Optimized Firefox Builds

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

As an open source project, anyone can create builds for Firefox (formerly known as Firebird). And, indeed many have. As Neil Turner writes about in his blog, Jesse Ruderman has a section of his site — “The Burning Edge” — where he chronicles bugs fixed in each day’s Firefox builds.

And, next to each day’s listing are links to processor-specific builds. In order to save some space, he makes use of some acronyms, but there’s a section which goes over all those. The key is to match up your processor’s special features (such as SSE) with the build that offers those.

If you’re not sure which features your processor has, Neil mentions that AIDA 32 will check your processor and figure that out for you. AIDA probably works fine, though I prefer WCPUID for that kind of thing — it’s a processor-focused utility and all the information you need is right on the first screen.

In the FAQ, Jesse also includes a quick-reference to match up which build is fastest for your processor:

So which optimized build should I get if my processor is X?

  • P2: G6 is fastest
  • P3: G6 SSE is fastest
  • P4: G7 SSE2 is fastest
  • Celeron: Depends on whether your Celeron is P2-based, P3-based, or P4-based.
  • Athlon XP: G7 may be faster than G7 SSE even though SSE is supported

Yeah, those acronyms may seem a bit obtuse for now, but it’s fairly straightforward once you’re looking at the list of builds for the day. And, apparently, the results can be quite dramatic:

Still with me? Good, because if you follow the above you may make yourself very, very happy. This optimized build is insanely fast — probably the fastest browser I’ve ever used. New tabs open instantly, menus appear as soon as you click on them, and page rendering is noticeably faster. If you’re willing to spend a few minutes trying to find a build that works best with your computer, then you’ll be thanking yourself in future.

If I had a halfway-decent processor, I’d try some of these optimized builds for sure ;). As it is, I have just an Athlon 700 in my box and about the only thing it supports are MMX and 3DNow, neither of which appear in specialized builds. To be fair, I may give a G6-optimized build a chance, as that one has rather lenient optimization that doesn’t completely require a modern processor.

PNG Alpha Transparency Support in IE 5.5+

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

A coworker was asking me about PNGs the other day, and I pointed him to the LibPNG page — one of the more comprehensive sites I’ve found on the PNG format. For those not aware, PNG is a lossless image format (like GIF) but it supports up to 24 bit color (like JPEG). It’s also supported by all the major browsers and many desktop applications.

Another advantage to PNG is that it supports alpha transparency. Unlike GIFs which have on-or-off transparency, PNGs support up to 256 levels of transparency. So, a properly designed PNG image with alpha transparency can look good against a background of any color.

Basic PNG functionality is supported by almost all browsers (Netscape, IE and so on), and support for PNG’s alpha transparency is also widespread. In fact, just about every browser — even the Sega Dreamcast browser — supports alpha transparency… except for IE on Windows (PNGs work there, just not the alpha transparency part).

And, as IE/Windows currently has the largest market share, it was thought that PNGs with alpha transparency essentially weren’t usable on the web. However, after re-reading the IE/Windows section, I see that there’s now a workaround to get PNG alpha transparency support in IE 5.5+!

As I understand it, IE can be induced — via some proprietary HTML — into using DirectX to render PNGs. And, as DirectX supports alpha transparency, you get alpha-channel support in IE. As all the other major browsers already have alpha channel support, it’s conceivable that PNGs with alpha channel transparency could be used throughout a site.

Tagatose — A New Sugar Substitute

Ashley Bischoff12 Comments

I was reading an issue of Wired’s dead tree edition that a friend had given me and they had a sidebar (not really a full article) on new sugar substitutes. The usual suspects such as aspartame and sucralose were there, but they also had high praise for one called tagatose which they described as “subtle & natural”. So, I checked online for more information and — go figure — found a Wired article on tagatose.

Like Splenda, tagatose is made from sugar, but tagatose is derived from milk sugars within whey. And, though Splenda already tastes very natural, apparently tagatose is virtually imperceptible from sugar. The only downside is that tagatose isn’t calorie-free — it has about 1/3 the calories of sugar. But, it doesn’t affect blood-sugar levels or cause cavities.

Levin whips out a set of keys, unlocks his desk, and rummages through a drawer. He pulls out a bag of tagatose-coated bran flakes and a chocolate bar, both creations of his Danish licensee. The bran is a little stale but sweet enough, and the chocolate tastes just like the real deal. He hands me a baggie of pure tagatose. I hold it up to the light, dab a little on my finger, and try it. A dead ringer for table sugar. […]

Though it’s not a calorie-free food, I’m still excited about another sugar substitute. With any luck, this will soon find its way into reduced-calorie chocolate bars and sodas (Spleda-based chocolate still doesn’t quite taste like the real thing). However, it appears that the tagatose folks don’t have quite the marketing arm of their Splenda counterparts; so, I have a hunch that it may be a while before tagatose becomes widespread.

Distributed Spammer Annoyance App

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

Adam Keeney wanted to annoy spammers and he figured that he could do so by filling out the forms on their websites with junk data. He soon realized that, if it was just him, the spammers would notice and then just block his ip address. So, he wrote Unsolicited Commando, a distributed Java app to automatcally fill out the forms:

Unsolicited Commando is specifically designed to fight spams that advertise sites that are trying to gather information about you. These often include sites that offer to refinance/eliminate your debt or sign you up with some sort of get rich quick scheme. These UCEs are rather lucrative, generating about $20 per valid lead from loan companies. If the good data is burried under the mounds of believeable BS that Unsolicited Commando provides then the mass-mailer must work harder to validate the data by placing thousands of phone call to false numbers. If the data is sold without verification then the mass-mailer’s reputation is ruined. Either way, Unsolicited Commando generates casualties. […]

This way, the spammers get junk data from a wide range of ip addresses and there’s no easy way to filter it. Of course, the more people participate, the more diverse the ip pool and the the more junk they get. I’m tempted to try this one ;).