Microsoft once again on the trail of mischief, as the old “get the facts” got hold of Internet Explorer 8.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/get-the-facts/browser-comparison.aspx
If you looked at that and got a head-spin, you are not the only one. First let me note the language the so called “facts” are presented in. One would expect more from the “worlds biggest software company”. http://kilianvalkhof.com/ie8fun/ makes more sense.
Now lets talk about the lenghts MS is going to promote IE8
$1.15 per download to Feeding America® up to a maximum of $1,000,000
They only want to get 860k downloads ? Firefox 3 got 8mill in 24hours http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/ and Safary got 11 mill in 3 days http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/06/12safari.html.
- Hey, if they are giving away loads of money why not give it to the people, eh ? Or at least the lucky fella who will get the 10 grand promised by Microsoft today:
http://www.microsoft.com/australia/ie8/competition/default.aspx
* Hekos expects a banner with ” you just won 10,000$ ”
<Hekos> blinking and all
<Hekos> you can only see it in IE8 cause FX has a working ad/popup blocker
<Hekos> and you cant see it in <ie8 cause it crashes your system
That’s for making me stay up late to debug IE again, M$.
Hey MS what do you think about people just not caring about you ? Fact is, if they KNOW about other browsers, they are using them. If they are using them, they know you are full of sh1t. No add is going to help you. If you want people to upgrade, why not force the upgrade on them with a Update like you always do ?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ
Related Links:
http://www.geektechnica.com/2009/06/busting-ie8s-mythbusting/
http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Taking_Microsoft_to_Task_Over_IE8__Myths_
The Iframe implementation of a navigation failed to work out as planned so a complete rethink of this plugin was in order.
What it does now is let you go
wherever you want, BUT if you go away from the homepage you will get a 5 min limit for inactivity as opposed to 30 min on the homepage. Going completely outside the scope of the homepage will get you only 3 min.
So this turned out to be a remake of the Auto Restart
Firefox plugin I saw long ago but was totally outdated.
But you get a nifty, touchscreen
friendly navigation. Works best with R-Kiosk and FxKeyboard 
Also, a note:
firefox in standards mode: body is document.documentElement
firefox in quircks mode : body is document.body
… doh
Edit 2009/6/7 : This project is currently not public. If you would like a copy please email me (find email in footer).
Ok, lets say you have a terminal that is serving the general public with a touchscreen interface. That particular system might be either on windows, linux or mac (or anything else you might have Firefox running on) and will most probably be run in full screen.
Finding a virtual keyboard that works good on any of those is a hard thing to find. I failed at finding it.So, how about a keyboard that works inside Firefox as a plugin ? Thats exactly what I imagined when i started on this project.
Here is a working plugin in my language and set for my specific needs.
FxKeyboard 1.1 – 3kb
fxkeyboard 1.1 English – Due to demand, a slightly more English version ( same layout as with the last one but English buttons, if someone makes a mockup for a real usable English layout, i will be glad to add it.)
GNU/GPL as usual, but i would like it if you ask for my permission before you use it in public accessible areas. If you are doing a kiosk system, you might also be interested in keeping firefox on the homepage using FxGrounded.
If you need customization, have a idea worth sharing or anything else, write me a email or comment this post.
Yet another plugin I despretely needed so I built myself.
Quite simple this one:
It locks the browser on the homepage + derivates (any page that has the url containing the homepage url). For example, if i had my homepage set to http://somepage.com I would be able to access http://somepage.com/some/dir/something.html. At this moment, subdomains are not supported.
If there are external links, this plugin blocks them, unless the links are displayed in a frame. If by some chance anyone might be able to get trough this, the page is redirected to the homepage when the top document is somewhere not in scope of the homepage.
Ideas, comments are always wecome.
fxgrouded 2kb – MD5: 501e943b8f174874db077de24c2b1ba9
Marko Zabreznik
Creating a kiosk environment.
The tools:
The requierments:
- Firefox 3
- Linux
- Non-exit-able
- Onscreen Keyboard
As you might expect, I tried everything.
R-Kiosk. Perfect.
A inline javascript Keyboard. While it did what was needed, it fails on forms that are on the bottom of the screen and in Iframes. Good side: Language was dependant on the page’s language. But Fail.
xvkbd. While I did manage to place it on top of Firefox and lock it so people cant close or edit it, and change their language.. it was annoying to do so. Moving it around the screen more so. Porting it to win32 impossible. Fail.
Ok, lets try a different aproach.
http://stlouis-shopper.com/~jtjsoftware/software/vkeyboard.xpi is a firefox Addon I found. A simple tweak made it work on Fx3. Here is what I made. The first step in porting the app, is thus in bad shape. ~Win.
If there is enough interest in such a plugin for Fx3, I myself and the original author will continue to work on it. A lot of things are already on my mind that I want to do with this project. Suggestions ?
