Independent Status Reports (17 June, 2005)
Friday June 17th, 2005
By Brian King
The Firefox and Thunderbird 1.1 releases are approaching fast, and there have been many changes and enhancements not just for users but also for extension authors. SVG is now enabled by default in Firefox, and other highlights include the <canvas> tag, E4X (XML handling in JavaScript), site-specific CSS rules, a redesigned Preferences system, and much more. The great advance for Thunderbird on version 1.1 is inline spell checking. Extension developers can enjoy greater flexibility on where their extensions are installed. Window icons are now supported in packages, as are OS-dependent XPCOM components. And one really nice feature in the code base is dynamic overlays,
allowing chunks of chrome to be pulled in at runtime (bug 282103). Phew, just let me catch my breath! In the meantime, check out these latest reports for Mozilla projects.
Note: If anyone has an update that they would like included in the
next report, go here,
or have any feedback on the reports in general, feel free to contact us.
Previous Reports
PasswordMaker — v0.6
(One password to rule 'em all!)
- For: Firefox, and a web-page version for any browser supporting JavaScript
- Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
Why use the same password over and over again when there's PasswordMaker? Now you only need to remember a "master" password, but you can generate the same, unique password for any website over and over again using any of 7 hash algorithms and 9 different levels of l33t speak. For added security, nothing is stored anywhere or sent over the internet. Passwords are calculated as they are used.
There's even an on-line version for when you don't have access to Firefox.
0.6 was released on June 5, 2005.
What's New in 0.6
- There's been some confusion whether the extension is named "Password Maker" (space between words) or "PasswordMaker" (no space). I've clarified the confusion by changing contents.rdf to use PasswordMaker just as this website does. The official name is now PasswordMaker.
- Support for multiple accounts ("usernames") on the same website. Now you can generate as many passwords as you like for the same domain. When PasswordMaker is about to generate a password for a website for which you've created accounts, you are prompted for the account to use. If you don't create accounts for a website, the default settings are used to generate the password.
- Ability to specify different settings (e.g., password length, l33t-speak, etc.) for each and every account on each and every website
- Support for "expiring passwords" — websites that force you to change your password periodically — through a new "counter" field. By entering a date, incrementing a number, or any other changing text, passwords can change as frequently as you need.
- A completely new look-and-feel in Advanced Settings to support the account management.
- Ability to generate the same password for different sites; when one URL is "matched", another can be substituted for password generation. For instance, if you want one of your Yahoo! accounts to use the same password as one of your Google accounts, in the Yahoo! account enter "yahoo.com" in "When URL Contains" field and "gmail.com" in "Use this URL" field.
- A security warning is displayed if you choose to save the master password to disk (even though it's stored encrypted), along with simple instructions on how to remove it from disk.
- If the master password had been stored on disk (encrypted), clearing the master password field erases the encrypted data from disk.
- The Basic Settings dialog, which was mis-sized on some platforms under some resolutions, is now completely resizable. You can make it any size you like and the dialog will open to the same size next time.
- All preferences are now stored in a file named passwordmaker.rdf instead of Mozilla/Firefox's preferences (about:config). This will make OS-level encryption of settings easy. When upgrading from an older release, your preferences are converted to the RDF file — they are not lost.
- Import and Export Preferences are disabled in this release. I haven't had time to re-write these features yet, but look for them in 0.6.1 or 0.6.2. In the meantime, you can manually copy/backup/delete %ProfileDirectory%/passwordmaker.rdf to achieve the same thing.
- This release required so much time that I was unable to update the integrated help. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them in the forums. You can post messages there without registering.
pageplaylist — v0.7
(Small player for MP3 links in current page)
- For: Firefox
- Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
First official release at mozdev.
MozCreator — M1
(Mozilla development IDE written in Java)
- For: All
- Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS
A lot has been going on with MozCreator lately. We're preparing for a M2 release, which should be coming sometime soon.
Recently, JavaScript support was added to the MozCreator Java XUL parser so we have most elements of the core Mozilla platform now ported to Java! This has simplified the GUI code significantly. We've also added a number of new features noted below.
We need Java programmers badly! If you're interested, send email to R.J. Keller. We'd also love to hear what you, the Mozilla developers, would like to see in MozCreator. Send any feature requests or other feedback to the mailing list.
Notable Highlights
- MozCreator now has Visual Studio-like docking panels that are draggable to other locations and minimizable.
- Added a pre-alpha GUI editor. Very rough, not much work on it yet. More to come.
- Toolbars can be collapsed (Netscape 4.x-style).
- Got some test code for creating a MozCreator executable on Windows and Linux. This should make running MozCreator easier.
- Now builds JAR files without requiring zip.
- New Welcome Screen.
- Lots of GUI tweaks.
Platypus — 0.5
(Firefox extension for creating Greasemonkey scripts)
- For: Firefox
- Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
Platypus is a newly-developed extension which provides a visual interface for creating GreaseMonkey scripts.
Notable Highlights
- Support for frames
- "Smart Delete", "Auto-Fix" and other functionality are a lot smarter
- New user interface features a toolbar and point-and-click editing
Launchy — v4.0.0
(Open links with external programs like Internet Explorer and Opera)
- For: Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird
- Platform: All
Notable Highlights
- Support Firefox 1.1 installation
- Support Firefox 1.1 registry service
- Fixed temp files cleanup
- Better apps detection
xulfrog — dev
(A little game inspired by the classic gaming hit Frogger)
- For: Mozilla, Firefox
Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
A lot of work has been done... actually I am focussing on the AI part of the whole thing.
Notable Highlights
- collision detection (70%)
- arbitrary enemy formations
- some IQ: cars try to kill the frog ;)
- layout for the frog has started
- analysis of the original game is 100%
Mozilla Materials — v1.0
(Keep on spreading!)
- For: Firefox, Thunderbird
- Platform: All
Site launched!
Mozilla Materials is all about creating, organising and maintaining materials such as flyers, posters, etc. for marketing purposes.
There are already quite a few things for Firefox and Thunderbird. Expect much more in the months to come!
Russ Key — 0.4.6
(Better host application detection)
- For: Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird
- Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
Fixed host application detection.
Notable Highlights
- Detecting host application better
Leet Key — 0.3.9
(Type 1337 in other languages)
- For: Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird
- Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
Binary support, UTF-8 support.
Notable Highlights
- Binary typing/transform added.
- Fixed 'off' switch.
- Added UTF-8 1337 support (making it possible to type in Russian 1337 for example).
WordBlock — v.001a
(WordBlock)
- For: Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, Camino
- Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
Recent dev for WordBlock has been progressing slowly. There's functionality that's similar to Adblock's but there's a noticeable difference. Code has not been released yet because it crashes and interfers with other extensions due mostly to my poor coding skills.
Soon, a beta will be released to the public.
Notable Highlights
- Improved two areas
- Few enhancements
- Lots of things still suck
adaptivehomepage — 0.1
(Firefox extension that sets your homepage based on your usage)
- For: Firefox
- Platform: Windows, Linux
Just finished a beta version of the project.
Released Beta Version
Previous Reports
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