Fx 2 Close Tab Button Change

Since it seems to be on a ‘weird‘ theme tonight I thought I would post this. The other night I had this comment from AI in regards to the Firefox 2.0: Close Tab Buttons post:

i did this tweak before and could see all the closebuttons even when tabs weren’t in focus. but they suddenly disappeared today . I checked about:config and the value is set to 1 by default. Is it possible to get these buttons to show without rollover action?

At first I thought may be it was a theme/extension conflict. So I changed the browser.tabs.closeButtons entry in about:config from ‘0′ to ‘1′ and noticed something different. With this setting the close tab button is ‘greyed’ out on inactive tabs until the tab is brought active or you rollover the button.

So at first I thought this was something new with Fx 2.0.0.4 as I could have sworn when 2.0.0.0 came out last October, if you had a close tab button on each tab it was red regardless if the tab was active or not. So test my theory I downloaded, installed and ran on a fresh profile Fx 2.0.0.3. Hmm same thing okay may be it was new with that build so then I tried 2.0.0.2. How odd same behavior okay I tried 2.0.0.1 and what do ya know inactive tab grey close tab button. Now wait, am I going crazy? So I did the same with Fx 2.0.0.0 and wait…this cain’t be right? Inactive tab grey close tab button, turns red when hover over or made active.

Again, I could have sworn when 2.0.0.0 came out the button was red regardless if the tab was active or not. Or was it? I posted this over at CyberNet News Forum (Fx 2 Close Tab Button Behaviour Change) and based on the response there everyone seems to think this is a new feature. But normally a ‘new feature’ is not retroactive through the entire branch (Fx 2.0.0.X). My only theory is the Default Firefox Theme was changed at some point, which would explain why this behavior exists in all builds on the Fx 2.0.0.X branch.

Well this is very weird as well.  Anyone else got any theories or better yet a documented answer? I tired looking through the mozillaZine forums last night, but mainly kept finding post about people wanting the close tab button at the end of the bar.

Safari For Windows? How weird!

Okay now this is very weird (almost unnatural), Apple has released (Beta) Safari 3.0 for Windows. This use to be a Mac only browser, but now it seems Apple has wanted to get in on the “PC Browser War”. For those of you keeping track we have IE 7, Opera 9.5, Netscape Communicator 9, and Firefox 3 in addition to Safari all trying to compete to be your web browser. Percy at Mozilla Links has done a brief but ‘weird’ review of Safari. Here were his observations:

• It has beautiful fonts, and as it has been already said, they must be stolen for Firefox. It offers 3 font smoothing levels, but the default seems to be adequate for me.
• Silently imports Firefox’s bookmarks. Live Bookmarks are imported as regular bookmarks though as it does no web feed trick except feed preview.
• It looks weird. It is nice looking but looks out of place in Windows, just like iTunes.
• It uses Mac OS native controls, which make it look even weirder.
• It acts weird. Double click the title bar to maximize it and you will have to kill it. No link modifiers in bookmarks or history, no Alt+Enter in location or search bars.
• It starts up faster than Firefox.
• It offers private browsing, currently in development for Firefox 3.
• It’s a beta.

Not sure if I am going to try Safari out or not. I do have plenty of drive space, but the whole concept just seems ‘weird’ to me as well. Stay tuned…

News Source: Mozilla Links >> Safari for Windows Beta released

Larry, the passport dude

As part of Mozilla’s on-going commitment to provide you with a safe browsing experience, meet Larry, the passport dude. He is going to part of the forthcoming Firefox 3 and a new way to verify a site’s identity (and if it is “safe”). Many people (including the humble Guru here) are misled into thinking that just because a site is identified as ’secure’ (has the little padlock in the status or address bar) that it is also ’safe’ As Meandering Wildly explains, the padlock only means the site has an SSL certificate, which in of itself does not make the site ’safe’:

The padlock has a lot of problems, though. First of all, it is misleading; it doesn’t mean “safe” at all. The padlock appears when a website presents a valid SSL certificate, issued by a company that your browser thinks is trustworthy. But the bar for getting one of these can be as low as $10, and the validation the companies do varies from excellent to non-existent. Even back in 2005, there were over 400 phishing attacks using SSL. So clearly, the padlock is not equivalent to safety.

We also, difficult as it is, need to get out of the “safety” game. We can’t tell users “this site is safe” because we don’t know that. Even ignoring the liabilities that might come with such a claim, there isn’t a good technological way to tell, right now, whether a particular site is safe in the way users care about. Do they handle credit card information properly? Do they ignore angry customers? Are they a front for stolen goods? These kinds of naughty people could get SSL certificates (and accompanying padlocks) and even the extended validation practices being discussed wouldn’t really stop them.

The example above is the Sandbox portion of the Firefox Add-ons site. Larry has verified the site by checking the SSL certificate validity.  Since this site is verified as safe Larry will…

• Show the user a meaningful, verified business name, giving the user something other than only the domain name to work with.
• Identify the party responsible for verifying that identification, since there has been, until now, very little way for a user to make informed decisions about which CAs they trust – the supposed root of the entire public SSL infrastructure.

Keep in mind Larry is still evolving, he has already changed some what since Meandering Wildly first wrote about him in March.  If you like, you can try out Larry even if you are not yet using any of the Fx 3 builds (he will work with Fx 2.0-3.0a6).  However, to do so you will need to be registered user with Firefox Add-ons since the add-on is currently in the Sandbox.  Firefox Addons >> Identity Feedback

Sources:

• Meandering Wildly >> Revisiting Security UI – Part 1 of 2
• Meandering Wildly >> Revisiting Security UI – Part 2

Weekly Update 2007-06-11

Here are the highlights from today’s Weekly Update meeting:

• Major Update (Fx 1.5.0.12 to 2.0.0.4)
  • Still only being offered to Fx 1.5.0.12 users on the “Beta (update) Channel“.
  • Too early to tell about success at this time.
  • Scheduled be offered to all Fx 1.5.0.12 users around June 21st
• Fx 2.0.0.5
  • Separate meeting today to discuss release scope and schedule.
  • More details later this week or at the next update
• Fx 3a6
  • More back end work/improvements (tagging) with Places.
  • Focus on Security Bugs as for overall security push.
  • Larry coming soon!
• Gecko 1.9a6
  • Security Focus: Tracking 24 specific bugs with 10 platorm engineers last week.
  • GFX: Lots of blockers fixed for A5, big perf patch landed for i18n pages
  • Texframe bug and perf analysis
  • Mac: CoreGraphics, popups, and context menus, with 3 blockers closed last week.
  • June 12 is the last day for hi-risk patches for A6.
  • Textframe on track to be enabled by default on trunk this week (hopefully before tomorrow ends, right?).
  • X-Site XHR patch planned for this week.
• Thunderbird 2.0.0.4
  • Scheduled for release on June 14th.

See the complete meeting notes.