All Checkins to the Gecko 1.8.1 Branch which Firefox 2 will be released from now require driver approval. It means no more new features will land on the branch, but all developers are going to focus on bug fixing.

According to Firefox 2 roadmap, Firefox 2 will be finalized in early Q3 2006. It’s time to welcome Firefox 2.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Windows Live Messenger 8.0.0792 繁體中文版 | English Version

我都用 pank 改的去廣告和多重登入版本: 繁體中文版 | English Version.

新功能大致上有：

1. 可以送訊息給離線的連絡人
2. 自訂連絡人名稱
3. 對話框訊息記錄可以顯示最後時間
4. 連絡人上限增加到 600 人
5. 共享檔案 (害我檔案總管多個奇怪的選項, 如果可以, 真想關掉 -_-)
6. Windows Live 登入小幫手 (不過安裝過好像無法移除耶…)

目前這版也還不能和 Yahoo Messenger 互通, 殘念~

Popularity: 28% [?]

Mozilla Firefox 2.0a3 Branch builds (20060619)

• [FX] P3 build for All CPUs support SSE2 (Lite Version)
• [FX] P2 build for All CPUs support SSE (Lite Version)
• [FX] P1 build for All CPUs support MMX (Lite Version)

Sepecial Check-in

• Firefox 2.0 Alpha 3 Branch
• Macromedia Flash Player 9.0.7.0 Beta
• Because most plugins only support up to 1.5, not 2.0, I add app.extensions.version with 1.5 in profile to be compatible with extensions
• Bug330895, set extensions.checkCompatibility as false instead of app.extensions.version.

Known Issues

• Tab Mix Plus (0.3.0.5) cannot work well except Dev-build
• Tabbrowser Preferences (1.2.8.9) cannot work well

1. checkout finish: Mon Jun 19 03:52:30 PDT (UTC -0700) 2006
2. All Chech-in, FX Chech-in from last build
3. my vs7.1-BonEcho patch
4. my tweaks profile patch
5. Used branding artwork by JairoB
6. UAO of zh_TW.Big5 Unicode Fix
7. P0/P1/P2/P3 all build with VC7.1
8. P0 build build with /GAL7 arch:SSE and mmoy’s SSE patches, for Athlon XP, and Duron 1.1 GHz+
9. P1 build build with /GAL6 and mmoy’s MMX patches, for Generic CPU
10. P2 build build with /GAL6 arch:SSE and mmoy’s SSE patches, for Pentium III ,Celeron 500+
11. P3 build build with /GAL7 arch:SSE2 and mmoy’s SSE2 patches, for AMD Athlon 64, AMD Sempron, Pentium 4, Pentium M, and Celeron 1.7 GHz+

Popularity: 8% [?]

Mozilla Firefox 2.0a3 Branch builds (20060616)

• [FX] P3 build for All CPUs support SSE2 (Lite Version)
• [FX] P2 build for All CPUs support SSE (Lite Version)
• [FX] P1 build for All CPUs support MMX (Lite Version)

Sepecial Check-in

• Firefox 2.0 Alpha 3 Branch
• Macromedia Flash Player 9.0.7.0 Beta
• Because most plugins only support up to 1.5, not 2.0, I add app.extensions.version with 1.5 in profile to be compatible with extensions
• Bug330895, set extensions.checkCompatibility as false instead of app.extensions.version.

Known Issues

• Tab Mix Plus (0.3.0.5) cannot work well except Dev-build
• Tabbrowser Preferences (1.2.8.9) cannot work well

1. checkout finish: Fri Jun 16 02:27:42 PDT (UTC -0700) 2006
2. All Chech-in, FX Chech-in from last build
3. my vs7.1-moz_1_8 patch
4. my tweaks profile patch
5. Used branding artwork by JairoB
6. UAO of zh_TW.Big5 Unicode Fix
7. P0/P1/P2/P3 all build with VC7.1
8. P0 build build with /GAL7 arch:SSE and mmoy’s SSE patches, for Athlon XP, and Duron 1.1 GHz+
9. P1 build build with /GAL6 and mmoy’s MMX patches, for Generic CPU
10. P2 build build with /GAL6 arch:SSE and mmoy’s SSE patches, for Pentium III ,Celeron 500+
11. P3 build build with /GAL7 arch:SSE2 and mmoy’s SSE2 patches, for AMD Athlon 64, AMD Sempron, Pentium 4, Pentium M, and Celeron 1.7 GHz+

Popularity: 7% [?]

Linux 2.6 vs. Solaris 10, from OSNews.

It, however, is very strange that I cannot feel such considerable performance improvement in Solaris 10. My summary is as followings.

There are several often overlooks positive features of Solaris as an alternative to Linux in lage enterprize environment:

• Solaris is more stable, especially in network intensive tasks.
• New T1 CPUs make Solaris on SPARC more attractive and provide a clean migration path from older UltraSparc models that fall behind in price/performance ratio.
• Due to the architecture of Solaris kernel and I/O subsystem there are several open source applications that can run on Solaris better then on Linux. Among them are all multithreading applications and open source databases. Solaris also significantly improves the security of open source applicators due to built-in protection from stack overflows.
• The recent test conducted by Sun [MySQL2006] had show that optimized for Solaris MySQL (UFS?) beats MySQL on RED HAT ES 4 (ext3?) by a considerable margin.
• It is unclear how it goes against ZFS in Solaris. Newer ZFS is still in too early stage for comparisons.
• For tracking system calls Solaris has an excellent truss utility. For Linux, the strace utility provides a similar but weaker function. For more complex situations Solaris has Dtrace. Currently Linux has no analogs for Dtrace.

There are also several disadvantages of Solaris:

• Linux has larger “knowledge space” especially noticeable in the number of published books. While Solaris has much better OS level security, Linux has better “open source knowledge infrastructure” including the information about securing open source applications, especially those implementing key application level TCP/IP protocols (HTTP, DNS, SMTP, ssh, Kerberos, etc)

Popularity: 20% [?]

Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2 Review, from Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite.

Today my colleague has installed Office 2007 Beta2, which UI is extremely different from previous products. Here are some screen-shots provided by Paul’s website.

Popularity: 15% [?]

web2.0中流行的设计元素:颜色.

作網頁, 其實 HTML 不難, 很多工具都可以代勞; 但是一個網頁的 Design, 包括各種素材的整合, 都是很大的學問. 像我這種沒有美感的人, 只能夠多多模仿別人了 :)

Popularity: 12% [?]