The One with the Thoughts of Frans

ExtendOpera.org was launched a few days ago. It’s a user initiative, aimed at bringing those aspects of Opera customization that Opera software has somewhat abandoned together.

Google apparently thinks that it knows what I want better than I do. I have clearly specified “en-US” as my preferred language, “en” if that’s not available, and “nl” if that’s not available. I tried removing the “nl” in an attempt to get Google to speak English to me, but it won’t comply. I finally got annoyed enough to write this little script to fix it. It would be easy to adjust for other preferred languages.

Install Google in English user script.

Last month, Apple released the Safari 4 beta. A few Opera users, myself included, decided to take action after viewing Apple’s false marketing claims. The following is the result of a combined effort, although I can proudly say that I wrote quite a bit of text for the article. It’s not entirely finished yet, but it’s good enough to cross-post it right now to draw some extra attention to it.

Everything that follows is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Deceptive Safari 4 Marketing.”

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When the Safari 4 beta was released, on February 24, 2009^[1], Apple Inc. published a feature list claiming a long list of innovations, inventions, and browser firsts^[2]. While Safari 4 may contain numerous features that are new to current Safari users, many of these have been publicly available to users of other browsers for quite some time, invalidating many of Apple’s claims.

Contents 1 Falsely Claimed Innovations In Safari 1.1 Implemented Prior to Safari’s Initial Release 1.2 Implemented Prior to Inclusion in Safari 1.3 Not Implemented Exclusively in Safari 1.4 Other 2 References

Falsely Claimed Innovations In Safari

Implemented Prior to Safari’s Initial Release

The first public beta of Safari was released on January 7, 2003^[3]. This is a list of innovations claimed by Apple that were first added in other browsers prior to Safari’s release.

• Built-in Google search: Apple claims that “Safari was the first popular browser to build a search field into its user interface” (emphasis added). The first public beta of Safari was released on January 7, 2003^[3]. Opera 5, however, which was released on December 6, 2000^[4][5], already featured a built-in search field^[6][7]. The second version of Mozilla Firefox (Phoenix 0.2), which was released on October 1, 2002, contains a similar feature^[8]. Consequently, Apple’s usage of “popular browser,” which has been suggested to validate this claim^[9], is ambiguous at best^[10].

• CSS 3 Web fonts: Apple claims that “Safari is the first web browser to automatically recognize websites that use custom fonts, downloading them as they’re needed” (emphasis added). However, Internet Explorer 4, released in 1997^[11], sports this feature as well^[12].

• Downloads window: Apple asserts that “Safari was the first popular browser with a download management window.” However, Opera 3.5, released on November 18, 1998, first introduced a transfer window to the Opera browser^[13]. Similarly to the built-in Google search, if Opera is assumed not popular enough to falsify the claim, Firefox (Phoenix 0.1) had this feature nearly half a year prior to Safari on September 23, 2002^[8].

• Inline Progress Indicator: While Apple states that “Safari was the first browser to move the progress indicator into the address field,” Opera first added this feature in Opera 5.10, released in 2001^[14].

• Movable tabs: In Apple’s words, “Safari was the first browser to let you organize tabs by dragging and dropping. … Rearrange tabs by dragging their tab handle left or right. Drag a tab out of a window to create a new window. Or drag a tab from one window to another window to merge their tabs” (emphasis added). Opera 7 Beta 1, released on November 13, 2002^[5], came with “Extended and vastly improved drag-and-drop support,” and this included the ability to “Move bookmarks, tabs, and MDI pages between SDI windows”^[15]. Furthermore, the same feature was already available as an extension^[16] in Firefox and was added as a feature to Firefox 1.5^[17], released on November 29, 2005. Safari did not add movable tabs until Safari 3^[18], which was released on June 11, 2007^[3].
  • Releaseyears of tabbed browsers: NetCaptor in 1998^[19], later by IBrowse in 1999, Opera in 2000, Mozilla in 2001, Konqueror and Safari in 2003, Internet Explorer 7 in 2006 and Google Chrome in 2008.
  • Releaseyears of movable tabs: NetCaptor 5.0 in 1998^[19], IBrowse 2.3 at 29 Jan 2003^[20], Opera 7 in 2003, Google Chrome 1 in 2008, Safari 4 in 2009.

• Open multiple bookmarks in one click – According to Apple, “[Safari] was the first browser to offer Auto-Click bookmarks.” This feature offers the ability “to open multiple pages in individual tabs with a single click.” Opera 4, released in 2000^[13], could open all of the bookmarks inside of a folder through the right-click menu. Opera 6 added the feature to open all bookmarks in a folder with a single middle click and added “Open all folder items” to the drop-down menu on the personal bar^[21].

• Third party cookie blocking: According to Apple, “Safari is the first browser that blocks … tracking cookies by default” (emphasis added). It is hard to verify or falsify this claim; nevertheless, it should be noted that this feature was already present in Opera 4^[21].

Implemented Prior to Inclusion in Safari

• RSS Aggregator: While Apple claims that Safari is the first browser that integrated an RSS reader into the browser, Opera integrated an RSS reader into its browser in 2003^[22], well before Apple in 2005^[3][23].

Not Implemented Exclusively in Safari

• Acid 3 Compliance: Apple asserts, “Safari is the first — and only — web browser to pass Acid 3″ (emphasis added). It is arguable that WebKit was the first rendering engine to get 100/100 (it was close between Opera and WebKit). However, Safari is not the only WebKit browser. Lunascape is also capable of using the Webkit rendering engine, and thus also passes the Acid 3 test^[24].

Other

• Apple claims, “Safari [4] supports Accessible Rich Internet Applications,” yet it is only partially implemented^[25].

References

Have you ever visited a website with specific password requirements? Nearly every website has requirements for minimum length. Various websites want capital letters, numbers, or -more commonly- both. In itself this isn’t so bad, but I keep forgetting all of these requirements. Websites should list their password requirements on places other than when creating an account and when changing said password. I don’t want it to pollute the main page or the login interface, but when I enter the wrong password I want to be informed of these requirements.

I have a password formula that I consider to be secure and it is based primarily on length. Small sentences are easy to remember for me and it’s not terribly hard to remember where to alter a few things to make it a secure password. My primary caveat is with pages that have (in my opinion) ridiculous maximum length requirements. I’ve managed to come up with a 12 character password for this issue because in my experience, most of my issues seem to be related to this maximum password length. However, this has significantly impaired my ability to incorporate a capital somewhere I’m not a fan of capitals in passwords actually, but I recognize that they may secure passwords more. However, I very much doubt that EaRLGr3Y is more secure than m4h.d0gg.has.bad.br3ath!. I must admit that I didn’t run any password generation tests, though. Regardless, it would be easy to throw one or more capitals in there and that’s not the problem.. Anyway, enough of that. The problem is that when I go on a site with such annoying requirements I try to log in with one of my usual set of passwords and fail. Of course, to make matters more annoying, after three failed tries they lock up for 30 minutes. Most of this could have been avoided by what I said above. If, for some reason, you see the need to restrict password lengths, inform me when my login fails.

In summary, after a failed login I want to see something in the spirit of the following.

Login failed. Are you sure you’ve entered the correct username and password?

• If you forgot your username, you can enter your e-mail address to have it e-mailed to you.
• If you forgot your password, you can request an e-mail with a link that will enable you to change your password, but before you do so, please consider:
  • The password needs to be at least 8 and at most 12 characters long. Note that I strongly oppose a limit of merely 12 characters. I have even encountered a limit as horribly small as 8 characters. However, I really want to know if someone did impose this limit.
  • The password needs to contain a capital letter.
  • The password needs to contain an integer.
  • The password needs to contain one of the following symbols: ;:.?`
  • And so on and so forth…

If you thought that this was primarily a rant about requirements on passwords that I consider unfortunate, you are correct. However, I can imagine that it might not be easy to fix this issue, whereas my proposed semi-solution is easy to implement. I very much doubt that this will be read by anyone who can change the slightest bit about any of the sites that are bothering me, nor that it will really help anybody else out there, but regardless, I just needed to get this out here. Given the nature of hashes, there’s no practical reason to enforce a maximum password length, so please don’t. Aside from that, I’d still like to be informed when capitals are required.

I really want to do the following, but I’m still stuck with Microsoft’s icon format and PNG.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="some-vector-image.svg" type="type="image/svg+xml">

I’m especially surprised that Google Chrome doesn’t support this. They do the whole web application thing; which utilizes the favicons of sites as application icons. SVG would be perfect to also offer a nice larger size icon. Another thing I didn’t know is that IE7 still doesn’t support PNGs as favicons.

Last, but not least, here is the favicon I created in the end: .

Someone linked to it.

Does this post add anything useful to months of silence? No, it does not.

I know Opera Mini 4 has been out for a while (a week, maybe two?), but in combination with my new mobile phone it’s absolutely awesome, that’s for sure.

I thought this conversation about an American product called string cheese was quite amusing. As you can see I’m also experimenting a bit with a better way to display conversations, but my results are fairly unsatisfactory so far.

Frenzie: string_cheese.jpg
They’ve got some weird shit in the US.

Axonn: … heh.
Axonn: You know why it’s like that?
Axonn: I can explain.

Frenzie: It’s like that cuz they pushed it through some shape?

Axonn: You see… the cow… or sheep… or wheverthefuck creature they milk… well… it sees the yank farmer… and has an immediate cheesing of the milk inside it (that is caused by fear of armed retaliation by the Bush government if not cooperating with the Food Obtaining Services For Fat Yanks). So the milk is transformed into cheese internally because the poor animal’s temperature grows. Even so, the terrified creature starts running around the farm with 2 up to 5 Yankers trying to get it. During the process, the creature (now guided by adrenaline and fear) reaches speeds up to 300 KM/h. In this moment, due to friction, it’s shape alters a bit, and liquid/semi-liquid stuff tends to be thrown out by the centrifuge force. In that moment, the creature shits the cheese into the said forms.
Axonn: It is still a mistery how the cheese (former milk) gets from the belly to the ass.

Frenzie: ROFLMAO

Axonn: Perhaps due to the great speed and fear, it can either tear holes through the creature’s belly, or simply travel through the available holes.

Frenzie: Dude, can I post this to my weblog or something, it’s hilarious XD

Axonn: At least that’s my theory to the thing.
Axonn: I might be wrong tho’………..
Axonn: But it’s pretty logical right?

Frenzie: Yeah, indeed it is! =D

Axonn: I mean, sure looks like shitted cheese.
Axonn: Oh, another explanation might be that the creatures refuse to cooperate with fake-capitalist would-be-nazi pigs and they end up in a fight where the Yank shuves his hand up the creature’s ass or mouth and pulls that shit out… hence, the form… like it’s obtained after 2 people fought over it. Or maybe they’re so greedy for that shit they *do* fight over it.
Axonn: Donno…
Axonn: ::- )

Frenzie: rofl

Axonn: Anyway, you have my blessing to post wherever… ::- )

Frenzie: rijpen-kaas.jpg
You mean it looked like this, but then they fought over it resulting in one big… string-thing.
Frenzie: That’s some Dutch cheese btw

Axonn: Bingooooooo.
Axonn: Yes, Romanian cheese looks like that too.
Axonn: You see, we Europeans .. respect food… in a way.
Axonn: They LOVE food.
Axonn: And you know, love can get preeeeeeeeeeeeeeetty passional.
Axonn: We eat and digest our food.
Axonn: They DEVOUR.
Axonn: :;- D

Frenzie: Wait… you mean the shape is also related to other holes than the ass of the cow?

Axonn: Could be, could be.

Frenzie: Perhaps that’s why they’re so afraid of gays
Frenzie: they’re afraid the cheese ass-fuck monopoly will be broken!

Axonn: No no. The problem is that gays don’t give milk. Well, I did hear of a few US semen-cheese specialties *laugh*…
Axonn: That was sick.
Axonn: ::- D

Frenzie: >_>
Frenzie: <_<
Frenzie: >_>

I don’t know when they added it, but it’s brilliant. Just scroll to zoom in and out.

I was reading entries on my old weblog from 2005 on the Wayback Machine, as I realised I hadn’t posted something on my current one in ages. So hereby. UDKM is Daniel.

(| !!UDKM |” U Don’t Know Me “) says (2:02):
Dude, words can’t express how much I love PHP designer 2007

Frenzie says (2:03):
lol

(| !!UDKM |” U Don’t Know Me “) says (2:03):
And my panties get’s wet of highlighted PHP code.

Frenzie says (2:04):
lol!

(| !!UDKM |” U Don’t Know Me “) says (2:04):
dude, highlighted PHP code is TEH SEX!

Frenzie says (2:05):
I know man

(| !!UDKM |” U Don’t Know Me “) says (2:07):
Highlited HTML is semi-sex.

Frenzie says (2:07):
lol

Frenzie says (2:07):
Highlighted CSS is a girl with a tight ass and nice titties.

(| !!UDKM |” U Don’t Know Me “) says (2:12):
Oh yeah, it’s an ugly font thought. Atleast in PHP designer 2007

Frenzie says (2:13):
lololol

(| !!UDKM |” U Don’t Know Me “) says (2:13):
So it’s a nice ass with nice titties but a fucked face.

Frenzie says (2:13):
Yeah, pretty much.