Mozilla released Firefox 3.5 last week with loads of new features like the zippy TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. It also includes another feature that I don't think I can ever warm up to - a revamped NSS module that causes ridiculously long launch times on Windows computers.

The NSS is responsible for handling encryption tasks via SSL, TLS, etc. When we're talking about encryption, random numbers are par for the course. I'm not sure how they generated random numbers in previous NSS versions, but for 3.5, Mozilla decided that using various temporary files on people's computers was a stellar way to calculate a seed for a random number generator. Generating truly random numbers on computers is hard. Hell, randomness itself is hard. Yet whatever Mozilla was doing before seemed to work well. Why they decided to use temp files now is anybody's guess. Especially given the fact that typical computer users don't even know of the existence of the various temporary folders on their systems, so we could be talking thousands of files that the NSS has to iterate over to generate a random number generator's seed. Thankfully, this issue has been logged as a Priority 1 bug, so we (hopefully) can anticipate a speedy resolution. In the meantime, if you like Firefox 3.5 on Windows but its slow startup has you at your wits' end (and you don't want to revert to a 3.0.x version), keep the following folders on your computer as clean as possible until this is fixed in a point release:

Windows 2000, XP and 2003

• C:\Documents and Settings\[user_name]\Temp\
• C:\Documents and Settings\[user_name]\Local Settings\Temp
• C:\Documents and Settings\[user_name]\My Recent Documents
• C:\Documents and Settings\[user_name]\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
• C:\Documents and Settings\[user_name]\Local Settings\History

Windows Vista, 2008 and 7

• C:\Users\[user_name]\Temp\
• C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Local\Temp
• C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
• C:\Users\[user_name]\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
• C:\Users\[user_name]\Local Settings\History

Now I don't want to comment on where Google is in the right or wrong and how their luck has taken a down-turn, since other bloggers have and will continue to do so. Although, I am a bit perplexed as to why Google didn't have backups for those deleted emails. I've read that Google has rolled their own file system and that it's apparently amazing, but I'm not sure any file system is rock solid enough to forgo disaster recovery plans for mission-critical applications and data.

At any rate, what I'd like to focus on are the two vulnerabilities, both of which have been fixed. Since Gmail is a web application, any update that Google makes to Gmail is automatically available to all users. Nobody has to go to the store to purchase new software, or download any patches or service packs. All users are using the latest version, complete with fixes for known problems. Also, it should be noted that the vulnerabilities were corrected in less than 24 hours since they were publicly announced.

Google Toolbar
Search term suggestions. Phishing detection. AutoFill for speedy completion of webforms. Spell check. This is a handy extension, but I'm not sure if I'll have a need for this when Firefox 2.0 ships.

Adblock
Advertising pays the bills for a lot of sites, but there's a 99.999% chance that I'll never click on a banner ad. So my guilt is slightly alleived when this handy extension removes them from every site that I visit

Adblock Filterset.G Updater
Filterset.G is a handy list of regular expressions that the aforementioned Adblock extension uses to determine ad content on a web page. This extension ensures that said list is automatically kept up-to-date.

IE Tab
This is one of those for-Windows-only extensions. This extension is extremely useful for web development testing, since it allows you to view any web page using Internet Explorer's rendering engine right from within Firefox. It's also perfect for viewing various web sites that only render correctly in IE (cough, MSDN, cough).

Web Developer
Another web development time-saver. It features a slew of tools to make development easier. The "convert POST to GET" feature alone is indespensible.

del.icio.us
This extension makes it easy to bookmark pages in my del.icio.us. Definitely a time saver when you use multiple computers.

Forecastfox
I'd rather not have to go to the Weather Network's website all of the time. This eliminates one step, since I already have a browser window open anyway.

I love Firefox's customizability. The other browsers like IE, Opera and Safari don't come close. Which Firefox extensions can you not live without?

For the benefit of myself and anyone else who becomes confused when following the documentation and being faced with plenty of errors, here's what it took for me to make it work.

Once you've installed the PostgreSQL packages, fire up a terminal window. PostgreSQL cannot be run as root, but when it's installed, it's also not setup to use your regular login account. The installer creates a postgres user for you. So you need to create a password for this user:

 
$ sudo su postgres -c psql template1
 

You'll now have a PostgreSQL prompt instead of a Bash (or whatever shell you're using) prompt. Issue this to change the password of the postgres user:

 
ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'your_chosen_password';
 
 \\q
 

Now all you need is a database. If you wanted to create one called, say 'bestdbever', enter the following at your shell prompt:

 
$ sudo su postgres -c createdb -O bestdbever postgres
 

Now you have a database that you can start creating a schema, tables, sprocs and more for. There's no need to add anything to rc.local, as the package installer will create the daemon for you. You also don't have to run initdb. Now when you're developing an application with PHP, Ruby, C++ or whatever, you would connect with the postgres username and the password that you setup in the ALTER statement. This was mostly for my own reference, but maybe it'll help somebody else.

So with some updates out of the way, I becan to use Vista for normal file mangement tasks. WinKey+E is what I did next (for those unaware, it's the keyboard shortcut to launch Windows Explorer). Windows Explorer looks familiar, but different nonetheless. The top menu (File | Edit | Tools | etc) has been replaced by a ribbon bar. The ribbon bar changes dynamically, presenting buttons for various tasks that changes depending on what you have selected such as a folder, a drive, an AVI file, a PNG file and so on. Actually, the first implementation of a ribbon bar that I saw was in Mastercam X. In a separate sets of posts, I'll talk about Office 2007, which also makes extensive use of ribbon bars.

A lot of talk about Vista resolves around how Microsoft has aped a lot of visual accoutrements from Mac OS X, I can agree that there is some truth to that. However, one of the coolest things about Vista is how it will automatically scroll the left pane in Windows Explorer for you, should the folders/sub folders extend beyond the width of the pane (hey Microsoft developers, is that a souped-up Tree Control or what?!). I've recorded a small movie showing this functionality.

Stay tuned for more about my encounters with Windows Vista.