Section: Internet
September 27, 2009 by
Jason
A lot of people hate Internet Explorer 6 and for good reason. Developers don’t like it because making their projects work on the aging browser with all its quirks eats up precious time and users don’t like it because of its severe lack of features and poor performance. But for many upgrading isn’t an option and many businesses still rely on the browser launched in 2001. But now there is an alternative; with a plugin users will get all of the benefits of a modern browser while still running IE and the best part is that it took Google to make this happen.
“Today, we’re releasing an early version of Google Chrome Frame, an open source plug-in that brings HTML5 and other open web technologies to Internet Explorer,” software engineers Amit Joshi and Alex Russell and product manager Mike Smith wrote. “We’re building Google Chrome Frame to help web developers deliver faster, richer applications like Google Wave. Recent JavaScript performance improvements and the emergence of HTML5 have enabled web applications to do things that could previously only be done by desktop software. One challenge developers face in using these new technologies is that they are not yet supported by Internet Explorer.” Read More»
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September 17, 2009 by
Jason Internet Explorer 8 includes a security feature that shuts down misbehaving applications before they can harm your system.
This capability, known as Data Execution Prevention (DEP), runs by default when IE 8 is installed on XP SP3 and Vista SP1 or later, but it may not always be clear to you why DEP has put the brakes on one of your PC’s applications.
DEP is the best reason I know for updating to Internet Explorer 8 and Vista SP1. For many years, Microsoft has included DEP which is also called No-Execute (NX) only in parts of Windows. For example, DEP is available in IE 7 but is off by default to avoid conflicts with old, incompatible programs.
DEP is now a key part of Vista and Internet Explorer 8. When I try to install older software on newer machines, I must configure Data Execution Prevention to allow the software installer to run with DEP disabled.
To open the Data Execution Prevention dialog in XP, open Control Panel, choose System, and then select the Advanced tab. Click the Settings button in the Performance section and select the Data Execution Prevention tab. In Vista, choose Performance Information and Tools, click Advanced Tools in the left pane, select Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows, and click the Data Execution Prevention tab. Read More»
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September 16, 2009 by
Jason Here are some search syntax basics and advanced tricks for Google.com. You might know most of these, but if you spot a new one, it may come in handy in future searches.
• A quote/ phrase search can be written with both quotations ["like this"] as well as a minus in-between words, [like-this].
• Google didn’t always understand certain special characters like [#], but now they do; a search for [C#], for example, yields meaningful results (a few years ago, it didn’t). This doesn’t mean you can use just any character; e.g. entering [t.] and [t-] and [t^] will always return the same results.
• Google allows 32 words within the search query (some years ago, only up to 10 were used, and Google ignored subsequent words). You rarely will need so many words in a single query – [just thinking of such a long query is a hard thing to do, as this query with twenty words shows] – however, it can come in handy for advanced searching… especially as a developer using the Google API.
• You can find synonyms of words. E.g. when you search for [house] but you want to find “home” too, search for [~house]. To get to know which synonyms the Google database stores for individual words, simply use the minus operator to exclude synonym after synonym (they will always show as bold in the SERPs, the search engine result pages). Like this: [~house -house -home -housing -floor].
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September 01, 2009 by
Jason I don’t want to make you any more paranoid about PC security than you already are (and yes, they are out to get you), but a report in Engadget suggests that a pair of Japanese students can hack WPA encryption, used on most Wi-Fi enabled devices, in around a minute. They have come up with a fancy new algorithm that, for the moment at least they’re keeping to themselves. It beats the previous record by some 10 – 15 minutes, making it a potential threat to Wi-Fi users. Details of the crack are due to be announced next month at a conference in Hiroshima, so it’s not in the wild yet, and even if it does escape, most users can protect their files by switching their WEP to AES (Advanced Encryption System) mode, or using the (so far) still secure WPA 2 system.
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Google is hard at work developing a 64-bit version of its open-source browser for Windows. The Mountain View-search giant indicated that work was in progress but delivered no specific availability deadline so far. According to Chromium developers Mads Sig Ager, a 64-bit (x64) flavor of Google Chrome will be offered to Windows users “soon.” There’s no telling just what the period of time “soon” can be translated into, but testers can already run 64-bit Chrome.
At the end of the past week, Google offered the first downloads of its true 64-bit version of Chrome, tailored to the Linux open-source platform. The Mountain View is focusing on adapting x64 Chrome to Linux and Mac OS X first, and only afterwards to Windows. According to Google, the heavy lifting is focused on porting the underlining V8 JavaScript engine to 64-bit platforms.
“V8 does not yet compile in 64-bit mode on Windows. We have focused on making the 64-bit version of V8 work on Linux and Mac at first. We are currently working on making the 64-bit version compile on Windows as well. We should hopefully have that done soon,” Ager stated when x64 Chrome for Linux was launched. Read More»
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Microsoft is pushing forward with the availability process of Internet Explorer 8, with a new wave of downloads scheduled to hit today, August 25th, 2009. The Redmond company announced since the end of June 2009 that it would start serving IE8 RTW to business users by the end of August, and the bits come right on schedule. The gold build of Internet Explorer 8 will be offered to all companies leveraging the software giant’s update server distribution solution designed to help administrators manage Microsoft Update releases across corporate networks.
“Starting Tuesday August 25, 2009, Internet Explorer 8 will be made available as “update rollups” via WSUS (Windows Server Update Services). This is critical for customers who manage their desktops via WSUS; they need to be aware of these updates and make necessary preparation to insure there are no unintended upgrades to Internet Explorer 8 on their desktops,” revealed Kevin Dean, Microsoft technology specialist, Education.
Ahead of August 25, WSUS admins had the option to disable auto-approve for “Update rollup” packages in Windows Server Update Services. In such scenarios, IE8 would only be offered to machines across a network after the updates were manually approved by the administrator. Business users and admins should be aware that even in the context in which Auto-Approve for “Update rollup” is enabled, the IE8 EULA still has to receive manual approval before the browser is installed on all downstream clients. Read More»
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If you want to share information stored on your computer with other people nearby and everyone’s computer has a wireless network adapter, a simple method of sharing is to set up an ad hoc wireless network. In spite of the fact that members must be within 30 feet of each other, this type of network presents a lot of possibilities. For example, you might consider establishing an ad hoc network at a meeting of mobile computer users so that you can share information with other attendees on their own screens rather than an overhead projector. (After establishing the network, you can do this by using Windows Meeting, for instance.)
Ad hoc networks are by definition temporary; they cease to exist when members disconnect from them, or when the computer from which the network was established moves beyond the 30-foot effective range of the others. You can share an Internet connection through an ad hoc network, but keep in mind that the Internet connection is then available to anyone logging on to a computer that is connected to the network, and thus is likely not very secure.
To set up an ad hoc network:
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The disclosure of a back door allowing bad guys to repeatedly guess Gmail passwords should remind us all to protect our accounts with long and strong character strings.
There’s a straightforward way to protect your online accounts use signin phrases that are easy for you to remember but hard for others to guess.
The latest vulnerability affecting Gmail accounts was recently revealed by security researcher Vicente Aguilera DĂaz in a posting on the Full Disclosure security list. (Aguilera previously revealed a Gmail flaw known as session-riding, which Google subsequently fixed, as reported by WS contributing editor Scott Spanbauer)
According to Aguilera’s new security alert, Google allows anyone with a Gmail account to guess another Gmail user’s password 100 times every two hours, or 1,200 times per day. No “captcha” keeps hacker bots from guessing passwords in this way. Worst of all: If a hacker controls, say, 100 Gmail accounts, 120,000 guesses can be made per day. Because Gmail accounts are free, many hackers control far more than 100 accounts, of course. Read More»
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If you’re experiencing problems with IE8 being slow to load pages, especially when multiple tabs are involved, this might be worth a try. Because this tweak is simply registering a DLL that should have been registered as part of the IE8 installation, there is no harm that can come from trying this.
Here are the instructions.
FOR WINDOWS XP
1. Click Start, then click Run.
2. In the Run dialog box, type cmd and press Enter.
3. In the Command Prompt window, enter this text and press Enter:
regsvr32 actxprxy.dll
4. Restart your computer.
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The latest release of the Compatibility View list update for Internet Explorer 8 went live earlier this week and is now available for download. In an effort to maintain compatibility between IE8 and website developers for IE6 and IE7, Microsoft introduced the Compatibility View feature in the browser.
The Redmond-based company also maintains a list of websites that fail to play nice with the gold version of Internet Explorer 8. For this specific content, IE8 doesn’t use the latest version of its rendering engine, tailored to modern web standards, but rather behaves like older releases of the browser.
“An update for the Windows Internet Explorer 8 Compatibility View list that is dated June 23, 2009, is available. This Compatibility View list update makes Web sites that are designed for older browsers look better in Internet Explorer 8. When you install Internet Explorer 8, you can decide whether the sites that you browse should be displayed in Compatibility View. After you install this update, you may have to restart Internet Explorer,” Microsoft informed.
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