Let's start with the download link to Firefox 4 rc1 for 64-bit Linux directory. You would think it would be as easy as going to the main download page for rc1. Nope only i686 Linux there. Next you might try a Google search with keywords like "firefox 4 rc1 64-bit". This gives you nothing but release notes, build help, and other miscellaneous links to the i686 version.
How did I find this ghost of build? I had to extrapolate the directory name from the i686 download directory. I figured if i686 was the 32-bit version then x86_64 had to be the 64-bit version. Really Mozilla did it have to be this hard?
Honestly this does not surprise me by now. Mozilla has not released a 64-bit build of Firefox until they started Firefox 4. I've been using the nightly builds since they started version 4. In the days before FF4 the only way to get a 64-bit build of Firefox was if you downloaded it from someone that built it (or you built it) or your Linux distro built one and you installed the package. This was better than nothing but you had to wait for security fixes from the distribution or the person doing the build.
FF4 is the first time Mozilla will be releasing an official 64-bit binary build of Firefox for Linux. I thank them for finally doing this. I just wish they would make 64-bit Firefox easier to find by putting it on the main downloads page.
Recently I had an issue where I was using a Firefox 3.6.x on someones computer and almost all SSL/TLS (https) websites showed a broken padlock with a red dot and white exclamation point in the right bottom corner. When you hovered your cursor over the icon it said "Connection partially encrypted. Parts of the page your viewing were not encrypted...". It showed up for most sites but not all of them. Even when I went to sites I knew for sure that all the parts where fully encrypted. This stumped me for days.
Finally, I hit upon this wiki page from Mozilla. Firefox has a setting in the about:config section of the browser called security.ssl.treat_unsafe_negotiation_as_broken. This was set to true. Setting this to true means that Firefox will display this icon on all websites that are vulnerable to a SSL/TLS session renegotiation flaw. The flaw is described here if your interested in learning about it.
That is what caused the icon to show broken most of the time. Most sites have not patched for this vulnerability yet but some have. For the ones that have the connection shows up fine. Setting the above Firefox about:config setting to false will make the lock appear normal again for all websites.
I'm disappointed in the Mozilla devs for being to lazy to make new text for this icon when this happens. It is very confusing when the text for the icon is telling you "Parts of the page your viewing were not encrypted...". Which is bull. All parts are encrypted fine but the renegotiation vulnerability is being checked for. They just attached this check to this icon and never bothered to change the text for when the icon is displayed for a different reason.
UPDATE: Userscripts site has been down for a long time now. I created a Github account and moved the script there. Easier for people to contribute code if they want, or to fix something. By the way this works with Chrome now as well. No plugins needed.
I thought it would be fun to write a Greasemonkey script which means I had to find a problem a Greasemonkey script could solve. The one I came up with was an issue I had with adding new movies to my Netflix queue.
Before writing the script I would hit "In Theaters" and "Coming Soon" sections of the popular movie websites (rottentomatoes.com and such) so I could add movies to my queue before they go to DVD. I would also look at other movies that have been out for a while and check their ratings also. That led to a lot of copying and pasting titles into the Netflix search box. Sites like dvdlater.com are good for the current stuff but you can't search deep into past movies and be able to add them to your queue easily. Plus you can't look at the respective sites ratings on said movie with sites like dvdlater.
So I made a script called Netflix Q Status. This script puts a little Netflix icon next to the titles of movies at popular movie review sites. You can click on this icon and get a popup box with movie info and queue status directly from your Netflix account. You can also add the movie to your queue right from the box. You do have to be a member of Netflix and logged into your account for it to work.
There are other Greasemonkey scripts that do some similar type things this script does like adding Netflix links next to movie names on the popular movie websites but they don't tell you if the movie is in your queue and they don't allow you one click access to all the movie info and the ability to add the movie to your queue without leaving the page.
I had not done Javascript in a while so that was a fun challenge and I think worth it to brush up on the scripting skills. Check it out if your interested. There are pictures of what the final product looks like on userscripts.org.
