March 29, 2005
More Power To The Web
GoogleBot "accidentally" indexes April 2005-dated Adobe Creative Suite 2 press release leaking the details to the web. Download links to Acrobat Reader 7 for Linux, great tips for tweaking Firefox, and Maxthon 1.2.1 update.
In another slip between cup and lip, Google managed to "out" a press release announcing Adobe Photoshop CS 2. Although the release is dated April 4, 2005 it appeared on the Web around Good Friday (March 26, 2005) courtesy a friendly GoogleBot!
Photoshop Creative Suite 2 is a significant update that includes lots of new features (and also new ways of doing old tricks). There's an improved file browser, HDR image support as well as Firewire preview for video junkies as well changes to the layers palette. Quoting the leaked release,
...a new set of intuitive tools, including an enhanced Spot Healing Brush, for handling common photographic problems such as blemishes, red-eye, noise, blurring and lens distortion. Smart Objects allow users to scale and transform images and vector illustrations without losing image quality — as well as create linked duplicates of embedded graphics — so that a single edit updates across multiple iterations ... Vanishing Point cuts tedious graphic and photo retouching tasks by allowing users to clone, paint and transform image objects while retaining visual perspective. Image Warping makes it easy to fold, stretch, pull, twist and wrap an image into shape by selecting an on-demand preset or dragging custom control points....And that's not all. Adobe has finally released a free Acrobat Reader 7 for Linux available as separate 40 MB TAR and RPM downloads. However, online testers found that Acrobat 7 for Linux doesn't let you to copy text with the mouse. And there's a small advertisement window too. Both Reader (and the complete Acrobat 7 Suite) include a Yahoo Search bar button. If you use Trillian (multi-service messaging) client, there's a serious security issue. If exploited it can open a back door granting a malicious user administrative control of your computer! Trillian acknowledges the problem as "extremely low risk" as the attacker has to create a fake instant messaging (IM) software, then message to targeted Trillian user and finally ensure the latter accepts the (infected) message. But as a reasonably competent script kiddie will soon prove, a code bullet exploiting the flaw will affects thousands of users. The vulnerability will be resolved in the next update, but until then Trillian cautions users to be careful when accepting file transfers and other communications from people not known to them. Firefox is the Numero Uno Browser if you consider the number of copies downloaded so far exceeding 25 million. However as the browser gains in popularity it (unfortunately) becomes a target for the afore-mentioned script kiddies out to make a name for themselves. And now its Firefox's turn to be patched against various vulnerabilities. However, unlike Microsoft, you often don't need to wait for a flaw to be identified or in some instances misused before a patch appears. The Firefox community is more proactive and often closes holes before they become general news. The most recent Firefox update to version 1.0.2 resolves 3 specific vulnerabilities: Drag and drop loading of privileged XUL, Arbitrary code execution from (the) Firefox sidebar panel and GIF heap overflow parsing Netscape extension 2. There's a complete list of Firefox vulnerabilities with details of Thunderbird and Mozilla Suite issues too. As Firefox's popularity increases, more tweak utilities appear. The latest is FireTune 0.6. However, this tool is for those who prefer not to "look under the hood" and manually tweak settings. If you had downloaded an earlier build, I recommend an immediate upgrade as the older versions managed to break just about every installed extension. Firetune 0.6 also includes 'Browser Turbo' to startup Firefox faster. But if you prefer to tweak individual settings, then there's lots of information available. Or you could change a few IP-related settings that help the browser connect faster and render pages faster. Read Firefox on Steroids for the complete information. There's also a great article, Firefox Beyond The Box by Meryl Evans. This covers using select extensions and add-ins, customizing, tweaking plus tips to improve browsing experience. FirefoxOpera is another great site about extending Firefox the right way without trading load times for enhanced usability. Keeping pace with Firefox is Maxthon, which so far is at over 21 million downloads. The just released Maxthon 1.2.1 includes more improvements to the built-in RSS reader. As well as bug fixes to the browser code including a persistent error that caused Maxthon not to unload from RAM even after being terminated. If you have a Maxthon build as recent as 1.1x, the auto-upgrade feature works fine. Although the update occasionally hangs and needs to be manually terminated from the Task Manager. However, I notice that builds previous to 1.1x don't update easily and its better to download the new version, uninstall the previous version while retaining your configuration settings. And finally install the newly downloaded upgrade. And finally do checkout the free Xinorbis 3 Beta. Use this hard disk analyzer to dig deep into a hard disk or folder and reveal all the contents. The utility can also compare folders that seem quite alike for common files. What I didn't find too helpful was a badly structured GUI that randomly would display details of a drive I wasn't really focusing on. The average home user with 1-2 drives won't have a problem. But a system administrator, or power users with multiple disks and drives will. And to crown it all Xinorbis crashed twice on me. Once when cataloging the drives, the second when I tried comparing two very large disk partitions with lots of duplicates. That's it for the week. Stay Safe until the next time!
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