Digital Nocturne

I thought hell is already freezing when I read this news. Internet Explorer 8 reached a very unexpected milestone — IE8 passed the Acid2 test!

In order to pass this test, the browser has to be compliant on standards of HTML and CSS rendering. Safari, Opera and beta version of Firefox 3.0 pass the Acid2 test. IE8 somehow surprised me because Microsoft used to be too arrogant in creating their own “standards”. I thought they didn’t care but now they are trying to be standard compliant… for real? I still can’t believe I’m blogging about this.

For related information here are some good articles:

IE8 goes on an Acid2 trip; beta due in first half of 2008

Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone

Mozilla Labs released a prototype extension for Firefox that lets you use different background on top of your currently existing theme. At the moment, this prototype is compatible with the default theme of Firefox. I have tested other themes and they looked ugly at some parts so I want to see more customization option in the next release of this prototype extension to change more than just the background in Firefox.

“The Persona selector is dynamically loaded and populated from a JSON feed and all designs are loaded via URLs to remote resources”.

I don’t know the security model for these theme resources so anyone paranoid enough may worry that some theme authors can put arbitrary code in their themes if there’s no special verification, digital signature or seal of approval from Mozilla. Even though it is really convenient for designers, I don’t like the idea that it downloads the graphics on demand just like that from the internet. I don’t even know if the graphics are coming from Mozilla Labs or any secure location. Maybe not?

There is an API currently being developed so there should be more changes on the way for this extension. It looks great on the default theme but someone will immediately notice that it simply adds background picture on Firefox toolbar with some transparency on tabs. Sometimes, I find it hard to read the tab texts when the background is too dark. There’s no transparency option so you cannot customize it anyhow. You can only choose from the existing lists of background designs at the moment. I really hope they add more option in this extension because Persona looks like a bland IE toolbar background changer. Some users may find this useful because it make their plain themes colorful; however, some advanced users maybe annoyed with this. To a certain extent, I find Persona too simple to fit my taste. I’ll uninstall it for now but I’ll try Persona one again when a new version arrives. For now, I’ll stick with the default theme of Firefox no matter how boring it is.

Link: Mozilla Labs: Persona for Firefox

LMAO.

We all know there’s no such thing as 100% protection or security. With recent exploits in the loose, even using Firefox does not guarantee you’ll be safe from vulnerabilities. Use with caution.

You can also check this out:
http://www.mandolux.com/archive/2005/0327.html

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