Talkings of a Tyrant

Cookies are little pieces of information that sites give to your browser for a variety of reasons. They are usually used to track you through the site (find out if a large enough number of people who like pancakes also like berries, etc.) or to keep you logged in. My habits tend to be that of: “I want to stay logged in to Gmail, but I want all the other cookies to go when I quit Firefox.”

If this is what you want, then CookieCuller is the extension for you!

CookieCuller allows you to “Protect” specific cookies. These cookies won’t be deleted unless you do it manually from Firefox’s built-in cookie manager, or unprotect it. Under the extension’s options, you can tell it to delete any unprotected cookies at Firefox’s start up. Strangely, that is the only option, but it still has its own menu. It would probably be simpler to put the option in the main CookieCuller dialogue rather than on its own. Maybe there is a real reason for it. I don’t know…

Keep in mind that Firefox’s built-in cookie manager takes priority over CookieCuller. This means that if you’ve set your cookies to expire at the end of Firefox’s session, then any cookies placed will expire at the end of the session, regardless of whether or not the cookies are protected.

Make sure your options look something like this:

CookieCuller is a great extension for control freaks like me and power users in general. It is easy to learn and easy to use, though sometimes figuring out what exactly a cookie does is confusing. However, that isn’t really the extension’s fault, as cookies are generally confusing. If you would like more information about your browser cookies, I would suggest “Are Cookies Dangerous?” by Dave Child.

Download CookieCuller
CookieCuller website
Get Firefox 1.5

The WMF security vulnerability in Windows (all versions of Windows) has really got Microsoft running.

What the vulnerability boils down to (if you want more details, try some other site) is by simply viewing an image (or rather, a Windows Metafile disguised as an image), a hacker has the potential to do anything the user can do. For most people, who are pretty much admins of their PC, this includes everything. Wipe your hard drive? Sure. Whatever.

By “viewing an image,” this means: viewing an image on the web, viewing an image in an email client, or however else you look at images. No downloading required.

Huge security vulnerability.

Microsoft, however, moved and worked with the quickest speed I’ve ever seen them, and have created a patch that fixes this problem. It is currently still being “quality tested” to make sure it doesn’t open up any other security vulnerabilities.

If you really can’t wait, you can download an unofficial vendor patch. I’m going to take my chances and wait.

I’m still trying to figure out if this vulnerability can be exploited in Firefox.

I’ve been accepted as an extension/theme reviewer at Addons.Mozilla.org.

As one of many extension/theme reviewers, I approve/disapprove extension that are queued for approval. When an extension is finished, the creater sends it off to addons.mozilla.org where, hopefully, it will be approved and hosted by the AMO website. If it is buggy or doesn’t do what it says, it gets sent back.

I also have to review comments that have been reported by AMO users. There are a lot of those.

I’ve finally found my calling for how to help Firefox. It requires very little coding knowledge, and yet I get to play with cutting edge extensions. Granted, I’m probably going to have to back up and back up again my Firefox profile, but…

I’ve been considering moving this blog from Blogsome. It is a tricky situation.

Arguments in my head for moving:

1. My own server would allow me to have complete control and maximum flexibility over my blog (Plus, a bit more prestige among the blogging community for owning my own domain). I’m a control freak in some senses after all.
2. Blogsome server has been down a lot lately. 150 instances according to Uptime since I switched to Blogsome in early November, and most of them have been in the last month.
   uptime report

Arguments in my head against moving:

1. My own server would cost money. I don’t like that. I’m miserly. My name is tyrantmizar.

   I originally considered moving to a different free blogging host like Wordpress.com or Bloggoing, but both of those are very limited in how much control I have over how my blog looks. For example, I can’t figure out how to directly edit anything like a template, etc, in either of those. I’m not willing to put up with a blog I can’t at least pretend I have control over, so both of those services are out of the question.

   If anyone does know how to edit the template in either of those sites, please email me.

2. I would lose all of this blog’s prestige. I would have to wait another month for Google to completely index my pages and get rid of the references to this blog. All of the kind links to this blog would become irrelevant.
3. It would be a pain to move, because there is no easy way to export from this blog in a format that is recognized by Wordpress. The only way I’ve discovered yet is by RSS, and in which case, all the comments are lost.

While it may look like I won’t move, there is a very good chance that I will. The trick is figuring out which host I’ll use.

Sorry. There may not be many more updates for a short while. It’s going to take some research and patience to decide.

There have been several implementations of the new features that Firefox 1.5 brings.

Some notable new features are canvas support and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) support. I’m only going to discuss two implementations, but keep in mind that there are several more.

Canvascape

One such site is Canvascape.

Canvascape is a clever implementation of the canvas tag and javascript to make a game that runs completely in Firefox. No Java, Shockwave, or Flash. Just CSS and javascript.

It doesn’t do anything, yet. They’re currently working on porting the original Doom to this form. It is a tech demo, yes, but it is very promising.

Canvascape

Moon Orbiter

The second example uses SVG and javascript.

This site allow you to interactively test the three theories for the creation of the moon/how the moon got into its orbit. It is nicely done, and give credence to all three theories.

How Did The Moon Get Into Orbit?

These sites are another sign that Firefox is stepping up as a major contender against Microsoft. They are starting to be the powerhouse. The ones that are the ones that push the web standards into acceptance.

Slightly wishful thinking, but hey! Let a fanboy dream!