Nate Weaver (Wevah): Aw yeah. (Taken with instagram)

January 25, 2012 11:37 AM

Aw yeah. (Taken with instagram)

 

Nate Weaver (Wevah): Tweaking.

January 02, 2012 07:07 AM

Tweaking.

 

Smokey Ardisson: Camino 2011 in Review

Posted by Smokey at January 01, 2012 08:03 AM

In many ways, 2011 mirrored 2010. For me, 2011 was even more exhausting than 2010, and that once again served to limit my contributions to Camino; for Camino itself, 2011 was again a year of transitions, as we continued to bid fond farewells to familiar faces and began to see the shape of things to come.

1. First and foremost, we finally shipped the long-awaited Camino 2.1, bringing a significant under-the-hood upgrade to all of our users, as well as a completely-rewritten autocomplete system for the location bar. The new version shipped in only six languages, but our hard-working localization teams are readying three more languages for Camino 2.1.1.
2. In addition to Camino 2.1, we released three security updates for Camino 2.0 and three milestones on the road to 2.1, for a total of seven releases shipped in 2011.
3. At the end of March, Mozilla announced the end of Gecko embedding, and as a result, we issued a blog post on the future of Camino.
4. We found ourselves very fortunate that there was no tinderbox excitement in 2011; the most exciting change in that area of the project was when I finally turned off Camino 2.0.x builds in December.
5. While there were no large website projects (or problems!) in 2011, we did do a significant update of the site content, both text and images, to coincide with the Camino 2.1 release. In addition, Samuel Sidler started a special project that he has yet to complete.
6. Once again the composition of our development team shifted as life and job changes impacted the free time of our all-volunteer team. In particular, this resulted in a virtual hiatus in the spring as many of these changes coincided. Thus, for most of 2011, only Stuart Morgan and I were actively working on Camino code—and not always regularly even then. Philippe Wittenbergh continued to help out with graphics and design, as well as QA and user support, where Chris Lawson pitched in as well. I enjoyed spending more time working on Camino code but sadly found myself stretched thin due to my older build and release, website and documentation, and support responsibilities.

Coming so close on the heels of Camino 2.1 and after such an exhausting year, this summary feels a little bit like it’s just a quick rehash of my Camino 2.1 release post—perhaps, for once, this annual post is an abbreviated one. Still, it provides an overview of the year’s major events in the world that surrounds our favorite web browser. As always, I want to thank the entire Camino community—developers, testers, localizers, users, and friends—for all of the help and support in 2011; Camino could not have made it this far without your contributions.

2012 is the year in which Camino turns 10, which is both exciting and bittersweet. I remain hopeful for the future over the coming year and look forward to diving back in to Camino work as the holidays wind down (and, in particular, shipping Camino 2.1.1 soon). If you want to help build the future of Camino, please do join our development discussion list—perhaps one of your New Year’s resolutions is to help develop your favorite browser? So here’s to 2012; together, let’s make it a great year for Camino!

 

Nate Weaver (Wevah): Implosion.

December 24, 2011 02:50 AM

Implosion.

 

Nate Weaver (Wevah): Photo

December 24, 2011 02:37 AM

 

Nate Weaver (Wevah): Autocomplete WIP

December 24, 2011 02:19 AM

Autocomplete WIP

 

Smokey Ardisson: Quoting Matt

Posted by Smokey at December 23, 2011 07:26 AM

Matt Mullenweg:

Scripting is the new literacy. A hundred years ago, the dividing line was the ability to read and write. Today, it’s between people who can code simple things, and those who can’t. It’s so liberating to have an idea and be able to bend the computer to your will. I’ve found that of the most rewarding experiences in life is to create something that provides a useful function for other people. There’s an intrinsic goodness in it, like how I imagine what a true craftsman would put into a chair, table or door. You build it for the ages.

While I disagree strongly with the beginning of the quoted passage, and somewhat with the end, the middle rings true with me. I enjoy being able to write simple things to help me accomplish a task, and sometimes those pieces of “software” are even useful to others. Like many before me, I started finding my way around the Camino codebase and attempting to pick up Objective-C and Cocoa in part to fix things that bugged me, to bend Camino to my will (to paraphrase Matt).¹ And although I’ve gotten great satisfaction out of fixing some bugs that have bothered me or have required some persistent debugging to fix, the most rewarding fixes—then and now—have been ones that have helped out others. It certainly isn’t saving the world, but if some code I write solves a problem someone else is having and makes their life just a little bit better or easier, it’s time well-spent.

Wishing you all the best this holiday season.

        

¹ The other part of my reason for attempting to pick up coding was to provide more manpower and help keep development moving—something with which nearly all small open-source projects could use a hand. ↩

 

Smokey Ardisson: 𝌙

Posted by Smokey at November 29, 2011 09:37 PM

If you’re reading this, it means that we have (finally!) released 𝌙, another major version of Camino. Camino 2.1 is not a revolutionary change, but a solid update—in fact I tend to think of it exactly as hansstatus noted on Twitter. So while there may not be as many attention-grabbing changes as in past releases, Camino 2.1 is, as its Unicode glyph codename indicates, an advance.

The road to 2.1 has been longer—and I think harder—than any of the prior release journeys I’ve been a part of, dating back to the long-awaited 1.0. While work on 2.1 began even before 2.0 was done (Dan Weber’s Summer of Code autocomplete work was already on “the trunk” when 2.0 was released), things really got going in early 2010, when Christopher Henderson banished Mork history and nearly single-handedly got Camino building and running on both Gecko 1.9.1 and Gecko 1.9.2. Unfortunately, the devil was in the details, and we (mostly heroic hacker Stuart Morgan) spent an inordinate amount of time tracking regressions caused by Gecko changes that ignored or didn’t work properly in embedding clients like Camino.

Still, we pushed onward, joined for a time by Chris Peterson (who made a significant contribution after Christopher Henderson had to cut back his involvement), and with a brief return visit from Camino 2 feature hero Sean Murphy alongside contributions from Camino stalwarts Ilya Sherman, Chris Lawson, and Philippe Wittenbergh. In all, we fixed approximately 400 “bugs” (problems or new features) on the road to Camino 2.1, with 15 different people contributing (for the very first time, and I hope the last, I topped the list, with 195 fixes—although about 50 of those are website changes¹). Still, it was a much longer process than we had hoped or wanted, but as I noted with the previous major release, Camino 2.1 is still a major improvement over Camino 2 and a triumph for an all-volunteer, all-free-time development team in today’s world of corporate-produced browsers.

Sadly, due to increased demands on the time of our hard-working localization teams, Camino 2.1 is going to launch with a record-low number of languages—just six—though three more will be be available again in future updates. If your language is one of those missing, please stop by the caminol10n mailing list and see how you can help bring these localizations back. (Localizing doesn’t require much specialized computer/software knowledge, and the updates required for languages that previously shipped in Camino 2 are not as comprehensive as with past releases; you and a friend can bring Camino to thousands of users in your language!)

For the first time ever, I believe, both Sam and I managed to get a full night’s sleep before a major release! The website was all ready beforehand, although we have few tweaks and changes that were safe to postpone until after the release.

The road to 2.1 has been, for me, a grueling journey, as if I were sprinting a marathon and, at times, simultaneously herding cats. Between development team changes, monkeywrench bugs, and a trying spring, I am exhausted. I am, however, incredibly grateful to everyone who has contributed to this fine new release—developers, reviewers, designers and artists, localizers, testers and bug reporters, and the rag-tag “support staff” working in Bugzilla and on the forum to address problems—and to getting Camino 2.1 shipped to our users. It has been an honor and a privilege.

I may manage to take a short break that’s actually a real break and then jump back into fixing bugs for Camino 2.1.1. Beyond that, it’s still hard to say. If you have any development experience and would like to contribute those skills and your time, please join us on our development discussion list to help us chart the future of Camino.

In the meantime, however, enjoy Camino 2.1; we hope you find it familiar but better, like an old friend fresh from new experiences.

        

¹ At least another handful of my remaining bugs were other non-code-related changes, and by lines of code or significance of patches, though, Stuart is still going to come out ahead. ↩

 

Camino Blog: Camino 2.1 Released!

Posted by Samuel Sidler at November 29, 2011 08:30 PM

 

Nate Weaver (Wevah): User agent preference

November 28, 2011 06:35 PM

User agent preference

 

Nate Weaver (Wevah): Paparazzi! error display WIP.

November 25, 2011 09:01 AM

Paparazzi! error display WIP.

 

Jon Hicks: It's been quiet around here, but not for much longer…

Posted by Jon Hicks at November 08, 2011 07:34 PM

I’ve written my first book!

Its taken even more time and energy than I ever dreamed it would, but yesterday marked the very last chapter passing it’s final stages of being buffed and tweaked into a manuscript that people would actually want to read.

I started planning this book 5 years ago, and only the combination of Five Simple Steps, Chris Mills (A.K.A “Mills of Steel”), Owen Gregory and my technical editor, Gedeon Maheux of The Iconfactory has made it actually happen.

All the icon artists I contacted (bar one – but I shan’t name any names!) were enthusiastic and responsive, which made it a joy to organise. Many responses came with fantastic icon material that hasn’t been seen before – early ideas and process snapshots, as well some yet to be released.

More details of the book will follow soon, but for now, here’s a work in progress of the cover to (hopefully) whet your appetite!

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Tagged: iconhandbook, icons

 

Smokey Ardisson: Ave et vale

Posted by Smokey at October 06, 2011 06:25 AM

The light of this world has grown dimmer; the light of another world now burns so much brighter.

Farewell, Steve, and thanks for changing this world while you were in it. My thoughts are with your family and friends tonight.

Ave et vale…

 

Jon Hicks: This is what its all about

Posted by Jon Hicks at September 29, 2011 01:27 AM

We’re having a truly Indian Summer here in the UK, and it looks set to continue over the weekend. It gets dark by 7pm at this time of year, so I had to get out early tonight to enjoy the warm rays while they lasted.

This image sums it up for me – riding through pretty countryside, with long shadows and village names that make giggle like a schoolboy.

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Tagged: cotswolds, cycling

 

Jon Hicks: Reasons why content doesn't show up on Apple TV

Posted by Jon Hicks at September 24, 2011 02:42 AM

As the Apple TV doesn’t let you connect a drive directly with your content (it requires a ‘middle man’ of iTunes) getting your content to show up can be a little trying at times. Some of the reasons why it goes wrong are:

1. The Mac serving the content isn’t on
2. The Mac serving the content has dropped off the wifi network (happening a lot in Lion)
3. The Mac serving the content doesn’t have iTunes open
4. The Mac serving the content has iTunes open, but Home Sharing isn’t turned on (or using the same login as the one specified on Apple TV)
5. The drive where all the content is stored has become unmounted, so iTunes can’t access it
6. You’ve remounted the drive, but there’s a bug where if iTunes has tried to play content stored on the network drive, it corrupts the file path data, replacing it with some other obscure file (in my case, it seems to be a photo folder bizarrely)

In short, there’s too much to go wrong, and Apple TV is on the naughty step until these steps can be bypassed without hacks. Rant over.

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Tagged: appletv, mediacentre

 

Jon Hicks: Big Innovation Lives Right on the Edge of Ridiculous Ideas

Posted by Jon Hicks at September 19, 2011 05:35 PM

Most people think that the opposite of play is work (especially in the corporate world) but the opposite is boredom or even depression.

Great article about the design consultancy IDEO, and how they use a culture of play to support creativity.

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Jon Hicks: Microsoft adopt the Open Share Icon

Posted by Jon Hicks at September 16, 2011 08:08 PM

I’ve been following the announcements of the new Windows 8 UI (and particularly ‘Metro’) this week with great interest. I think they’ve done a fantastic job with Metro, it really looks like a fresh start UI wise.

One detail stood out in particular. In the screenshots I noticed that they’ve adopted the Open Share Icon in their UI.

To fill you in, the Open Share Icon came about after the original share icon was purchased by the company that provides the ShareThis service. While still licensed for public use, some people felt this wasn’t in the spirit of the thing, and decided to create a completely open version instead. It’s this version that Microsoft has adopted.

So why is this newsworthy? Microsoft did the same back in 2005, when they adopted the RSS icon that Stephen Horlander created for Firefox 1.0. That adoption quickly established it as a standard, and standards are good for everyone. Before long we will think of share as this symbol, without thinking twice.

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Tagged: icons, microsoft

 

Camino Blog: Camino 2.0.9 Released!

Posted by Samuel Sidler at September 14, 2011 07:00 PM

 

Camino Blog: Camino 2.1 Beta 2 Released!

Posted by Samuel Sidler at September 09, 2011 06:45 PM

 

Camino Blog: Camino 2.0.8 Released!

Posted by Samuel Sidler at September 09, 2011 06:45 PM

 

Jon Hicks: Revolights

Posted by Jon Hicks at September 08, 2011 04:07 PM

Here’s an interesting idea for improving bike lights and night time visibility. Revolights is a Kickstarter Project that places LEDs in a ring around the wheel, timed so that it provides a constant beam lower down, lighting up the road around you:

From the video, I’m not 100% convinced that they’re quite bright enough yet, but to be honest, I adore the effect. Tron light cycle comparisons aside, I’m just a fan of how they look when moving. I really hope this project gets some attention, funding and development – in a few years this might be the kind of thing that gets built into the wheel itself.

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Tagged: cycling, inventions

 

Jon Hicks: ON YER BIKE: Riding into the hearts of people

Posted by Jon Hicks at August 29, 2011 07:02 PM

James Styring, an Oxford-based cyclist and cycling campaigner (he runs Cyclox), wrote about my conversion to cycling in his column for the Oxford Mail. Thanks James!

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Smokey Ardisson: Dear Steve…

Posted by Smokey at August 25, 2011 09:37 PM

Best wishes for the next stage of your journey.

…And thanks for all the Macs.

 

Jon Hicks: Safari Omnibar

Posted by Jon Hicks at August 04, 2011 08:10 PM

Safari Omnibar is a SIMBL plugin for Safari that enables a single addressfield/search bar like Google Chrome’s Omnibox. Its still fairly early days, but it works well, and has just been updated to support search shortcuts:

(the search bar is hidden after installation)

To edit keyword searches, right click the address field…

… and then you can then enter the search keywords

This is of course functionality that’s been available in Opera and Firefox, long before Chrome, but this is a great way for folks that prefer Safari to get it.

Safari Omnibar is hosted on github

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Tagged: plugins, safari

 

Jon Hicks: New Skype Emoticons

Posted by Jon Hicks at August 02, 2011 02:37 AM

Working with Steve Pearce and Mark McLaughlin from Skype, and genius animator Julian Frost, Hicksdesign has updated the complete set of Emoticons for its desktop and mobile clients. Currently released in the Windows and Android versions, Mac and iOS will follow later.

The brief was simple, update the Emoticon set, providing multiple sizes (20,30,40,60,80px), but retain the style that is already familiar to millions of users worldwide. The original set was designed by Priidu Zilmer and only existed in one size – 19px. An odd numbered grid can allow you to centre elements better, but the decision was taken to start at 20px to allow more straightforward enlargement. This meant some of the basic proportions of the eyes to head had to be changed.

The 20px was the first to be drawn in each icon, followed by the 80px. For the new icons, the Photobooth Reference technique was employed a lot…

My favourite part of the project was seeing Julian give them life, and provide motion that I could never have achieved. That dance icon is a work of modern art. Emo is another personal favourite

In all, there are now 98 emoticons. It’s been a fantastic project to work on, and with superb clients to boot.

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Tagged: emoticons, icons, skype, work

 

Camino Blog: Camino 2.1 Beta 1 Released!

Posted by Samuel Sidler at August 01, 2011 07:00 PM

 

Nate Weaver (Wevah): Lion features WIP + real toolbar.

July 31, 2011 09:36 PM

Lion features WIP + real toolbar.

 

Nate Weaver (Wevah): Photo

July 26, 2011 07:16 AM

 

Nate Weaver (Wevah): Photo

July 26, 2011 07:15 AM

 

Jon Hicks: Biologic BikeMount for iPhone

Posted by Jon Hicks at July 15, 2011 03:52 PM

I’d reached that point in my rides, where I wanted some sort of cycling computer to track my progress and show my route, so I recently picked up a Biologic BikeMount to allow me to use my iPhone. Rather than buy a dedicated unit (such as a Garmin, which isn’t really an option financially at this point) this lets me reuse a device that’s already replaced lots of other separate devices like Camera and iPod. Here are my thoughts after 2 months of use.

The phone gets clipped into a sturdy protective hardcase, which is then mounted to your handlebars via a supplied bracket. I’ll let this chap called Josh tell you exactly how it works:

Together with Cyclemeter, I now have a nice clear display to glance at, at the end of the ride, I export the results to Strava. The dedicated Strava app is nice and clean, but a bit basic. I like the features of the Cyclemeter app, such as telling me how many calories I’ve burned (very motivating for me).

The main disadvantage of this setup is the overall size of the kit. While the iPhone itself isn’t that big, by the time it’s in the protective case it’s got added bulk. At least the case gives me confidence that if it does get dropped, the phone would survive.

I’ve managed to get mine mounted on my stem, so that it keeps it out of the way a bit, but there’s no getting over how much it much it dominates the handlebars compared to a dedicated unit like a Garmin. It might make you feel a bit self-conscious!

Other, minor, negatives points are that the home button is a stick-on dome of plastic, which fell off after a few weeks, just leaving the sticky pad. It still works though. Also, the bracket that you put on the bike doesn’t get absolutely tight. Just as you think it’s going to tighten, it loosens slightly again. So you have to tighten again, and stop just before it ‘snaps back’ to loose. However, I’ve not any problems with it falling off, or being wobbly.

Another reason I got the mount, was that I fancied trying to shoot video to capture some of the picturesque parts of my rides (the case has a window for the lens). First of all, it’s a fiddle to get the bracket and phone in the right position so that the camera has a good landscape view, but it is possible. However, the iPhone camera just isn’t up to the job – the picture is just too shakey. There’s a lot of post-processing apps that will take out the shake, but they crop the image a lot. I did try an app called Steadylens, which works during recording, but that wasn’t much better. The overall effect is what I can only describe as ‘swirly and shimmery’ even at very slow speeds. As if its being viewed underwater:

I also noticed on still images, taken with the phone in the case, that it distorts the image towards the edges.

Despite the size, and other little niggles, the BikeMount, along with Cyclemeter, works really well, and do me just fine.

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Tagged: cycling, reviews

 

Jon Hicks: Milestones

Posted by Jon Hicks at July 13, 2011 03:13 AM

Another wee cycling update. It’s now been 6 months since I claimed that I wasn’t interested in being sporty, owning a Road-only bike (I wanted to ride something ‘chap’ and retro), and that I would never touch Lycra with a bargepole, let alone my body.

All that’s changed – I’m now riding a proper road bike (that I’m trying to make as modern as possible), in lycra and wearing SPD shoes. What a difference it all makes though! After a lot of discussion on Twitter on normal shorts vs bib shorts, I got a pair of the former from Shutt Velo Rapide. which are really comfy and no comparison to when I was trying to ride in jeans. I’m realising the advantage of bibs though, as I get do get a cold patch on my back.

SPDs were another big step, but didn’t take as long to get used to as I thought they would and make the difference that everyone has been telling me they do. After a couple of falls on the grass outside I soon got the nack, I got used to getting my feet in and out without looking down. I couldn’t ride any distance without them now – and certainly wouldn’t want to tackle any hills.

Another milestone I passed tonight was my first ride – with someone else. I was very nervous, almost like a first date nervous. Would I hold them up? Would I be a panting wheezy lump at the back? Would I fall over, forgetting to twist my foot out of the SPDs? Actually, I was fine – a little out of breath, but as much because I was trying to chat at the same time.

The advantages of riding with others are well documented, but the biggest difference I felt was in keeping pace. It spurred me on to keep pedalling and try a bit harder. Also, on such a windy night, it was nice to be able to draft behind someone for a bit and feel the reduction in wind resistance.

The biggest problem I find is with getting time to go out riding. I can usually manage an hour a week, and would love to do more, but the spare time just isn’t there. Especially when I’ve got a book to write. However, for the first time, I’m starting to think about group rides and even working up to doing a sportive! I love it.

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Tagged: cycling

 

Jon Hicks: A Gentleman's Guide to tying a bow tie

Posted by Jon Hicks at July 12, 2011 01:43 PM

Conor Whelan’s gorgeous illustration for the 2011 Trinity Ball Magazine. Browse the rest of his excellent work while you’re there!

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Tagged: chap, gentleman, illustration

 

Smokey Ardisson: Code complete for Camino 2.1 Beta 1

Posted by Smokey at July 11, 2011 06:55 AM

It’s been a long time since I’ve made a Camino-related post (due to my new time constraints), but I wanted to pass along some good news quickly.

Sunday night Stuart and I landed the last two bugs we’d been waiting on for Camino 2.1 Beta 1, so our final preview is now code complete. There is still some release note- and website-related work to be done before we can build and ship Beta 1, but we’re close enough that you can start counting down the days!

 

Jon Hicks: Five Details

Posted by Jon Hicks at June 24, 2011 09:24 PM

It’s all too often the case that as soon as a project is finished, I’m on to the next one in the queue, without any time to stop. I’m sure others know this feeling – there’s no time to reflect and blog about the work you’re doing. So here starts the catch up…

Back in April, a project I was involved in was finally launched, the new Identity and website for Five Details, previously known as ExtendMac, whose “Flow”: FTP client won a Runner up prize in the prestigous Apple Design Awards in 2008. Brian Amerige, who created Flow was getting ready to release a new iOS app called Seamless to coincide with the relaunch, and Hicksdesign were bought on board to create a new identity and website.

After a few different explorations, we settled on the simple logo of the 2 ‘D’ shapes that together form a ‘5’ in the negative space:

The logo has white and orange variants, working on either a white or dark background, as well as ‘layered’ version, for use in backgrounds:

Brian and I discussed suitable type treatments, and I felt that LFT Etica was the right fit for this project. It needed to be a clean sans-serif that would work well bold, but with some individuality. I particularly loved how it looked reversed out of black. Brian and I were both keen, and the fact that it was available to use on the site via FontDeck sealed the deal.

A logo can never be designed in isolation though, so as soon as these initial ideas were approved, work on the website began. The key requirement here was the app name was the most important element of the page – the Five Details branding and navigation was secondary to this. Therefore it made sense to place this at the bottom as fixed footer.

(I didn’t work on the app icons by the way: the Seamless icon was created by Woflgang Bartleme, while Flow was created by Sebastiaan De With)

In terms of media queries, this site doesn’t feature the whole gamut of layout possibilities, but it was clear that optimised views for iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad were needed. Following the idea of 320 and up, the stylesheet starts with the narrow view, and then the ‘desktop’ version is added via media query. This prevents mobile devices from loading the larger images. The iPad is a different context though, and it gets the full css, plus a few other rules to optimise it. As Mobile Safari still doesn’t support position:fixed, the nav is placed at the top using position:absolute.

One thing I always find a bit challenging is how to arrange navigation for a smaller screen, such as maximum width of 320px. There’s not usually enough room for a horizontal navigation, and as Stu Robson points out, it pretty much takes up the whole screen when it’s vertical.

My solution was to place the navigation last in the markup, so that while the ‘normal desktop view’ fixes this to the bottom of the viewport, the iPad has it at the top, and the smaller iPhone view has it as footer.

It makes extensive use of the background-size:cover property to make background images scale to fill the background proportionally, while still filling the viewport. One thing I found with this was that Firefox and Opera didn’t like you to have a differenr shorthand ‘background’ declaration in conjuction with it. In order for it to work on those browsers, all the background properties had to laid out individually.

I also wanted to mask off the bottom the site, where it goes underneath the navigation. I tested this using webkit-image-mask initially, and then replaced this with a fixed position image. This is straightforward on the plainer colour backgrounds, but for pages such as the About section, where there is a large black and white photo, I had to create a special mask with the bottom portion of the photo, adding the same background-size:cover CSS to make it work.

Here’s the mask:

And here it is in place:

Fiddly, but worth it in the end!

To finish, I’d like to say how marvellous it was to work with Brian on this project. He had constructive insights on the design, and while we went through a number of iterations, the end result is all the better for it. Brian was also someone who listened, and it made for a very happy relationship!

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Tagged: casestudies, design, mac

 

Jon Hicks: The Bicycle Cap

Posted by Jon Hicks at June 10, 2011 05:11 PM

Here’s a lovely little film for your Friday pleasure. With a distinctly Wes Anderson feel about it, it tells the story of what happens when a bicycle and a sewing machine get together!

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Tagged: cycling, video

 

Jon Hicks: The Setup

Posted by Jon Hicks at June 09, 2011 01:50 PM

Daniel Bogan asked me a few weeks ago about what hardware and software I use, as part of ‘The Setup’. My interview is now live, but looking back my responses sound a bit clipped! Sorry about that.

I also mention how I’m waiting for cloud services to mature. Since the interview, Apple announced iCloud, but this still doesn’t go far enough yet, and as I mention, it’s as dependant on the networks used to access it as much as the server serving it. Anyway, it’s another step in the right direction, so maybe it won’t be that long until I can ditch upkeeping a local NAS drive with all my movies and music?

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Jon Hicks: Removing MLB from the Apple TV 2 menu

Posted by Jon Hicks at June 08, 2011 04:59 PM

If like me, you have no interest in MLB, will never use it, and would rather you didn’t have it so prominent in your Apple TV menu, this tip is for you.

It’s a bit of a rigmarole, but if you’re really keen to remove it, here are the steps you need to take:

1. First of all, if you haven’t already done so, jailbreak your Apple TV with Seas0n Pass
2. ssh into the Apple TV (in something like Transmit, Flow, Cyberduck etc.) using apple-tv.local as the server, root as the username, and alpine as the password. You can of course do it Terminal, using ssh root@apple-tv.local but I find the file editing part a right faff personally!
3. Navigate to /private/var/stash/Applications/AppleTV.app/Appliances/Internet.frappliance
4. Open info.plist (I used xcode)
5. Find ‘FRApplianceCategoryDescriptors’, and delete Item 1, and save.
6. On the Apple TV, restart lowtide via Maintenance > Settings (or just pull the plug out and pop it back in again)

…and it’s gone!

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Tagged: appletv, howto, mediacenter

 

Jon Hicks: A Little Tea Experiment

Posted by Jon Hicks at June 02, 2011 03:48 PM

Tea drinking peoples of the internets! Here’s a little experiment I’d like you try next time you make a cuppa with a tea bag. If you’re strictly loose-leaf, then this test isn’t going to be for you, but for the rest of us, give it a go and see if you think it tastes any better.

First boil a kettle of fresh water, so that it is has oxygen. Reboiled water loses it’s oxygen and therefore doesn’t brew properly. Then, here’s the bit I want you to test (although you may already do this part)…

Dribble the boiling water onto the tea bag from at least a foot away. The smaller the amount of water the better. This should then make the brew very bubbly – mixing in more oxygen, and hopefully improving the brew.

Next time you make a cuppa, have a go and let me know via Twitter if you think it made any difference!

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Jon Hicks: Authentic Jobs UK

Posted by Jon Hicks at May 25, 2011 10:52 PM

Aside from “Will you ever do a theme for GMail?” and “Know any good Penny Farthing Emporiums?” the questions I get asked the most are “Do you know of any jobs?” or “Can you let people know about this job?”. I help where I can in getting word out.

It’s natural then, for Hicksdesign to snap up the invitation to be a part of the new UK division of Authentic Jobs. Along with Elliot Jay Stocks, Sarah Parmenter, Floris Dekker, we will be joining the existing Authentic Jobbers showing the latest vacancies on our blogs, and broadcasting the occasional tweet.

There’s also the chance to win an iPad2 with a (RED)™ cover, just by posting a job listing, tweeting one, or spreading the word about Authentic Jobs UK. Have a look at Touchscreen Tussle for details!

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Tagged: jobs

 

Jon Hicks: Project Peugeot

Posted by Jon Hicks at May 25, 2011 02:36 AM

I mentioned a while back that while I’ve been enjoying the Globe for its comfortable, relaxed style, I’d been thinking of getting a proper road bike for weekend and sunny evening jaunts around the countryside. Not being able to justify the cost of a new bike just yet, and heavily inspired by Simon Clayson’s Peugeot 753 project, I spent a while watching items on ebay, looking for a suitable basis for a project bike. Ideally I was looking for something with a classic style frame with flat top tube that was rideable from the off without needing too much work. I knew that it would probably be something that would need a respray and work done further down the road, but it would allow me to find out if a road bike was ‘for me’, without spending too money up front. If it did work out, I could improve and upgrade it and spread the cost out over time, but if it didn’t, no big loss.

Finally, the ideal candidate turned up, and it was another Peugeot:

Looking back through old Peugeot catalogues, it turns out that it was a ‘Competition’ from 2000, making it about 11 years old.

What made it particularly appealing was the quality Columbus Thron steel frame and silver Campagnolo Veloce groupset. The frame colour was already black (which was exactly what I wanted), so even though it would need a respray at some point soon, it didn’t need to happen right away. The general condition was OK, and it didn’t need any drastic intervention up front.

The initial plan was to make this a retro build, with chrome handlebars (Nitto Noodles), Brooks Honey Leather Saddle and bartape. Here it is in this unfinished half-way stage:

However, after a few weeks I realised that I’d changed my mind, and that my heart was really after something more modern. After all I already had the retro styled Globe Daily. So after some rethinking here’s what it looks like now:

So far I’ve replaced:

• Front tyre: removing the old yellow stripe type helped tidy up its looks immensely.
• Pedals: Shimano A530, which have cleats on one side, and normal flat pedal on the other, so that it can be used for commuting as well as road riding. I haven’t got SPD shoes yet, and I’ve got use to flipping the pedals with my foot to get the flat side
• Saddle: Charge Spoon, which is great value
• Handlebars and Stem: This was the biggest change. I found the reach and shape of the Modolo bars it came with hard to use, the brakes and shifters felt too far away. Then I tried Nitto Noodle bars, which have nice swept back tops, but the reach was still quite large. Now that I’ve swapped it for a Deda RHM 02 bar (much shorter reach) and slightly shorter matching stem I’ve got it how I need it. In order to fit the Deda stem I needed a quill stem adaptor, but it works really well. I finished this off with some Fizik gel pads and bartape for a comfy hold. This was really nice, but I found the strips that they supply to tape down the ends at the centre not very flexible, and didn’t make a smooth end. I changed this for plain black insulation tape which works much better.
• I also removed the 90s style graphics, using a hairdryer to soften the adhesive and a credit card to scrape it off, leaving just the Peugeot logo.

Overall, it’s cost me just over £200 for the original bike, plus all the additions (some of which were new, some nearly-new off ebay). I’ve learnt a lot by doing this, but I’ve had to ask lots of questions and some trial and error before getting this far, so thanks again to Simon Clayson, Matt Carey and Tim Barry for putting up with all my questions.

So was a ‘proper road bike’ for me? Undeniably yes. After just 2 weeks of using it, the Globe feels slow in comparison. I never thought the bike would make that much difference, and that personal fitness was a bigger factor, but now I can see that the bike can make a big difference too. I’ve had great fun riding this around local villages, increasing my mileage and how long I can go without stopping for a breather. It’s also been a fun geeky journey choosing parts.

It’s a project that’s still in progress, and as funds allow I plan to respray it and upgrade the wheels, but a more immediate task will be to replace the chain and clean the mucky drivetrain. I’m also starting to realise why cyclists wear lycra, and I’m coming around to the idea. Slowly, but getting there…

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Tagged: cycling, sideprojects

 

Jon Hicks: Rapha Films

Posted by Jon Hicks at May 24, 2011 02:43 AM

Recently, my favourite place to spend time on the internets has been the Rapha Films channel on Vimeo. These high quality short films are not only inspiring and enthusing, but beautifully shot, edited and scored too.

It all started with their Rapha & Paul Smith promo video:

Which was followed up by ‘City Riding’ (both featuring the can’t-help-but-want-to-imitate Cole Maness):

Then there is Rapha California, which if you ignore the anti-helmet sentiment, is brimming with atmosphere:

All three directed by Ben Ingham, with brilliant sound design by Soundfly.

I could go on, embedding just about every video they’ve uploaded, but instead, I’ll mention 3 more. Two Broad Arrows a short film inspired by the life of Sean Kelly, Rapha Rides Monti Pallidi and the Tour of California series, starting here. If you’re a cyclist then you’ll no doubt already be aware of these films, but worth highlighting for anyone who hasn’t.

The Vimeo app for Boxee is currently crashing on me a lot, so I’ve been watching these on Apple TV via Couchsurfer (yes you can Airplay from iOS too). It would be great if Apple could open up apps for Apple TV and get the same slick experience that YouTube videos and Podcasts get.

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Tagged: cycling, rapha, video

 

Nate Weaver (Wevah): Who knew he was so tall? (Taken with instagram)

May 23, 2011 11:36 PM

Who knew he was so tall? (Taken with instagram)

 

Jon Hicks: ATV Flash and Boxee 1.1

Posted by Jon Hicks at May 23, 2011 02:25 AM

Two media-centre related things I’ve done recently: Jailbreak my Apple TV to install ATV Flash Black, and update my Boxee Box to v1.1. Heres a quick report of how it went:

First the ATV: When the beta of ATV Flash Black was announced last December, I looked into and disregarded, the jailbreak process. Too much hassle if you had updated your ATV from the factory supplied version. Now, the process is straightforward with Firecore’s Season Pass app and a micro-usb cable. Likewise, installing ATV Black was easy when following the instructions, and I was able to add extras onto my Apple TV.

The result, I have to say, was promising, but not wildly exciting. I had hoped that Coachsurfer (the Browser) would allow me to use BBC iPlayer, but sadly, videos wouldn’t play. Vimeo did work well however! The Plex client and Media Player work OK, but they are in Alpha, with playback issues ranged from taking an age to buffer, quitting mid-play and stuttering on high res files. What I really liked though was the Last.fm plugin which was a joy for playing my ‘recommend artists’.

Overall, worth a look, but I’m undecided whether it’ll be worth keeping up with the updates.

On the flip side though, installing the 1.1 update on the Boxee Box has invigorated it. The UI has seen some refinement, and it’s all the better for it. Gone is the murky background, replaced with a rich, dark starry sky reminiscent of the v0.9 backdrop. Simple thing, but it makes such a difference. The typeface is improved (if a little tightly spaced) and the section icons are simple, but no longer over-simplified. This is just the tip of a raft of the many improvements and fixes that make the Boxee Box feel like its fulfilling it’s original promise. Along with the impending announcement of UK content providers, things are looking up! Hurrah!

(Music is still shunted off into a ‘files’ menu sadly…)

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Tagged: appletv, boxee, mediacenter

 

Nate Weaver (Wevah): Photo

May 20, 2011 05:58 PM

 

Nate Weaver (Wevah): WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?

May 11, 2011 07:00 PM

Dagobah.

 

Jon Hicks: How to survive as a colourblind designer

Posted by Jon Hicks at May 05, 2011 02:19 PM

…It’s a question that pops up every now then from other designers with colourblindness, asking me what techniques I use to work around it. I hesitate to ‘play the CB tambourine’ yet again, but for those that struggle with it there are 3 things I rely on a lot (apart from discovering HSL colour):

1. Ask people. If I’m ever unsure of a colour I’m using, or being asked to use, I ask someone that isn’t colourblind. That’s usually either Leigh or one of my studio mates at No73.
2. Steal other colour schemes. If you see something that works, nick it. Get something like the indispensable ColorSnapper and grab the colour values of things you like (as well as tell you what colour something is)
3. Don’t be afraid to use black and white with one accent colour

Nothing is foolproof, and remember that everyone sees colour differently anyway :)

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Tagged: colourblindness

 

Caminol10n: ¿Algún voluntario para revisar la localización en español de iLocalize?

Posted by Ernesto at May 04, 2011 05:48 PM

Hola a todos,

Jean Bovet es el desarrollador de iLocalize, la aplicación que usamos para localizar Camino.

Jean tuvo la gentileza de enviarnos licencias gratuitas a todos los localizadores de Camino y he pensado que es hora de que le devolvamos el favor. Está a punto de publicar una nueva versión de iLocalize, la versión 4.

Estos días he tenido un poco de tiempo libre y me he dedicado a localizar su aplicación en español. Está casi completa. Los archivos nib y los archivos de segmentos ya están todos traducidos. Solo me falta terminar de traducir los archivos HTML de ayuda, que espero tener listos a mediados de la semana próxima.

¿Podría alguno de vosotros echarme una mano con la revisión?

Si alguien está dispuesto, por favor, que se ponga en contacto conmigo y le enviaré la aplicación para que pueda revisarla.

 

Jon Hicks: Doctor Who Season 6 Calendar

Posted by Jon Hicks at April 27, 2011 01:37 AM

In all the recent busyness I haven’t had a chance to let you folks know that I’m still updating the Dr Who Calendar Feed for Season 6, letting you know when the episodes are on BBC1. As I find out episode titles and broadcast times, I’m adding these along the way. This season is a little unknown, as the episodes are being split into two – the second half being show in the Autumn, so this only covers the first half for now.

Note that Episode 3 is being shown at the slightly later time of 6:15pm – it wouldn’t be Dr Who if they weren’t messing with the schedules every week…

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Tagged: drwho

 

Jon Hicks: Polygraph

Posted by Jon Hicks at April 20, 2011 04:23 PM

Polygraph is a lively new typeface from PintassilgoPrints that’s just bursting with character. It’s inspired by polish artist Leszek Zebrowski’s poster work, but I see echoes of Rennie Mackintosh’s hand lettering style in here too. Whereas official Mackintosh typefaces (and my own amateur contribution Hill House) are very clean and rigid, Polygraph carries the expression of artists hand really, really well.

Packed with eccentric alternates, it is an all-caps font with four exchangeable variations for each letter. These alternates are programmed to cycle when the font is used in OpenType-savvy programs, creating a random effect on glyphs distribution. The resulting pieces are truly outstanding, with an audacious handmade twist.

I’ll be looking for somewhere that I can use this…

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Jon Hicks: The Ram

Posted by Jon Hicks at April 13, 2011 06:31 PM

I’d be the first to admit that the geekery of bike components appeals to me as much as the actual cycling. As the author Robert Penn says It’s all about the Bike. I’m currently fiddling away on a road bike project, using a 10 year old Peugeot picked up off ebay as the basis, and choosing replacement parts is great fun.

My tastes started off retro, or ‘vintage’ as the cycling crowd would call it (retro to them means the ’80s), preferring steel, honey brown leather and highly polished metal. Recently though, I’ve been getting into the look of more contemporary parts just as much. In particular, I’ve been lusting after the Cinelli Ram bars ever since I discovered them:

The unified stem and bar shape is just so pleasingly flowing, and the variety of graphics that look good on it really show it off as a piece of art as much as a functional component:

(photos © Bike Rumor)

It makes sense to me to make this much fuss of the handlebars, its the one part of the bike (other than the front wheel) that you’ll see the most. At around £500 these aren’t going to find their way onto my Peugeot Project anytime soon, but I can’t help planning in my head what custom graphics mine would have…

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Tagged: cinelli, cycling, design

 

Jon Hicks: Website, soft scoop edition

Posted by Jon Hicks at April 11, 2011 04:52 PM

Discovered in the road around the corner from my house, labelled ‘website’ on the top and sides.

No, I wasn’t brave enough to look inside. I was a little scared to tell the truth, it was like someone was trying to bait me.

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Tagged: found

 

Samuel Sidler: Camino Checkins, March 2011 Edition

Posted by ss at April 01, 2011 11:07 AM

During the month of March, we shipped Camino 2.0.7 which incorporated only one fix to blacklist Comodo certificates (I wrote a timeline of the events a few days ago). We also updated our alpha users to a version that incorporates the fixes.

But the big news from last month is an announcement about the future of Camino. Stuart also wrote up his thoughts on the announcement as well as a post about why we all don’t help Firefox become a better Mac application. Given the removal of the embedding layer of Gecko, Camino’s future after 2.1 is uncertain. Regardless of what happens, the entire team – myself especially – is very proud of where Camino is today.

If you’d like to help Camino move forward in the future or just want to follow along, join the camino-dev mailing list.

• Bug 638557 – Show bookmark import sources in a most > least useful order
  Smokey rearranged the list of bookmark import sources to be a bit more useful.
• Bug 636263 – Impose a soft limit on items from one source in autocomplete
  The autocomplete window will now only show up to seven items (out of ten) from one source, using the remaining three for other sources.
• Bug 563208 – Add Camino changeset information to the hourly/nightly build sourcestamp file
  As part of its build process, Camino produces a file that says exactly what changeset it was built from. Previously, this only showed information from Gecko, but will now include the Camino changeset as well.
• Bug 597808 – Omnibus ad-blocking bug for October/November/December 2010 & January/February 2011
  Every so often, we update the built-in ad-blocking. This latest change incorporates five months worth of fixes.
• Bug 629850 – If Camino is set as the default app for an unsupported protocol (mailto, feed), accessing URIs for those protocols wedges browser
  In some instances, Camino could get set as the default application for a protocol it didn’t support. When that happened, accessing those URIs would cause Camino to hang.
• Bug 367155 – Notification names need “k” prefix
  Chris fixed this bug which was code-cleanup.
• Bug 642427 – Unify visit count interface between bookmarks and history
  The backend interface for counting visits was different depending on if you were calling bookmarks or history. Stuart unified the interfaces to make future development easier.
• Bug 504879 – Improve autocomplete ranking
  As part of improving autocomplete ranking, Stuart added a new factor to our algorithm. Comment 4 in that bug explains exactly how autocomplete ranking works now.
• Bug 641852 – Disable nib-stripping in Camino/prefPanes and Sparkle
  As the summary says.
• Bug 644052 – Refactor keyword generation
  A backend change that, surprisingly for all involved, refactors keyword generation.
• Bug 644057 – Shutdown crash due to recreating PreferenceManager [@ Camino@0x9fcb85] [@ Camino@0x9ff2d5]
  A crash fix based on code inspection and a Socorro report. (Keep reporting your Camino crashes! We actively investigate and fix them!)
• Bug 642616 – Consider building in future-proofing for block-level HTML5 elements
  Because Camino 2.1 doesn’t support some of the newer HTML5 elements (like <section>), we’re giving them some basic CSS rules so they’ll display properly.

 

Jon Hicks: epic45 - 'Weathering'

Posted by Jon Hicks at March 30, 2011 02:14 PM

I only discovered epic45 a few months via the other Jon in our office, but they’ve already become one of my favourite bands. I’ve only just caught up with their back catalogue (‘May Your Heart be the Map’ in particular has been my soundtrack to cycling) and already there’s a new album, called ‘Weathering’ out!

I’ve tried to find ways of describing the music, without using wanky terms like ‘dreamy pop soundscapes’, but it’s hard. Something about their sound instantly makes me think of childhood summer adventures in the countryside and suburbs. You see? Hard not to make it sound pretentious. They describe it as:

There is a long tradition of pastoral music capturing a quintessential Englishness, running from Vaughan Williams through the English folk tradition to more recent names like Robert Wyatt and Talk Talk. Further down this line you’ll find Epic45.

Which sounds much better. They’re also one of those bands that has the whole package of music and artwork, and the latest album cover ‘Weathering’ is my favourite so far. It continues the sound of the last 2 albums ‘May your heart’ and ‘In all the Empty Houses’, but builds on it with different guest vocals, Stephen Jones from BabyBird, Rose Berlin (Dean Garcia of Curve’s daughter) and other artists.

You can pick up the CD or download (in many different flavours) from the Epic45 Bandcamp page. It should allow you to preview the tracks, but last time I looked it wasn’t working. However, if you have Spotify you can try out some epic45 with ease: have a listen to All the Empty Houses and May Your Heart be the Map

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Tagged: music

 

Stuart Morgan: A Follow-Up Comment on Camino's Future

March 30, 2011 05:04 AM

Several people have asked (as people have from time to time even in less uncertain times): Why don't we all just work on Firefox for the Mac instead? I understand why people think that makes sense. Camino is a browser in the Mozilla family, Firefox is a browser in the Mozilla family. Both run on the Mac. Basically the same thing, right?

What the question is missing is an understanding of the sorts of things that motivate people to contribute to open-source software in their free time. I don't know everyone's motivations for working on Camino, but of those I do, none picked it by deciding that they wanted to work on a Mozilla-family browser and then flipping a coin. Even if it were entirely a question of project goals, Camino and Firefox don't have the same goals, once you get beyond the “make a browser” part. But speaking for myself, the project goals are only a small part of why I'm here.

Off the top of my head, major reasons I work on Camino:

• I want to work on software I care about personally.
• I want to build Mac-focused software.
• I want to write Cocoa/Objective-C code.
• I like working with a small group where I know everyone, and interpersonal politics aren't an issue.
• I like having significant influence over the development of the project.
• I like being able to reach decisions quickly, without bureaucracy.

Firefox offers me exactly zero of those things. So the simple answer to the question of why I don't just go work on Firefox is that it wouldn't be rewarding for me. And since since we're talking about my free time, that's the only reason that matters. And while I don't speak for everyone else, I'd be surprised if my list doesn't overlap heavily with most of the other Camino developers.

(I could also list several reasons I would specifically not want to do it, personally, but those are probably not as generalizable to others.)

Comments (2)

 

Smokey Ardisson: Camino crashes after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6.7

Posted by Smokey at March 29, 2011 08:42 PM

A number of users have been reporting persistent, random Camino crashes following their upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6.7 (which was coincidentally released about the same time as Camino 2.0.7, causing much confusion over the source of the new crashes). Mac OS X 10.6.7 contained a large number of changes to font handling (the “ATS” and “CoreText” items) that, in some cases, rather than preventing font-related crashes, have caused new ones.

In all of the cases we have successfully debugged so far, users have had corrupt or invalid fonts which have, in conjunction with the font handling changes in Mac OS X 10.6.7, caused Camino to crash. Luckily, there is a relatively simple series of steps you can take to restore stability to your OS and prevent Camino from crashing:

1. Validate your fonts using Font Book; remove or disable all fonts with errors or warnings, as well as any duplicate fonts.
2. Restart your Mac in Safe Mode to clear the OS font caches (which contain data for the corrupt or invalid and duplicate fonts you removed/disabled in step 1).
3. Restart your Mac normally, and Camino should no longer crash from these font-related crashes while browsing.

If Camino still crashes after removing corrupt, invalid, and duplicate fonts and restarting in Safe Mode, please post in the support forum so that everyone can help further debug your problem (and please include links to crash reports you’ve submitted for these crashes).

Special thanks to Philippe Wittenbergh for his always-expert memory of the steps necessary to resolve font cache corruption.

 

Stuart Morgan: Thoughts on Today's Camino Announcement

March 29, 2011 04:36 AM

Today a major hurdle for the long-term future of Camino was announced on one of the Mozilla newsgroups. As our blog post suggests, there's a chance that Camino 2.1 will be our last release. It all depends on whether this new direction is something that will attract enough new developers for the work involved. And while our dwindling developer population has been sad on one hand, I think it is actually a side effect of something very positive: a huge improvement in the Mac browser landscape.

Pretty much everyone who worked on Camino (and before that, Chimera) did so because they wanted to build the browser they wanted to use, but couldn't find. We worked on Camino because it was the best browser out there (in our opinions), and we wanted to make it even better. And frankly, for a long time there wasn't much competition. Mac IE became more and more out of date until it faded into history. Safari started out anemic even by Camino's “keep it simple” standards, and didn't see a lot of change at first. Firefox felt like what it mostly was: a Windows app that happened to run on the Mac (and it was the only other open-source option). A small group of volunteers was, for a long time, able to keep up with—and even beat in many users' opinions—the other browsers.

But now we live in a very different world; one where there are good browsers pushing eachother to get even better, faster. Safari has closed the compatibilty gap and is focusing more on features. Mac Firefox (while still not my favorite) is now more of a Mac app built with a cross-platform toolkit than a Windows port. Chrome has come along and (in my totally unbiased opinion) made a compelling case as a browser that both offers power users power, while holding close to some of the same principles that are at Camino's core (and added another major open-source player to the field to boot).

On the web technology side, things are moving much faster these days too. We've fallen behind Firefox in shipping major Gecko revisions (not least because of the issues mentioned in our blog post); we're only now about to come to par with Firefox 3.6. Being a year behind wouldn't have been such a big deal for much of Camino's lifetime, but recently a year is a very long time in the web world. It's already reasonably common to see sites that don't support Firefox 3.0 (and thus Camino 2.0).

So while I am sad to see what could be the beginning of the end for the Camino project, I have to cheer at the underlying causes. And even if Camino does end with 2.1, there's no question that its legacy will live on. A number of Camino alumni are hard at work building those browsers that have changed the landscape. It's clear to me that without Josh Aas the Mac version of Firefox would not have seen the improvement that it has, and it's certainly no coincidence that Mike Pinkerton helped craft the browser that won my daily usage away from Camino. And let's not forget that Firefox started out as, essentially, the Windows version of what was to become Camino.

So whether or not there is a Camino 3, there's no doubt that Camino helped create the browser world that we live in now. I'm proud to have been a small part of that, and thankful to everyone who helped us along the way.

Comments (0)

 

Camino Blog: The Future of Camino

Posted by Stuart Morgan at March 29, 2011 03:30 AM

 

Samuel Sidler: Timeline of Comodo Certificate Compromise

Posted by ss at March 28, 2011 10:14 AM

There’s been a lot written about the most recent Comodo certificate compromise including two Mozilla Security Blog posts on the topic, but I have yet to see a concise timeline of the events. As a former Mozilla security release coordinator, I’ve been following this topic closely and wanted to write up my thoughts, as well as a full timeline.

A good write up of the issue is available on the Mozilla Security Blog, as well as on the Tor blog, where Jacob Appelbaum did excellent detective work to find this issue long before it was publicly disclosed. I also want to mention bug 642395 in which details are emerging about a hacker claiming to be responsible for the compromise.

Timeline

• 15 March, 18:00-20:00 – Certificates issued.
• T+0d, 0h, 15m – Comodo revokes certificates.
• T+1d, 1h, 32m – Mozilla informed of issue with initial list of certificates.
• T+1d, 4h, 33m – Google lands initial fix in Chrome’s tree.
• T+1d, 13h, 29m – Mozilla bug filed.
• T+1d, 21h, 59m – Comodo confirms most major browser vendors aware of the issue.
• T+1d, 23h, 44m – Chrome update with initial fix available.
• T+2d, 1h, 38m – Mozilla lands initial fix on main development trunk and Firefox 4 branch.
• T+2d, 13h, 29m – Comodo informs Mozilla of two additional certificates to block.
• T+2d, 15h, 33m – Mozilla lands additional fix on main trunk and Firefox 4 branch.
• T+2d, 19h, 59m – Google lands additional fix in Chrome’s tree.
• T+3d, 16h, 45m – Confirmation that Apple is aware of the issue.
• T+3d, 23h, 20m – Mozilla lands initial fix and additional fix on Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 branches.
• T+6d, 17h, 44m – Firefox 4 with fixes available.
• T+7d, 6h, 30m – Firefox 3.5.18 and 3.6.16 with fixes available.
• T+7d, 7h, 12m – Mozilla announces certificate issue, without details.
• T+7d, 20h, 44m – Microsoft issues fixes.
• T+9d, 1h, 16m – Chrome update with additional fix available.
• T+9d, 19h, 23m – Mozilla announces details of certificate issue.

Some notes about the above timeline:

1. All times in UTC.
2. T+0 is 15 March, 20:00 since that’s seemingly when the last certificate was issued.
3. The “initial fix” listed is a patch blacklisting the initial 7 certificates that Comodo informed vendors about.
4. The “additional fix” listed is a patch blacklisting the additional 2 certificates that Comodo informed vendors about.
5. Details about when vendors other than Mozilla were alerted to the issue are hard to find.

There’s a lot to say about this event, much of which has already been said. Before talking about timeline, I think it’s important to call out Comodo for both their good and bad work in this instance.

To save face, Comodo could have simply revoked the certificates and dealt, in private, with the RA that issued the certificates. Those outside of the open source world know how hard it is to come clean, publicly, for something that can be kept private. Kudos to them for contacting browser vendors and ensuring a fix made it out fast.

That said, this isn’t the first problem Comodo has had. Previously Comodo allowed issuance of a www.mozilla.com certificate, allowing domain verification to be done by their RA.

(I could also mention bug 526560 but that wouldn’t be entirely fair to Comodo since other CAs are doing the same thing. While this is blatantly against Mozilla’s CA Policy, Mozilla has decided not to enforce such issues. The open bug on enforcing section 7 is 567193.)

Of course everyone is focusing on Comodo right now. I’d like to focus on the browser vendors and their reactions to this threat.

From the timeline, it’s fairly clear that one browser vendor has taken the longest getting this issue fixed. No surprise here, that vendor is Apple. I yearn for the day when Apple takes security seriously. Unfortunately, I think I’ll be yearning for a long, long time.

It’s also clear that Google responded fastest, issuing a fix to its users less than 48 hours after the attack. While we don’t know for sure when they were contacted, we can assume it was around the time Mozilla was contacted. It’s clear they went into overdrive and released a stable version of Chrome blacklisting the bad certificates less than 24 hours after being informed of the issue. Sadly, Google didn’t know that Comodo would later realize they had failed to disclose two additional fraudulent certificates to browser vendors. They issued a fix for those two certificates seven days later.

Mozilla has often worked that fast to fix critical security issues, but in this case didn’t. While they quickly decided to rebuild the Firefox 4 release candidate to include the blacklisted certificates, it still took a full six days before a fix was in the hands of users, in the form of Firefox 4 and later Firefox 3.5.18 and 3.6.16. During this time, all users were theoretically at risk.

Comodo has said that there is no evidence of any of the bad certificates being used in the wild, based on their OCSP responder logs. Of course, OCSP pings can be stopped with a MitM attack, something any state-driven attack – as Comodo claims this is likely to be – could easily do. (Read more on revocation and its shortfalls.)

Mozilla also decided not to disclose this issue publicly until a fix was release. They have since apologized for waiting so long but I think the bigger story is how long it took to get a fix out in the first place. While Google jumped to protect Chrome users, Mozilla waited almost six days before issuing a fix to users.

Attacks like this are often targeted at a specific group of users and this one was likely the same. We will likely never know all the details but there are a few questions and takeaways from this event that we should look at closely and take very seriously.

1. Revocation clearly doesn’t work right now. At what point will browsers fail on revocation errors?
2. Mozilla has always held openness and security as two of its main mantras. In this instance, they failed at both, not informing users of a targeted attack immediately and not issuing a security fix for almost six days. Sometimes waiting for everyone else isn’t “responsible disclosure.”
3. Comodo has never had full control over its RAs – something likely true of many CAs – and is increasingly causing critical security issues for users worldwide. The larger your network of RAs, the larger your threat vector.

I’m actually a bit disappointed at Mozilla’s performance during this event and I hope they take such compromises more seriously in the future. Regardless, there are lessons to be learned at each step of the way by all parties involved.

 

Jon Hicks: Play your iTunes library remotely over VPN

Posted by Jon Hicks at March 25, 2011 10:16 PM

Brilliant solution to listening to your iTunes library remotely. I already have a Mac set up at home with Home Sharing on, to serve the Apple TV and my iPhone in it’s speaker dock. Now I can use it to play it anywhere there is internets!

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Jon Hicks: Truly, it is made of unicorns

Posted by Jon Hicks at March 24, 2011 03:07 AM

Is a Macbook Air up to the job of being a primary working machine? It has for me…

Since 1995, I’ve always used a Mac laptop as my primary (and only) work machine. When at the office, I plug it into a large screen with keyboard and mouse, and then at home or travelling I’ve got absolutely everything I need with me. Having seen the new generation Macbook Air in the flesh/aluminium, and how small and light it is compared to my unibody MacBook Pro, I wondered if it could be the way forward. The fact that I now cycle to work gave me more impetus to get something that wouldn’t be so heavy on my back.

Just as Frank Chimero says in his post about the Air, you have to know what your needs are first. I wanted the power of my 15” MacBook Pro, but in a more portable form, that would allow me to run my day to day apps, and in particular the two resource hungry ones:

• Adobe Illustrator CS5
• VMWare Fusion with an XP and Windows 7 disk images

From what I read of people’s experiences on Twitter, I was confident it would work. The lady I spoke to at Apple Leasing felt different though, and quite fervently wanted me to get a Pro, but I ignored it and went for the top spec Air – 13” with 4gb RAM, 256gb SSD drive and 2.13ghz processor. The resolution is the same as my MacBook Pro, so while the screen size is 2” smaller, I fit in the same as I always did before.

It’s absolutely amazing.

Amazing, light and jolly fast.

The Air is leaps and bounds faster than my Pro, despite having a less powerful processor and graphics card. The speed gains must therefore come from the SSD drive. All computers (especially Macs) feel fast when they’re fresh out of the box. Over the months things start to slow down though, so it’ll be interesting to see if that happens with SSD. At the moment, restarts are matter of a few seconds, and the biggest test for me, my Windows 7 virtual disk with aero enabled, runs incredibly smoothly. On the Pro it would drag everything down with it, now I can use it without any issues.

When used on a desk, the wedge shaped body means my hands sit so much more comfortably than with the MacBook Pro – there’s no edge to dig into my wrists. It’s dramatically lighter as well of course.

I don’t miss the CD drive either, and 256gb is just enough to work with and keep a good iTunes Library around. Having Spotify helps too, until a proper cloud-music solution appears. Neither have I particularly missed the ethernet and firewire ports.

I’ve run it in clamshell mode (Macbook closed, connected to an external screen) all day without it feeling like it’s going to boil – something I’ve never been able to do with a Mac laptop. Many prefer to have the screen open, and make use of the extra space, I prefer one screen. In fact with the Air, it’s beneficial to do so, as the RAM is shared with the graphics card, it’s not powering two screens. It works great with my 24” LED Cinema Display (you can only get the 27” these days).

There’s only two negatives that I’ve found: Firstly, in some tasks, such as Flash, the fans can really kick in. It doesn’t get particularly hot (like the MacBook Pros always did), but it is rather noisy. In fact, running it in clamshell mode can exacerbate this, but it still doesn’t overheat.

The other is display issues after being connected to my 24” LED Cinema Display. If I don’t makes sure that the display looks right on the Air before I close the lid to sleep it, I can’t get it to come back on wake. The only solution is to force restart.

However, these are still pretty small negatives compared to benefits of this super-lightweight, fast workhorse. Hands down, it is the best Mac I’ve ever owned.

I really don’t regret going Air one bit, but as always, your mileage and needs, will vary…

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Tagged: air, apple, macbook, review