Can't see Instagram in Firefox?

Trouble was, that Instagram and embedded Instagram pictures recently stopped loading in Firefox.
This also affects other Gecko-based browsers.
> If you want to skip the story, jump to solution.

While I also use NoScript on desktop Firefox, and on Firefox for Android, all the necessary instagram domains were allowed.

On the desktop, I'm mostly using Firefox 39.0.3, because it plays well with Flash. (There were no issues like that with other browsers.) First I thought, that this was because I wasn't using the latest Firefox. As this Firefox version plays well with Flash, I didn't want to upgrade to the latest version, because with the latest Firefox, Flash playback on YouTube is jerky since Firefox 40.

But the Instagram issue repeated, when I was also using the latest Firefox for Android. Initially I thought, that this was the fault of Instagram, and since I don't use Instagram or Facebook, I didn't think much beyond that. And for a month or so, I couln't resolve it.

But when Instagram showed in a different computer in the latest desktop Firefox (43.0.4) with the same extensions installed, I began to investigate again.

When reloading a random Instagram page while also watching the Firefox Browser Console, I found an error, which, in pasted form, looks like this:

05:16:59.308 An error occurred during a connection to instagramstatic-a.akamaihd.net:443.

Peer attempted old style (potentially vulnerable) handshake.

(Error code: ssl_error_unsafe_negotiation)
1

After some searching, I found the solution in a game forum.

SSL safe negotiation setting

Turned out, that when perusing the Privacy Settings extension of Firefox, I had turned all the settings to most secure, and among them turned on security.ssl.require_safe_negotiation. After I turned that off, Instagram showed again.

If you don't have the Privacy Settings extension installed, go to about:config and type in or paste security.ssl.require_safe_negotiation . The boolean setting value for it should be false. If not (if it's true), then double-click the setting or press enter on it to set it to false. Or right-click for context menu to Toggle.

Otherwise, the Privacy Settings extension is awesome, and I recommend it to everyone.

Whereas people who manage instagramstatic-a.akamaihd.net, should implement new-style SSL/TLS handshakes to keep their corner of the web safe.

So this was the issue that affected me.

NoScript

If, on the other hand, the above is not an issue, then you might be having NoScript installed to defend your browser from malware, and among other things, it's blocking Instagram domains, which means they're not in the whitelist. Jump to domains.

NoScript has a blue "S" button that shows the status of whether a page is completely blocked, half-blocked (content from other domains has been blocked, which is most common), or completely allowed.

That button is usually visible in the location bar, or accessible through Firefox's hamburger menu. (If the blue 'S' is not there either, click the green Customize button in the hamburger menu to see if the NoScript button is listed in the 'Additional Tools and Features' section.)

One can change NoScript domain permissions thus:
* Hover the pointer over the blue "S" button, which launches a menu with a list of domains. If the NoScript menu is very long, it has small up and down arrows for scrolling.
* To whitelist a domain, click on "Allow domainname.tld". Alternately, domains can be blocked by clicking on "Block domainname.tld". This can be done in one go for several domains.
* Once the cursor hovers away from the menu, NoScript will automatically reload the affected page (or pages in other tabs). If a page or pages don't reload (per custom settings), they can be reloaded manually.

For Instagram, the following domain names must be allowed:

platform.instagram.com
instagramstatic-a.akamaihd.net
www.instagram.com

The above are all third-level domains, because they contain three name components separated by periods/dots.

By default, NoScript shows only base second-level domains, such as instagram.com without the www and a dot. For most common users with NoScript, allowing instagram.com and akamaihd.net is sufficient.

Android telefoniga mobiil-Interneti jagamine läbi Wi-Fi

Seadmete opsüsteemid:
• Samsungi telefonis Android 2.3.6 (eestikeelse kasutajaliidesega);
• arvutil Windows XP SP3, mis on ingliskeelse kasutajaliidese ja Windowsi enda Wi-Fi tööriistadega ühendumiseks.
• Mida teha, kui arvutil on ThinkVantage Access Connections

Artikkel eeldab juba nii Androidi-nutitelefoni kui ka Windowsi kasutamise oskust teataval tasemel.

Niisiis selgus kõige alguses, et nutitelefonis peab Wi-Fi ise samal ajal välja lülitatud olema.

Kõigepealt tuleb kindlaks teha, et mobiil-Interneti võrguseaded on enam-vähem korras:

Seaded  
• Juhtmevaba võrk ja võrk >
  • Mobiilsidevõrgud >
    Pääsupunktide nimed >
    • Elisa:
      (•) internet.elisa.ee
      wap.elisa.ee või mms.elisa.ee vms asemel.
       
    • EMT:
      (•) internet.emt.ee
      wap.emt.ee või wap2.emt.ee või mms.emt.ee asemel.
      Android nutitelefon võimaldab kasutada nii tavalisi Interneti-lehekülgi kui ka lehitseda wap-lehtedel. Nendel juhtudel, kus mobiiliteenuse paketis on mobiil-Internetile mahupiirangud, mille ületamisel tuleb oluliselt rohkem maksta, on wap-lehtedel lehitsemine odavam. Soodsa paketita kõnekaardi omanikele Android-nutitelefonis mobiil-andmeside ei soovita, kuna paljud teenused ja programmid soovivad automaatselt ühenduda ja kohe andmeid vahetada. Niisugused kõnekaardid sobivad rohkem WAP-lehitsejatega funktsioonitelefonidesse (sh Nokia mitte-Windows nutitelefonid), millega on oluliselt kergem oma Internetiliiklust reguleerida.

Edasi tuleb seadistada Wi-Fi hotspoti (Android 2.3.6-s värdsõna "kuumkoht") juurdepääsupunkt (AP ehk access point) —

Seaded  
• Juhtmevaba võrk ja võrk >
  • Modem ja kaasaskantav kuumkoht >
    • Konfig. kaasask. Wifi kuumkohta >
      Võrgu SSID (nimi, mille järgi leiad võrgu üles)
      [Kirjuta oma võrgu nimi. Lubatud on numbrid 0-9 ja tähed A-Z, a-z, sidekriips - ja allkriips _]
      Turvalisus
      Vali [WPA2-PSK]
      Parool
      [Kirjuta tühikuteta vähemalt 8 tähemärki, lubatud on numbrid 0-9 ja tähed a-z (küll mitte suurtähed)]
      [\/] Näita parooli
      — on valik näidata võrguparooli, mille võib Windowsi Notepadis üles kirjutada ja kohe mällu kopeerida (Ctrl+C).
      Vajuta [Salv.] nupule
       

Siiski otsustasin, et enne hotspoti aktiveerimist oleks kasulik mobiilivõrk (pakettandmeside) enne sisse lülitada (võib ka tagurpidi) —

Seaded  
• Juhtmevaba võrk ja võrk >
  • Mobiilsidevõrgud >
    • Kasuta pakettandmeside [\/]
      — Kui seda parasjagu vaja pole, ei pea see sees olema.

Nüüd aktiveeri hotspot:

Seaded  
• Juhtmevaba võrk ja võrk >
  • Modem ja kaasaskantav kuumkoht >
    • Kaasaskantav Wi-Fi kuumkoht [\/]
      Windowsis otsi Wi-fi võrk ja leia oma võrgu SSID. Vali see ja ühendu.
      Võrguga Ühendumiseks küsib Windows võrguparooli, tihtipeale kahe sisestusväljaga samas dialoogiaknas.
      Sisesta seesama võrguparool, mille oma Wi-Fi võrgu tarvis. Kui tuleb teine väli, siis sinna sama parool uuesti.
      Üleskirjutatud parooli saab kopeerida ja asetada (kleepida) võrguparooli väljale (Ctrl+V).

Ühendumine siis, kui Wi-Fi tööriistaks on ThinkVantage Access Connections

Tingimusteks Windows XP SP3 ja ThinkVantage Access Connections 6.01 (2013, ingliskeelne).

ThinkVantage Access Connections on suurepärane võrguühenduste haldamise programm, mille algselt arendas välja IBM, ning mille arendamist jätkab Lenovo. Access Connectionsi eelis on põhjalik seadistatavus, võimalus luua ja hallata asukohaprofiile ning neid eksportida ja importida ühest arvutist teise. Lisaks kergendab see võrguühenduste haldamist, eriti kui kasutusel on erinevad Windowsi opsüsteemid (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1).

Niisiis järgnev eeldab, et arvuti peamiseks võrguühenduste haldajaks on Windowsi enda asemel ThinkVantage Access Connections (tavaliselt ingliskeelne), mis tuleb kaasa peamiselt ThinkPad sülearvutitega, aga võib-olla ka teiste Lenovo sülearvutitega. Teine eeldus on see, et näiteks kui on Inteli Wi-Fi adapter, siis Inteli Wi-Fi tarkvara ei ole aktiivne ja on maha installitud, kuid adapteri draiverid alles.

Kui hotspotiga nutitelefonil on kõik muud tingimused edukalt täidetud, siis üldine probleem on see, et ThinkVantage Access Connections programmiga ei ole võimalik peale võrguparooli sisestamist Interneti-ühendust saada.

Access Connections on küll palju funktsionaalsem, kuid teatud olukordades mitte nii paindlik kui Windowsi enda võrguhaldustööriistad.

Et kui juba läbi Access Connectionsi oli alguses püütud ühendust võtta, siis Access Connections on juba salvestanud asukohaprofiili, mis kannab mobiiltelefoni AP (access point-i) nimetust. Antud Access Connectionsi versiooniga (6.01) miskipärast ei õnnestunud toimetada äsjaloodud asukohaprofiili, millega ei saanud ühendust (selle ühenduse valiku puhul oli Edit-nupp tuhm). Seega äsjaloodud edutu asukohaprofiil tuli kustutada; Access Connectionsis on sellisel juhul efektiivsem käsitsi uue asukohaprofiili tegemine.

Lahendus seisneb selles, et Wi-Fi seadetes peab konkreetse ühenduse krüpteerimine olema AES ja mitte TKIP.

Kui avada Access Connections põhiaken (tegumiriba märkuste alal must arvuti, mille all juhtmed), siis minna Location Profiles (asukohaprofiilid) vahekaardile, millel ilmub asukohaprofiilide nimekiri.

Eeldusel, et vana ja mittetoimetatav asukohaprofiil on juba kustutatud ning käsitsi uuesti loodud, tuleb seadetes suhteliselt hoolikalt näpuga järge ajada.

Kui Location Profiles vahekaardi nimistus on leitud telefoni AP, valida asukohaprofiil ja klikkida Edit nupule. See kehtib siis asukohaprofiili kohta, mis on saanud eduka ühenduse ja mida saab toimetada.

Aknas Edit Profile: (asukohaprofiili nimi) valida "Wireless Settings" vahekaart.

Et kõik oleks kindel, siis ühenduse tüüp (Connection type) peab olema infrastruktuur (Infrastructure), "Wireless mode" on tavaliselt "Auto". Teisi seadeid (v.a. allolevad) tavaliselt muuta pole vaja.

Kui AP juhtmevabaks turvastandardiks on telefonis valitud WPA2-PSK (Android 2.3.6-s ainuke turvaline valik), siis Access Connections telefoni-wifi asukohaprofiili Wireless Settings vahekaardil on allatulev menüü "Wireless Security Type", kus valida
"Use Wi-Fi Protected Access - Pre Shared Key (WPA-PSK)". Lisaks klikkida Properties nupule, mille järel tuleb ette "Wi-Fi Settings" aken. Seal on järgmised võimalused:
• Access point authentication, kus valitud peab olema WPA2-PSK
• Data encryption: — Valitud peab saama AES ja mitte TKIP.
• Pre-shared key on "Use 8-63 alphanumeric characters (0-9, a-z)"
• Edasi vajadusel sisestada uuesti võrguparool ja vajutada OK.

"Edit Profile" akna "Additional Settings" (täiendavad seaded) vahekaardil on tavaliselt linnuke
\/ Network security juures. Kui vajutada [Settings...] nupule, siis vastutustundlikul kasutajal on tavaliselt välja lülitatud failide ja printerite jagamine, Interneti-ühenduse jagamine, ning sisse on lülitatud Windowsi tulemüür.

Possible causes for minor reductions in Firefox market share

This was first intended as a reply to the Firefox developer mailing list, but then I decided to post it here first.

Personally, there have so far been two gripes with Firefox that I've taken some issue with:
* One was the disabling of on-demand loading of pinned tabs after session restore (between versions 9–11);
* The other is the current brouhaha over Adobe's Flash crashing the plugin container process, which is really not the fault of Mozilla. (more below)

Sometimes it's not users leaving Firefox, but some of them starting to use Chrome as their very first browser. Well, Chrome coming around is a good thing, because this gives people more choice as to which browser they want to use, as Chrome and Firefox both possess unique and attractive features that meet their users' different needs.

HTML5 video
The current situation with Flash crashing the plugin container in Firefox is coincidentally a good cause for moving to HTML5 audio and HTML5 video, specifically Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora, and WebM, which are free and especially license-free formats.

YouTube's work in converting most of its videos to WebM reduces the immediate requirement and sometimes unpleasant chore of installing Flash on Linux, thereby increasing adoption of Linux, as other sites will hopefully follow suit in adopting free formats.

If we exclude the Summer low and the current Flash issue, then the next reason behind a reduction in Firefox usage could be the choice of format in sites using HTML5 video — most users tend to choose the browser that plays back whatever their favoured media site offers, with variations (mobile/desktop) of Chrome being in a rather advantageous situation right now, as it has built-in support for Flash.

Yet the situation with HTML5 video seems to be split right now along the lines of which HTML5 codecs are supported by which groups of browsers: Safari and IE vs. Opera, Chrome, Firefox and its derivatives.

The choice of YouTube and DailyMotion to offer videos in license-free formats is highly commendable. Now, if YouTube could actually stream high-profile events using HTML5/WebM in addition to Flash...

Desktop to mobile/tablet
Yet another reason in reduction of Firefox market share could just as well be the transition of people's major computing devices from desktops (including notebooks) to hand-helds (smartphones, tablets), nearly all of which currently have WebKit as their main rendering engine (in the form of either Safari or Chrome). I do not know if there has been a separate browser market share comparison for just desktop computers, because I understand that general tallies have usually encompassed both desktop and mobile spaces, with mobile being the separate segment.

Ultimately, as Mozilla and then Firefox were introduced, it was hoped that the browser market would eventually take the shape that it of recent times has started to form (at least worldwide) — in that no one browser would completely rule the market to be in its singularity the one to hold back innovation, and the one to pose itself in unintended consequence a widespread vector for malicious attacks.

So, in conclusion, the situation in my humble and perhaps half-informed opinion, is quite a bit more mixed with regard to what may be the possible causes of Firefox browser market share reduction this Spring and Summer.

Windows Me, Netscape 4.x

This text was written as a series of replies I posted in the YouTube comments section of a promotional introduction video of Windows Me, which can be found in the said operating system.

Since the video was not uploaded from the official source, chances are that the video and the comments to it won't be available at some point of time. So I posted them here for future reference.

And since Blogspot does not have limits on the amount of text, then I have edited the replies a bit to add text.

Windows Me was really good on something like a 667 MHz CPU and 128Mb RAM at the time. If you want to run reasonably modern software without swapping much, then you need 256 Mb of RAM (factor in [modern] web browser, IM program, OpenOffice 2.4.3).

Windows Me can run on less, of course, as it was included in computers that only had 64Mb of RAM.

At one point, Windows xp ran fine with 128 Mb RAM, but nowadays it needs 512M RAM as a real-life minimum to keep the system secure & do something productive.

These specs were for a new PC from around 2000 that was first supplied with only 64 Mb RAM. I requested it have 128 Mb, since the lesser setup was slow with multimedia of the time (it had fast Internet, so I knew it was the amount of RAM). After the RAM upgrade, using the computer was a breeze.

I also took very good care of the hard drive and the OS, keeping it updated & secure, and since its users mostly used Netscape for business, then viruses and exploits never made it there.

At that time it [the popular version of Netscape] was Netscape Communciator 4.x. I think on that PC we stuck with 4.79 for a long time (the last of 4.x was 4.8, released in 2002 :-). The 4.x branch was the first to support CSS, but that was the only feature which caused crashes when turned on (especially in 4.0x), so I kept it off on all our Netscapes, which were fairly solid after that. Despite the clunky Navigator, the best part was the e-mail client, which introduced mail filters to fight spam (then seen as controversial).

We skipped Netscape 6, never considered 7.x, and in newer PC's moved instead to Mozilla, the open-source descendant of Netscape and which Netscape 6 and 7 were based on anyway.

As Mozilla Foundation started Firefox, it ceased Mozilla development, which was taken over by others, and Mozilla Application Suite became SeaMonkey.

The last version of SeaMonkey for Windows 98/Me is 1.1.19 ([from] 2010); its Gecko rendering engine is a wee bit newer than that of Firefox 2.0 (Gecko 1.8.1.20 vs 1.8.1.24).

Why Iceweasel versions before 2.0 are not Debian-based

One nice day I found a screenshot of Iceweasel that looked like a version prior to Iceweasel 2.0 and added in its description that it was Debian Iceweasel, as browsers named Iceweasel with a lower-case w are usually Debian-based. (As opposed to GNU IceWeasel, which in 2007 was renamed to IceCat to avoid confusion.)

It then turned out for me, this particular screenshot, and other screenshots in the database that it was not so for the reasons that follow.

The uploader of the screenshot had the unintentionally good sense of including the taskbar of the operating environment, which happened to feature a program window with the title of package iceweasel-1.5.0.4-g1-i386. While this got me to get the version number right, the package name was just enough information to start looking further, results of which only pointed to Gnuzilla servers and mirrors. This put me into some doubt as to whether the browser in the screenshot was Debian Iceweasel, and looking even further, my doubts were confirmed.

Locations for iceweasel-1.5.0.4-g1-i386 available here:

From a selective search of most GNU mirrors, I found only one mirror still actually hosting some original files:

ftp://aeneas.mit.edu/pub/gnu/gnuzilla/
http://www.ftpdir.hu/aeneas.mit.edu/pub/gnu/gnuzilla/

The relevant binary files there were last modified on 06.09.2006 00:00.

From the Internet Archive I found another mirror which has hosted iceweasel-1.5.0.4-g1-i386:

web.archive.org/web/20070507153807/http://ftp.download-by.net/gnu/gnu/gnuzilla/
(also features a later capture)

The binaries were last modified on 05.09.2006 23:59, so a minute earlier than those at aeneas.mit.edu.

Note that researching this kind of history through the Internet Archive has three or so limits:
* I tested to see if only an HTTP mirror had an archive page. Although I did not try to see if the WayBack Machine archives FTP pages, too, I didn't find any necessity for it either; Assuming also that the WayBack Machine does not archive FTP folder listings in the first place;
* The Archive has its own exclusion list of servers that it won't crawl (limited in relation to the GNU mirror list);
* Many mirrors had blocked crawling through robots.txt, as mirrors anyway host large files, which can be taxing to the Internet Archive. It's still useful for the WayBack Machine to archive programs — especially device drivers and obscure program packages, because the Internet Archive can sometimes be the only place where these can be found.

Through my searching whether an HTTP mirror has an archive page, then in the process a substantial number of those ftp-as-http mirrors that allowed crawling had their /gnuzilla folders captured by the Internet Archive. This should serve useful at tracing browser history with a similar method in any possible future research.

No other mirror services in the list of GNU mirrors that I searched at contained the original packages of iceweasel-1.5.0.4-g1-i386.

Left out from the search:
- South America: Brazil /only country in the list;
- Africa: South Africa;
- Asia: Bangladesh, China, Japan, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan;
- Europe: Greece, Portugal, Spain.

(Funny, Israel was in Asia, too :-)

There were two reasons for leaving these countries out of my search: Either a non-sensical URL (which I couldn't recognize as something resembling legitimacy), or the country is not trustworthy enough to visit its websites, no matter how harmless on appearance. The amount of servers not checked was approximately 10-15%, based on guesswork.

A user-published package of 1.5.0.8pre2 available at safeweb.sitesled.com/iceweasel

Now, Debian started including Iceweasel as a rebranded replacement of Mozilla Firefox only since version 2.0, after which GNU slightly renamed their package to IceWeasel (note capitalisation of W), then a year later renamed their package to IceCat to finally avoid confusion with Debian's own package.

In conclusion, all Iceweasel versions prior to 2.0 are Gnuzilla-based.

I had to add to that screenshot file's notes that this was a screenshot of a Gnuzilla-based Iceweasel and not one of a Debian-based Iceweasel. The GNU IceCat Wikipedia page was also of great help in determining the right source.

Absolute positioning of content in a containing block

A less formal alternative title would be "Placing content from the middle of a box into a sidebar to the edge of a containing block"

Context

The problem first occurred when I tried to create a user style for a login page to accomodate small screens (Yes, there are people who use small screens).

The main problem was that I could not change the structure of the not-so-well designed page, so I had to resort to some unorthodox uses of formatting in CSS. Later it turned out ot have some interesting uses in a sister blog.

The basic [formatting] concept behind this is taking content out of normal flow, placing it as a sidebar into the top right edge of the container block, and then making sure that other content (mostly visible text) will then flow around the sidebar box.

While it may sound simple just like that, then implementing a working solution for the first time proved more difficult. The solution that I found out does work, but still contains some caveats. More about it later and below.

In-depth

What does not work

First off, just floating the box to the right is pointless, because the box is positioned according to normal flow and is floated where it's structurally positioned in the page (or text). It is then adjacent to that content which only follows the box in the page structure.

Adding a negative top margin is just as impractical, because it will never be accurate relative to the sidebar's position, as the position of the sidebar still depends on how much space is taken up by preceding objects or text, since relative renderings are always different, depending on fonts, rendering engines and zoom levels.

If you're modifying your own content, then putting the box before the content that initially preceded it defeats the purpose of normal text flow (as seen in Lynx).

The solution

Mostly assuming that the containing block and inner blocks are <DIV> elements, which I so dislike, because they are severely overused.

The points are here in a hierarchically continuous order, so as to present the logic and reasons behind it.

• The containing block,
  which is to enclose the sidebar and content that should surround it:
  Set its position to relative — This will keep absolutely positioned blocks inside the containing block; otherwise all absolutely positioned blocks will be taken out of all flow and will be (absolutely) positioned relative either to any preceding relatively positioned block in the page hierarchy, or the viewport, which is the topmost block.
• The sidebar's position must be set to absolute, with most important parametres set like this:
  
  <DIV STYLE="position:absolute; top:0px; right:0px; width:234px">Textual content<DIV>
  

  ^ top:0px and right:0px will place the sidebar box to the top right (to right of main content), where position is calculated from the containing block's top and right edges; width:234px — Here you can specify your own width for the absolutely positioned box.

• And finally, the tricky part — How to make sure that content or text surrounding the sidebar will show next to the sidebar without all of parts of it staying hidden under the sidebar?
  
  Well, my solution was to place the that content (which precedes the sidebar and is innards) into a relatively positioned DIV& box, with its right margin approximately the amount of the sidebar's width. This ensures that text or content inside that DIV won't stay under the sidebar.
  
  If the sidebar is long enough to encompass much of the content that follows, then that content should also be encased in a DIV with similar parametres: relative positioning and same margins.
  
  Caveats:
  • If much of the content left of the sidebar is text, then its flow is limited to the squares of DIV boxes (there must be at least two of them). Normally flowing text could then start well after the sidebar and DIV boxes end.
    
    Mitigating effects
    One way to mitigate this without creating separate DIVs and their left (or right) margins is to create a ghost DIV with same size properties as the sidebar floated right just under the absolutely positioned sidebar. This has better chances of taking effect if the sidebar's height and width are fixed and that the content is controlled server-side.
    
    Yes, the "ghost" DIV can contain about the same text, if there's a desire for that ghost DIV to follow the size of the primary DIV (think differences in fonts and zoom levels), but this then may defeat the purpose of having that text in the ghost sidebar, because it would be duplicating. Oh well, solutions can be made both with JavaScript and CSS to make sure this text doesn't appear twice in a text-only or very plain browser (think Lynx).
    
    Otherwise I was thinking of :before and :after pseudoelements, or of a way to insert a client-side Greasemonkey script.
    
    This is now the point where one can play around with various options.
    
  • I found another problem when editing text here in Blogger, where the sidebar height was greater than text next to it, so the sidebar, given that it was absolutely positioned, overlapped past the post tools area. In that sense it's a good thing to try out the size of the sidebar in the DOM Inspector, which allows client-side visual editing of webpage elements under inspection.
    
    One way to mitigate this would be wrapping all of the affected content, including some preceding the sidebar (where it visually starts) in a DIV and specifying a height greater than the height of the sidebar. The height of the DIV should then allow for some hypothetical differences in size.
  
  

This out-of-order sidebar solution works in Firefox 1.0 (Mozilla 1.7.xx, preferably SeaMonkey 1.1.19 or K-Meleon 1.5.4) and newer. It does not work in Internet Explorer 7 (or older), so a workaround must be in place, if there's a large IE-based audience in mind. It should probably work in Internet Explorer 8 or newer.

Putting stuff before a counter with CSS and associated caveats

I thought this too important to be passed up, so here's only a very rough draft of what I discovered. And because I was only revisiting this subject right about now, I have yet to get my own head around all this, with more detailed explanations.
(Blogger had nasty issues with updating their software, so a number of blogs were in read-only mode and so instead of writing this up I was occupied with other things. The good thing is that Blogger have been very responsive in addressing the posting outage.)

When tallying personal data and opinions for what was ostensibly a list of items in a text file, I wanted to find out how in an ordered HTML list (a numbered list with <OL> tags) I'd be able to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to place some special items before counters (usually numbers, but CSS 2 standard has expanded counters to be much more) as markers of some sort.

The main point was to make a more informative and interesting list... Well, yes, but this turned out to be a far more difficult exercise than I first thought.

For an intro, the following describes the differences in rendering between Mozilla Firefox 2 and Mozilla Firefox 3+. Because these browsers use the Gecko rendering engine, which is used by other browsers, then here's also a quick browser side-by-side of the rendering engine's branches:

Gecko 1.7	Gecko 1.8.1	Gecko 1.9 and newer
Mozilla Firefox 1.0	Mozilla Firefox/IceWeasel 2	Mozilla Firefox/IceWeasel 3+
Mozilla Application Suite 1.7	SeaMonkey 1.1	SeaMonkey 2+
	K-Meleon 1.5	K-Meleon 1.6+

What follows is example CSS code with some comments. I haven't yet had all the time to describe everything, but bear in mind the lede.

OL.Eurovisioon {counter-reset:item; list-style-position:outside}

OL.Eurovisioon LI {display:block;}

/* • display:block ^ loses the browser's automatic numbering;
• The items must be displayed as block, so as to make sure that the later width attribute applies. */

OL.Eurovisioon LI:before {float:left; content:'miskitekst\ ' counter(item) '.'; counter-increment:item; border:solid 1px gray; padding-right:5px; width:82px; text-align:right; line-height:1.1em; color:navy; white-space:nowrap} _{/* these work... */}

/* ^ • Floating them left makes sure that the items are displayed like in a standard ordered list;
• item must be inside counter(), item is also specified for counter-increment;
• text-align:right aligns numbered counters right and so makes it more list-like again;
• white-space:nowrap makes sure that when increasing text size, text inside blocks wouldn't wrap and add in height and take away from the structure.

Caveats:
Once the items are all displayed as text-block or inline, the width attribute does not apply anymore. Displaying as block and floating to right works in Firefox 4 (I'm also assuming 3.0+), but not in SeaMonkey 1.1 and anything with the Gecko 1.8.1 engine (see the above table) and the caveat applies to all older browsers.). Setting the display to text-block or inline fixes the issues in SeaMonkey 1.1, only that setting width attributes does not work then. */

OL.Eurovisioon > LI.plus:before {width:82px; content:'\ sisu\ ' counter(item) '.\ '; text-align:right; color:blue} _{/* somehow works */}

OL.Eurovisioon > LI.plus {list-style-position:outside}
^ Is this really necessary?

Moreover, the list already contains tabular data; including informative content with :before or :after pseudo-classes means that this data won't be indexed and may be lost to search engines. Non-graphical and older browsers won't be able to see such content.

I, of course, thought that I'd never see the day when my own fancy CSS implementation would not be visible with something like SeaMonkey 1.1.19.

The correct rendering is supported by Mozilla Firefox and IceWeasel 3 (probably since 3.0), SeaMonkey 2, Google Chrome (Version 11 does, so I'm assuming a host of earlier versions do, too), and the latest Konqueror, Apple, and Opera fare. Internet Explorer 7 does not support this. Bleh.

So here's the example list:

1. tekst
2. teine tekst
3. kolmas tekst
4. neljas tekst

with corresponding code in HTML:

<OL CLASS=Eurovisioon>
<LI>tekst</LI>
<LI CLASS=plus>teine tekst</LI>
<LI>kolmas tekst</LI>
<LI>neljas tekst</LI>
</OL>

So long I still have to use Mozilla Firefox 1.0, I must still use a simple HTML table. At least the advantage is that most browsers will be able to see the content. The table in question is here.

As the information was laid out in a text file, it nevertheless turned out to be tabular data, which was actually much simpler to organise into a table, rather than implement complex CSS for the same.

Collapsing elements in Firefox 1.0

As I was perusing Yahoo Mail Classic in Mozilla Firefox 1.0, it turned out that there was a linked block element half-blocking the sign-out link at the top of the page and in May this year, those links stopped being underlined when hovered over — this made targeting the pointer too difficult to click on the sign-out link. If I click on that block element, it will jump to a position on the page, then, somehow the block element probably moves and probably frees up the space above the sign-out link... Or whatever.

Turned out that the culprit was an invisible non-collapsed block that contained a "Skip to conent" link, which was meant for browsers like Lynx, Links, Elinks, Netscape 4.x, and other older fare (Lynx is still maintained :). This is really the fault of site coders, who instead of specifying display:none in the element's style, only specified visibility:none. The former would have collapsed the whole element, the latter only makes it invisible, but still usable and visually existent in the document structure.

If positioning is important, then one design solution is to specify a low z-index for the invisible DIV element and a correspondingly higher z-index for code that contains links (an unordered list). In CSS, z-index specifies how elements are layered with respect to each other: a higher value means that an element is above (or in front of) all other elements and a lower value (if somewhere is a higher value specified) means that the element is below, or behind higher-valued elements.

First I tried the Adblock Plus (ABP) extension, but that didn't work: ABP 0.7.0.2 is the last version for Firefox 1.0, but lacks functionality to collapse/hide elements by their id. Only the next version, 0.7.1, starts supporting this. I've written about it previously.

As I was looking for a solution, the Greasemonkey extension caught my fancy. The last to support Firefox 1.0 is 0.5.3.

Version 0.5.3 is also the last one of Greasemonkey to install on SeaMonkey 1.1, but it doesn't work.

The solution is to first install xSidebar (If the current stable versions won't want to install, then version 1.0.1 or 1.0.2 might install properly). Then on the back of xSidebar a modified Greasemonkey extension can be installed. So for SeaMonkey 1.1, Greasemonkey 0.8.2 mod is the order of the day. Note that if you have Adblock Plus 1.0.2 installed, its toolbar button will vanish. But no worries: You can turn on the Adblock Plus status bar icon from Tools > Adblock Plus Preferences...

Greasemonkey is a powerful tool to change the look and functionality of online sites and web pages client-side, but alas, it is not very easy and requires knowledge of HTML, JavaScript and CSS.

There are many instructions online on how to incorporate custom JavaScript and CSS snippets into your browser equippped with Greasemonkey and how to specify server whitelists and blacklists. I might introduce the same instructions here or put them up somewhere else.

While I thought I just had the solution, it then turned out that the block element was only equipped with a class parameter and no ID. I had also learned that only recent and modern versions of Greasemonkey now support the JavaScript getElementbyClass functionality, but I only have an outdated version.

Well, no matter: Greasemonkey 0.5.3 supports getElementbyId, but that really is not the most important thing, because Greasemonkey also allows injecting snippets of Cascading Style Sheets with JavaScript. And CSS is power.

Yes, while the DIV element did not have the ID parameter in it, it still had the CLASS parameter specified and the solution looks like this:

document.styleSheets[0].insertRule('A[class~=yucs-skipto-search] {display:none}', 0);

/* ^ • A is the linked element;
• Square brackets in the selector are used for conditional matching in the form of ELEMENT[attribute=value] — In this case, the {display:none} CSS block applies when yucs-skipto-search is found anywhere in an A tag's class attribute value (which the next point is about);
• ~= means that the pattern for the element attribute may be any matching part inside class, because when I looked at the source, the class parameter contained more than just yucs-skipto-search.
• display:none collapses the element. */

document.styleSheets[0].insertRule('A[target=_top]:hover {text-decoration:underline !important;}', 0);

/* ^ In this line, Any hovered link tag A where the target parameter exactly contains _top must be underlined when hovered over. Note that instead of ~= for any matching part inside A[TARGET ]there is a single equals sign = for an exact match. !important overrides anything provided previously and makes sure that the these links are underlined when hovered over. */

So much for now.

Adding formatting to CSS generated content

This solution (or workaround, if you like) came out of a need to write text visible only for modern browsers.

I have a case, where such text would point out a formatting feature containing further information in <ACRONYM> tags, only that severely out-of-date and text-only browsers do not support the dotted underline and border properties, so help text for these browsers was not necessary. I wouldn't use JavaScript (which uses document.write) and there are websites like WordPress (IINM) that only allow editing CSS files and may forbid JavaScript.

The CSS 2.1 specification has it that it's possible to create generated content before or after an element, using :before and :after pseudo-elements, respectively.

The best explanation about how it works is in the CSS2 technical recommendation at W3.

The difficult part is in how to format text within the content: property.

Well, there are two ways that work and a third way that is a workaround. The two ways are well-documented in the W3 technical recommendation (see above link), where it's possible to specify attributes with first-letter and first-line (for longer texts within content) pseudo-elements.

The Third Way

Specifying formatting for bits of text within the content: property is impossible, so the solution is to create one or more rulesets of :before or :after pseudo-elements with similar declaration blocks, wherein some rulesets' declarations are different.

In HTML, write the following snippets of code:

<SPAN CLASS=text></SPAN><SPAN CLASS=dotted></SPAN><SPAN CLASS=bits></SPAN> and so on...

In CSS, example code shows the following:

.text:after {content:'^ Mouse over text with\ ';}
.dotted:after {content:'dotted underlines'; border-bottom:dotted 1px; border-bottom-color:inherit;}
.bits:after {content:'\ for more infobits'}
/* ^ Use the backslash \ to escape special characters, including a space (or it won't be shown). */

The result:

Browsers, which don't support CSS :before and :after pseudo-elements, won't see this. ^

The result is used here in a previous blog post. The example text snipped was put in place of a paragraph break, but since the Lynx browser wouldn't create a paragraph break inside a list with <P></P> or <BR><BR>, or instead there was more space added in modern browsers with variants that included a non-breaking space  , then the best solution was to wrap above HTML code within <DIV> tags and add a non-breaking space —

<DIV>&nbsp;<SPAN CLASS=text></SPAN></DIV>

Characteristics

The most interesting and equally obscure characteristic with CSS generated content is, that generated text cannot be directly copied — even when selecting a normal area that wraps around generated content, then only the wraparound selection is pasted.

While this may be useful to wonks interested about protecting original content, then it's still a chore to implement, and advanced users would still be adept at copying text from near the source (unless obfuscated). The technique is similar to mechanisms that disable direct text copying in advanced document files, like PDF, but with the difference in sophistication: PDF files have encryption and other features.

The (dubious) advantage is, that direct copying is disabled; and the disadvantage is, that a number of browsers don't support these pseudo-classes. And not just older (Netscape 4) and niche browsers (Lynx, Links, Elinks), but even Internet Explorer 7 doesn't.

16.12.2015. Update:

I recently wanted to add newlines to generated content, but after several turns of trial-and-error with \A in content:, I turned to a search engine and found about the best blog post by Chee Aun that describes the issue in detail.

The solution with Firefox is to specify white-space:pre-wrap — This preserves both wrapping and newlines.

Somehow installing, configuring, and using NoScript in K-Meleon 1.5 via Wine

I am assuming that you probably already know how to use Wine and know your way around the computer.

The conditions: Knoppix 4.0.2, because it runs passably with 128 Mb of RAM, in a situation where no swap space is available. This version of Knoppix has a really outdated version of Wine, which makes it difficult to use Windows programs there. There may be people stuck with either that version of Knoppix or that old version of Wine. At least this post provides a case study, which I hope could be of some interest.

The only reasonable place I could find NoScript for K-Meleon 1.5.4 is from extensions.geckozone.org/KMES-NoScriptEn. The version is 1.7.8.0 and it's from 17.06.2008 (that's 2 and 3/4 years old as of April 2011).

First off, change installer's .exe file rights for it to be an executable. Like this from the command line:

chmod u+x "K-Ext(1.1-1.5-1.6)_NoScript(1.7.8.0).exe"
^ u = for current user; + = add/enable; x = executing;
The filename is wrapped in double quotes, because it contains parentheses "()".

In my case, the first round of installation didn't work. Later I specified this target install directory:

z:\mnt\hda1\Program Files\K-Meleon
^ can't remember if I specified an upper- or lowercase letter z

and installation worked after that.

K-Meleon should not be running during installation, so run it after installation.

27.04.2011.–: After a relatively quick-and-dirty article which turned out to be far more specific than originally anticipated and still quick-and-dirty, I've updated the following with information which will make K-Meleon slightly easier to use as it is, with what the setup is and all...

When running K-Meleon through Wine in Knoppix 4.0.2 (remember that it's from 2005 and very outdated) and when you're stuck with such a set-up:

• The NoScript button menu can be used with a mouse by right-clicking on the NoScript button and holding the pointer device button down and dragging the cursor to the necessary command (shortcut menus will otherwise turn off after right-clicking on an item and hovering a mouse cursor over its menu; I've seen this in TWM, don't know how it works in other window managers).
  Other ways:
  • Click on the NoScript button, then use menu hotkeys (underlined) to perform a function;
  • or consider dragging the pointer through the NoScript menu via the main Tools menu.
• Saving configuration changes in the NoScript Options window does not work, because it's impossible to save settings by clicking the OK button, but you can otherwise close the window (saving options may work with newer versions of Wine; haven't tried this myself).
  Workarounds:
  
  • Configuring NoScript is possible only at about:config for settings (use the noscript text pattern in the about:config search bar to get NoScript-specific settings);
  • ^ Consider removing some default domains there from the noscript.default string;
• Worse, the NoScript menu in K-Meleon (at least in the given configuration and set-up) won't show domain names in its menu (Shock! Horror!).
  • Now, the whitelist, which is not shown in about:blank, is only configurable in prefs.js at the local K-Meleon profile folder on the hard drive (from where K-Meleon is run). If you don't know what the prefs.js location of the current profile is, open Preferences, go to "Privacy & Security" preference category, click on the Cache tab and see the "Cache Folder:" entry, which shows the location of the current profile folder.
    An example location is here:
    

    "/mnt/hda1/Program Files/K-Meleon/Profiles/g1bb3r1sh.default"

    So, edit the prefs.js file with a text editor at this line:
     
    user_pref("capability.policy.maonoscript.sites","place.doma.in nam.es here.com in.alphabetic.al ord.er.com ea.ch doma.in na.me separated.wi.th a.space.com and.do not.break.the.li.ne");
     
    Make sure just in case that K-Meleon is not running when editing the file, because if you've saved the file and then exit K-Meleon, then K-Meleon is highly likely to overwrite your changes.
    13.09.2011.

    Given that I had been using K-Meleon like that for a longer while, I created a menu item in the TWM window manager, where I could directly open the prefs.js file from the menu.
  • Alternately, adding sites to whitelists works from the menu (see above), but since the above configuration does not make it possible for the K-Meleon URL bar to function and display addresses, then a user is limited to knowing the site domain and web page address in the following ways:
  • In K-Meleon, the tab bar is typically shown by default, so it should be enough to hover the mouse cursor over a page's tab button: This displays the tool tip, which then shows the site/page title and its partial address.
  • A user might know the site's domain name, if they've entered it themselves (because of limitations, entering a URL goes through editing bookmarks and accessing a bookmark set up for just that).
    A user can specify that only top-level domain names are added, by setting this in NoScript preferences through about:config, only that the whole point of NoScript to me is the fine-grained way in which some subdomains can be whitelisted, so that disruptive ones are duly excluded. Unfortunately, not directly seeing a site's domain name in the URL bar has security implications, including the fact that the non-functioning URL bar doesn't change color when visiting a secure site, though a bottom-right status bar indicator should work. Preferably, only safe sites should be visited. (Avoid clicking e-mail links, if you know they're dubious, but this requires at least some user education and this is where NoScript is useful. There is nevertheless a greater amount of security in running K-Meleon equipped with NoScript, no matter how limited it is, through Wine in Linux than in Windows 9x);
  • Some necessary domain names pulled by a page from (a) differently-named domain/s to fetch scripts and/or stylesheets across sites and subdomains are not displayed anyway (not even in the NoScript menu), so there is no direct way of learning which other domains must be allowed for scripting.
  • Consider disabling NoScript for the duration of the session, if you're using a service which requires logging in and if it's been impossible to learn what are the exact outside domains with necessary scripts.
  • The third option is to import domain names from other NoScript settings in other prefs.js files. This actually works. But what if using a new service that users a non-primary domain name for scripting? Or what if an existing service sometimes changes its subdomains?

Kasutaja valikud seoses saidiväliste linkide ja hüpikakendega

On olemas vähemalt kaks arvamusringi selles osas, et kuidas kohelda oma kodulehel saidiväliseid linke: üks toetab välislinkide avanemist samas aknas/vahelehes, teine uues aknas, sest tegemist on teise saidiga.

Näiteks Vikipeedias avanevad välislingid omas aknas; mõnedes teistes (kommerts?-) saitides olevad välislingid on seatud avanema uues aknas.

Üks mu sõber kirjutas mulle, et olla kunagi ühest kohalikust arvutiajakirjast lugenud arvamust (mis kirjutati enne Wikipedia loomist), et välislingid peaksid avanema uues aknas, sest nii olevat korrektsem.

Minu vastuväited on, et linkimisel on tegemist põhimõtete erinevusega. Kui Wikipedia ja wiki-laadsed saidid lingivad teistele saitidele ilma, et avaneks uus aken (või vastavalt lehitseja seadetele vaheleht), siis lingi juures on pildiga märge, et tegemist on välislingiga.

Hüpikakna (või -vahelehe) avamine ei ole õige lahendus, kuna see kasutab sellisel juhul rohkem arvutiressursse, nii et kasutajale peab jääma valik selle kohta, et kas ta tahab uut akent, vahekaarti või lehitseda edasi samas aknas/vahelehes. Kui link on seatud avanema tavakliki korral uues aknas/vahelehes, on kodulehe tegijad võtnud oma külastajatelt selle valikuvõimaluse nii või teisiti ära.

Free Software alternatives to Trajan Pro

With the image and font table well below I have tried to find out free small caps and fallback font alternatives to Trajan Pro, a very popular Roman-style font known for its style and legibility. With free, I have in mind the context of free software, so free as in freedom.

The reason for this was that I was fixing the design of a simple website and its original designer had specified Trajan Pro as the font for the site's menu text, only that Trajan Pro is proprietary and non-free, which means that not everyone has it and I had to find out the necessary fallback fonts.

A fallback font means that I specify multiple fonts in the font-family CSS property: If a web browser can't find the first font, it shows text in the next specified font or uses the browser default.

I recently discovered that a similar trick can be used in OpenOffice.org documents, where I'd specify two or more fonts and separate them with a comma. OO.o also has the means to set fallback and replacement fonts in its options.

Requirements for matching fonts:

• Roman typeface.
• Must have small caps, just as Trajan Pro does /capital letters should then be bigger;
• Must look good and legible in bold weight (this was the site requirement) at default size (12pt/16px) and I only chose ones that looked good enough;
• Must contain the ü character /implies that other Latin-extended characters are also contained.

N., 06.09.2012 update:

A large number of primary fonts are already 'Roman' or like by their looks, and nowadays' CSS conventions should allow transforming text into uppercase with a favoured font. Alas, there are sites that are likely to use Trajan Pro, and so there need to be fallback fonts that are similar.

Process:

I found most of the interesting fonts from fonts.debian.net (one large page contains several hundred images of font examples, so beware), an otherwise fabulous resource for all who want to seek free software fonts.

As I was seeking only small caps fonts, I only downloaded these.

In the process it occurred that that some of those fonts wouldn't show properly, because space marks were visible. Since fonts.debian.net shows fonts with all their subsets, I made a half-educated guess that some of the small caps fonts I downloaded were also subsets, which therefore didn't require to have spacemarks in them, because any rendering software would fall back to the main/primary font for symbols that were not used in the subset. Another reason for visible spacemarks might be that the fonts that I got from the above site were not compiled for Windows, but Linux and Unix in a wider sense, so this could also be the reason.

As it turned out some of those fonts displayed on fonts.debian.net were indeed subsets of TeX fonts, which are listed here (if not with the same extensions, like ttf, then still with the same filenames), so skimming over that list should help in distinguishing the fonts that should not be downloaded in the first place, unless you know exactly what you want. The fallback system in TeX is called Metafont, so spaces are probably there, too.

Furthermore, when creating the table, it turned out that the text had to look good both in high contrast (black on white) and in lighter incarnations. I haven't put that yet as a requirement.

Result:

The following is a quick-and-dirty preliminary report, as I have yet to do more research on small caps fonts on the subject.

The fonts I included in the table are only those that passed the requirements, well, somehow:
• Whether any example resembles the cut-into-stone effect of Trajan, is debatable, at least they're Roman;
• They must be reasonably light even when in boldface;
• The winners' most common denominator is that their small caps really are what they say they are, unlike with Trajan, where actual capitals are only slightly larger, which makes the alternatives metric-wise imperfect.

Fonts in the results image and table are in medium size, which defers to the browser and operating system default (typically 12pt). Since even small caps are small, then any smaller-sized text with some of these fonts is very likely to be less legible.

In the image, I've avoided using the actual Trajan Pro font, which is non-free, and resorted to using contours of the text that use it. In a table below the image, the Trajan Pro row text is formatted in that font, but the font is displayed only when a client computer actually has it (otherwise the browser will defer to the blog's default body text font). To fully comply, I've formatted the heading row with the Liberation Sans font (with fallbacks to Helvetica, Helv, sans-serif).

Results table Font name	Test word	Notes	Overall mark
Trajan Pro	Külalisteraamat	Reference
Romande ADF Style Std	Külalisteraamat		++++
LMRoman10-Caps	Külalisteraamat	Slightly fatter	+++
Berenis ADF No2 Style	Külalisteraamat	Legible, but small caps are small...	++
The below fonts are fallback fonts with small caps. Conga might be a non-free font, although it's been included in a version of Knoppix.
Conga	Külalisteraamat	Knoppix 4.0.2, fallback
Copperplate Gothic Light	Külalisteraamat	Windows, fallback
Castellar	Külaliste­raamat	Windows, 2nd choice fallback /note that "lower-case" capitals are level with "upper-case" capitals
Felix Titling	Külalisteraamat
Perpetua Titling MT	Külalisteraamat
The below fonts, while having "small" caps, were found in Windows, but they don't qualify because of various visual aberrations.
Copperplate Gothic Bold	Külalisteraamat	Windows, fallback /Ugly when bold, but small caps are smaller
Engravers MT	Külaliste­raamat	Windows /Too large
Algerian	Külalisteraamat	Windows /Too ugly

I intend this post to be a work in progress of sorts, so I hope to make further updates.

N., 06.09.2012. update:

Fonts with small caps that didn't make the cut:

• Aegean /incomplete
• Akkadian /incomplete
• Analecta

Computer Modern Roman Regular Small Caps / CM Roman /ugly
TeX Palladio L Small Caps & Old Style Figures / TeX Palladio L

• Irianis ADF Style Standard Regular / Irianis ADF Style Std
• Linux Libertine O Capitals / Linux Libertine O C

---

Text about Free software alternatives to Segoe UI was moved to a separate post.

What's left of sidebars for Netscape

Ed Mullen has a great page on Netscape and Mozilla tips and even a page that includes installable links to sidebars that can still be added to SeaMonkey 1.1.xx, a successor to Netscape 7/8 and Mozilla Application Suite.

Unfortunately, some of the sidebars are now outdated, half-work, redirect, cannot be found anymore or are completely offline.

Below is a selection of sidebars I found to be interesting to check them out.

Sidebars that still work:

• The Google sidebar works! Yay!
• The Real.com Guide sidebar only offers search for audio, video, and radio stations (no actual Guide to speak of).

...That are outdated:

The CNN Expanded Sidebar is still live, but stopped having updates since two years ago on March 2, 2009: The Dow Jones index dropped below 7000 on that day, because AIG had a record loss, tech gadgets had become a luxury, and "Twilight" stars were huge.

The links to news sites don't work, because they use a redirect via info.netscape.com (which now redirects to netscape.aol.com ).

In terms of context, the "Last updated" text in the sidebar is inaccurate, because it's most likely a script. That sidebar page is now a virtual time capsule of World news.

Netscape Sidebars

...that redirect:

• Netscape WebCenter Travel (webcenter.travel.netscape.com) — Ah, well, this at least redirects to travel.aol.com, but that's it. At least it's topical.
• Netscape Celebrities (celebrities.netscape.com) — redirects within the sidebar to netscape.aol.com.
• Netscape TV Listings (tv.netscape.com) — redirects in-sidebar to netscape.aol.com.

...that don't work anymore:

(in descending order of importance)

• Netscape Time Zone Converter (cgi.netscape.com) — "Not found" — Ed Mullen's screenshot of it is now a historical artifact;
• Netscape Netbusiness — because netbusiness.netscape.com is completely offline (no 404 page, even);
• Netscape Netbusiness Industry Headlines (netbusiness.netscape.com) — domain is offline;
• Netscape Netbusiness Search (netbusiness.netscape.com) — offline;
• Netscape DevEdge (developer.netscape.com): "This tab is not available right now." — Taken offline since about 11.10.2004 and then moved to devedge-temp.mozilla.org/index_en.html
   
• Netscape Home Improvement (homeimprovement.netscape.com) — "Not Found";
• Netscape Home Improvement House and Home (homeimprovement.netscape.com) — "Not Found";
• Netscape Lifestyles Pet tools (lifestyles.netscape.com) — "Not Found".
   
• American Greetings (lifestyles.netscape.com) — "Not Found"

• The OS/2 sidebar does not work either, because os2.org cannot be reached.

Speaking of which — OS/2 has officially outlived Windows 9x, because according to screenshots, Mozilla Firefox 3.5.4 works in it. OS/2 can also run OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 and OS/2 now lives on as eComStation, where Firefox 3.6 and 4.0 (beta) can also be run.

eComStation is capable of running OpenOffice.org 3.2, VLC Media Player 1.1.4, and CUPS, a free software printer framework (modern printer support).

While Windows 9x only supports Mozilla Firefox 2.0, OpenOffice.org 2.4, and has ageing support for printers (I admit as much that some printers useless with CUPS are supported in Windows 9x)...

pilet.ee-sse ei saa sisse

Juhtus selline lugu, et tegelikult päris modernse, kuid õige pisut aegunud Mozilla Firefoxiga (versioon 3.0.19) läksin pilet.ee kodulehele ning seal tekkis selline veateade:
"invalid security certificate".

Veateade annab võimaluse lisada pilet.ee domeen erandite nimekirja, kuid seda pole tegelikult vaja teha.

Sama veateade võib tulla ka teiste vanemate Gecko-põhiste lehitsejatega, nagu näiteks SeaMonkey (Mozilla edasiarendus), K-Meleon, Galeon, Epiphany jt.

Lahendus:
Tarvis on lehitsejale peale panna Sertifitseerimiskeskuse sertifikaadid siit või siit.

See on suhteliselt lihtne, sest sertifikaatidele tuleb peale klikkida ja siis ilmub programmidialoog, mille kaudu saab sertifikaadid lehitsejasse panna. Saab valida vähemalt, et nende sertifikaatidega saab ära tunda veebisaite.

Tuleb tähele panna, et see protseduur tuleb veateate esinemisel teha igas lehitsejas ja lehitsejaprofiilis eraldi. Lähtuda võib kasvõi sellest, kui lehitsejas niisugune veateade tekib.

Kui niisuguseid asju juhtub ka Internet Exploreriga, tuleb sertifikaat samamoodi peale panna.

Netlog and dubious invites

Many users have received invites to join the Netlog social networking website.

Fetching e-mail addresses from various other services' address books happens through the sign-up process, whereby an unsuspecting user is asked to enter his/her user names and passwords for his/her other services that s/he uses, which is how Netlog subsequently and automatically acquires all the e-mail addresses from a users' accounts in almost any of the popular services they use.

All reputable services (such as those from Google and Microsoft) strongly advise in their terms of service documents and elsewhere for their users not to divulge their user names and passwords to others. This not only means other people, but also other websites.

The only current Wikipedia entry containing information about the sign-up process was in the Russian Wikipedia.

Remedies

Change your services' alternate e-mail addresses

Before you change your accounts' passwords (which you subsequently have to remember anyway), make sure that the alternate (other/secondary) e-mail address for all of your relevant services' account settings is yours and only yours. If it has been changed to something that isn't yours to begin with or is a blank (less likely if the account might be compromised and more likely if you haven't entered an alternate address), change it back to your default alternate e-mail address. With all the services that you use, the action must be done in fairly quick succession.

For example, live.com (formerly known as msn.com) account information page is here (requires signing in):
https://account.live.com/summarypage.aspx?mkt=en-us

The same page in Estonian:
https://account.live.com/summarypage.aspx?mkt=et-ee

Change your passwords

Only after changing alternate e-mail addresses and then confirming them (if the relevant services' systems require that), change your passwords. Remember to note the passwords down somewhere for quick memorization and be careful as to how you type the passwords, because these are always case-sensitive.

The same account information pages also faciliate changing your passwords. Again, please be careful and diligent when doing this.

Delete information and apologize

In your Netlog account, delete (or change some something untrue) any personally identifiable information and post an apology. Anyone who receives the dubious invite spam e-mail and then dares to click on the profile visitation link, should see your apology and that you did not actually intend to use the service.

Please keep in mind that before you join any social networking service, ask the person who allegedly sent the invitation if s/he has really sent the invitation or not. If not, then the invite is dubious and you should not join the service. If you do want to join a service, make sure that it's run by a reputable company, such as Microsoft or Google. AOL, Yahoo, Facebook and MySpace are also good.