• Feb 17, 2004

    Mozilla Europe website launched

    Mozilla Europe, a non-profit organization that was recently founded by several European Netscapees and Mozilla contributors, has just launched its website. Read the press release.

    Some would say the website design has a certain Communist theme to it - I wonder if it's not because of the judicious use of red and stars. Very nice, nonetheless. My only complaint would be the accessibility links which appear when you roll over them. Somewhere below the navigation bar, there are 3 links: "skip to Navigation", "skip to Search" and "switch language", which are hidden by applying a white color to the text, but become black when hovered. Confusing to a normal user to say the least. At least it confused me a bit when for a moment I thought the site just managed to produce a Peek-a-boo IE6 bug. But of course not, this is Gecko we're talking about ;). Back on topic, I don't see the point of providing accessibility links in this manner since it appears for users who don't need them when they least expect it. Try Mark Pilgrim's advice. Not to take anything away from the designer(s) though - they have done an excellent job.

    Update: The designer of the Mozilla Europe website, Sam Latchman, has made clear several things in his comment. Most importantly, "display:none" does not pass muster on many screen readers as proven on css-discuss.

  • Feb 16, 2004

    Interesting Google stuff

    I seem to have picked up a handful of Google-related bookmarks. I think I have way too many at the moment so it is as opportune a time as any to start making link dumps.

    • Hidden Google Tools writes on several tools you probably never knew existed. Some of these are listed below.
    • Soople provides a form-based front end to many of Google's more advanced operators. Nothing to it really - just a simple form submission to Google with the appropriate query string. But convenient nonetheless.
    • Fagan Finder is quite like Soople, though it has an IE-only version which I didn't bother to check.
    • Google WebQuotes is a beta application from Google Labs which "offers a convenient way to get a third party's opinion about each of the returns for your search, providing you with more information about that site's credibility and reputation".
    • Google Guide is an interactive tutorial on how to use Google more effectively.
    • Google has a help page on Advanced Search Operators. Nice to keep it handy.
    • Google offers special searches within specific topics, including searches for Universities and other institutes of education with university searches.

    Now that's 7 less bookmarks which makes it, erm, 1196 - 7 = 1189 more bookmarks to go through.

  • Feb 14, 2004

    Blogzilla exposes some Windows source code

    Update: I notice lots of people coming in to this page from Google searching for "windows source code". Whoops, sorry, but this isn't the place to get the actual source or any real news on it. Do stay and look around if you're interested though :)

    Blogzilla takes a look at some Windows source code derived from "unnamed sources".

    We here at redemption in a blog were also provided with some choice bits of the source code via unnamed sources:

    if( application.language == JAVA ) {

    set_speed_step_factor( 0.50 ); // decrement clock speed to 50%
    set_crash_probabilty( 0.80 );

    if( application.toolkit == SWING ) {
    render_speed( UNBEARINGLY_SLOW );
    start_idle_task(); // start an invisible process to consume CPU cycles
    disable_hardware_acceleration();
    }
    }

    In other news, Dilbork, everyone's favorite geek comic, has a strip on Mozilla.

  • Feb 13, 2004

    Firebird? Firefox? How about Firegoat?

    Firesomething is an extension that changes the "fox" (or "bird" if you're using Firebird) into something else. Something else which can be whatever you want.

    Screenshot of Firesomething in action

    Check out the concise feature list:

    Features: Polymorphs fire animals.

  • Feb 11, 2004

    The new referrer spam technique - blogger beware!

    I was checking my referrer logs the other day and came across several peculiar entries. There were mostly weblogs (except for 1), and at first glance would seem to be legitimate. Until I noticed a few things:

    • There is no sign of a link back to my site.
    • There are links to smut sites which appear to be the same throughout these sites.
    • The weblogs are new - in some cases there is only 1 entry, and no sign of an archive.
    • Certain elements are repeated across the sites.

    Take a look at the sites (all redirected via JavaScript so that search engines ignore them): [1] [2] [3] [4].

    Unmistakably, these are sites owned by a single person (or group of persons) who is out to seek referral links back to their sites, what is colloquially called "referral spam". Whatever for, you say? Well, here's a hypothesis (obvious as it is, it probably should be called "the truth" rather than a hypothesis).

    First and foremost, this person (let's just say, for ease of writing, that it is 1 person and it is a guy) is clearly someone intent on capitalizing on the weblog linking phenom that allows weblogs to have high PageRanks. A discerning eye will notice how the sites have domain names that can be turned around into sites of pornographic nature. Strong evidence that these either were porn sites before or are going to be once their Google PageRank gets high enough. By putting up some seemingly legitimate content to throw off webloggers, this person hopes to have his referral links unnoticed, unblocked (and implicitly acknowleged as legitimate). Referrer spammers are probably having a hard time with the increased awareness about referrer spam among webloggers, including tools and scripts to stop them. I can almost hear the imaginary light bulb switching on in their minds - why not use blogs as well? Place referrer links from a dummy weblog, link to several sites, get linked back (illegitimately), and get away with it. Just sit back and watch the PageRank and backlinks grow. Smart, but not smart enough.

    Notice how the links to smut sites are almost consistent across all 4 sites - dead giveaway. That was what set the alarm bells ringing for me - why the hell would a weblog link to pornographic sites? In this case, this person is getting ahead of himself. The intention, as I see it, would be to make use of these fake blogs to boost search engine rankings for his existing sites by linking to them. Ah greedy, greedy. And what's more, those links go to a porn site which I've blocked. Folly, folly.

    Curiousity piqued, I Googled in hope of finding someone else reporting the same phenomenon. Here's what I found:

    So this is not new (4 months old news isn't news). I wonder, how many webloggers have heard of this or seen this before though. I'm not clear on the how high the level of awareness is, but if you do have a weblog, do warn your readers (who are probably bloggers themselves). (And no, you don't have to link back to me - hypocrite I am not ;))

    As for a solution, I use mod_rewrite to block out unwanted referrers, thanks to kasia in a nutshell. You can view my .htaccess (which contains my list of blocked referrers as well). For an explanation of how this works, check out pippo's reply to my thread at SitePoint Forums.

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