Spontaneous Monotony

If anyone else is getting the footer problem (that I mentioned in the post the other day) then please add a comment (preferably a screenshot if possible) to this mozilla bug report as something this serious (inability to correctly render CSS which even IE6 copes with) should probably be sorted out before the final release of Firefox 1.5. It isn’t just a problem with this site – someone else using Wordpress 1.5.x has had the same problem (there’s a Wordpress support discussion on it, which was where I got the bug report URL from).

UPDATE: Forgot to mention – you’ll need a Bugzilla account (free registration) to submit anything

I’m now using the first beta release of the new version of Wordpress- originally expected to be called Wordpress 1.6 (the reason for the jump is unclear). It has the AJAX userinterface of Wordpress.com, and the Akismet spam plugin (whose effectiveness I will report back on at a later date) comes as standard. Other improvements include:

• Visual preview of themes (as opposed to simply getting the name and author)
• Easier user account handling (it now uses a role-based permission system ie I can say whether someone is an ordinary user, a writer, an admin etc.)
• Adding categories from post edit menu

At the moment there don’t seem to be very many improvements to the ‘front end’ (ie the part of the website visitors see) but if you spot anything different (or any bugs!!!) then let me know!

Update: The only change I’ve noticed in the user-accessible area of the site is that the footer is squint

The Sony XCP rootkit story just keeps getting better and better – copyright infringement lawsuits may soon be added to the antitrust and computer hacking ones. Matti Nikki has disassembled it and found out that it uses code from several opensource projects – including LAME (the popular MP3 substitute codec used by the likes of Audacity) and VLC (the cross-platform media player written by John Lech Johansen. Why is this a problem? Because both programs are licensed under the GPL license, which requires that ANY program incorporating code from them must itself be released under the GPL. So far, XCP has not been released under such a license. Sony has now been well and truly knocked off its cherished high horse.

Just a warning for Firefox users (this has also gone up on my rarely-used spreadfirefox blog and my wordpress.com test account): The latest version of the FireFTP extension (0.9) comes with compatibility with Firefox 1.5, but less happily it also comes with a popup ad. Users who have not donated are presented with a popup nag screen demanding money – and this happens EVERY TIME YOU OPEN THE TOOL. If I wanted my machine loaded with adware then I would go back to M$ Internet Exploiter.

Update: The plugin’s author has e-mailed me to say that he has made the program ‘less intrusive’ – I’ll report back on what exactly that means when I get a chance to install the extension

Update 2: The ad screen is STILL THERE. Sure, you get to disable it this time (It’s a Yes, Not Now, Remind me Later screen) but it hasn’t been removed altogether – so if you are uncomfortable with ads in Firefox on principle, you should still give it a miss.

You’ll notice that I’m now using TinyURLs for all external links on this site – including those in comments/trackbacks. There is no great sinister plot involved, it’s just that a 24-character TinyURL loads faster than a 75- or 80-character W3C validator link. It also helps for copy-pasting links into your browser’s address bar. For commenters/trackbackers: this is NOT nofollow by the back door, your contributions ARE welcome on this site – Google and other search engines will give the link credit to the page they end up at, not the TinyURL (works the same as all those RedirectPermanent codes I had to write when I switched blogging systems).