Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog

The Wall Street Journal is reporting the Microsoft Board is meeting today in regards to their possible take-over of Yahoo!

The people say that it’s unclear what final approach Microsoft will take, but that discussions between the two companies have been stymied by a stark divide on price. Microsoft has said privately in recent days that it’s willing to offer as much as $32 or $33 a share, well above the $29.12-a-share value of its original cash-and-stock offer as of Tuesday’s market close, these people say. But major Yahoo shareholders have signaled they want in the range of $35 to $37 a share, with Yahoo’s management and board similarly shooting for an offer in the upper $30s…

There also word Yahoo! is still considering possible ventures with AOL or Google. Today Yahoo! stock has been trading between $26.76 and $27.78 per share while Microsoft has been between $28.51 and $29.21 per share.

News Source: Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog

This past Saturday, April 26th was the deadline Microsoft had given Yahoo before they would go directly to the shareholders. This deadline was established via a follow-up letter from Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer to Yahoo on April 5th. On last Thursday, April 24th Microsoft finance chief Chris Liddell made comments to investors and then employees:

…another of the company’s options is to abandon the bid entirely. If no deal was reached by Saturday, the options are “to try to facilitate a transition, to possibly go directly to Yahoo shareholders. Or to walk away and go back to our original organic strategy,” he tells employees in an internal broadcast last week, according to a transcript filed with the SEC.

So now the deadline has passed and we wonder what is going to be Microsoft’s next move? More so given the above statements from Microsoft’s Liddell. A bit too early tell at this moment being it is still very early on the west coast. But this could prove to be a very interesting week, especially if Ballmer and Microsoft end up walking away from the whole bid.

Note: April 30th/May 1st mark the 90th day since Microsoft’s unsolicited offer for Yahoo back on January 31st.

News Source: Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog

This morning I opened my Thunderbird to find an alarming comment on the Adobe Acrobat vs Foxit Reader article. UHammerIT wrote:

Capitalism Killed The FOXit reader

And yet another one bites the dust.

Foxit Reader is no longer a free product. O yeah, sure you can get a one year license for free if you buy something else (where they get 50% commission on the sales). Wonderful. I hardly blame them, they are developers and need money, but at least they could make their 2.0 version open source and continue with their commercial pro line.

This truly and utterly sucks, as pre 2.0 versions do not understand the Firefox plugin concept.

My first thoughts were here we go again, first FastStone and now Foxit. But I got to thinking, I had just read an extensive review (Foxit 2.3 PDF Reader Includes Tabs) over at CyberNet News earlier this week and don’t recall them mentioning anything about the reader no longer being free. I went back and re-read the article, again didn’t see anything about having to pay for Foxit.

So next was over to the official Foxit site. Once there my heart sank after I clicked the button Get it for free! I saw what UHammerIT was talking about when the new window opened. Yes, you can get it for free if you jump through a few flaming hoops over a tank full of hungry sharks. You would have to either end up buying a subscription (DiSH, TiVO, Blockbuster, NetFlix), giving away your personal information (Discover Card) or signing your life away to the devil (AOL). This is not good.

But wait this says Foxit PDF Reader Pro Pack and in the original window it is Foxit Reader 2.3 for Windows. Sounds like two different products to me, but are they trying to pull the wool over our eyes by making us think all there is is this Pro Pack? Apparently the answer is YES! After a closer inspection of the page I noticed a download link (highlighted in the screenshot below) that takes you to a page where you can download the Foxit Reader 2.3 for Windows for FREE (as in no jumping through hoops).

Click Image To Enlarge

Okay so now I wonder, what exactly is the Pro Pack, besides $39 a year? As near as I can tell it is a bundle that includes Foxit Reader along with some of their other PDF related software. Still really cain’t really tell for sure what all is included in the Pro Pack but it is likely applications that I am not going to use or could get for free somewhere else.

I was able to download, install and use Foxit Reader within Firefox without being required to pay for it or complete one of their offers. I wasn’t too sure though as when I opened a PDF file, Firefox activate the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Turns out all I had to do was re-associate PDF & FDF files with Foxit Reader. I am thinking these settings were changed last week when I upgrade to the newer versions of Adobe Flash. Bottom line is Foxit Reader is still free, provided you click the correct link. Note: the DOWNLOADS link at the top of the page also takes you to the free version of Foxit.

Jason recently commented on the OpenOffice.org Docs In Fx Part 2 entry:

Thanks for the great article! Very useful.I wonder if it is possible to open a word .doc within Firefox using OpenOffice and this method?

Excellent question! Never really thought about it but figured it should work if I could get Firefox to associate Word Documents with Open Office. As it turns out yes you can.  Further, you don’t need to do anything else other than to activate the Mozilla Plug-in from within OpenOffice.org via the Tools Menu, Options…, Internet and then under Mozilla Plug-in check the enabled box. It will work if you have already associated Microsoft Office documents with OpenOffice. This is done when you installed OpenOffice (see below).

AT&T is trying to get in the to the web browser market now with their own browser called Pogo. Before you run out and download this keep in mind, it is still in development and in limited private beta. You can sign up to be notified when the public beta will be opened. Further, unless you have a really powerful machine don’t even bother as the performance would stink. I am sure you are thinking “It is a web browser, how powerful of a machine would I need?”

Well, the minimum requirements are 1.6GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, and a video card with at least 256MB of VRAM. But, Ars Technica did try the browser on a more powerful machine running dual-processor, dual-core AMD Opteron 2210 with 1.80GHz CPUs, 2GB of RAM, and a NVIDIA Quadro FX 560 video card with 128MB of VRAM running Windows XP. The results were less than stellar

On this machine, the remainder of Pogo’s features actually displayed, but did not do much else. We found that with even minor use, the browser slowed to a crawl, animations built into the UI were laggy, and at some times, unusable. Performance was extremely poor when even trying to perform basic functions like clicking UI elements.

Pogo is suppose to be a Mozilla based browser, so why is it so power hungry? This is because it has this massive 3D interface for navigating through the browser’s history as well as bookmarks. These screenshots (courtesy of CyberNet News) show the history (top) and bookmarks (bottom). Here are some of other browsers Windows system requirements for comparison:

• Firefox 2/3 & SeaMonkey
  

  • Processor: Pentium 233 MHz (Recommended: Pentium 500MHz or greater)
  • Memory: 64 MB (Recommended: 128 MB or greater)
  • Video: not listed

• IE 6

  • Processor: 486/66-megahertz (MHz) processor or higher (Pentium processor recommended)
  • Memory: 16 to 32 MB
  • Video: Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution monitor with 256 colors

• IE7

  • Processor: Pentium 233MHz processor or higher
  • Memory: 87 to 218 MB
  • Video: Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution monitor with 256 colors

• IE8 Beta 1

  • Processor: Pentium 233MHz processor or higher
  • Memory: 64 to 512 MB
  • Video: Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution monitor with 256 colors

• Opera

  • Processor: Pentium II
  • Memory: 64 MB
  • Video: not listed

• Safari

  • Processor: 500 MHz Intel Pentium
  • Memory: 256 MB
  • Video: not listed

It is doubtful I am going to even try Pogo as I don’t see any real benefit, just a lot of bling. Sorta like Windows Vista Aero Interface. I am looking for functionality, speed along with a nice UI (that doesn’t make me feel like I am running a 386 with a dial-up connection).

Source: CyberNet News

Numerous times I have written about FastStone (Image Capture) and I still use the application for most of my screenshot needs. However, there is a sever limitation with FastStone as it only allows you to capture what is visible on your screen, hence the term screenshot. This can be a problem if you want to capture and entire web page and it is larger than your screen. In the case of FastStone or any other screenshot application, you would have to create multiple screenshots. There is an easier and better way with Abduction.

Continue reading ‘Review: Abduction’

This is a not a ‘Microsoft Parody’ video. This ‘marketing’ video for Vista SP1 is for real as Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer appears in the video. After watching this, makes me wonder who approved and signed off on this project (and if they are still working for Microsoft). If you are at work, watch at your own risk! You may want to turn down the volume…even if you are not at work you may still want to turn down the volume!

Source: Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog

Firefox 2.0.0.14 a security update has been released. This release addressed Bug 425576, which caused crashes within the JavaScript garbage collector. See Firefox 2.0.0.14 Release Notes for more details. Users may obtain Firefox 2.0.0.14 manually via the Check for Updates… option from the Help menu. Automatic upgrade (for those who have this feature enabled) should occur within the next 24-48 hours. Alternatively, users may also download Firefox 2.0.0.14 directly by going to http://getfirefox.com.
Continue reading ‘Firefox 2.0.0.14 Released’