from Zaku

That's ironic...

I'm different from Zaku!

Gmail updates

Gmail is now increasing the maximum storage for its users. And I found that it now supports HTML email in Firefox, through I never use HTML email. I haven't tested with IE, but I guess it works as well.

Wow. :-)

The official "What's new" notice:

G is for growth

Storage is an important part of email, but that doesn't mean you should have to worry about it. To celebrate our one-year birthday, we're giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able. We know that email will only become more important in people's lives, and we want Gmail to keep up with our users and their needs. From Gmail, you can expect more.

We're not in the plains anymore

Fonts, bullets and highlighting, oh my! Gmail now offers rich text formatting. And over 60 colors of the rainbow. Discover a land of more than just black and white.