Firefox 4 which was released yesterday has been downloaded over 6 million times in just 24 hours. It features faster application startup, faster javascript engine, full HTML5 and CSS3 compliance etc.
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What’s New in Firefox 4:
Fastest Firefox Ever
- Performance: Firefox is up to six times faster than the previous release. With improved start-up and page load times, speedy Web app performance and hardware accelerated graphics, Firefox is optimized for rich, interactive websites.
Streamlined Interface
- App Tabs: give a permanent home to frequently visited sites like Web mail, Twitter, Pandora, Flickr.
- Switch to Tab: easily find and switch to any open tab from your Awesome Bar without opening duplicate tabs.
- Panorama: drag and drop tabs into manageable groups to save time while navigating many open tabs.
Private and Secure Synchronization
- Firefox Sync: access your Awesome Bar history, bookmarks, open tabs, passwords and form data across multiple computers and mobile devices.
Most Customizable
Private and Secure
- Do Not Track: Firefox is leading the Web towards a universal standard Do Not Track feature that allows users to opt-out of tracking used for behavioral advertising.
- Firefox puts privacy first, fixing flaws in some Web standards to prevent others from accessing your browser history.
- HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS): automatically establishes secure connections to stop “man in the middle” attacks and keep sensitive data safe from interception during the log-in process.
- Content Security Policy (CSP): prevent cross-scripting attacks by allowing sites to explicitly tell the browser which content is legitimate.
Cutting Edge Tools for Web Developers:
- The JavaScript engine incorporates the new JägerMonkey JIT compiler, along with enhancements to the existing TraceMonkey JIT and SpiderMonkey’s interpreter for faster page-load speed and better performance of Web apps and games.
- HTML5 support in Firefox includes hardware accelerated, high-definition video (WebM), 3D graphics, offline data storage, professional typography, touchscreen interfaces and the Mozilla Audio API to help create visual experiences for sound and more.
- Firefox 4 also improves existing tools like CSS, Canvas and SVG to enable developers to make exciting Web pages.
- Firefox provides uninterrupted browsing when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins. If one of these plugins crashes or freezes, it won’t affect the rest of Firefox. Simply reload the page to restart the plugin.
Read the full blog entry from mozilla.
Install it on Ubuntu using PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox |
Cheers!
The new admin bar in wordpress 3.1 is one good feature to have but sometimes its unwanted. For example you might already have some other kind of top bar with which admin bar may interfere. You can remove the admin bar by putting the following code in /wp-content/YOURTHEME/functions.php:
if(function_exists('show_admin_bar')){
show_admin_bar(false);
} |
I came across this weird error in unserialize() where it refused to unserialize the serialized data. After hours of trying different things to solve it, finally converting the encoding worked.
The solution to the problem is to use the following function instead of unserialize():
function safe_unserialize($str){
return unserialize( trim( mb_convert_encoding( $str,'auto','UTF-8' ) ) );
} |
Cheers!
I was trying to compile sphinx server from source but I go the following errors on executing make
undefined reference to `libiconv_open’
undefined reference to `libiconv’
undefined reference to `libiconv_close’
To fix the error, you can compile without iconv (multiple encoding support) support. Use the following commands to compile. You can add more parameters as per your requirements.
./configure --without-iconv
make CFLAGS=-liconv
make install |
I hope that helps
Recently, I tried installing Ubuntu on my friend’s computer. I used Maverick’s Live CD but the boot process stuck at kernel_thread_helper+0×7/0×10. I noticed a huge list of acpi errors above this message and figured it was somehow related to ACPI. To solve the problem I simply turned of ACPI.
Solving the problem in Live CD:
Insert live cd, and before the Ubuntu tries to boot into it press Esc repeatedly until you get to Ubuntu menu. Press F6 and select acpi=off and press enter. You can now press Esc again to close this sub-menu and press ‘Enter’ to boot into Live CD. This time your boot process should complete without any errors.
Solving the problem in installed system:
(Once you install Ubuntu using Live CD, you have to follow the following steps to fix this problem in your installation.)
1. In the grub menu, press ‘e’. Search for ‘quiet splash’ and add ‘acpi=off’ (without quotes) after that to make it look like ‘quiet splash acpi=off’. You’ll be able to boot in now.
2. Go to Applications->Accessories->Terminal
3. Execute:
sudo gedit /etc/default/grub |
4. Find the line which says GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash” and change it to the following:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash acpi=off”
5. Exit gedit.
6. Execute:
7. Restart. This time you don’t have to edit anything. Ubuntu should boot without any issues.
Comments and suggestions are more than welcome.
Recently facebook made its font smaller. It worried lots of people with weaker eye sight. The font looks ugly as well. They reduced it all the way to 11px from 13px. And changed its color to #000 from #333. I made a quick greasemonkey script as it works cross-browser to fix the issue until facebook does something about it.
You can install the script from the following link:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/89552
Google Chrome: Chrome doesn’t need any extension for this to work. It’ll install the script right away.
Firefox: You need to install greasemonkey extension from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748/
Opera: It has its own Userjs API. This script might work on Opera. However, it has not yet been tested.
I don’t recommend using any version of IE, hence no instructions for that.
Updatedb command by default does not include /media path for updating its database. You can change the settings in /etc/updatedb.conf so that it starts indexing other partitions too.
sudo gedit /etc/updatedb.conf |
In the PRUNEPATHS setting, remove /media. Save the file and run
This will index all your files from /media folder. Make sure the partitions are mounted.
Cheers!
This class of error means the dependency is of different version than required. I tried to install deluge-console but it gave me the following error:
deluge-console : Depends: deluge-common (= 1.3.0-0ubuntu1) but 1.3.0-1~getdeb1 is to be installed
The error is not that self-explanatory. Here the deluge-common version required by deluge-console is 1.3.0-0 but 1.3.0-1 is installed. This means that I have newer version of a dependency required by the application I am trying to install.
Fortunately, you can force the version in apt-get:
sudo apt-get install deluge-common=1.3.0-0ubuntu1 |
I forced an older version, downgrading the package. This fixed the error for me and I could successfully install deluge-console after that.
This method can be applied to fix problems in other applications as well.
Cheers!
After upgrading to Maverick, somehow Amarok stopped playing Mp3. Same thing happened when I upgraded to Lucid from Karmic.
To fix it, install libxine1-all-plugins:
sudo apt-get install libxine1-all-plugins |
That fixed it for me!
Cheers!
When learning to make bash scripts, at one point or other you’d like to know how to suspend your computer from terminal. Well, there are quite some methods available for Ubuntu. You can choose whatever suits your needs. I prefer method 3 (look below).
Method 1:
sudo sh /etc/acpi/sleep.sh force |
Method 2:
This command might not be available in older versions of Ubuntu. It works perfectly fine on Lucid and Maverick.
Method 3:
This command does not require sudo so it might come in handy. For example, you can map it to a keyboard shortcut for easy access.
dbus-send --print-reply --system --dest=org.freedesktop.UPower /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Suspend |
One thing to notice here is none of the commands I mentioned here will ask your password on resuming. For that you’ll have to lock your computer before suspending. You’ll have to use gnome-screensaver-command --lock before suspending to lock the computer
Create a suspend script:
Open a new file in gedit:
sudo gedit /usr/bin/suspend-comp |
Copy and paste the following code and save it:
#!/bin/sh
sleep $1;
dbus-send --print-reply --system --dest=org.freedesktop.UPower /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Suspend |
If you want the script to ask for a password on resuming, copy-paste this code instead:
#!/bin/sh
sleep $1;
gnome-screensaver-command --lock
dbus-send --print-reply --system --dest=org.freedesktop.UPower /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Suspend |
Add the executable bit:
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/suspend-comp |
Now suspend-comp time-in-seconds can be used in terminal. For example, if I want to have my computer suspended after 20 seconds I can simply type:
Mapping it to keyboard shortcut for easy access:
Go to System->Preferences->Keyboard Shortcuts. Click Add. Type Suspend for Name and suspend-comp 0 in Command field. Click Apply.
Now scroll to the bottom of the list to find Suspend. Click on ‘Disabled’ on the right to ‘Suspend’. Now press any key combination to map the command to it. I used Ctrl+Alt+Shift+s.
Now simply pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+s will suspend your computer.
Cheers!
