E-Musings Mon Immorata

Critical Firefox, Maxthon, Spybot Updates New releases resolve security issues, speed up browsing and protect you from Internet malware, free software to create panoramic images, detect file process use and resolve Windows Update problems. This week let's rejoice in the glut of software updates. Several of which are recommended essentials if you want your browsing experience to remain problem free. Let's begin with Maxthon 1.2.3 released April 14, 2005 in both Standard (Lite) and Combo versions.. Besides the inevitable bug fixes, the latest version also resolved an annoying Maxthon issue that unfortunately keep re-appearing in too many new builds. That of the browser executable (MAXTHON.EXE) remaining in memory even after the application has been terminated (File > Exit). For every application that remains loaded, closing Windows takes that much longer as the kernel has to first unload all non-core Windows applications before shutting down. I usually double-check the list of applications in the Task Manager. And force-close any recalcitrant stay-behinds. Maxthon 1.2.3 also resolves an intermittent GMail login issue (which I never seemed to have experienced). The application start-up and shutdown times too have been improved. As has the browsing (page render) speed. But I now notice a whole new, and often intermittent bug: if you have more than 4 tabs open loading sites that refresh dynamically, the browser stops responding until the pages load in full. It can't be a browser cache-caused glitch because my browser cache (shared by Internet Explorer and Maxthon) is 150 MB large. Multiple, and incremental, builds of Firefox 1.0.3 were released over the past 7-10 days. Unfortunately each build used the same version number and seemed final until yet another minor but annoying bug was discovered. Like the one that 'broke' several oft-used extensions. However the Mozilla Foundation has now released the final version that resolves several security issues. If you have Firefox 1.0.2 or earlier and were hoping the auto-update mechanism works, think again. When I tried an experimental update from Firefox 1.0.1, the only updated software available was for a tabbed browsing extension! If you were using a Moox-complied build (separate, optimized by CPU/processor), there were no trunk 1.0.3 versions available. Only an Aviary (branch) build dated April 15, 2005 for AMD Opteron/Athlon FX/Athlon 64/Sempron 3100+ and Intel Xeon/Pentium Mobile/Pentium 4/Celeron D CPUs. Mozilla 1.7.7 too has been released. Again Moox is quite bit delayed and offers trunk versions no later that 1.7.5. Firetune, a Firefox tune-up utility, has been updated to work with both the installed and portable versions of Firefox. There are also new performance enhancements, support for more languages and the utility now works with older Windows (98SE/ME) versions. I also found a very handy extension, Scrapbook. This adds Opera Notes-like support to Firefox. And you can capture part of a web page (by selecting content), the entire page, linked web pages, images, as well as an in-page elements (e.g. PDF, Flash, XML) viewable in the browser downloadable files. This extension also saves dynamically-generated pages with their original layout and formatting intact unlike Firefox's built0in Save As... feature. ScrapBook's much more advanced than QuickNote and behaves a bit like Maxthon's XML-based Collector (which doesn't do images; only in-page content without hyperlinks.). Also released very recently is an updated version of Spybot Search & destroy 1.4 RC. This is a heavily rebuilt version that supports Windows XP/2003 Themes. The default scanning options have been tweaked to include Opera profiles. As has the View Report settings. The proxy management now supports '@' in the user name. And the exclude lists are blocked against tampering (but anti-security worms and viruses). Even Spybot's core can detect if its being tampered with. And the immunization feature uses an encrypted file, and now includes an undo feature. Confirmation dialogs have also been added to uninstall feature and the file shredder. Read the Spybot Search & Destroy 1.4 RC changelog for more. Or better download a copy for yourself. As for April 7, 2005, Spybot detects the EnergyFactor Dialer. DesktopSearch, Search-System, Special Offers Network, E-Ventures NV, 180Search.Solutions and NavExcel Websearch hijackers. DelfinMedia.ViewerAdware, SmartSecurity, iSearch, Win32.Net Daemon, ISearchTech.ISTbar, TheGuardian, SearchFast, Crazywinnings.Inc and DyFuCa.InternetOptimizer malware. Admilli Service, SilentSpy, CoolWWWSearch, WildTangent and n-Case spyware. And SearchMiracle, ParallelTasking, RarVelon, Wild Media, RS-Local-A, Search-For-You, Small-Add, R-Bot and Webus.D Trojans. A detailed list of malware signatures detected and quarantined is also available. Courtesy the LangaList, I learned about Autostitch, an amazing technology demo that stitches together multiple pictures to form a single panoramic image. The software will detect and join overlapping photos. And can combine both horizontal and vertical frames. The user interface is minimal. And you have to select the input file group, then choose your options based on the initial calculations before generating the output image (pano.jpg) that's saved to the same folder as the input group. The site's Research page offers more technical details plus documentation downloads. The photo's to be panoramaized must overlap and must be taken from a single point of view. Another reference was to WhoLockMe that lets you view information about a file and which other processes are locking or using it. And if you experience Windows Update-related issues, check out this Windows Update Tips FAQ. 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