bc

Spider has been updated to version 0.0.2.4. This update includes minor changes to the default output messages Spider issues as well as the ability to load browser chrome in addition to normal web pages. I’ve made a kludgey attempt to automate Firefox which simultaneously illustrates the possibilities and pitfalls of this approach. If you are a XUL hacker and have suggestions on how to improve this approach, I would really appreciate your feedback.

/bc

DANGER! Will Robinson! DANGER!

If you are not comfortable using beta software, do not know how to back up your profile or don’t know what bugzilla is, then please do not download nightly builds for testing!

Every little bit helps…

One of the strengths of the Mozilla community which has helped make Firefox such a success are the people who love Firefox who also help to make it better. Many people have filed bugs on issues they have discovered and I would like to ask those people for a little bit of help.

Mozilla developers have been working hard to fix bugs for the releases of Firefox 2 and Thunderbird 2 later this year. So far, there have been 3331 bugs fixed on the 1.8 branch from which Firefox 2 and Thunderbird 2 will be released. Unfortunately, only 341 have been verified as fixed so far.

Crashes and Hangs

211 bugs which cause crashes or hangs have been fixed but not verified.

Regressions

327 bugs which cause regressions have been fixed but not verified.

If you filed one of the bugs on these lists, it would be very helpful if you could download a nightly build of Firefox 2 or Thunderbird 2 and verify that the bug you filed is actually fixed. Please comment in the bug and add me (bclary at bclary dot com) to the cc list.

Tip: You can easily find the bugs you filed by clicking on one of the above links and after the query loads, clicking the “Edit Search” link at the bottom of the page. Then under Email and Numbering, click the reporter check box under Any of of: and add your bugzilla email address to the field below the contains select box.

Thanks to Brian J Polidoro for bringing this to my attention.

Better now than never!

If you are a developer for a commercial web site or web application and Firefox compatibility is important to you, your employer and your customers, please begin testing your content and applications with the nightly builds of Firefox 2! The code is very quickly being locked down so that it is becoming increasingly difficult to get changes made before the release of Firefox 2. If you don’t report a problem with your site or application soon, it may be impossible to get the fix into the next release. The most important things to look for are regressions where something that worked in Firefox 1.5 is now broken in Firefox 2. This month marks the sixth year I have been a member of the Mozilla Community and it has never failed that someone from a major web site or application developer waits until the last minute to test their content with the upcoming release. Don’t be the grasshopper! Test today not tomorrow!

Firefox 1.5.0.5 was released today and every Firefox user should update today.

I have updated the ua sidebar to include the new user agent strings for those of you who are still doing user agent string browser detection.

I have also blocked access to this site and the archive for users of out of date versions of Firefox (who have JavaScript enabled). If you notice that an up to date Gecko-based browser is incorrectly blocked, please contact me and let me know the details including the user agent string.

/bc

The problem

In bash, running test programs which indicate their pass or fail status via an exit code can be problematic when they are run as part of a pipeline in Linux, Mac OS X or Cygwin since the reported exit code of a pipeline is normally the exit code of the last program in the pipeline. If the test program is not the last program in the pipeline, then its exit code will be hidden by the exit code of the last program.

The solution

bash version 3 introduced an option which changes the exit code behavior of pipelines and reports the exit code of the pipeline as the exit code of the last program to return a non-zero exit code. So long as none of the programs following the test program report a non-zero exit code, the pipeline will report its exit code to be that of the test program. To enable this option, simply execute:

set -o pipefail

in the shell where the test program will execute.

Caveat Emptor

The pipefail option was introduced in bash version 3 which is supported in current Linux and Cygwin releases of bash but is not supported by the default bash shipped on Mac OS X.

To work around this lagging version on Mac OS X, you can simply download, build and install the latest version of bash from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/ into your /usr/local/bin directory. Then code your shell scripts to use the shebang !#/usr/local/bin/bash instead of the normal /bin/bash. For systems such as Linux or Cygwin which already provide a pipefail capable version of bash, simply create a hard link from /usr/local/bin/bash to the system version /bin/bash.

ln /bin/bash /usr/local/bin/bash

The ua sidebar has been updated to include user agent strings for Firefox 1.5.0.4

If you already have the sidebar installed, you will automatically see the changes.

Vendor/Version browser detection strikes again!

When attempting to view the new Yahoo! home page in the development version of of Firefox 2 (also known as Bon Echo), I was presented with the following lovely page:

If Yahoo! had made the requirement to be any Gecko-based browser based on branch 1.8 or later (which includes Firefox 1.5), then I would have been able to see their new design without having to fudge my user agent.

If you must restrict access to specific Gecko versions, use something like getGeckoRv() which can be used to detect the version of a Gecko-based browser independently of its branding or vendor/version.

bug 334957 is an example of the evils of Vendor/Version browser detection in action.

MSNBC uses a script to implement their pull out menus using DHTML. The menu works fine in IE and Firefox, but fails in Camino, and the recent developer builds of Firefox such as Bonecho (Firefox 2) and Minefield (Firefox 3) as well as Safari due to Vendor/Version browser detection.

The support droids at MSNBC claim that they since they support 99% of browsers and only support released browsers, there is nothing they can do to fix their script.

How ironic since their stupidity forces browsers like Epiphany (a browser which embeds Firefox on the Gnome desktop in Linux) to include Firefox in their user agent strings which artificially inflates the reported marketshare of Firefox.

You may be interested to know that in order to support any Gecko-based browser with their pull-out menus, all they would have to do is change

nm_bFM = ((nm_bWin && nm_nIE >= 5.5) ||
(sUa.indexOf("Firefox") > 0)) &&
(sOTyp != "static") && (sOTyp != "javascript");

to

nm_bFM = ((nm_bWin && nm_nIE >= 5.5) ||
(nm_nNN >= 6)) &&
(sOTyp != "static") && (sOTyp != "javascript");

As an added bonus, this would allow the menus to work in Safari.

Remind me to blog about MSNBC’s policy of requiring Internet Explorer to view Videos even though other news sites support Firefox. Freedom of the press… hah!

I have started a thread in mozilla.dev.quality (nntp|Google Groups) on an automated testing project for Firefox and Thunderbird. Topics include:

• Execution Environment
• Directory Paths | CVS Locations
• Nightly Build Installation
• Building
• Profile Creation and Initialization
• Test Invocation
• Result Reporting

If you have experience with automated testing frameworks and are interested in helping out, please join the discussion.

An update to Spider which fixes a problem in trunk builds where the Spider failed to follow links whan run as a chrome XUL application is available. See What’s New for the gritty details of the changes.

A security update to Firefox 1.5 has been released. All users of Firefox 1.5 should update to 1.5.0.3.

If you already have Firefox 1.5 installed, you can easily update by clicking Help -> Check for updates. You can also download the full installer from www.mozilla.com.

The User Agent String sidebar has been updated to include Firefox 1.5.0.3.