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Chrome: Back to Firefox

Posted by James | Filed under Web

After a day of using Google Chrome, I’ve gone back to using Firefox 3. My biggest complaint with Chrome is the lack of extensions (although it has been noted that these could appear in future). I find it much harder to do my job without Firebug, Web Developer Toolbar, et al.

I was perturbed by Google’s EULA for the browser, giving Google potential rights to everything posted via the browser, however they have since modified this to alleviate users’ fears.

I’ve also been put off by a couple of issues I’ve read about/discovered:

A flaw in the version of the WebKit browser engine Chrome uses allows an attacker to use a Java carpet-bombing attack, whereby a user can be tricked into launching an executable Java file.
Typing ‘:%’ into Chrome’s omnibar crashes the app hard, taking all tabs down with it. So much for tab process isolation!

However, I love the V8 Javascript engine:

It achieves great performance by compiling JavaScript to native machine code, rather than to a bytecode. Thus, JavaScript applications will run at the speed of a compiled binary.

photo credit: themaxsons

Tags: Browsers, Chrome, google, java

Read more | Comments (0) | September 5th, 2008

Add To Reader for Ubiquity

Posted by James | Filed under Code, Geek, Web

Just wrote a basic “Add to Reader” verb for Ubiquity.

ubiquity

If you don’t know what Ubiquity is then watch the video.

Ubiquity is going to be awesome for Firefox power-users. One of the best things about Firefox is the extension eco-system and Ubiquity is going to make writing extensions much easier.

UPDATE: Modified my script to no longer require the type of feed, it will now just pick the first one it finds. Future ideas include listing the feeds available and allowing the user to choose one before adding it.

Tags: Add-on, firefox, firefox extension, firefox-add on, mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Ubiquity

Read more | Comments (0) | August 27th, 2008

Google releases Open Source Crypto

Posted by James | Filed under Code, Open Source, Security, Web

photo credit: gruntzooki

Google has released “Keyczar”, a cryptography toolkit that supports encryption and authentication for both symmetric and public-key algorithms.

Why Keyczar?

Cryptography is easy to get wrong. Developers can choose improper cipher modes, use obsolete algorithms, compose primitives in an unsafe manner, or fail to anticipate the need for key rotation.

Cryptography is a common problem for web programmers, and Google aims to alleviate some of these issues by giving programmers a simple API for these functions.

Keyczar abstracts some of these details by choosing safe defaults, automatically tagging outputs with key version information, and providing a simple programming interface.

Keyczar is designed to be open, extensible, and cross-platform compatible. It is not intended to replace existing cryptographic libraries like OpenSSL, PyCrypto, or the Java JCE, and in fact is built on these libraries.

To download Keyczar and for more information, please visit the Google Code project and discussion group.

[Via] Google Online Security Blog