The best browser, in my opinion, has just released it’s first major revision since reaching v1.0. Get it here. The changelog summary is quoted below for your convenience.
Here’s what’s new in Firefox 1.5:
- Automated update to streamline product upgrades. Notification of an update is more prominent, and updates to Firefox may now be half a megabyte or smaller. Updating extensions has also improved.
- Faster browser navigation with improvements to back and forward button performance.
- Drag and drop reordering for browser tabs.
- Improvements to popup blocking.
- Clear Private Data feature provides an easy way to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut.
- Answers.com is added to the search engine list.
- Improvements to product usability including descriptive error pages, redesigned options menu, RSS discovery, and “Safe Mode” experience.
- Better accessibility including support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. Screen readers read aloud all available information in applications and documents or show the information on a Braille display, enabling blind and visually impaired users to use equivalent software functionality as their sighted peers.
- Report a broken Web site wizard to report Web sites that are not working in Firefox.
- Better support for Mac OS X (10.2 and greater) including profile migration from Safari and Mac Internet Explorer.
- New support for Web Standards including SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6.
- Many security enhancements.
The Burning Edge has more detailed lists of new features and notable bug fixes.
Technology
I thought I might try something new… here’s a summary of some stuff that I’m into at the moment.
Music:
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I really cannot get enough of this band. Some really great tracks on this album. Perhaps I’ll just provide you with a quote from a review that does better justice of summing things up than I can do:
Jimmy Shaw lays down increasingly awesome guitar work over more maturely realized lyrics. And how’s our favourite first lady Emily Haines doing? Pleine forme, ma belle, pleine forme. While everyone is going on about their first single Monster Hospital, for me it’s Police and the Private that the band allows to stay in gorgeous mid-flight, and that really shows the huge potential of Metric. Ottawa XPress – Oct. 13th 2005
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I know I’m coming in late on the Kanye train, but whatever, it took me sometime to hop on board, sue me. Anyways, we’ve been playing this album a lot around the house. It’s really great. Review except time:
Diamonds From Sierra Leone is hot, no doubt, especially with the Jay-Z help on the remix; Touch the Sky is fun, as is Heard ‘Em Say with blue-eyed crooner Adam Levine. But my favourite verse on the album, somewhat inexplicably, is Paul Wall’s on Drive Slow, in which he steals the show from Kanye and GLC. Ottawa XPress – Sept. 15th, 2005
Online
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CBC has been doing a pretty good job with putting up a lot of (unfortunately small resolution) video content from it’s (canadianized) answer to Comedy Central’s the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. My favourite segments are the comercial spoofs. Check out this one from the latest episode: A message from the Distillers of Canada (you probably wont get it if you haven’t seen the source for the spoof). They have pretty much every produced segment (i.e. non-monologues) from every episode available online, which is pretty awesome.
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The place to get the latest Greasemonkey scripts, all served with all the fancy whiz-bang/hype features of Web 2.0. Here’s a link to my scripts on userscripts.org: [My] Profile! I just wish they could make their login system persist between sessions (Especially annoying, since their fancy AJAX login form doesn’t actually submit, so Firefox never prompts to save the password).
Art & Media, Blogathyant Recommends
The Band STEADMAN have the songs, the musicianship, the ENERGY and the ENTHUSIASM to BLOW THE TOP OFF any CLUB, or ARENA, and if given a listen, have that RARE quality — the ABILITY TO DELIVER!
I LIKE THIS BAND!! — P. McCartney
If thats not a ringing endorsement (a copy of the original quote) I don’t know what is. Don’t believe the hype? Feel free to judge for yourself, by downloading any of the 109 tracks this band has released online, for free, in unrestricted mp3 (Look under ‘Freeloads’).
www.steadmanband.com
Art & Media
Too funny: A gamespot user’s Domo toy takes a look at thew new Xbox 360 controller.
Fortunately for Domo, even though he can’t read English he still knew it was a controller and just happened to have an XBox S-Controller lying around the office.
read more | digg story
Games & Leisure
A special undercover investigation by the CBC… has exposed major problems with security at some of Canada’s airports…
“It’s what I call the illusion of security,” says a passenger screener.
The Fifth Estate’s program on airport security airs Wed. (Nov. 9th) at 9 p.m. on CBC.
read more | digg story
News
With the anticipated July 4th 2007 release Transformer fans all around the world want to know who will be the voice of Optimus Prime.Petter Cullen? Hopefully. I don’t think it will be quite as good if it isn’t.
Here’s my biggest WTF moment from the article: “Soundwave’s alternate mode as a cassette deck, for instance, doesn’t have quite the same appeal as it did in the ’80s, and he will instead change into a helicopter” [emphasis mine].
It’s interesting how they’re presenting the movie in this article like it’s going to be amazing, despite saying that the primary writer has left to work on another movie, and not only that, but his biggest claim to fame (according to the article) is having been a writer for “Cosby” (1996) (note, that’s not “The Cosby Show” (1984), but rather the other, later, Cosby show with Sanka from Cool Runnings) and having written 2004’s Catwoman. Wow. Just… wow.
read more | digg story
Art & Media, Humour
