Massively-improved memory use of Firefox 3

Posted by Rakesh under Linux /GNU, Technology

It’s great to see the massively-improved memory use of Firefox 3. It far excels anything that we offered, previously, and seems to best all other browsers on the platform.

Now, obviously, Windows Vista isn’t the only platform available. I, personally, use Debian (Linux) and am interested to see the memory numbers there as well.

The short summary is Windows Vista (Commit Size) and Linux (RSS) provide pretty accurate memory measurement numbers while Windows XP and Mac OS X do not.

On Mac, If you look at Activity Monitor it will look like we’re using more memory than we actually are. Mac OS X has a similar, but different, problem to Windows XP. After extensive testing and confirmation from Apple employees we realized that there was no way for an allocator to give unused pages of memory back while keeping the address range reserved.. (You can unmap them and remap them, but that causes some race conditions and isn’t as performant.) There are APIs that claim to do it (both madvise() and msync()) but they don’t actually do anything. It does appear that pages mapped in that haven’t been written to won’t be accounted for in memory stats, but you’ve written to them they’re going to show as taking up space until you unmap them. Since allocators will reuse space, you generally won’t have that many pages mapped in that haven’t been written to. Our application can and will reuse the free pages, so you should see Firefox hit a peak number and generally not grow a lot higher than that.

I think it’s great to see these numbers come in. In many ways Firefox 3 is going to be a very different browser from its previous instantiations. I’ve, personally, been using it as my primary browser for a while now and have enjoyed the increased performance. It really does feel – and really even look – like a whole new browser.

Click here for the real story

What makes Firefox so special to internet users

Posted by Rakesh under Linux /GNU, Technology

I do not remember how many times I used and will use Mozilla Firefox. But I have remembered, how many times I used Microsoft Internet Explorer – it would be approximately one hundred times (not more than this, I guess). Of course, Mozilla Firefox is best browser for me. There are many reasons to love Mozilla Firefox. It’s Open Source Software and one of the best browsers out there on the market, and it’s free (as in liberating).

Through the unique development methods of Open Source, they are able to make a product with impressive speed and less bugs than programs developed by traditional methods. Mozilla Firefox has a number of unique features, and it is overall a good product.

Mozilla Firefox has a superb Firebug extension and I’m fan of this tool. Probably the single most useful extension for web development. I love how you can examine your webpage structure and even change styles or HTML elements on the fly. The Javascript console is really handy for testing JQuery statements and other scripts.

There are many other features which I like most such as:

firefox -ProfileManager -no-remote

This is how you start a separate session of Firefox, so you can test your site using, say, an admin account and a regular user account at the same time. Bonus: you can set up a test profile with very few add-ons, so that your add-ons don’t interfere with the site you’re testing.

Other ways to accomplish this: run a separate browser, or use the Devel module to switch back and forth. Not as convenient, though.

Tamper Data [Click here fo the adon]

The Tamper Data module is handy when you’re debugging form submits or page redirects, because you can step through the requests or change any of the submitted values. You can use tamperdata to view and modify HTTP/HTTPS headers and post parameters…

Macros [click here for the addon]

Automate, record and replay repetitious browser-based work or tasks. If you love the Firefox web browser, but are tired of repetitive tasks like visiting the same sites every days, filling out forms, and remembering passwords, then iMacros for Firefox is the solution you’ve been dreaming of! ***Whatever you do with Firefox, iMacros can automate it.***

about:config

The about:config shows an interface for viewing and setting a wide variety of configuration variables, many of which are not otherwise accessible through the GUI.

what makes Firefox so special to internet users

A big part of what makes Firefox so special to power users is its extensibility with extensions, add-ons, plug-ins and themes, and Firefox 3’s Add-ons dialog got the attention it deserved.

Mozilla tweaked and updated a whole lot of little things here and there throughout Firefox 3, which amounts to a big overall boost in usability.

protection against malware and phishing sites

Firefox 3 has stronger filters and protection against malware, phishing sites, cookies, and other tools that compromise privacy and security. A malware warning shows up when you visit sites known to install malicious software, Firefox 3 doesn’t show the content of knock-off sites. Now you can feel even better switching your less tech-aware relatives over to the open-source browser.

natural extension of your system

Your browser is a serious part of your computer time, so having it look like nothing else on your system can be seriously annoying. Firefox’s designers made system integration a priority with this release, and it shows—even Windows XP’s and Vista’s button layouts have subtle differences in color and shading. There’s differences at deeper levels, too, with Cover Flow-type styling in the add-ons manager for OS X, transparencies in key places in Vista and OS X, and other tweaks that make your browser feel like a natural extension of your system.

no more guess for right password

No more guessing whether you’re saving the right password or clicking “Cancel” on unnecessary pop-up requests. Gran Paradiso only asks you to utilize its password-saving function once you’re already in and sure everything worked, and it won’t block you from seeing the logged-out version of a page if you don’t want to sign in.

smart bookmarks

Much like iTunes’ Smart Playlists, Firefox 3’s new Smart Bookmarks function can analyze your browsing habits and create lists of links based on it. The default bookmark toolbar only comes with three standards, “Most Visited,” “Recently Bookmarked,” and “Recent Tags” (more on that later), but it’s none too hard to make your own.

Previous versions of Firefox’s bookmark organizer have been pretty utilitarian affairs that make you drag and drop your links around nested folders. With Firefox 3’s new Places Organizer, those with reams of URLs can find them using boolean rule searches and multi-column results, as well as keep them better organized with a tagging system. Better still, you can save those smart searches for when you next need them.

smart location bar

Like a personal assistant who telepathically knows when you’re going to need just the right phone number (or Starbucks fix), Firefox 3’s address bar, now dubbed the Smart Location Bar, helps you get to your frequently visited, or recently discovered, sites in super-quick fashion. That application you just read about on AIRAKESH’s Weblog, but can’t remember the name? Type “m” into your address bar, and Firefox instantly pulls the relevant sites from your history. The bar also learns through repetition, so the next time you start searching with “m,” it knows you’re looking for Mozilla, not Microsoft.

snappier browser performance

It’s not flashy, and it doesn’t have any social networking features, but Firefox 3’s actual performance is the best reason anyone should consider upgrading, or making the switch to the ‘fox. Firefox’s engineers claim that their third major release is 9.3 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 in JavaScript performance, and 2.7 times faster than Firefox 2. This means snappier browser performance when you’re using webapps like Gmail, Remember the Milk, and more. Even more important, especially for Mac users, is the improved memory usage and more than 15,000 improvements that make for a less crash-prone browser. I’ve seen noticeable speed-ups in page loading in Linux, XP, and Vista, but the real reason I’ve switched over to using Release Candidate 1 is that I haven’t had to cross my fingers every time a Flash-based video loads. Graphed comparison of memory use amongst browsers in Vista courtesy of John Resig.

Useful links:

http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/features/
https://addons.mozilla.org/

How to install Google Chrome in Fedora 10 or Fedora 11 (Linux)

Posted by Rakesh under Howto, Linux /GNU, Uncategorized

As we know, Google has already its open source version of its Chrome browser and it is called Chromium. But recently Google has updated its Google Chrome browser with a new beta release.

So here, it’s all about installing Google Chrome browser on Fedora machine.

Lets’s start installing Google Chrome browser from commandline on Fedora 10 or Fedora 11 machine (step-by-step guide).

Command line configuration for YUM

First, use rpm to install the key, as described in the RPM setup guide.

As root, add the following to a file called google.repo in /etc/yum.repos.d/:

root@ fedora:~# cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
root @fedora: yum.repos.d]# gedit google.repo

[google] name=Google - i386 baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/i386 enabled=1 gpgcheck=1 gpgkey=https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub

If your .repo file contains gpgcheck=1, signatures will automatically be verified during installation.

If you are running a 64-bit distribution, you should also add the x86_64 repository, which will provide you with native 64-bit versions of some of our software:

[google64] name=Google - x86_64 baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/x86_64 enabled=1 gpgcheck=1 gpgkey=https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub

You can then use yum as usual, e.g.


root@ fedora:~# yum install google-chrome


While installing google-chrome, when it is asked to enter y/N, type ‘Yes’ to proceed with installation (please follow as mentioned below).

warning: rpmts_HdrFromFdno: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 7fac5991 google/gpgkey | 1.7 kB 00:00 Importing GPG key 0×7FAC5991 “Google, Inc. Linux Package Signing Key ” from https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub Is this ok [y/N]: y

Done!

To open the browser, go to Applications -> Internet -> Google Chrome.

Enjoy Google Chrome in Fedora Linux ! …

How to prevent Google from tracking your searches

Posted by Rakesh under Uncategorized

Google thrives where privacy does not. If you’re like most internet users, Google knows more about you than you might be comfortable with. Whether you were logged in to a Google account or not, they know everything you’ve ever searched for, what search results you clicked on, what news you read, and every place you’ve ever gotten directions to. Most of the time, thanks to things like Google Analytics, they even know which websites you visited that you didn’t reach through Google. If you use Gmail, they know the content of every email you’ve ever sent or received, whether you’ve deleted it or not.

They know who your friends are, where you live, where you work, and where you spend your free time. They know about your health, your love life, and your political leanings. These days they are even branching out into collecting your realtime GPS location and your DNS lookups. In short, not only do they know a lot about what you’re doing, they also have significant insight into what you’re thinking.

GoogleSharing is a special kind of anonymizing proxy service, designed for a very specific threat. It ultimately aims to provide a level of anonymity that will prevent google from tracking your searches, movements, and what websites you visit. GoogleSharing is not a full proxy service designed to anonymize all your traffic, but rather something designed exclusively for your communication with Google.

GoogleSharing is a system that mixes the requests of many different users together, such that Google is not capable of telling what is coming from whom. GoogleSharing aims to do a few very specific things:

1. Provide a system that will prevent Google from collecting information about you from services which don’t require a login.
2. Make this system completely transparent to the user. No special websites, no change to your work flow.
3. Leave your non-Google traffic completely untouched, unredirected, and unaffected.

The GoogleSharing system consists of a custom proxy and a Firefox Addon. The proxy works by generating a pool of GoogleSharing “identities,” each of which contains a cookie issued by Google and an arbitrary User-Agent for one of several popular browsers. The Firefox Addon watches for requests to Google services from your browser, and when enabled will transparently redirect all of them (except for things like Gmail) to a GoogleSharing proxy. There your request is stripped of all identifying information and replaced with the information from a GoogleSharing identity.

Googlesharing is hardly the only tool that can flummox Google’s behavioral tracking system. The proxy system Tor, for instance, provides anonymity for any sort of Web browsing by siphoning a user’s data requests through not one but three servers.

Click here to download Firefox Addon for GoogleSharing proxy.

How to Install Google Chrome browser (not Chromium) in Debian Linux

Posted by Rakesh under Howto, Linux /GNU, Nxt, Uncategorized

Google Chrome for Linux has arrived.

As we know, Google has already its open source version of its Chrome browser and it is called Chromium. But recently Google has updated its Google Chrome browser with a new beta release.

So here, it’s all about installing Google Chrome browser on Debian machine.

Installing Google Chrome browser (Chromium) on Debian Lenny or Ubuntu is easy. Let’s start now…

Imp. Note:

Command line configuration for APT

On an APT-based system (Debian, Ubuntu, etc.), you must download the key and then use apt to install it and refresh your package indexes.
For more information on Google’s package signing key, see the Signing Key page.

Run these commands as root from commandline:

rakesh@ debian:~# wget -q -O – https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | apt-key add -


rakesh@ debian:~# apt-get update

Recent versions of apt-get will automatically attempt to verify packages on download. If an appropriate key is not found or if the package is corrupted, you will get a message like the following:

WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated! packagename

Add the following rule to e.g. /etc/apt/sources.list, or if your distro has the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ directory, add it to a file called google.list in that directory:

rakesh@ debian:~# gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

# Google software repository deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free main

then use apt as usual, e.g.

rakesh@ debian:~# sudo apt-get update

Run the following command from commandline as root to install Chrome browser (for me the current version of Chrome are: google-chrome-unstable and google-chrome-beta)

rakesh@ debian:~# sudo apt-get install google-chrome-unstable

OR

rakesh@ debian:~# sudo apt-get install google-chrome-beta

Done!

To open the browser, go to Applications -> Internet -> Google Chrome.

Enjoy Google Chrome in Linux ! …