Google Chrome 6 released

Google has managed to churn out many major releases of the Chrome browser during the last couple of years and now they have released the first stable build for Chrome 6. The new version has a more simplified user interface: there’s a single menu, the “go” button has been removed and the Reload and Stop buttons have been combined into one, the browser no longer shows “http://” in the address bar, the bookmark button has been moved to the right and the toolbar has a new color scheme.

Google Chrome 6 New Inteface

Google Chrome 6

Further more Chrome 6 adds support for form auto-fill and support for WebM videos. You can now synchronize auto-fill data, extensions and all their settings. Extension sync is probably the coolest new feature to be introduced, because you can take your extensions with you no matter what computer your are using. “WebM is an open, royalty-free, media file format designed for the web” which is already supported by software like Opera, VLC, Winamp and by YouTube.

The Stable and Beta channels of Google Chrome 6 have been updated to 6.0.472.55 for Windows, Mac, and Linux.  This version contains the following fixes:

All

  • [r58038] [r58039] Failures when using auto-complete (issue 51727, 52940)
  • [r58106] Default search engine settings wiped out (issue 10913)
  • Shift reload not working (issue 1906)

Windows

  • [r58190] Importing data from other browsers when chrome is set as default  (bug 53655)
  • [r58288] Chrome can’t be made default browser when it already exists (bug 53656)

You can download the latest offline release here

PHP 4 and MySQL 4 end of life announcement

WordPress has finally decided to move on to supporting PHP version 5 and dropping support for PHP version 4 since PHP 5 adds many new features and design changes that make developing robust, secure, feature-rich software faster and easier. This decision is in-line with many open-source projects such as Joomla and Drupal, who have already decided to move to PHP 5. Not only will WordPress drop support for PHP 4, but will also discontinue support for MySQL 4 as well.

Our approach with WordPress has always been to make it run on common server configurations. We want users to have flexibility when choosing a host for their precious content. Because of this strategy, WordPress runs pretty much anywhere. Web hosting platforms, however, change over time, and we occasionally are able to reevaluate some of the requirements for running WordPress. Now is one of those times. You probably guessed it from the title — we’re finally ready to announce the end of support for PHP 4 and MySQL 4!

In less exciting news, we are also going to be dropping support for MySQL 4 after WordPress 3.1. Fewer than 6 percent of WordPress users are running MySQL 4. The new required MySQL version for WordPress 3.2 will be 5.0.15.


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Firefox 3.6.7 fixes critical issues in 3.6.6

Mozilla has shipped a mega patch for Firefox to fix a total of 14 moderate to critical security flaws that expose Web surfers to attacks by hackers.

Impact key:

  • Critical: Vulnerability can be used to run attacker code and install software, requiring no user interaction beyond normal browsing.
  • High: Vulnerability can be used to gather sensitive data from sites in other windows or inject data or code into those sites, requiring no more than normal browsing actions.
  • Moderate: Vulnerabilities that would otherwise be High or Critical except they only work in uncommon non-default configurations or require the user to perform complicated and/or unlikely steps.

Below is a list of bugs fixed in the latest release:

  • Cross-origin data leakage from script filename in error messages
  • Cross-domain data theft using CSS
  • Multiple location bar spoofing vulnerabilities
  • Characters mapped to U+FFFD in 8 bit encodings cause subsequent character to vanish
  • Same-origin bypass using canvas context
  • Cross-origin data disclosure via Web Workers and importScripts
  • Remote code execution using malformed PNG image
  • nsTreeSelection dangling pointer remote code execution vulnerability
  • nsCSSValue::Array index integer overflow
  • Arbitrary code execution using SJOW and fast native function
  • Plugin parameter EnsureCachedAttrParamArrays remote code execution vulnerability
  • Use-after-free error in NodeIterator
  • DOM attribute cloning remote code execution vulnerability
  • Miscellaneous memory safety hazards (rv:1.9.2.7/ 1.9.1.11)

What is a Mashup

In Web development, a mashup is a Web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services. Mashups have gained popularity in the last few years.

The term implies easy, fast integration, frequently using APIs and data sources to produce enriched web applications that were not necessarily the original reason for producing the raw source data. Early mashups took data from sources such as google, twitter, etc and combined them with other services to create visualizations of the data.

The mashup architecture is divided into three layers:
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