Dev Sandalian

Today I read nice info from Opera Mobile Development Blog that saying Opera Mobile 9.5 beta will be released for public test on July 15th. This mobile browser is using the same rendering engine as latest Opera desktop version.

Some mobile phones are already equiped with Opera Mobile 9.5 such as HTC Touch Diamond. This is because preparing an application to work on different platform is a lot of work compared to application for specific platform.

Let’s just wait for the public beta release and by the way how is Fennec going?

Today I’ve made a country database and upload it on Google Code page under the project named Siomay. The list containing 253 country names with their ISO2 Alpha, ISO3 Alpha, IANA internet name, UN vehicle code, IOC olympic, UN ISO numeric and ITU calling.

Download SQL dump and use it at your will. Please leave any comment if you have something to share.

Today I planned to fix my previous Veoh downloader but surprisingly my country is blocked by Veoh.com. Doh, need a little workaround involving proxy etc. Please be patient dear readers.

After creating a new world record as the most downloaded application in the first day out doesn’t mean Firefox 3 has no security issue. Tippingpoint has found a very first vulnerability just five hours after the browser is released. The vulnerability allows attackers to run programs on any Firefox user’s computer. To expose the vulnerability, victims would have to click on the wrong link first.

Although this vulnerability details won’t be released to public until the Firefox developer has a chance to repair the problem, there is no waranty that nobody has found the same vulnerability. They might have created some tools to exploit this hole.

Opera Software has released their final Opera 9.5 yesterday at June 12th. With a lot of improvements from the prior version, this release also has a new shinny look and feel. It’s also mentioned as the best achievement of four years development. It’s a little surprising that Opera released the final version just a few days before their competitor, Firefox, release their final version 3 next June 17th (tomorrow!).

I’ve tried Opera 9.5 and see many improvements and brand new features. Here are the list of Opera 9.5 features that worth to mention. Well, not all mentioned here are brand new features, just to write down my own opinion of interesting Opera features.

• Opera Link
  Opera Link is a new feature that allows Opera users to synchronize their bookmark, speed dial and notes on desktop version with Opera Mini and vice versa.
   
• Enhanced Tab Menu
  
  You can duplicate the tab, lock the tab to avoid incidental closing, detach the tab, and even create a follower tab. Duplicate tab is duplicating/opening new tab with the same browsing history as the active tab, while follower tab is a tab that will open the link that you clik on the active tab.
   
• Open With
  
  “Open With” is the most democratic feature from Opera. You can easily open the current URL using this feature. Simply right click on the page, select Open With and you will see a list of your browser(s) and choose wich one to use. Fair enough, rite?

Well, sorry not to write other Opera features because I think you’ve read them somewhere in the net. Now let’s wait until tomorrow to see what Firefox had prepared to compete with Opera.

This morning I checked my web based application (it generate PDF for reporting purpose) located at my client’s office. They said that PDF report no longer viewable by browser but open download dialog instead. I got information that they just reinstall some application because of virus attacks.

I checked the browser (Firefox) configuration, nothing seems wrong.  I checked Adobe Acrobat and nothing’s seem wrong either. Then I found a simple trick to solve the problem, thanks to Google.

Go to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat\Reader\Browser and you will see a file with .DLL extention. Copy the DLL file into Firefox’s plugin folder, it’s something like C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\Plugins. Then restart Firefox and try to open a PDF file or drag and drop a PDF file into Firefox.

Problem’s solved.

Opera has released their mobile browsing report, yesterday. The report was made by analyzing the uses of Opera Mini (small but powerful –java based– mobile browser) by the users all around the world. The fact was an amazing thing, they found that social networking sites take 40% of total Opera Mini usage all over the world. Even at USA and Indonesia, the number is increased into more than 60%.

Here’s a quote from Mr Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO at Opera Software:

I invite you to see some this transition for yourself in our first “State of the Mobile Web” report. We looked at the aggregate, anonymous traffic of more than 44 million cumulative Opera Mini users worldwide to see where they chose to spend their time when using the Web on their mobile devices. I hope you find this report useful, actionable and interesting.

They also wrote the top ten sites visited using Opera Mini for users located in Russia, Indonesia, China, United States, India, South Africa, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Germany and Poland. Please jump to http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/ for details.

This is an update for my previous Youtube Downloader.

If you don’t know what is PHP Youtube Downloader, it is a simple PHP script that we can use to download video from Youtube.com. You must, at least, having PHP installed and CURL activated.

Download the source at here and read some information at Google Code Page.

Have fun!

Ars Technica just wrote an interesting article about their experience using Mozilla’s mobile browser which its codename is Fennec. It’s still on their early stage of development so we can’t give it a try. Thanks to Ars Technica for following screen capture of Fennec Mobile Browser:

They reported that Fennec suit on Nokia N810 for the showcase. There’s no further information on which platform they will play. Will it be Linux, Windows Mobile, Symbian OS or even Java based?

Mozilla said that they want to ”transfer” the feel of browsing using Mozilla Firefox into this handheld browser and featuring synchronization between Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Fennec.

Based on Wikipedia, Fennec is a small fox found in the Sahara Desert of North Africa (excluding the coast) and in some parts of Arabia.

From Opera Mini’s official blog saying that new beta for Opera Mini is coming soon. They’re not giving us list of new improvements but they gave a clue that the new improvements are wanted by most users.

There’s no statement about the release date. All we can do is just waiting for the next information, for both Opera Mini and Opera Dragonfly, hopefully.