Digitivity » browser

The Dolphin Web Browser for Android Spies on Your URLs

Digitivity — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:57:00 +0000

Dolphin HD, one of the most popular alternative web browsers for Android devices, has now been shown to spy on every website you visit by sending the URLs to a website, en.mywebzines.com, owned by the browser vendor.

The company came up with an excuse relating to a “webzine” feature, but that was really weak. Anyway, there’s a new release out which the company claims fixes the “issue”. Via

DigiNotar SSL Hack Threatens Browser Security

Digitivity — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:02:18 +0000

This is a little technical, but it affects your ability to access secure sites without anybody seeing what you’re doing.

DigiNotar, a Dutch provider of SSL certificates, has been hacked, and hacked well and good. The hackers then created rogue SSL certificates, which can be used to impersonate actual, well-known websites, like google.com.

The total number of compromised domains is now an amazing 531 (yes, five hundred thirty-one). That includes Facebook, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Skype, Twitter, Tor, WordPress, the CIA, Mossad, MI6, and others. The Dutch government also said it couldn’t guarantee the security of its own government sites.

What to do about it

There’s something built into the secure certificates system which is supposed to mitigate the harm done in situations like this: certificate revocation. When a certificate authority (an issuer of SSL certificates) finds out that its certs have been compromised, it can issue a revocation notice.

Browsers are supposed to check for such notices before using a certificate. (In Google Chrome, there’s an option “Check for revocations”.) Theoretically, all should be fine, since DigiNotar has revoked the certificate.

But browser distributors have also done some updates of their own so that users of the latest browser versions will get a warning if they try to visit a site signed with a DigiNotar certificate.

So be sure you’re using the latest browser version.

Resources

Slashdot
Net Security
Nine News
Wikipedia has a good overview

Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview – BrowserCam for IE 6 and 8

Digitivity — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:04:36 +0000

If you design websites, you’ve probably had to view a site in multiple versions of Internet Explorer.

Unfortunately, you can only usually have one version of IE installed on your computer.

Now Micrsoft has come out with a way preview web pages with multiple versions of IE.

SuperPreview lets you view a web page in both IE6 and IE7 or 8, whichever you have installed on your machine.

Get SuperPreview here.

Microsoft (Finally) Wants You to Ditch IE6

Digitivity — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 17:23:37 +0000

If you’ve opened up Internet Explorer 6 recently (I only do so for testing), you might have noticed that instead of the normal Microsoft portal (MSN, Live, Bing, and so on), you get a message encouraging you to upgrade your browser.

I say good on them. I guess they had to after IE6 users were getting all sorts of messages from Google on YouTube telling them that their browser wouldn’t be supported after a certain date for watching videos.

Here’s what the upgrade info page looks like.

And here’s Microsoft’s top 8 list of reasons to upgrade, presented here in reverse order:

8. Browse with more confidence. (security updates)
7. Make it yours. (customization)
6. Find what you want in fewer clicks. (accelerators)
5. Recover from crashes quickly. (tab isolation)
4. Browse more privately. (private browsing mode)
3. Avoid phishing scams and malware. (SmartScreen Filter)
2. Use a browser that respects your privacy. (separate address and search boxes)
1. Keep the web familiar. (use us because we’re us)

Google Chrome Browser Third Place Behind Internet Explorer and Firefox

Digitivity — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:05:37 +0000

A new survey is showing that Google’s Chrome browser is moving to third place in the browser standings.

Granted, the percentage for Chrome is nowhere near Internet Explorer, but I still think this is important.

The most important lesson is: You should code your websites to HTML standards as opposed to targeting a single browser’s quirks (like IE 6.0).

It’s a mistake to dismiss Google Chrome because it doesn’t have a lot of market share at the moment. Firefox likewise didn’t have a lot of market share, but it’s at about 25% right now. Who in their right mind would turn away 1 out of 4 of their customers?

But I think Google can increase its market share much more rapidly. For one thing, they can promote Chrome on their websites, like they’re doing on Youtube now. The number one video site on the Internet telling people to download Chrome gives it instant credibility.

In addition, Google can promote Chrome outside the digital sphere, as they are doing on the busses of certain cities currently. If Google can make google a household word, Chrome’s not too far behind.

Resources

Download Google Chrome here.
Slashdot discussion
Browser survey
ComputerWorld article

Firefox 3.1 Beta Has New, Faster TraceMonkey Javascript Engine

Digitivity — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:49:35 +0000

InfoPackets reports that the Firefox 3.1 beta is getting faster at JavaScript and CSS rendering. It’s going to need it for upcoming competition from Google Chrome and Microsoft IE.

But the original article‘s test numbers aren’t quite promising. While Firefox 3.1 may be faster than previous Firefox versions, it’s still slower than the current Safari beta.

HowToCreate.co.uk CSS rendering benchmark: Firefox 3.1 beta loads in 456 ms and renders in 38 ms. Safari 4 beta loads in an amazing 54 ms and renders in 7 ms.
Sean Patrick Kane’s JavaScript test: 344 ms for Firefox and 174 for Safari.
Acid3 standards compliance test: 93 for Firefox and 100 for Safari.

Sorry to say, but this is really pathetic performance. Here’s hoping the Firefox devs can bring their game up by release time.

How to Play a Quicktime Movie That Isn’t Playing in Your Browser

Digitivity — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:08:25 +0000

Even though Flash FLV movies have become something of an Internet standard, some sites persist in presenting movies in Quicktime format. Here’s how to view them if you have trouble playing them in your browser.

Reasons Quicktime movies might not play in your browser might include:

You don’t have the latest Quicktime plugin installed.
You don’t care to launch the Quicktime plugin.

I usually skip embedded Quicktime movies just because the plugin is so heavy. It takes a while to start up, and it takes up additional memory after it’s done. This is unlike the Flash plugin, which is always loaded since it’s needed for so many websites.

So what I do is just do a “View Source” on the page (View: Page Source in Firefox). Then I search for the Quicktime movie URL. You can do this by searching for the text string “.mov”. An example would be:

Just get the URL:

http://www.colorguides.net/movies/pantone_solid_colors_movie.mov

Take it and paste it into VLC at the File: Open dialog.
Of course, this means that you need to have VLC installed, but you should already have it installed.