Welcome |eMusings | Offtakes on Web-related software, services 'n tips

Thu, 9 Sep 2010
by emusings
3 Comments

Tip Jar: Live Dangerously! Fix your crawling BSNL DNS

Disclaimer: Implementing this change requires understanding Windows Networking. It may contravene BSNL policy.

This writer uses India’s BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited – what a mouthful hence the acronym) Dataone broadband service. Which is a bit of step-child with mostly outdated (and therefore useless) configuration information on the vendor’s site. That is assuming you can find said information in the first place. I usually use Google to search for DNS status updates. There’s an active thread at the India Broadband Forum where users post their experiences.

I got plumb tired of waiting for ages to open any website outside India. Including this blog. So I did a bit of digging and decided to live dangerously. I changed my DNS settings to use Google Public DNS instead.

To do so I first opened a command line window and ran ‘ipconfig /all’ to detect the existing BSNL DNS which I then carefully wrote down (in case living dangerously meant no connection). I next opened the Windows Control Panel network option and changed the primary and secondary DNS to those offered by Google for both dial-up modem IP4 DNS settings. As well as those for the LAN Card’s IP4 settings. You have to do it in both or there will be no appreciable enhancement. BSNL Router users too can change their settings by opening http://192.168.1.1 and using admin / admin as the login / password combination. If that doesn’t work check the router documentation (you did save it safe somewhere didn’t you?).

And once you are done run Ping Test (requires Flash & Java VM) to check your grade. I tried the service before changing the connection and the site timed out before it could test anything!

Broadband throughput using Mozilla Firefox 3.6.9

Broadband throughput with Mozilla Firefox 3.6.9

Broadband throughput using Google Chrome 6.0.472.x

Broadband throughput with Google Chrome 6.0.472.x

After switching to the Google DNS, I got a B grade connecting to a Mumbai (aka Bombay, India) server and a D grade connecting to Ashburn, VA (USA) servers. Do note these aren’t subjective tests because testing using a different service, Speedtest, of the same servers got completely different times! I tested with Firefox 3.6.9 and Google Chrome 6.0.472.x and Chrome was way faster!!! My poor scores may have something to do with the ancient (4+ years old) modem provided when the maximum BSNL network speed was an awe-inspiring 256 kbps!

And even if you aren’t in India, the Google Public DNS may improve your browsing speed, So why not try it. Living on the edge can be fun!

Thu, 1 Jul 2010
by emusings
0 comments

Firefox 4 Beta out now with modified user interface

It’s heeeere! The much awaited Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta (or rather Beta 2 to be exact). With its ‘all new’ layout. That’s quite similar to Chrome but still needs work. Feature-wise little has changed since the Firefox 3.7alpha5 release. And there are still plenty of gap areas. That in the Beta can’t be addressed through add-ons because of changes in the Firefox 3.7alpha5 add-on structure. Even Nightly Tester Tools, every tester’s jailbreak app, doesn’t work.

Right now there’s just the one add-on that does work: Mozilla Sync (aka Weave, Dec 9, 2009).

Several previewers have been complaining that Firefox 4 Beta starts up slower. I didn’t notice any speed checks as compared to Firefox 3.7 alpha builds. But when you start a new instance or even open a new blank Windows the app seems to lockup for several seconds.

In the default display, the menu and bookmark tool bars are hidden. With menu tabs displayed above the address bar. But unlike Opera there’s no tab preview. All you get is the page title text. The Bookmark bar is now accessed via a button set at extreme right. Unfortunately in the Beta, you can’t change the button position. But oddly enough you can add the same button to the menu using the customize option!

The new orange colored button (labelled Minefield) at the top extreme left is more Opera that Google Chrome. This button supposedly allows access to the most used links. On my version Check Updates is a frequently used option that doesn’t appear in the quick list. But not having the menu bar constantly visible isn’t that bad. On Windows press ALT to display the menu. Then when you click a menu item it vanishes. If you can’t decide what do do press ALT again to hide the menu.

The right-click context menu has been updated for hyperlinks. You can now direct open a link (in the selected tab/window). Or in a new Tab or Window.

Test-wise Firefox 4 Beta 2 still turns in an ACID3 test score of 97/100 compared to Firefox 3.6.6 (94/100), Google Chromium (100/100) or Opera 10.60 (100/100). The only browser that does worse is Internet Explorer 8 with a failing score of 20/100. But then do we ever expect great geeky stuff from Microsoft.

For this users I miss simple things like the ability to paste ‘n open URLs from the address bar (available in Google Chrome/Chromium and Opera). Or the ability to add, disable and re-enable add-ons without a app restart. Google Chrome manages this so well. How come Firefox can’t do so too?

Mon, 21 Jun 2010
by emusings
0 comments

Tip Jar: Pidgim – multi-service Instant Messaging (IM) client

Friends, family and customers frequently wonder which instant messaging client I use. The answer is the free Pidgin. That allows you to connect to multiple services like Yahoo, GMail (Jabber), MSN, AOL, ICQ, IRC, MySpace and more. And is available for the MacOS, Linux and Windows platforms.

There’s even a Skype plug-in for Pidgin but because of the Skype platform model, you also need to have Skype running. Which sort of defeats the purpose of a single IM client? Just use Skype for text, voice and video chats

Yes, some features like voice chat (VoIP) and file transfers are either crippled or plain not available. But I like my all-in-one client which uses fixed system resources. And runs multiple chat sessions via a tabbed pop-up. Instead of multiple clients with their own chat windows. Pidgin connects directly or through a proxy. And you can set each account’s connection individually.

Pidgin is available as a download complete with the GTK runtime. Or you can download a Portable version.

My company has standardized on an internal OpenFire (Jabber platform) chat server for inter-employee communications including file sharing. Doing so has really simplified our LAN configuration since we no longer need to use Active Directory to share files among computers.

And for members of the super-paranoid tribe, you can encrypt communications using Encryption or OTR (Off The Record) add-ins. Once installed you have to setup private and public keys. Then send a chat request with public key to your buddy (also using Pidgin). Who accepts the request and adds the key to their certificate store. Now all chats between you two are encrypted.

A network admin buddy tells me that unlike other IM chats displayed in plain text in server access logs, OTR communications display as hashes. Pretty neat, dontcha’ think?

There are other free clients available like Digsby and Miranda. But my experiences with both haven’t been very good. The open-source Digsby requires that you first register an account with them to use the client. I don’t see why I need to add another gateway with potential access to my buddy lists and private conversations.

Miranda has been very unstable for me. Not only are there frequent crashes; usually in the middle of an important chat. But setting up Miranda isn’t very easy. You need to activate just about every feature. In Pidgin where key features are activated and you only need to disable the ones you don’t need or want.

Mon, 14 Jun 2010
by emusings
0 comments

Tip Jar: Firefox Spell Check – Do Word-style grammar squiggly underline

The Download Squad dug out this gem from the Mozilla Knowledgebase.

Firefox’s integrated spell checker is extremely handy for avoiding an embarrassing typo in an email, blog post, or Twitter update, but after a while, the light red underline is easy to ignore. Fix that with a quick about:config tweak as follows:

Enter About:config in the Firefox address bar. If it pops up an alert, tell it that you know what you’re doing and proceed.
Search for ui.SpellCheckerUnderlineStyle. If you find anything, skip to step 5.
If your system is like mine, you found nothing. That means you have to add this configuration value. Right-click the main portion of the window and select New > Integer.
Now, enter ui.SpellCheckerUnderlineStyle to create a setting by this name.
Now you can set the value of this setting to one of several options: 0 for no highlighting, 1 for a dotted line, 2 for long dots, 3 for a single straight line, 4 for a double underline (like you see above – that’s my pick), and 5 for a squiggly line, which is the default

Fri, 9 Apr 2010
by emusings
1 Comment

Tip Jar: Fix Firefox 3.7 Alpha Memory Leaks & Runaway Processes

If you are using Firefox 3.7 Alpha (properly Firefox 3.7a4 pre) and have been noticing your system slowing or choking, there are a few sub-processes or properly Out-of-process plug-ins (OOPP) that may be leaking memory. Active OOPPs will be listed in Windows Task Manager > Processes as mozilla-runtime.exe.

In my testing I found that three plug-ins

Macromedia Shockwave for Director Netscape v10.1.1.16
RealPlayer Version Plug-in 6.0.12.1348
RealPlayer G2 LiveConnect-enabled Plug-in (32-bit) 6.0.11.2240.

were guilty. Shockwave Flash would also run as an OOPP when you opened a Flash-enabled site. However once you done visiting such a site you can safely terminate this sub-process without messing up Firefox.

And if you haven’t used Firefox 3.7 Alpha yet, I hope you will test it soon. Instead of installing it use the latest Firefox 3.7 Alpha Portable edition. And make sure to allow it to update at least once a week instead of installing a copy.

Despite the odd version number, its way closer in features and spirit to the much-awaited Firefox 4. There are lost of improvements including an awesome page rendering speed, page rendering speed is awesome and this build despite its quirk is more polished than the official ‘n stable Firefox 3.6.x releases.

Windows 7 users will view the new clean interface with window transparency and Aero Peek support. If you use a previous version of Windows you may want to install the Strata 40 theme. To make sure you can install stuff on cutting edge versions, make sure to first install the Nightly Tester Tools extension. This let’s you bypass Firefox extension installer built-in version checking.