Mozillale NoScripti installimine Windows Vistas

Seesinane on siis eestikeelne kokkuvõte oma varasemast ingliskeelsest blogipostitusest. Alguses kirjutasin selle kohta ühele sõbrale, ning kuna tekst osutus siiski pikemaks, leidsin ma seejärel, et jutt vajab avaldamist.

Hiljuti ühes Windows Vistaga masinas avastasin Mozilla 1.7.13. Tegemist on siis tarkvarapaketiga, mille lehitsejamoodul on sama vana kui Firefox 1.0.8 (Aprill 2006; esitlusmootor pärineb 2004. aastast ja Mozilla enda arhitektuur 2001.-st aastast).

Et Mozilla mõnede lehekülgede JavaScripti pärast kokku ei jookseks, läks alguses palju aega, et kuidas sellele NoScript nii peale panna, et töötaks, sest umbes sama vanale Firefoxile Knoppix 4.0.2-s (2005) sai küll. Lõpuks jätsin asja katki...

Mõni kuu hiljem leidsin lahenduse (Mozilla tuli käima panna administraatori õigustega) ja siis panin peale NoScripti, aga nii, et see tuli kindlasti installida Mozilla kasutajaprofiili kataloogi.

SeaMonkey 1.1-ga sellist probleemi ei tohiks olla, sest SeaMonkey 1.1 ja Windows Vista arendus/väljalase langes umbes samale ajale, et põhimõtteliselt sai seda Vista jaoks siis veel kohendada nii, et oleks parem ühilduvus.

SeaMonkey 1.1.19 on üks viimastest vabatarkvaralistest graafilistest lehitsejatest, mis töötab Windows 98/Me peal.

Tools to uninstall extensions in Mozilla 1.7.xx and SeaMonkey 1.x.

Mnenhy

In Mozilla Application Suite and SeaMonkey 1.x, removing extensions is not as easy as it is in SeaMonkey 2.0, given that the latter uses Firefox-based infrastructure.

First off, there is Mnenhy, which has many modules and which is more geared towards expert users. The important module is the Chrome Manager, which is accessible from the Tools menu.

* For SeaMonkey 1.1.xx, I use Mnenhy 0.7.6.666 (Can't remember where I got the version with the .666 patchlevel, but this should be the one for SeaMonkey 1.1.xx);
* For Mozilla 1.7.13, I use Mnenhy 0.7.6

Mnenhy 0.7.6 is compatible with Mozilla 1.7 and SeaMonkey 1, and it can be downloaded from mnenhy.mozdev.org

Extension Uninstaller 0.2

Unlike Mnenhy, this is one is more user friendly and even has easy-to-read error logs in case something doesn't work.

Extension Uninstaller 0.2 also requires the Extension Uninstaller API, which should be installed first.

Now, the problem with getting Extension Uninstaller is that its original website with
http://mozmonkey.com/extuninstaller/ and
http://mozmonkey.com/extuninstaller_api/
URLs is offline.

The only relatively good references I found to it are in
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=365228
— where only the addons.mozilla.org extension pages are references, but these are unfortunately closed, too.

The solution is to peruse the original official URLs in the Web Archive.:

Snapshot from 2010-03-04

There, scroll down to the Install section, see the "Install For:" Mozilla link. Right-click on the link, choose "Save Link Target As..." command to save the XPI.

It's a bit more difficult With the Extension Uninstaller API .xpi, which can be separately had from archive.org.

Installing NoScript to Mozilla in Windows Vista

This blog post describes how to install NoScript to Mozilla Application Suite in Windows Vista.
In all actuality, this should also apply to other compatible Mozilla extensions.

Conditions:

• Windows Vista SP2
• Mozilla Application Suite 1.7.13 (released 21.04.2006)
• NoScript 1.1.4.7

To install NoScript in an account with administrator rights,

• you must run Mozilla as administrator.
  For how to properly install NoScript in a guest account, see below.

  Attempting to install in any other way won't work. Yes, I've tried it myself before I found the solution.

• I chose NoScript 1.1.4.7, because it's the last version for Firefox 1.0.x.

  The reason is that Firefox 1.0.8 uses version 1.7.13 of the Gecko layout engine, which also matches the last version of Mozilla Application Suite. Any newer version might be incompatible, and I haven't tested NoScript 1.10, which is the last version for SeaMonkey 1.1.

• Since Mozilla 1.7.13 is eight years old and does not support modern web standards, installing any extension from addons.mozilla.org requires more steps:
  To download version 1.1.4.7 of NoScript from addons.mozilla.org,
  • go to its version section there and hover over the 1.1.4.7 section so that the Download Now link which looks like a button becomes visible.
  • Right-click on the Download Now link, choose to "Save Link Target As..." from the context menu, then save the extension into a folder of your choice. The Mozilla extension is saved with the .xpi file extension (but not installed.)
  • 01.03.2014 update:
    If that does not work (because of design changes at a.m.o), go instead to Mozilla's relevant addons folder for NoScript at ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/addons/722/, and scroll down to the chosen version.

    Firefox addons developers, either by tradition and culture or requirements from a.m.o, append their addons' XPI files with product acronyms as markers of compatibility with a client program in such a way that amongst browsers, fx stands for Firefox, sm for SeaMonkey, and mz for Mozilla. This should inform users of older client versions as to which extension version is still compatible.
    
    As I skimmed over Mozilla's NoScript FTP folder with above knowledge, I noticed that the most recent NoScript version marked with mz is actually 1.8.2.1. I don't remember having tested that version with Mozilla in Windows Vista before, but I hope other adventurous users might be lucky. Maybe in the future I will get to test that version, too.

  • in Mozilla, browse to the on-disk location of the saved extension, and click on it to install. The filename should be noscript-1.1.4.7-fx+mz+sm+fl.xpi
• Given the circumstances, always install NoScript and any other extension into the user profile and not the general installation folder, because it may be rather difficult to remove it afterwards.
• Once the extension reports it's installed, exit Mozilla.
• Then start Mozilla again as Administrator to finish the install process, then exit Mozilla again.
• Start Mozilla normally.

Added L., 01.03.2014.:

Installing NoScript in a normal/guest account.

Now, in a normal or guest account, it needs more work, mainly because of the differing designs of Windows Vista and Mozilla. We should remember that Mozilla 1.7.13 was made to run in Windows 95...

It won't be necessary to run Mozilla as administrator, because it will launch the instance with administrator credentials, which then brings its own settings as set in the administrator account.

Installing NoScript into Mozilla in a non-admin account mostly follows the steps of installing in the user profile space. After that, restarting Mozilla fails with this error:

"The program must close to allow a previous installation attempt to complete. Please restart."

The result in the background is that Mozilla starts, and starts xpicleanup.exe.

The following is an assumption: xpicleanup.exe wants to delete xpicleanup.dat, and unlike in Windows xp and older, the latter file is placed not where xpicleanup.exe anticipates it to be. xpicleanup.exe then fails to delete the file, Mozilla exits, and renders xpicleanup.exe an orphan process, hanging in memory. Trying to start Mozilla several times leaves more instances of xpicleanup.exe in memory. These processes must be ended either from Task Manager or Process Explorer.

Finding xpicleanup.dat within your profile, deleting or renaming it to xpicleanup.bak does the trick, and Mozilla will start again, with NoScript installed and functioning. (I usually rename such files as filename.ext.bak in order to preserve its extension, might I ever need the original and now renamed file again.)

xpicleanup.dat for a normal/Guest account (yours might be named differently) is located at —

C:\Users\Guest\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla\

^ to browse there, enable viewing of hidden files at folder options (Alt or F10 > Menu > Tools > Folder Options)

Useful instructions from a post by Alice at MozillaZine Forums.

---

A little bit of background information and history

Mozilla Application Suite (Mozilla) was not designed with Windows Vista in mind, so using it in a modern operating system is not without obstacles. Yes, it does run, but this post about installing extensions sort of shows where some of the caveats lie.

Mozilla was at the time the open source base for Netscape, and version 1.0 of Mozilla was released on 05.06.2002, which is roughly 11 years ago as of 2013. I mean, wow, eleven years. Anyways, Mozilla was released to a wide variety of operating systems and for just as wide a variety of versions of each, including Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows Me, Windows 2000 (released 17.02.2000) and Windows XP (itself released on 25.10.2001).

After version 1.0, Mozilla progressed to have quick developments over its lifetime by getting new features added, but not too much by way of changes to its baseline architecture.

	Longevity
Mozilla's penultimate 1.7.13 version came out on 21.04.2006, just five and a half months before the RTM version of Windows Vista was finalized on 08.11.2006. Windows Vista was released to general availability on 30.01.2007.	Mozilla 1.7 Alpha is dated 23.02.2004, and 1.7 itself came out on 17.06.2004, so there is two years and about two months of time between 1.7 Alpha and 1.7.13, and exactly two years between 1.7 RC1 (21.04.2004) and 1.7.13.
After mozilla.org ceased development of Mozilla Application Suite, another team took over development and renamed the project SeaMonkey. Windows Vista was not released yet by the time SeaMonkey 1.0 arrived on 30.01.2006, but beta versions of Vista had to have been available already.
SeaMonkey 1.1.xx (18.01.2007 and on) was thereafter developed to accommodate Windows Vista, with SeaMonkey 1.1.19 (16.03.2010) being the last version of the 1.1 line, and the last for Windows 98/Me. Note that Windows 7 was released on 22.10.2009, so there's a great possibility that SeaMonkey 1.1.19 should run well on that operating system, too.	Three years and nearly two months between SeaMonkey 1.1 and 1.1.19. Overall, if I discount layout engine changes, then Mozilla and SeaMonkey are essentially the same product and programmatically the same infrastructure. When taking into account the release dates of Mozilla 0.8/0.8.1 (14.02.–26.03.2001), when it finally became reasonably stable and usable, and SeaMonkey 1.1.19 (16.03.2010), then that whole architecture has lasted for about nine years. Ten when factoring in development time, but that's a stretch considering official titles. If I were, on the other hand, to also consider Classilla, a browser for Mac OS 9, and the latest version of which was released on 19.10.2012, then all in all, Mozilla's run could certainly be timed to ten years from Mozilla 1.0, eleven years from Mozilla 0.9.5 (12.10.2001), and almost twelve years since Netscape 6 (06.12.2000). Such a long lifetime for one branch of development is a testament to its quality and reliability over a long span of time.

Future

The reason to have NoScript in Mozilla is that the browser is just so old and can easily crash with a piece of JavaScript newer than what Mozilla can support. It should be of relevant help that the post that follows this one, is a tutorial on installing extension uninstallers in Mozilla and SeaMonkey.

Mobiilinternet Samsungi telefoniga

Niisiis midagi ka eesti keeles, kuna tegemist on Eesti-põhise teenuse kasutamisega.

Eesmärk on ühendada arvuti mobiil-Internetti läbi vanema Samsungi telefoni, mis ei ole Android.

Mobiiliks on Samsung SGH-D830.
Töötavaid juhendeid sellise telefoniga ühendumiseks ei leidnud, seega tuli kirjutada ise midagi.

Antud telefon on umbes seitse aastat vana. Selle kõige kiirem ühenduvus ulatub vaid EDGE/GPRS standardini, mis on siis 2.75G — võrdluseks: 2013. aastal on levinuim "kiire" ühendusstandard 3.5G, ning juurutamisel on 4G.

Aparaat toetab lisaks Bluetoothi, mis on kasulik siis, kui Samsungi enda USB-juhet ei ole käepärast (teised USB juhtmed ei kõlba, sest telefonipoolne ots on omanduslik).

Niisama Windowsis sissehelistamisabimehega (Wizard) ühendust luues saatis mind ebaedu ning tuli välja, et seda tuleb teha Samsung PC Studio abil.

Esialgu juhendid USB-juhtmega ühenduvuse kohta, kunagi hiljem Bluetoothi kohta (suurt vahet ei tohiks siiski olla).

Eeltingimused: Windowsi opsüsteem, Samsung PC Studio 3 programmikomplekti olemasolu (mul oli versioon 3.2.3 IE2 (2009), ning see tahab Windows 2000 või uuemat, kuid väidetavalt toetab see ka Windows 98-t) ja vastava telefoni draiverid. Need on saadaval Samsungi kodulehe tõmbamiskeskusest. Proov oli tehtud Windows XP SP2 ja SP3-ga.

Windowsis peavad olema sisse lülitatud näiteks Telephony ja Remote Access Connection Manager teenused. Remote Access Auto Connection Manager vist ei pea sees olema (Started), aga see ei tohi olla välja lülitatud (Disabled).

Bluetooth ühenduse jaoks peab arvutis olema sisemine adapter või olema ühendatud Bluetooh USB-adapter (pulk vmt), telefon ja arvuti peavad olema omavahel paaris (i.k. paired).

Tarvis oleks eelnevalt oma numbrile tellida vajalik mobiil-Interneti pakett või piisavalt kõneaega. Minu puhul oli teenusepakkuja EMT. Simpeli omanikud saavad laadida korraga 10 või 15€ ja saada piisaval määral andmemahtu (kunagi olla Simpelil olnud ka mobiil-Interneti päevapiletid).

Juhend ühenduse loomiseks

	USB-juhtmega	Bluetoothiga
1.	Ühenda oma telefon arvutiga	Bluetooth peab telefonis ja arvutis olema sisse lülitatud. Telefonis käib see eestikeelse kasutajaliidesega nii: Menüü > (9) Seaded > (7) Bluetooth > (1) Aktiveerimine > (•) Sees Bluetooth on võimalik lisada ka telefoni kiirmenüüsse, kuid aktiveerimine võib võtta peaaegu sama nupuvajutuste arvu kui tavamenüü kaudu aktiveerimine.
2.	Ava Samsung PC Studio. Eeldatud on programmi ingliskeelse versiooni kasutamine. PC Studio olekuriba peaks enam-vähem automaatselt näitama, kas telefon on ühendatud (ilmub mobiili mudelinumber).
		Kui ei ole, siis PC Studio 3 menüüs vali File > Connection... • Uues aknas kliki Bluetooth ikoonile, mis peab olema sinist värvi, mis näitab, et Bluetooth on aktiivne. • vajuta Connect. • Kui akna olekuribale tekib kiri <mudelinumber> connected — vajuta OK
3.	Ava "Networking Wizard"
4.	PC Studio Networking Wizard abimehe tervitusaken, vajuta "Next"
5.	Ühenduse loomine: uue jaoks vali "Create" raadionupp, vajuta "Next"
6.	Ühenduse nimi (Connection Name): Sisesta tekstiväljale oma ühenduse nimi, esialgu (teiste puudumisel) näiteks EMT Internet vajuta "Next"
7.	Modemi valik:
	SAMSUNG Mobile USB Modem	Bluetooth Modem
	Vajuta "Next"
8.	Riik (Country) ja teenusepakkuja (Network Provider): Antud versioonis Eestit pole, aga riik tuleb ikka valida; seega "[Other]" ja teenusepakkuja on seejärel automaatselt samuti "[Other]". APN name: internet.emt.ee Phone number: *99# See on siis väli sissehelistamisnumbri lisamiseks. Kasutajanimi ja parool jäävad tühjaks (EMT seaded) "Advanced" nupp on DNS serverite seadistamiseks. Sinna minema ei pea, kui teenusepakkuja DNS serverite nimesid oma dokumentatsioonis ei täpsustanud. Sellisel juhul on DNS-seaded on automaatsed (AFAIK). Vajuta "Next"
8.1	Tuleb sisestatud info kohta ülevaade (Summary). Vajuta "Next"
9.	Järgmises aknas on linnuke "Connect to the Internet directly" järel. Et siis kohe ühendumiseks. Vajuta "Finish". Linnukese võib ära võtta ja ühenduda hiljem, sest peale "Finish"-nupu vajutamist on Samsungi-põhine "EMT Internet" otsetee loodud Windowsi töölauale ning samuti otsetee Windowsi Network Connections kaustas. Viimasele saab ligi ka Start > Connect To > "EMT Internet" ja edaspidi otsustasin seda kasutada.
10.	Ette tuleb võrguabimehe teatis, kus on kirjas, et kui telefoniga ühenduda, siis PC Studio enda ühendus telefoniga katkeb ja selle kaudu andmete ülekanne tuleb vajadusel samuti katkestada. Sama dialoogiaken küsib veel kord, kas kasutaja soovib ühenduda Internetiga (valitud ühendusega).
11.	Vastates jah (OK või Yes), tuleb Windowsi enda sissehelistamisaken pealkirjaga Connect to <sinu mobiilinterneti nimi> — kus kasutajanime ja parooli väljad jäävad tühjaks. Kui väljad ei ole tühjad, tuleb nad tühjaks teha, sest EMT tavajuhistes ei ole sätestatud, et seal peavad andmed kirjas olema Erandina peavad kasutajanimi ja parool olema kirjas siis, kui teenusespakkuja juhistes on need kindlalt sätestatud. • Lisaks on võimalik (tühjad) kasutajanimi ja parool salvestada, kas siis ainult endale ("Me only") või kõigile, kes seda arvutit kasutavad ("Anyone who uses this computer"). • Vajutada tuleb vaid "Dial".

Nii ja põhimõtteliselt peaks ühendus valmis olema ja tegumiriba teavitusalal (kellast vasakule poole jäävad ikoonid) tekib loodus ühenduse kohta oma ikoonike ja teavitus. Tähtis: Kui mobiil-Interneti ühendust rohkem ei kasutata, tuleb sellele ikoonile parema nupuga klikkida ja valida "Disconnect" (see on oluline, et ei tekiks arveid).

Peaks mainima, et telefonis oli sarnane ühendususprofiil juba valmis, seega ma ei tea, kas telefonisisesest seadistusest sõltub ka midagi või mitte.

Tuleb tähele panna, et niisuguse telefoniga ühendus kiire olema ei saa; küll on võimalik oma e-posti kontrollida ja veebis surfata. Lisaks piiratud mahuga ühenduste puhul (väike pakett vms) ei tasu näiteks teha videokõnesid, tõmmata filme ja muusikat (YouTube, Spotify jne), säärased programmid tuleb enne ühendumist kõik välja lülitada.

Eelistatuim on kasutada näiteks Firefox lehitsejat koos NoScript, Flashblock ja võib-olla isegi ka Adblock Plus lisadega. Need kõik peavad olema muul kasutamise ajal "välja treenitud", et vajalikud saidid töötaksid ja mittevajalike reklaamid, skriptid ja Flash-pluginad oleksid vaikimisi blokeeritud.

Overview of Nokia phones offered by U.S. carriers (October 2012)

US web offers for new Nokia phones as of 10.10.2012.
The list is somewhat incomplete, and emphasis is added to phones that don't have Windows Phone in them (all Windows Phone versions, including 7.5, 7.8, and 8).
This list also reflects which carriers' websites first ask for location without offering their phones first. The carriers whose sites do that, are more likely to offer locked phones and with a fixed contract instead of selling them to someone who would want to use their phone with a different carrier.

This time I have also included MVNO-s (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) that were featured in the respective Wikipedia navbox.

Near the end of the compilation it turned out that most carriers and MVNO-s did not carry Nokias, so if I will ever make a future compilation of who carries Nokias, these will get further emphasis beyound colour.

Legend:
* "Nokia not listed" means that the website is offering phones by brand name
* "No Nokia phones" means that the website either does not offer phones by brand name, or that Nokia phones were not available.

National

• T-Mobile:
  Nokia X2 (refurb)
  Nokia Lumia 710 (doesn't count)
  Nokia Lumia 810 (announced; doesn't count either)
  
  
• AT&T: Nokia Lumia 900 (doesn't count, and now also includes refurbished models)
  (Nokia not in the list of first four (primary) offered manufacturers)
• Verizon Wireless
  Basic phones: No Nokia
  Smartphones: Nokia is not even in a gray list
• Sprint: Personal/Business — No Nokia. (Sony Ericssson not included anymore)
  Wants zip code, but includes coverage maps.

Supra-Regional

• C-Spire: None (has Sony Ericsson)
• Cricket Wireless (subsidiary of Leap Wireless) — No coverage in the area.
  According to Wikipedia (as of 09.10.2012), Nokia is not mentioned, and the mycricket website does not feature Nokia phones.

MetroPCS (to be merged into T-Mobile) — Nokia is not in the listed brands
U.S. Cellular — Nokia is not in the listed brands

Minor-Regional/Regional

• Tried Alltel Wireless — service not available at "my" zip code (I used one of Au Sable Forks, NY)

Alaska Communications — Nokia is not in listed brands

Cellcom —
Nokia is listed, but no products shown
• Cellular One
  Locations: Montana, North-Western Wyoming, Texas (TX-10, TX-11), and Oklahoma (OK-5)

  cellonenation.com — Wants zip code celloneet.com (lands on cellonenation.com)— Wants zip code

  • cellular1.net (Yum! :-) (East Central Illinois, device availability varies by location) —

    Feature Phones:

    Nokia 2720

    
    

    Smartphones: Nokia not listed, but includes a bevy of Sony Ericsson phones.

    
    

    Texting phones:

    Nokia C3

  • cellularoneonline.com (Northeastern Arizona and Northwestern New Mexico)

    All mobile phones:

    Nokia C1

    
    

    Smartphones: Nokia not listed.

    
    

    Hearing aid-compatible:

    Nokia 2720

    Nokia 6085

    Nokia 7020

    Nokia E5 (Aspect)

  • South Canaan Cellular (Wayne and Pike Counties, Pennsylvania/cellularonenepa.com) — No Nokia phones
  • Choice Wireless (Texas and Oklahoma, cellonetxok.com, models vary based on availability)
    Nokia 2760
    Nokia 5800
    Nokia 6061
    Nokia 6085
    Nokia E63
• Cincinnati Bell — Has landing page, but this can be run around. Nokia not listed.
• Element Mobile — No Nokia phones
• i Wireless (T-Mobile affiliate)
  Nokia listed, but no phones shown.
• Immix Wireless — No Nokia phones, but some Sony Ericsson phones.
• nTelos — Nokia not listed, but includes Sony Ericsson
• Revol Wireless — No Nokia phones
• southernLINC Wireless — No Nokia phones
• West Central Wireless (includes Five Star Wireless and Mid-Tex Cellular)
  Nokia 1661
  Nokia C1-01
  Nokia C3-00
  Nokia C6
  Nokia N8
• Indigo Wireless — No Nokia phones
• Viaero Wireless
  Nokia listed, but no phones shown. (Offers two Ericsson devices that are not phones)
• Long Lines Wireless
  Nokia listed, but no phones available.
• Arctic Slope Telephone Association Cooperative (astac.net) — Still wants zip code.

MVNO-s (Mobile Virtual Network Operators)

• Virgin Mobile (Sprint) — Nokia not listed
• Boost Mobile (Sprint) - Nokia not listed
• Consumer Cellular (uses AT&T) - No Nokia phones
• Hawaiian Telcom (uses Sprint & Verizon) - No Nokia phones
• GreatCall (uses Verizon) - No Nokia phones
• Kajeet (uses Sprint) —
  
  Nokia listed, but no phones available.
• KDDI (uses Sprint) - No Nokia phones.
• Liberty Wireless (uses Sprint Nextel CDMA) - No Nokia phones
• MOSH Mobile (Indiana, uses Centennial Wireless, no international calling; website redirects to AT&T's site) —
  
  Current Nokia devices as of 28 January 2008 according to Wikipedia:

  Nokia 2610
  Nokia 6101
  Nokia 6085
• Movida Wireless (based in Florida, uses Sprint PCS) — No Nokia phones
• Page Plus Cellular (headquartered in Toledo, Ohio; uses Verizon) — No Nokia phones
• Ting (a no-frills operator launched in February 2012 by Tucows; uses Sprint CDMA, 3G, 4G WiMAX, and 4G LTE) — No Nokia phones
• Tracfone Wireless (subsidiary of Mexican América Móvil; uses Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile) — No Nokia phones
  • Simple Mobile (headquartered in California, subsidiary of Tracfone Wireless, uses T-Mobile). Purchasing a phone requires going to affiliate website. —
    
    Nokia N100
  • Net10 (brand of TracFone Wireless; uses AT&T and T-Mobile). The e-store requires a zip-code. Availability varies by location —
    
    Nokia 1600
  • SafeLink Wireless — Wants zip code, area not supported.
  • Straight Talk (CDMA: Verizon or Sprint; GSM: T-Mobile or AT&T) — Shopping for a phone takes to a different domain, which wants zip code, with area supported. — No Nokia phones.
• TruPhone (international operator) —
  Only for businesses: Offers Nokia phone bundles, does not quote models or price on their website.
• Trumpet Mobile (headquartered in Dallas, Texas; CDMA) — No Nokia phones.
• NTT DoCoMo USA —
  Nokia 500

Free Software alternatives to Segoe UI

This post started first as a side note to a post about Free Software Trajan Pro alternatives.

I've found at least two free fonts possibly similar to the non-free Segoe UI: Iwona, Quercus.

N., 13.09.2012.
Another alternative to Segoe UI is the Ubuntu font family, which consists of
• Ubuntu,
• Ubuntu Condensed, and
• Ubuntu Monospace.

Note that fonts of the Ubuntu Font Family are governed under the Ubuntu Font License, which is not compatible with Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) and not approved by OSI. Nevertheless, the Ubuntu Font License is copyleft and fairly permissive.

Nevertheless, Ubuntu Font Family fonts have been included into use with Google Docs, so it seems that they have already earned themselves quite a reputation.

Manipulating page styles with the new Greasemonkey

This article assumes that the reader knows some JavaScript and a fair share of CSS, and how to create userscripts for Greasemonkey.

The argument for using Greasemnkey is that it allows for a more straightforward implementation of user-created styles, which don't require remote storage, such as userscripts.org.

Well, as of recently, it became impossible to manipulate styles on pages with modern versions of Greasemonkey running within Firefox and SeaMonkey.

I suppose this might have happened during the transition from Firefox 12 to some newer version. Oddly, the version of SeaMonkey has always remained the same, so this should somehow have ruled out that issue. Then I began thinking of NoScript — which is about the only extension maintained well for both SeaMonkey and Firefox, and updatd accordingly — but I'm not going to point any fingers, just because I don't know what the real cause is.

So, the situation happened to me using SeaMonkey 2.5 (which I am not using often, though planning to upgrade one day) with Greasemonkey 0.9.13.1, and in Firefox 15 with about the latest modern releases of Greasemonkey (0.9.22—1.x).

Greasemonkey is officially available only for Firefox, but since SeaMonkey 2.x is not supported by many extension developers, then Philip Chee decided to modify ostensibly free software extensions originally made for Firefox to then post them at xsidebar.mozdev.org for other SeaMonkey users. Some of the extensions are modified by request of other users. So the most recent Greasemonkey version for SeaMonkey 2.3 or newer is 0.9.13.1, which is modern, but by no means the newest fare.

If you think usescripts somehow stopped working, then this is not quite so. Compared to older implementations, Greasemonkey has just evolved and so have ways to manipulate styles with usescripts. IMHO.

The traditional, or classic, way of inserting lines of style code in a Greasemonkey userscript was something like this:

document.styleSheets[0].insertRule('DIV[class=pagecontent] {width:auto !important; max-width:1014px !important;}', 0);

^ Nevermind !important, which was meant to override existing online style rules. Writing declarations with [square brackets] is also clunkier, but more reliable.

Now, there are a few things about the metadata block to remember when composing a userscript: @namespace and @grant.

• @namespace does require that something is written for it. For the example I had, I wrote random, and it works for a test script, but the string can't be empty and has to be meaningful, per instructions given in the link.
• With the second, I set @grant to none.
  T., 29.01.2013. update:
  @grant is a new(ish) security measure to limit API access of a script. With this it's possible to grant none (no API access) and grant GM_*, where script lines starting with GM_* are allowed. One such example is the simplified way of modifying CSS styles through GM_addStyle. To allow GM_addStyle, set

  @grant GM_addStyle

  In conclusion, this is what I think is something that I overlooked when initially writing the blog post herein.

Interestingly, I discovered that @include strings can be equipped with wildcards. This could be an age-old feature, but this saved me a bit of effort in writing userscript code:

// @include       *.wikipedia.org/wiki/*

• By not including http:// and https:// protocols, the userscript should work for domains under both;
• The asterisk * before the primary domain (separated by a dot) allows for inclusion of subdomains. Anyhoo, the new way to insert custom style blocks is this:

GM_addStyle("DIV.pagecontent {width:auto !important; max-width:1014px !important;}")

Works for me.