TheThinMan writes "This is the completely updated second edition. Four years ago I made the first edition my constant companion and it has saved me, and any other web developer nearby, weeks of head-scratching since. Back then we had to tussle with Netscape Navigator 4 vs. Internet Explorer 4 while supporting the version 3 browsers. Though the browser war is over and all sides have vastly improved their products, DHTML has moved on. This edition brings home just how much has changed and just how much is new. Most importantly, it helps you to develop web interfaces that will be cross-platform from the outset." TheThinMan's thoughts on the book continue below.

robbo writes "Earlier this week, The Register ran a piece on major UK banks and E-commerce sites' refusal to support alternative browsers for online banking, and they followed up with a list of saints and sinners. The reasons vary from requiring support for proprietary technology to security. My own bank only recently started supporting Netscape 6 (but they still don't support Mozilla). Clearly, support for Mozilla, Konqueror, or Galeon are absolutely necessary if projects like GNUCash can successfully integrate online banking. How does the Slashdot crowd find their banking support? Is your bank a sinner or a saint?"

ErikRed1488 writes "There is a new virtual postcard from Friend Greetings, owned by Permissioned Media that prompts you to install their software to view the card. You are then presented with a EULA granting them permission to e-mail all the Contacts in your Outlook Address Book. Those people are presented with an e-mail from you telling them they have a greeting card to pick up. So, this thing spreads like a worm, but includes a EULA that 95% of users won't take the time to read. Symantec isn't detecting this as a virus, but does have information about it on their site. In addition to the worm-like way it spreads, it also installs spyware designed to deliver ads to your computer. You also give them permission to install further software any time they want. In my opinion this is completely nasty, but it's all clearly in the EULA that you must agree to before it installs the software."

Some of your questions for Dr. Cerf (Vint to most people) were technical, and some were political. All discussions of Internet policy end up being a mix of the two, it seems, and Vint is heavily involved with both (although I'd have to say not only from his answers here but also from personal conversation he and I have had that his main interest is the technical side).

minus_273 writes " MSNBC (of all places ) has an intersting article about AOLs new PC. We have already heard of Lindows , WALMART PC and there was speculation of AOL Red Hat. Well, it looks like this is what AOL decided to do. All 3 are mixed into one. AOL now has a beta 7.0 client that is distributed with Lindows along with AIM and Netscape. I wonder if this stuff will work on normal Linux without WINE."

ealar dlanvuli writes "BuisnessWeek Online is reporting that AOL/TW and Lindows have decided to work together in bundling a version of Netscape 7 with future Lindows products. One wonders if they should instead be supporting OEone and making it scream."

Slashback brings you another flurry of updates (below) on the recently reported Mozilla security leak, the Greek gaming ban (you'll never guess), the mega-hour TiVO mod mentioned earlier today, the long-term healthiness of the Atkins Diet, and more. Read on for the details.

Mike S. writes "Mozillazine has pointed users to this story at ZDNet UK which breaks the news about a privacy bug discovered in in all Mozilla builds up to and including 1.2a as well as browsers based on Mozilla such as Netscape 6/7, Chimera and Galeon. The bug allows a web site to track where you're going when leaving the site whether you use a link, a bookmark or type a URL into the address field. This page has a demonstration of the bug and instructions on patching it via a user.js file."

ceswiedler writes "Salon is running a story about Mozilla's potential dominance as a platform for application development. They discuss the community development centering around Mozilla, and point out that its cross-plaform GUI environment is 'exactly the kind of thing Microsoft was trying to prevent when it launched its war against Netscape. It didn't want Netscape around, because Netscape was becoming a platform.' In what might be a Salon first, they even include a reference to a Slashdot comment by SkyShadow."

Various Microsoft news tidbits contributed by numerous readers: Phoebus0 notes that Microsoft's Vice-President in charge of Windows development states flat out that Microsoft products aren't engineered for security, absolutely guaranteeing he'll have tomorrow's Ditherati quote. Many readers submitted this Knowledge Base article stating that Microsoft is mystified by a wave of successful hacks on assorted versions of Windows (there's also a news report on this). Microsoft has another security bulletin out on the digital certificate spoofing bug that has caused them so many problems recently.

MrJones was one of many many users to submit that Netscape has released Navigator 7.0 unto the world. With their dwindling market share, it'll be interesting to see what affect this has on internet users. But here's hoping it makes a dent.

Slashback tonight is loaded with updates and addenda to previous stories on Bayesian spam-prevention, pop-up ad blocking, and celebratory picnics as well as an inquiry into the other side of visionary literature. Read on below for the details.

Jucius Maximus writes "As announced on the Ogg Vorbis site, PS2/Linux developer Brad Barclay has built Ogg Vorbis libraries for PS2 Linux. I'm not seeing any encoder tools there yet, but this has implications in third party multimedia development on the platform, making it potentially cheaper for people to develop applications with music due to Vorbis's non-hostile licensing."

jsled writes "C|Net /News.com article details how the forthcoming Netscape 7.0 will not include the nifty pop-up blocking sported in Mozilla, as AOL depends on pop-up ads for annoy^H^H^H^H^Hmarketing to their "valued" customers. The MozillaZine story and comments have a couple of extra, interesting points of detail: how to easily restore the functionality and how some sites get around the popup blocking." Update: 08/15 12:45 GMT by J : In related news, Doug Isenberg asks over on GigaLaw: Are Pop-Up Ads Illegal? The news publishers who say "yes" say that turning off graphics in your web browser should be illegal too.

kernel_panic writes "Okay, I've been reading up on combining two or more SDSL connections together to give you one big fat pipe, but I haven't seen any references to doing this w/ ADSL. This place even manufactures a nifty little hardware device (ePipe) that combines two WAN ports for the aggregate sum. I've seen the Netopia 7000 Series routers support this capability as well, w/ an add-on card, but all of these places only mention accomplishing this w/ SDSL accounts. I've seen a lot of info on bandwidth load balancing, but I want bandwidth aggregation (inverse multiplexing). Has anyone had any experience doing this kind of thing w/ your Linux/BSD gateway boxen?"

briandonovan writes "A new edition? Given all of the changes in the web programming landscape since the 1998 publication of the previous edition, David Flanagan's JavaScript : The Definitive Guide (JS:TDG4), 4th Edition was overdue. Flanagan delivers a book that more than measures up to its predecessor - JS:TDG4 includes a substantial amount of new material and, as a whole, has been extensively updated. The crushing gain in browser market share by Microsoft's Internet Explorer offering, the maturation of the Netscape 6.x,7.x / Mozilla browser suite and its entry into the fray along with a slew of other Gecko-based browsers, promulgation of newer versions of the ECMAScript specification (accompanied by new implementations in JavaScript and JScript), and the publication of successive W3C DOM Recommendations are all reflected in this edition."

gwn asks: "I have just over 100 Compaq Armada 100s laptop purchased early in 2001. Over 60 have developed cracks in the lid just above the left hinge and at the front corners. I had one of these on a VP''s desk, no abuse, and it cracked. Compaq has denied any other reports of this with any other customer, just my problem they say. They have stopped giving me a hard time when I send these in for repair and they are repairing for free. This is still a royal pain in the rear and does cost me money. Lately, they started coming back with Compaq Notebook 100 labeled screens and it got me thinking they are running out of parts. It can't just be mine that are cracking. Does anyone else have a Compaq Armada 100s or Notebook 100 with cracking case problems?"

flynn_nrg writes "Luigi Rizzo, one of the FreeBSD developers, has just finished the code for a new scheduler. From the announcement: '...as promised, a first version of the Proportional Share scheduler that we developed is available here. These are for a recent -STABLE (i think any version from 4.4 should work; the only 3 files modified are kern_synch.c, kern_switch.c and proc.h, plus a one-line change to kern_exit.c). I have tested it a little bit on a diskless system, and it seems to survive running a full X session with the usual set of xterm, netscape etc. while i do a "renice" of the processes and even switch back and forth between schedulers. But do not trust this yet for a production system!' Read the full post here."

chill writes "CNN is reporting "RealNetworks on Monday will unveil a new open source version of its streaming media software that supports multiple file formats for audio and video, including those that use Microsoft's Windows Media technology." and "RealNetworks did not formally license the ability to offer Windows Media software, but instead re-created the technology based on data streams sent between the server and player software, The New York Times reported. A Microsoft representative told the newspaper that the company would need to determine whether RealNetworks licensed the software before taking action. " I can't wait to see the actual license." Update: 07/22 19:10 GMT by T : The software can be downloaded from the Helix site, if you're interested.

dmayle asks: "I'm an origami folder, and I have some diagrams stored as web pages on a cd. I'd like to print them out (since folding in front of a computer monitor is not the easiest of tasks), but the web pages have all of the steps laid out horizontally. I've tried using Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, and even IE (on a windows platform), but I can't seem to find a printing engine that can handle wide web pages. Am I missing something? Hasn't anyone ever tried to print wide web pages before? What I'm asking is: Do you folks know of any utilities (or browsers) that I've missed that can handle printing wide web pages?"