I am taking a risk and using Wordpress 2.6 beta 1. If my blog breaks, please email me at kennyljs@gmail.com asap!!!

Changes since Wordpress 2.5 :

• * Post Revisioning
• * A “Press This” bookmarklet for tumblelog style quick posting
• * Caching of static files with Gears for faster Admin page loads
• * A new and improved image editing dialog that offers lots of control over the images in your posts
• * Theme previewing as seen on WordPress.com
• * Built-in word counting in the post editor
• * The ability to disable remote publishing for the security conscious
• * XML-RPC API for changing blog options
• * Better SSL support for the Admin
• * Hierarchy-aware paging in the Manage Pages and Manage Categories admin pages.
• * The ability to relocate your content directory
• * The ability to move wp-config.php out of your web root
• * Drag-and-drop sortable galleries
• * Customizable default avatars
• * Bulk delete, activate, and deactivate for plugins
• * Check box range selection with shift-click
• * TinyMCE 3.1.0.1 with lots of bug fixes
• * jQuery 1.2.6 with some nice performance improvements
• * jQuery UI 1.5
• * Lots of bug fixes and performance improvements

Click Me!!!!

Download it now. For Malaysia, start downloading today(18th June 2008). Help the Firefox project set a World Record!!!! Malaysian time is set from 1am (18th of June 2008) to 1am (19th of June 2008).

You can test out Firefox 3.0 Released Candidate 1 now.

Click here to download Firefox 3.0 RC 1. (WARNING : SOFTWARE IS A RELEASED CANDIDATE. DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!)

Why even bother with Firefox 3, you may ask?

Well, here are some of the features in Firefox 3 that you should know!

URL bar powered!

More information in the url bar. And it even has a gmail style star!!!

Build for Security!

You know you are going to the actual site, instead of a phishing website!

If you click on a suspicious link, it will warn you about it!!!

And many more features, you can read them up on them here.

I downloaded Wordpress RC1 and try it on my current theme. It works, so far so good!

Have a look at it here -> http://beta.kennyljs.com/

Wordpress 2.5 new Dashboard.

New Wordpress Write Interface.

I think this new admin dashboard for Wordpress is nice. And it’s neater than the previous version. What do you think?

You can test out Firefox 3.0 Beta 1 now.

Click here to download Firefox 3.0 Beta 1. (WARNING : BETA SOFTWARE ARE UNSTABLE. DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!)

For Mac user, click here. (yeah, you wong!)

Click on the articles below to know some interesting features you might get in Firefox 3.0. However, just be reminded that they are all beta features, they MIGHT be dropped or not.

• Firefox 3 : Redesigned download manager.
• Firefox 3 : Visual Separation?
• Firefox 3 : Security Larry

Filezilla - This is an Open Source ftp client. It’s very easy to use and has lots of features like site manager, message log, file and folder view, and the transfer queue. I only used Filezilla recently, and I feel it is a very good open source software to upload your files to your ftp, webhost..etc.

Click on Image to enlarge.

Features:

• Easy to use
• Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
• Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, OSX and more
• Available in many languages
• Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
• Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue
• Drag & drop support
• Configurable Speed limits
• Filename filters
• Network configuration wizard

Changelog:

• Install some default filters if filters.xml missing in user’s settings directory
• OS X: Fix remote file viewing/editing
• Additional fixes for SFTP servers with nonstandard filename encodings

Download: FileZilla 3.0.3

Click here to go to Filezilla Home Page

The upcoming Firefox 3 which is planned to be release in the first quarter of 2008, will have newer “cutting-edge” features as compared to Firefox 2. You can find their planned feature list here.

Apart from the new redesigned download manager,  the upcoming Firefox 3 will probably have a better anti-phishing security system. Codenamed ‘Larry’, it incorporates better security features when accessing banking, financial, online stores and many others secured website where important information are transmitted. It will verify that the location you are accessing is a genuine website and not a phishing website!

And if you happened to land on a phishing site, you get this

Firefox 3 will protect you from phishing website, but at what percentage? At this development stage, it really works well, but what if a website that is well crafted by those crafty people? Is ‘Larry’ good enough to protect from them? Maybe as ‘Larry’ gets updated, it will get better, as Firefox 3 will only be out next year.

to be continue……

Firefox -  It is an alternative web browser to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Firefox is more secure, fully customizable and has lots of new features like spell checker, tab browsing, advanced bookmarking/history functionality (upcoming version of Firefox) and many more features that Internet Explorer lacks. Highly recommended and it’s FREE!

Bugs that are fixed in 2.0.0.9 :

• Bug 400406 - Firefox will ignore the “clear” CSS property when used beneath a box that is using the “float” property. There is a temporary workaround JS/CSS code available for web developers with affected layouts.
• Bug 400467 - Windows Vista users will get “Java not found” or “Java not working” errors when trying to load Java applets after updating. To fix this, users can right-click the Firefox icon and “Run as administrator”, then browse to a page with a Java applet — doing this once will fix the problem and permanently restore Java functionality.
• Bug 396695 - Add-ons are disabled after updating. Users can fix this problem by opening their profile folder and removing three files (extensions.rdf, extensions.ini and extensions.cache)
• Bug 400421 - Removing a single area element from an image map will cause the entire map to disappear. There is no workaround available at this time.
• Bug 400735 - Some Windows users may experience crashes at startup. There is no workaround available at this time.

And many more. Have you updated to the latest version yet? If not, startup auto-update or download it now!

Hulu.com is a web platform for viewing and sharing TV shows, movies, and clips. Where you can see your favourite US TV drama series like :

Just to name a few.

Basically Hulu is like Youtube but with features that Youtube doesn’t have like you can set start and stop points on the videos that you are sharing, so if you only want to share one scene, or a particularly good 20 seconds of a video, you can do that with Hulu.

Currently Hulu is in private beta phase. You can submit your email address at hulu.com and see if they want you as a beta tester.

I wonder though, why re-invent the wheel when there is already Youtube? What’s the differences actually? The fear of people uploading copyrighted contents? or piracy? or BOTH? Whatever is it, isn’t Hulu the same as Youtube, allowing people to watch copyrighted content which could lead to people finding ways to download it?

Maybe Hulu will be a paid-subscription kind of service, since it will showcase lots of US TV series, according to Hulu. Whatever is it, if it goes live (out of private beta), you might have the chance to watch online your favourite Heroes episode without download or waiting for the ORIGINAL DVDs to hit the market or buy from the pirates. What do you think about Hulu?

Wordpress has released version 2.3.1. Update now! Click here to see what bugs has been fixed since 2.3.

And woohoo. My pagerank finally been updated from 0 to 2. Since I moved from blogger.com in September, didn’t think my pagerank would be updated  at all, since it’s relatively a new blog! Yeah, just wanted to shout this out.

Here is a Belldandy to celebrate the occasion!

Mozilla Labs (from the people behind Firefox) has come up with an application codename : Prism. Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop. According to them, Prism isn’t a new platform, it’s simply the web platform integrated into the desktop experience. For more, please read here.

I downloaded the prototype version of Prism version 0.8 and tried it out. Installed it to load Gmail account.

Setup up is one simple dialogue box.

You can add the shortcut icon anyone on your desktop, Start Menu or Quick Launch Bar.

Basically Prism just put Gmail as a stand-alone kind of browser.

It works on web applications like all Google web apps, Facebook..etc.

After trying out Prism, this application sounds promising. Because you basically can leave Gmail on without opening your web browser (Firefox, IE..etc). However, it will cluttered up your desktop if you leave a lot of Prism windows open. Like the situation below.

Google apps : Gmail, Calendar, Documents and Photos.

My opinion is that Prism can make the desktop very messy if you are loading a few web application all at once, unless they plan to add tabs to it. Which would basically make Prism redundant. It’s just basically like Firefox without lots of it’s functions like bookmarks..etc.  However, it provides a “one-click” for your favourite web apps without loading up your browser. Want to try Mozilla Prism out?

Due to the fact that Firefox version 2.0.0.8 introduced a few regression bugs in which in some Windows system, Firefox will crash. Another bug is that add-ons will be disabled. However, it seems these bugs doesn’t affect everyone and some might not even noticed it. Read more about it here.

Bugs that plagues version 2.0.0.8 :

• Bug 400406 - Firefox will ignore the “clear” CSS property when used beneath a box that is using the “float” property. There is a temporary workaround JS/CSS code available for web developers with affected layouts.
• Bug 400467 - Windows Vista users will get “Java not found” or “Java not working” errors when trying to load Java applets after updating. To fix this, users can right-click the Firefox icon and “Run as administrator”, then browse to a page with a Java applet — doing this once will fix the problem and permanently restore Java functionality.
• Bug 396695 - Add-ons are disabled after updating. Users can fix this problem by opening their profile folder and removing three files (extensions.rdf, extensions.ini and extensions.cache)
• Bug 400421 - Removing a single area element from an image map will cause the entire map to disappear. There is no workaround available at this time.
• Bug 400735 - Some Windows users may experience crashes at startup. There is no workaround available at this time.

So, if you are using Firefox, make sure automatic update is turn on to receive updates to these bugs when version 2.0.0.9 releases!

Wordpress has released Wordpress 2.3.1 Released Candidate 1 to the beta testers. Here is the list of fixed since 2.3. Changelog is basically the same as Wordpress 2.3.1 Beta1 except changes to wp-mail.php.

According to the bug fixed list, has any bug or problems you encounter being fixed?

Bug fixed list :

1. Email notifications fail on hosted sites that check sender address
2. Add Windows Live Writer manifest XML file (and images), enables tagging support
3. i18n error in MT importer
4. Spelling error in UTW importer
5. clean_url() should not encode ampersands on the way to the db
6. Post preview broken
7. Visual Editor Disabled, Editing a Page With HTML Encoded Entities &lt;span&gt; changes them into <> changing the content
8. Posting from email addresses with “hyphen” cannot be assigned to the user
9. statistics reported back from wordpress 2.3 bugged
10. WordPress (plugin) updates compare unexpected values to find update matches
11. Blogroll -> Import Links doesn’t use link terms and importing assigns them to numerical categories
12. “Browse” interface in “Upload” broken
13. Duplicate entry errors when inserting term relationships during upgrade to 2.3
14. Use INNER JOIN instead of LEFT JOIN for taxonomy
15. Undeclared variable in _cat_row()
16. Taxonomy intersection queries are inefficient
17. Pages are not sanitized in wp-admin/page.php
18. wp_safe_redirect() case sensitive for hostnames
19. Send To Editor fails if title is empty
20. Widget class name is mispelled ( widget_catgories)
21. Cookie testing prevents login
22. Ensure Prototype is loaded before jQuery
23. “Convert All Categories” likely should be removed
24. get_pages filter may be applied twice

Probably a final version will be out soon. Prepare to upgrade!

According to Alex Faaborg, Mozilla’s interface designer in his blog, he mentioned about divergent of themes for different platforms. So, Windows Xp, Windows Vista, OS X..etc will feature their own default themes when Firefox 3 is released (hopefully) sometime next year. He also gave a few screenshots on what to expect for Vista and OS X. Too bad he didn’t gave any Windows XP screenshot.

OS X

Vista

I know this isn’t much, but it’s what you might be expecting from the upcoming Firefox 3. What do you think? Should Firefox 3 have a unified or diversified skin?  Or will it turn into “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” along with those supporting the idea and those opposing the idea having a huge war over it?