Archive for June, 2009

File Under: Software & Tools, Web Basics
Jun
19
2009

Taking Microsoft to Task Over IE8 ‘Myths’

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Microsoft recently launched a campaign promoting its Internet Explorer 8 browser, making some bold claims about IE8′s capabilities.

The campaign, called “Windows Internet Explorer 8: Get the Facts,” trumpets IE’s speed, stability, ease of use, safety and customizability. It also provides a chart and several data points intended to show how IE8 surpasses other browsers in these areas.

While IE8, which was released earlier this year, is certainly the best version of Internet Explorer yet, several of Microsoft’s claims lead us to more questions, overlook some obviously plain facts or simply leave us scratching our heads.

On the campaign website, you’ll see Microsoft listing eight reasons to install Internet Explorer 8 — it’s “faster than ever,” it’s more customizable, it recovers from crashes — all of which point out the enhancements over previous versions of IE. No harm there.

But in the next section, titled “Browser comparison,” things gets dodgy.

Here, Microsoft claims IE8 has better protection against malware and phishing scams than Firefox and Chrome, as well as better privacy features. The privacy and security claims are dubious, especially considering Firefox 3 has some equally robust privacy features. Chrome also has almost identical features, as well as an incognito mode that mirrors IE8′s InPrivate browsing mode.

More troubling are the claims that IE8 is on par with Firefox and Chrome when it comes to support for web standards and performance.

The fact that both Firefox 3 and Google Chrome are both leaps and bounds ahead of IE8 when it comes to support for both established and emerging web standards, like HTML 5 and CSS 3, is no mystery to anyone who’s developed websites using anything beyond CSS 2.1, the latest CSS standard Microsoft IE8 supports, or to those developing user experiences with open video players or offline data storage features. Furthermore, for users of Ajax-heavy websites like Gmail and Netflix, IE8 performs just fine, but it’s not nearly as fast as Google Chrome.

And how about Safari and Opera? How do they compare? A casual reader wouldn’t know, since Microsoft didn’t include them in this chart.

On to the third section — deliciously titled “Mythbusting.” It’s here that Microsoft calls out the competitors on four common arguments against IE8.

The four “myths”:

  • 1: Internet Explorer is much slower than Firefox and Chrome.
  • 2: Internet Explorer is less secure than Firefox.
  • 3: Firefox is a richer, more adaptable browser than Internet Explorer.
  • 4: Internet Explorer doesn’t play well with Web standards.

The site goes on to attempt to de-bunk these myths one by one, with varying levels of head-spinning pretzel logic.

On the speed issue, Microsoft says its navigation features make it easier to use, therefore making it faster to find what you’re looking for. This isn’t speed, this is spin. It then dismisses page rendering and JavaScript performance data supplied by Firefox and Chrome as “micro-benchmarking page load claims” that don’t extend to real-world use cases. Again, nobody who’s serious about measuring browser speed accurately is going to buy this. And where are Safari and Opera? Not mentioned here.

On security, Microsoft says IE8 is more secure than IE6 or IE7, which is true. But to back up its claim that IE8 is the most secure browser, Microsoft cites a self-sponsored study that Opera has since called out as manipulative and incorrect. The rest of the arguments supplied here — more advanced phishing and malware protection, better defense against cross-site scripting, better security out of the box — fall flat when you look at similar features in Firefox and Chrome.

It’s the last two that are the biggest head-scratchers.

IE8 is more adaptable than Firefox and Chrome, both of which are fully open-source? More customizable than Firefox, which has the richest, most vibrant add-on community among all the browsers, including the Two Browsers Not Appearing In This Comparison?

And IE8 plays well with web standards? Again, it’s a huge improvement over older versions of IE, but IE8 surpassing all other browsers, including the Two Browsers Not Appearing In This Comparison? Au contraire.

Additonal reading: Geek Technica’s breakdown, which goes into more technical detail that I’ve provided here.

Screenshot (with commentary) by robceemoz/Flickr

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File Under: Multimedia, Software & Tools
Jun
18
2009

How Firefox Is Pushing Open Video Onto the Web

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The underlying language used to build web pages is being substantially re-written for the first time in a decade.

The W3C, the web’s primary standards body, is revising HTML with an eye on improving the performance and capabilities of rich, browser-based applications. One of the great promises of HTML 5, the emerging standard, is that content creators will be able to embed video and audio files on web pages with the same simplicity and ease as images and links.

The tools being used to power this behavior are the Ogg Theora and Vorbis codecs maintained by the non-profit Xiph.org. Currently, most video and audio on the web is presented using either Adobe’s Flash Player, Microsoft’s Silverlight or Apple’s QuickTime. These are proprietary technologies, which means they come with various restrictions — licenses, patents and fees — attached.

Ogg, being open-source and patent-free, has no fees and very few use restrictions. Ogg has been around for a while. It was beaten out by MP3 in the Napster days as the audio format of choice, and has remained obscure ever since. It’s also gotten a bad reputation because of poor quality and large file sizes compared to competing tools like h.264, which is used by both Quicktime and Flash, and will be used in the next release of Silverlight.

However, in the past year, the quality issues dogging Ogg have been largely solved thanks to the increased interest and involvement of developers who want to see support for open video on the web become a reality.

At a recent developer conference, Google showed off how it was building Ogg support directly into its Chrome browser to handle video playback without using any plug-ins. Mozilla’s Jay Sullivan was then invited on stage, where he announced the next version of Firefox would also include built-in Ogg support, all part of a grand plan among browser makers to, in Sullivan’s words, free video from “plug-in prison.”

Webmonkey got a chance to sit down with Mozilla director of Firefox Mike Beltzner and Mozilla director of platform engineering Damon Sicore to talk about web video in Firefox 3.5, the next version of their company’s browser, which is due at the end of June.

We asked Mozilla how its full-force adoption of open video standards will free video from the so-called “plug-in prison,” and why it’s attempting to do so even though the browser used by some 60% of web surfers, Internet Explorer 8, doesn’t support any of the standards that make this scenario possible. [Clarification: As reader "redvine" points out in the comments, Theora plug-ins do exist for IE8 and IE7. There is no native support for Ogg or for the <video> tag in IE8.]

During our chat, Beltzner and Sicore showed us some demos, all of which are linked to below. Also check out the open video test site at DailyMotion and YouTube’s open video demo, both of which are discussed below. You can view these demos if you’re using any browser that supports native Ogg playback: Firefox 3.5 (the recent betas and the first release candidate) and the latest releases of Google Chrome and Opera. Remember, IE won’t work without plug-ins. Neither will Safari 4 on Mac OSX — the <video> tag is supported, but you’ll need to add Ogg support to Quicktime using the Xiph Quicktime plugin.

Webmonkey: What’s the state of open video support in Firefox 3.5 right now?

Mike Beltzner: We’re not just shipping with support for the HTML 5 video tag, we’re actually also shipping the Ogg Theora codec. Which means with no plug-in, you can watch any video that is encoded using Ogg Theora.

[Beltzner shows a demo of a movie trailer playing in the browser. Pretty straightforward. But unlike a Flash embed, I can increase the page text size with a hot key, and the video sizes up, too. I can also right-click on the video and choose "Save As..." to save the video locally. I view source, and I see the video is embedded in the page with a <video> tag, just like an image. The player controls are all JavaScript. He switches the player code and introduces a little zoom slider in the corner. It uses CSS -- I drag it and it resizes the video.]

Webmonkey: The video is nice and sharp.

Beltzner: We’re really proud of the overall playback quality. A year ago when we started looking at this, I would not have been able to sit here and tell you this is going to be competitive with the web video codecs we see today.

Recently, Chris DiBona, who works at YouTube, said on a mailing list, YouTube is really interested in Ogg, but the problem now is the bitrate is just not competitive, the files are too large. He said “it will break the internet if we switched to Ogg.”

The guys we’re working with at Xiph ran a comparison using the exact same bitrate between YouTube’s encoder and Ogg’s encoder. The sharpness is largely the same, and just a little bit sharper in Ogg. Also, I wrote a post showing that if you use the YouTube high-quality encoder at the same bitrate, Ogg is noticeably sharper.

This is the product of one year of open-source investment in the Ogg codec. I’m super excited about the work that’s gone into it.

Webmonkey: How do you see these factors — the HTML 5 video tag, putting the Ogg codecs right into the browser, presentation techniques that mimic the plug-in player experience — affecting video on the web? What’s it going to change in six months? Or six years?

Beltzner: In six months, you’re going to see more sites like DailyMotion doing things where they detect that the browser supports Ogg and the video tag, and in that case, they’re going to give those users an Ogg-and-video-tag experience.

I think you’ll see content sites doing this because they’ll have the ability to re-encode their entire video libraries without having to pay any licensing fees. The Ogg Theora encoders are completely license-free and patent-proof. They don’t need to worry about which player you’ve got. They also don’t need to worry about which hardware you’ve got. Ogg Theora will run on Windows, Mac and Linux, or any embedded device or mobile device built on the Linux platform.

In six months, that’s what you’re going to see — content sites that are making their first tentative steps into open video, and also people on the bleeding edge starting to do really interactive stuff.

[Beltzner shows two more demos, one using JavaScript and CSS to perform content injection on a looping video, and one which overlays CSS filters onto a video.]

This is really representative of what we think video on the web is going to start to look like — truly interactive stuff where you’re doing client-side manipulation.

Webmonkey: And in six years?

Beltzner: Six years from now, I think you’ll see Ogg video will have taken over the way that PNG has taken over from GIF.

PNG was created for many of the same reasons we’re doing this — graphics were using a licensed encoder which was causing problems for content creators and problems for people who wanted to embed GIF and JPEG viewers onto devices. So, the PNG encoder was created to serve as a patent-unencumbered, unrestricted license way of encoding and unencoding image data. And that is exactly the same thing we’re trying to do with open video.

Also, along the lines of Jay Sullivan’s comment about “freeing video from plug-in prison,” it’s important to note that a lot of cool things have been done with Flash Player in the past, but they’re one-sided. Now, if you see somebody doing something cool in an open video player or an audio player, you can see the code with one click. It’s all JavaScript, CSS and HTML. It works with View Source in the browser, and you can learn from it. So we’ll see more innovation that way.

Webmonkey: One of the major stumbling blocks here is support across all the browsers [Microsoft IE8 and Safari 4 lack native Ogg support]. Do you think everyone is going to eventually play ball? Is this something you’re not really worried about, or is this something you think about every day?

Beltzner: We’re not actively concerned about it. We care more about the content creation sites because that’s why people are using video now. They’re not using it because they have certain players in their computers, they’re using it because they want to get at the videos that are on the web. So I think as long as we continue to make it easier for people to do fun things with video online, people will do it in the formats that are easiest for them to use. And that’s how we’re going to spread it across the web.

Damon Sicore: The key part is just having the client available that can play the videos. If 22.5% of the internet can do that, then it’s a huge step forward.

Webmonkey: What about Theora’s use on set-top video boxes? [For example, Boxee uses a browser based on Mozilla's code to display web video.] Are there any limitations for playing back things like 1080i or 1080p fullscreen HD video?

Beltzner: The codec supports all those things. Right now, it’s more heavily optimized for the type of video you’re going to find on the web, but those targets — full 1080p — are in sight. Again, a year ago, if you played an Ogg video at 1080p, your fans would start to spin and your computer would get really hot. That’s no longer the case. At 1080p, Ogg still doesn’t have the same performance as h.264, but it’s closing in really quickly.

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File Under: Software & Tools
Jun
17
2009

Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate Now Available

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Continuing its new policy of pushing updates to beta testers first, Mozilla has made the first release candidate of Firefox 3.5 available a bit early for those using the beta 4 release. Firefox 3.5 RC1 is actually listed as simply Firefox 3.5 in the update panel, but note that this is not actually the final release.

If you’ve been running beta 4 (or the recent minor update, “Preview”) you can update to the release candidate now by heading to “Check for Updates” in the Firefox help menu. For those of you that have not been running the betas, a download will be available soon.

With a release candidate in the wild, the final release of Firefox 3.5 inches closer — Mozilla’s goal is get Firefox 3.5 out before the end of June.

If Mozilla succeeds Firefox 3.5 will arrive almost exactly a year after 3.0. That’s a long wait in “internet time,” but Firefox 3.5 brings a host of new features — more than were originally planned — and is significantly faster.

Among the new features are much faster page rendering times and an improved JavaScript engine, as well as expanded support for HTML 5, CSS 3 and the latest emerging web standards being used to power browser-based apps like Gmail, mapping services and online productivity tools. There are also smaller changes like an updated user interface, better crash protection and new privacy controls, all of which will bring Mozilla’s browser up to speed with more current releases like Apple’s Safari 4 and Google’s Chrome.

If you’d like more information about Firefox 3.5 and what’s new, check out our links to previous coverage, listed below, or head over to Mozilla’s Chris Blizzard’s blog. Blizzard is about halfway through his 35 days project in which he highlights Firefox 3.5′s new features and even has some examples of how developers are taking advantage of the new tools to push the limits of the web.

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File Under: Software & Tools
Jun
16
2009

Host Your Own Facebook With Opera Unite

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Opera Software has unveiled a new service, dubbed Opera Unite, for its flagship browser. Opera Unite is essentially a web server built in to the browser — instead of just passively browsing the web, Opera Unite lets you share photos, chat, and host your web site directly on your own computer.

Opera Unite is currently in beta and available within the latest pre-release versions of the upcoming Opera 10 browser.

The new service allows users to build and host not only web sites, but also custom web apps powered by JavaScript, which could be used to power private social networks like mini-Facebooks or mini-Flickrs, collaborative tools like Google Wave or even file-sharing darknets.

Running your own server isn’t a new idea — many of us are doing it already thanks to the the built-in web servers in almost every OS on the market — but by putting the server in the browser, Opera is making it possible for anyone to host their own server with the click of a button. Once Unite is up and running, anyone can connect to it from any browser. While your copy of Opera runs the server, your visitors can use any browser they’d like.

So what’s the big deal? Why would you want your own web server on your local machine? For answers, you have to go back to Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision of the web — it was supposed to be literally a web, rather than hub-and-spoke network of servers and web browsers that we have today. The advantage of the true “web” approach — that is, I connect directly to your PC rather than both of us connecting to, say, Facebook — is that there’s there’s no third party involved, which means we all control our own data and aren’t dependent on a server.

But there are also some problems with that approach which historically made the client server model more practical — namely bandwidth and uptime.

While bandwidth has improved over the years, most ISPs still offer far better download speeds than upload, and if you’re serving your data off a local server (whether simply a local Apache instance or something like Opera Unite) don’t expect it to perform like server sitting at the end of fiber optic cable.

Then there’s the uptime problem… put your laptop to sleep and your locally-hosted website disappears from the web.

The uptime problem is one place where Opera Unite doesn’t offer any advantage over traditional home server setups. In order to run any sort of server from your desk, your PC needs to be on all the time — close your laptop and, poof, your data is gone. This is the fundamental problem with the original “web of PCs” concept that has never been solved. Even supposing it could be bolstered with some sort of remote cache, that’s not really all that much better than just hosting remotely.

However, all the other complicated stuff associated with web hosting, like opening firewall ports or setting up DNS redirects are handled for you.

The part of Opera Unite that handles the DNS remapping works around both firewall problems and ISP blocks. Many residential ISPs block web server traffic through port 80, which Opera side-steps by making the request from the DNS remapper to your Unite install on something other than port 80.

And what about security? The idea of people uploading and downloading whatever files they want to and from your computer obviously raises concerns. The application is sandboxed, and from what we can tell, no outside access to the host filesystem is allowed. Local files are uploaded to the Unite server and then “downloaded” off to incoming browsers. This is a potential legal can of worms for Opera, which may eventually be forced to start reporting on what’s being uploaded and by whom. Obviously, the security of Unite is incomplete at the moment.

If the web hosting capabilities of Unite fail to raise your eyebrow, take a look at its application framework. It’s here, in the ability to build and host custom web apps on your local machine, that Unite starts to look more enticing.

Thanks to a set of web standards-based and open-source APIs, developers can build Unite applications almost entirely out of JavaScript. JavaScript is still probably too complicated for the average web user, but if Firefox add-ons are any indicator, there are enough developers out there to build just about everything you could ever want.

Opera has several demo apps available for this beta version of Unite, including a chat application, some file sharing tools, a photo publishing app and a media player. But Opera product analyst Lawrence Eng believes that Unite will eventually inspire far more powerful applications.

“Think of multiplayer games, from simple two-player challenges like Chess up to sprawling RPGs,” writes Eng. He goes on to suggest collaborative editing suites (think Google Docs without Google) and local wikis will be among the possibilities — though he seems to have conspicuously left out the obvious one, file sharing.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Eng’s ideas is that Unite could use Ajax and other scripting tools such that “updates are seen on everyone’s computers in real time; multiple people could make changes at once, without having to lock people out. That sounds a lot like Google Wave, which offers similar tools, but relies on the current model of hosting everything on a centralized Google server.

So far, Unite seems a bit heavy on the hype, light on the delivery. While it has some hurdles to overcome, we like where Opera seems to be aiming with Unite and look forward to seeing how it develops. As so often happens with Opera innovations, the ideas behind Unite may well percolate up into other browsers as well.

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File Under: Software & Tools
Jun
15
2009

Anonymous and Secure TorFox Browser Foils the Script Kiddies

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Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean somebody’s not logging your web activity surreptitiously.

Lucky for you, there’s TorFox, a new mashup that marries the open-source Firefox web browser with the venerable Tor anonymizing web router service. The browser can be loaded up on a USB stick and run on any PC without writing any logs, cookies or private information to the host machine.

TorFox is available as a free download for Windows users only (for the time being) from TorFox.org and the project page on Google Code.

Such enhanced privacy tools are usually trumpeted by only the most security-minded geeks. But it’s not just the tin-foil-hat-wearing, Orwellian-prophecy-spewing, Linux-kernel-hacking weirdos who benefit from more secure browsing tools.

As one of the TorFox programmers writes in to tell us, the specialized browser blocks JavaScript and CSS exploits, so you don’t get clickjacked or pwned like this. Also, all content requiring Java or Adobe Flash Player is blocked.

According to the project page, TorFox achieves its heightened security through a series of “API hooks and DLL injection hacks”. Furthermore: “Ideally, we want to completely remove all direct communication between Firefox and the localhost. Instead, all address lookups are done through tor-resolve and all connections are made through tor socks server.”

A better machete with which to navigate the jungle.

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File Under: Software & Tools
Jun
15
2009

Flickr Makes it Simple to Post Photos on Twitter

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The photo hosting service Twitpic has emerged as one of the most popular way to post images to Twitter. But what about that Flickr account you’ve got? Surely there’s a way to get those images over to Twitter?

So far, Flickr.com, the grand poobah of online image hosting sites, has largely ignored Twitter. But that’s about to change. Flickr has quietly corrected its Twitter oversight by providing a new method of cross-posting your uploaded images to your Twitter stream.

Rather than a fancy new tool, Flickr simply added Twitter to the list of options on the “blog this” link that appears atop each photo. However, before posting to Twitter becomes an option, you’ll need to give Flickr permission to access your Twitter account.

Thankfully, Flickr has implemented this account verification using Twitter’s new OAuth support, so there’s no need to give away your Twitter username/password. Instead, just follow the offered link to Twitter, give Flickr permission to access your account, and you’re done. Once that’s set up, the “blog this” option should offer a link to post to your Twitter account — much like in the screenshot above.

The compose screen is simple, but has all the basic things you need to to post to Twitter — character count, photo preview and even a pre-shortened URL using the new, minimized domain http://flic.kr.

Of course, this method might prove to be a little cumbersome if you’re batch uploading quite a few photos, which is why Flickr also offers a new e-mail posting address that will automatically push multiple photos onto Twitter.

The Flickr API’s postPhoto method also works with Twitter, which means third-party Flickr clients can offer post-to-Twitter functionality as well (though as far as I can tell, none of the popular clients have implemented it yet).

One thing to keep in mind: Flickr’s new Twitter support is currently labeled a beta. Though I had no problems using it, be aware that bugs may exist. If you’d like to report a bug, or have a feature suggestion, head over to the Flickr Twitter Beta group and let Flickr know about your ideas.

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File Under: Software & Tools
Jun
11
2009

Su.pr Combines URL-Shortening With the Power of StumbleUpon

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The Su.pr dashboard. Click the image for a larger view.

StumbleUpon has launched a new URL shortening service known as su.pr. The site is currently an invite-only beta, but you can follow @stumbleupon on Twitter where the company is announcing invites.

Now you’re probably thinking,does the world really need yet another URL shortening service? Well, no, but su.pr does bring something new to the table — integration with StumbleUpon and its some 8 million users.

What that means is that, not only do you get a shortened URL for posting on Twitter and the like, but your URL also automatically goes into the StumbleUpon pool where other users can discover it.

In effect su.pr is really two services — a URL shortener, which offers all the stat-tracking information of similar sites like bit.ly, and a quick and easy way to send your URL to the vast legions of StumbleUpon fans.

When outside users click on the su.pr URL they’ll see StumbleUpon’s toolbar at the top of the page where they can rate, comment, like and otherwise interact with your site via StumbleUpon. In that sense su.pr is a bit like the much-maligned DiggBar, but, thankfully, su.pr uses 301 redirects and otherwise behaves like a good web citizen — in other words it doesn’t hijack your domain and steal your site’s Google juice.

Su.pr also plans to offer custom short URLs as well as “SEO friendly” URLs, giving you the option to avoid the StumbleUpon toolbar entirely.

Once you’ve posted a su.pr link the site allows you to track the number of clicks it gets as well as the number of users that land on your page using StumbleUpon. Su.pr even tracks when you post links so you can figure out the best time to submit your link for maximum click-through traffic (if you’re into such things, check out Tim Ferriss’ screencast on how he uses su.pr to figure out when to post links).

There’s also a very interesting looking feature that allows you to promote a specific site alongside your posted links. This works using a bit a JavaScript to display related content from your own site, say your blog. To set it up just head to the preferences section of su.pr and add your URL to the list of “promoted websites.” Once that’s done, your site’s most popular pages will be injected into the pages you link to.

For example, say you post a link to your favorite band on last.fm. When someone clicks that link they will see the last.fm page, but then off to the right hand side they’ll also see a list of the top-rated content from whatever website you added to the promoted websites list.

So is su.pr better than bit.ly and the rest? Well, if you’re just looking for a URL shortening service then no, they’re about the same and there’s no compelling reason to switch (though su.pr does save you character over bit.ly).

However, if you’d like to tap into the traffic driving power of StumbleUpon without having to do any extra work, su.pr offers all the power of a URL shortener and automatic access to StumbleUpon’s already large audience.

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File Under: Software & Tools
Jun
10
2009

Finding the Best Firefox Add-ons Gets Easier With New ‘Collections’

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The ability to expand Firefox’s capabilities using add-ons, and thus extend its basic functionality far beyond that of a normal web browser, is no doubt responsible for much of its popularity. There are literally thousands of ways to extend Firefox, and Mozilla claims that users have downloaded close to half a billion add-ons.

However, while savvy users know what they want and are willing to sift through the Mozilla add-ons site to find it, many Firefox users either don’t know what they want or have trouble finding the right add-on.

To help them out Mozilla has unveiled a new approach to extending Firefox — Add-on collections.

A “collection” is a bundle of add-ons aimed at novice users just getting started with customizing their browser. It’s similar to an idea Mozilla started with its Fashion Your Firefox campaign. The new collections take that idea a step further by allowing you to create your own bundle of add-ons that can be shared their friends, posted on the web and even — if it proves popular enough — end up featured on the Firefox Add-ons website.

The new “collections” section of the Firefox add-ons site already has quite a few nice bundles aimed at everyone from web developers to social network junkies to travelers looking for trip planning tools. While most of the featured bundles are currently Mozilla creations, the company hopes to eventually swap those out with better collections from savvy users.

To create a collection of your own, you just need to log in to the add-ons site, give your collection a name and select the actual add-ons you’d like to include. Once you have your collection tweaked the way you want it, just save it and it will then show up in the directory with a unique URL you can share with friends or post on the web.

The video below offers a step by step walkthrough showing you all the various options for creating your own collection.

Add-on Collections II: Sharing & Publishing from Justin Scott on Vimeo.

If the new collections website isn’t enough for you, there’s even an add-on for discovering top-rated bundles. The Firefox Add-on Collector helps you organize your collections and can even manage and update the collections you’ve created.

Add-on bundles are something that the Mozilla community has long argued would help less experienced users do more with Firefox, and it’s nice to see Mozilla implement the idea in a way that usable, easy to figure out and dare we say, fun.

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File Under: Social
Jun
9
2009

Facebook Offers Vanity URLs for User Profiles and Pages

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Starting this weekend, Facebook is letting each user pick a real name to identify the URL of their profile.

Right now, your Facebook profile’s URL ends in a decidedly inhuman string of numbers. Not so easy for anyone to remember (except search engines). Starting Friday night, the social networking site will allow users to pick out a profile URL that contains their real name. This will make URLs on the site much cleaner, easier to remember and (hooray) more appropriate to put on a business card.

Starting at 12:01am Saturday June 13 [that's 12:01am EDT, Friday 9pm Pacific], you’ll be able to go to Facebook and claim your name on a first-come, first-served basis. If you have a fairly common name and your full name is already taken, you’ll be given the option of choosing an alternate permutation, like first initial and last name, or the addition of your middle initial. User names have to be at least five characters long, and they can only contain letters, numbers or periods.

Also — and this is important — once you pick a user name, you won’t be able to change it or transfer it.

The switch is not mandatory. Users will be able to assign real names to their profiles as well as any Facebook Pages they administer, but only if that Page has more than 1,000 fans. Groups and Events won’t get human-friendly URLs at this time. Facebook has a full rundown of the eligibility requirements on its site.

Facebook’s move towards so-called vanity URLs for user profiles echoes a similar change Google made to its own user profiles earlier this year. The trend towards offering real names in URLs is part of a wider movement among social websites, as users want to make it easier for their friends to find them, either by simple logic or through search engines.

And that’s the “big deal” part — by getting a Facebook URL with your real name in it, you’ll be much easier to find on Google. You’ll also have a single public page where you can link off to all of your other social profiles.

This is something we’ve already been able to do using lifestreaming sites or social aggregation sites like Plaxo Pulse or FriendFeed, but with limited success.

Check out the contact info listed on my personal blog — I point to my FriendFeed page as the place to go if you want to find me on all the social networks I belong to. However, when I search for my name in Google, I see that my Facebook profile pops up on the first page of results. My FriendFeed profile doesn’t show up until you go deeper. Obviously, Facebook has far more Google juice than FriendFeed, and its pages get ranked higher in the results because they have more authority.

So, this is a win for the SEO of your personal brand, whether it be your name, your business, or a nickname you’ve had your whole life. You’re simply going to be that much easier to find on the web.

File Under: Software & Tools
Jun
9
2009

Firefox 3.5 ‘Preview’ Paves the Way for Final Release

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Mozilla has released what the company is calling Firefox 3.5 Preview, an “almost there” version of its next web browser, which is due in about a month.

Firefox 3.5 is not at the release candidate stage just yet, but the announcement does say that the Preview update is “considered stable for daily browsing use.” This release is a recommended update for those of you already using Firefox 3.5b4. The update fixes a number of stability bugs, some JavaScript issues and offers improvements to the browser’s built in Ogg-based video and audio playback capabilities.

If you’re already using Firefox 3.5b4, the Preview update should arrive automatically within the next 24 hours. If you’d like to start testing it immediately, head to the “Help” Menu and select “Check for Updates.”

It’s been about a year since the arrival of Firefox 3, the web’s second-most-popular browser behind Microsoft Internet Explorer. That’s a long wait in “internet time,” so the next version of the open-source browser is widely anticipated. When the final release of Firefox 3.5 arrives, it will bring with it a host of new features, including much faster page rendering and JavaScript engines as well as expanded support for HTML 5, CSS 3 and the latest emerging web standards being used to power browser-based apps like Gmail, mapping services and online productivity tools. There are also smaller changes like an updated user interface, better crash protection and new privacy controls, all of which will bring Mozilla’s browser up to speed with more current releases like Apple’s Safari 4 and Google’s Chrome.

The Mozilla announcement also says that the release candidate — the final stop before Firefox 3.5 is officially released into the wild — will arrive in the next 1-2 weeks. Given that there’s generally a week or two of last minute testing and bug fixes after the release candidate, we put the final release of Firefox 3.5 in the first week of July 2009.

If you’d like more information about Firefox 3.5 and what’s new, check out our links to previous coverage, listed below, or subscribe to Mozilla’s Chris Blizzard’s blog. Blizzard will be spending the next 35 days covering all of Firefox 3.5′s new features, with two posts a day, every day.

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