Preview: Main Site

Phases 1 and 2 of the ‘big changes’ are already or nearly completed. Earlier this week, we did move over the Wiki, the main site, The Email Mafiia blog and sites and a handful of other sites to the new sever. Surprisingly, the migration went a lot smoother than I was expecting. Did some have minor issues with the Wiki, but was able to get those resolved very quickly.

As for the main site, just have a little more tweaking and adjusting to do before we launch the new main site. So far, I am very impressed with the flexibility of being able to work in WordPress. I had heard some complaints from a friend of mine about how the first page is still going to look like a WordPress Blog (shows post title, author, date, etc). Well, thanks to the Twenty Ten Weaver Theme, you wouldn’t know this was built on WordPress.

The biggest thing you are going to notice is we really cleaned up the main page. The big Facebook & Twitter widgets have been removed, replaced with buttons. The releases section has been cleaned up a bit as well. There really isn’t much going on with main page. It is acting more as landing page with links to the Blog and Wiki as well as to our sister site, The Email Mafia.

I have decided to move the Wiki to Phase 3 instead of Phase 4. The template is still going to take some tweaking, but should be fairly simple as all I will need to do is copy over the custom CSS and install a few plug-ins. The fun part is going to be moving the content from Media Wiki into WordPress.

The final phase will be the blog. That really should not take very long as I won’t have to ‘de-blog’ the template. Upload the new header, import the content then install some pliug-ins and should be ready to go. Will need to figure out how to redirect on the wordpress.com side over to my server as right now my server is redirecting to the wordpress.com site.

One more thing, since this whole process went fairly well, there’s a good chance I am going to redo the main Email Mafia site into a WordPress as well and creating a ‘wiki’ for that site too.

Photobucket Uploader Extension

It has been a long while since we’ve done an extension review. I came across the Photobucket Uploader Extension a week or two ago while I was in my Photobucket account. I use Photobucket for both management and storage of images I use on the three blogs (FF Extension Guru, Email Mafia and El Guru’s) and their associated websites. I just find it easier to work with images this way, especially when incorporating them into the WordPress environments (WordPress.com & WordPress.org/self-hosted).

This extension is a major time saver. Once installed and link to your Photobucket account, simply right-click on any image (except CSS coded background images) within Firefox and select Upload to Photobucket from the context menu. That is it, the image will be uploaded to your default album and you can even get your links as soon as the upload is completed. No more having to right-click on the image copy the URL, go into Photobucket, then upload via the pasted image URL.

But wait, there’s more! Say you have an image saved on your computer and you want to upload it into Photobucket. Normally, you would need to go Photobucket, select to upload from your computer and then spend a couple minutes trying to get to where the image is saved. I run into this issue a lot, being that I can have the image saved in one of many locations depending on if the image is going to be used for a blog or website. In the case of earlier tonight I had a couple photos I had taken and had cropped earlier that I wanted to upload for use on the El Guru’s Blog. I had the folder which the photos were saved within opened in Windows Explorer. I simply opened a new Firefox tab and then dragged the image into Firefox. Once it was in Firefox, it was a simple right-click and the image was in my Photobucket Album and I had the link I needed to post the image.

The Photobucket Uploader Extension is not endorsed or sponsored by Photobucket. The extension works with Firefox 3.0 up through 3.6 (do not know if it can be forced to work on Firefox 4).

Firefox 4 Code Name: Tumucumaque

Mozilla’s tradition is code naming Firefox major releases after national parks from around the world, and, since recently, Thunderbird major releases after beaches. The latter we have seen with the first development release of Thunderbird 3.3 code named Miramar. For whatever reason there has not been much use of the code name for Firefox 4, especially given we are nearing the release of Beta 8. Percy at Mozilla Links did a little digging and found the code name for Firefox 4 is Tumucumaque, borrowed from the Tumucumaque Mountain National Park in Northwest Brazil.

Firefox turns 6!

Mozilla celebrates the 6th anniversary of the release of Firefox (Firefox 1.0) on November 9th. Mozilla is inviting people to join in the celebration,

This year, to celebrate Firefox and the Mozilla community’s work promoting innovation, choice and openness on the Web, we ask for your help to showcase how people love and use Firefox in your part of the world. Just send us a postcard with your message about Firefox and your FoxCard will be featured in our Mountain View or Paris offices. You can even win Firefox goodies when you send in your FoxCard. Check out our FoxCards page on Facebook or Spread Firefox for more information.

Also Mozilla is asking for people to help test Firefox 4 Beta. You can read more and see a ‘cool’ photo from the Mozilla Summit 2010 this past July in Whistler, BC, Canada at The Mozilla Blog.

Firefox 4 Delayed Until 2011

C|Net is reporting Mozilla has delayed the release of Firefox 4.0 until early 2011.  Further, sill no definitive word on when Beta 7 is going to be released other than ‘Early November’. Though the nightly builds for the Firefox 4 are being numbered as 4.0b8 pre. The updated schedule for Firefox 4 is also showing there will be Beta 8, Beta 9 and Beta 10 to be released before year-end. The first Release Candidate (RC) build should be sometime in early 2011.

Firefox 3.5.15 Released

Mozilla released an emergency update for Firefox 3.5on October 27th. From Mozilla Developer’s News:

These releases fix a critical security issue that could potentially allow remote code execution. We have received reports from several security research firms that exploit code leveraging this vulnerability has been detected in the wild. Thanks to Mozilla’s industry-leading open security process the fix has been created, tested, and released to users within 48 hours of first notification about the vulnerability.

See the Release Notes for more information. Auto-updates should be occurring in the next 24-48 hours, otherwise users may get the latest update by going to Help menu and selecting Check For Updates. If you’re still using Firefox 3.0.x, this version is no longer supported and may contain security vulnerabilities.

IMPORTANT! Firefox 3.5 support will be ending soon. Upgrade to Firefox 3.6

Firefox 3.6.12 Released

Mozilla has released an emergency update to Firefox 3.6 on October 27th. From Mozilla Developer’s News:

These releases fix a critical security issue that could potentially allow remote code execution. We have received reports from several security research firms that exploit code leveraging this vulnerability has been detected in the wild. Thanks to Mozilla’s industry-leading open security process the fix has been created, tested, and released to users within 48 hours of first notification about the vulnerability.

See the release notes for more details. User should soon be prompted to upgrade but can also can by going to the Help the Menu and selecting Check For Updates…

Firefox 3.5 Support Still Going

Back in January we reported, Mozilla had (and still does) indicated on the Firefox 3.5 download page “Firefox 3.5.x will be maintained with security and stability updates until August 2010.” At that time we were speculating that Firefox 3.7 (now 4.0) would be released by August 2010.

With the release of 3.5.14 earlier this week we thought this was going to be the final release on the 3.5.X builds. Apparently not as seen in today’s Release Recap. Firefox 3.5.15 is scheduled (tentatively) for early December. Will this be the final build? That more than likely depends if Firefox 4 is released by that time which given how behind schedule Firefox 4.0 is at this point…well you decide.

New Mozilla CEO and Firefox Updates

The big news this week is after six months of searching, Gary Kovacs, former general manager and vice president of mobile and devices at Adobe, and employee of IBM for ten years, has been appointed as the next Mozilla Corp. CEO.

Mozilla Corp. former CEO John Lilly explained why Kovacs was the most ideal replacement:

We’ve talked with many people through this process — most of them were exceptionally talented in many ways. But Gary’s a special person for the CEO role, and here’s why:

• He’s a veteran of the Web and rich media — he’s been at the center of several cycles at Macromedia/Adobe and recently Sybase/SAP
• He’s got a deep background in mobile over the last 5 years or so — that’s an incredibly important area where we’ve got a lot to prove in the coming years
• He’s been involved in changing big organizations, and with those organizations changing the bigger landscape — Macromedia, Adobe & Sybase

I am glad to see Mozilla is going to be putting more focus towards Mobile web. Just within the last couple weeks Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Maemo was released. I did find Percy’s (Mozilla Links) comments interesting and share the same thoughts in regards to Flash:

I am personally glad to see someone who knows Adobe from the inside to come aboard. I am pretty sure Adobe has serious interest in making the web a better place, and is just coming to realize the open web is an opportunity as big as the lack of rich web media features was more than a decade ago.

On the other hand we all need Adobe’s top class tools. A Flash version that outputs HTML5 code instead of SWF files would be a turning point in web history.

Now on to the subject of Firefox updates. It seems Mozilla has gone from one extreme to the other. In August and September there were 4 Beta releases for Firefox 4 and a couple updates in September for the current 3.5/3.6 builds. Firefox 4 Beta 7 (really?!) was suppose to be released at the end of September with the first Release Candidate build scheduled for this month. Right now future releases of Firefox 4 have been postponed. The upcoming Firefox 3.5/3.6 releases kept getting pushed back during the past couple weeks, the latest release date (subject to change) is October 19th. Important to note that the upcoming Firefox 3.5.14 once released will be the last update for the Firefox 3.5 builds.

Paste & Go coming to Firefox 4

Firefox 4 will now have a new feature available from the context menu called ‘Paste & Go’. This option is available when pasting into either the address bar or search box. As the name implies, once the content is pasted it automatically goes to the address or displays the results for the searched term.

I can’t say I am all that excited about this feature. For one thing I rarely paste via the context menu. Most of the time I either paste via CTRL+V. In the cases of addresses, this is usually after I have opened a new tab. I suppose for people who use the context menu a lot this would be useful.
Source: Mozilla Links