Firefox's new look

Firefox's new look (the Australis GUI) can now be seen in the Firefox Nightly build. Without more ado, here it is, on Debian XFCE:

A lot of negative opinion on the internet, but quite like it myself, no objections certainly, and tabs definitely look nicer.

Firefox Nightly can be unpacked to the home directory and run from there. However, it's probably a good idea to use a separate profile, to avoid the risk of making changes to an existing profile that are not compatible with the existing version of Firefox (or Iceweasel, in my case).

Debian Bits And Snips explains how to do this. I ran into a problem in that when I'd closed Firefox Nightly and launched Iceweasel again, it was using the new profile. I had to use Profile Manager again to switch Iceweasel back to the default profile, but after that I used the launch command given and Firefox Nightly used its own profile and left Iceweasel using the default profile.

/home/username/firefox/firefox -P "new profile" -no-remote

no-remote means Firefox uses the new profile independently of the profile set for Iceweasel and without changing the profile set for Iceweasel- indeed it can run at the same time as Iceweasel with this command.

Profile manager can be launched with the following terminal command in Linux, if Iceweasel is using the wrong profile:

firefox --ProfileManager

Open magnet links in Transmission

One way to do this is to copy the link and open it as an URL in Transmission, but I recently came across some instructions for making magnet links clickable and open in Transmission.

Instructions are at transmissionbt.com.

After that, make sure Transmission is set to handle magnet links in the Iceweasel Content type menu, as described on the Crunchbang forum.

Browse files on Android from Thunar

If you try to browse an Android device from Thunar in XFCE over Bluetooth, it will try to launch Nautilus, which of course isn't installed in XFCE.

The Arch Linux Wiki has a useful script to allow Thunar to browse files on Android over Bluetooth. The script uses obexftp, which must be installed.

obexftp must also be installed in Android. I've read that some Android devices have the service running, but mine didn't.

Bluetooth File Transfer and ES File Explorer File Manager both install the service.

To be honest, I didn't have much success browsing files. In particular, image files from the phone's camera took a long time to browse, and half way through the folder, Thunar would give the same thumbnail to every file.

But I thought I'd document what I did in case I need to come back to it, or in case somebody else finds it useful.

SD card reader not working in Linux

One thing I've not been able to get working in Linux is the SD card reader on my laptop. The Ubuntu manual sdhci driver page hints at why:

Many of existing SD controller chips have some nonstandard requirements, proprietary registers and hardware bugs, requiring additional handling. 

lspci reveals the name of the SD card reader:

SD Host controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MMC/SD Controller (rev 01)

dmesg that there's a problem:

mmc0: Unknown controller version (16). You may experience problems.

This is a message I've noticed while the computer is booting, I think for as long as I've used Linux, and in many different distributions.

There are several bug reports for this issue, but I haven't found any "additional handling". To read and write to SD cards, I use a USB card reader from PoundWorld.

One post I came across suggested there might be a fix coming in kernel 3.5, but I'm using 3.10 from Wheezy backports.

In the end I came across a way to disable the SD card driver so that the error message doesn't appear. Add:

blacklist sdhci-pci 
blacklist sdhci 
blacklist mmc_core 

to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.

bugs.launchpad.net

This didn't take effect until I ran:

update-initramfs -u 

Debian forum.

Firefox to run H.264 video

In a previous post I talked about the future of Flash in Linux, and looked at some of the possible alternatives. I mentioned HTML5 video as a possible alternative, and an issue with HTML5 video adoption: proprietary and non-proprietary formats.

Now Cisco has open sourced the H.264 codec (the proprietary codec used to encode most online video) and Firefox will run H.264 video in "the first half of 2014".

In a surprising twist, the future of open and standard HTML5 video is looking a lot brighter today, with Cisco's announcement of the release of a fully open source implementation of the H.264 codec.

 The code makes it possible for any open source project to add support for the video codec without paying any fee or signing any restrictive license with the MPEG-LA, the industry group that licenses the technology.

This is a major development, as the situation around the proprietary codec has been an important source of contention among browser makers to date.

Most video found online is encoded with H.264. That's not a problem for Flash video, since Flash Player supports the codec out of the box.

In theory, it's not a problem for HTML5 video either, as long as browsers agree to license the codec. In fact, the license is even free in many cases. But it is incompatible with open source projects like Firefox.

Mozilla refused to add support for H.264, though it could have afforded to pay the license, because it meant that downstream projects, which relied on Firefox, wouldn't have been able to get the entire Firefox source code under an open license.

Google came up with a potential solution, the WebM video format and the VP8 codec, which it open sourced and made available for free. But, several years after that, most videos found online are still encoded with H.264 and won't work in Firefox without external codecs.

Softpedia

Cisco worked with Mozilla to get this done, so it's no surprise that Mozilla is the first to make use of this new open H.264.

The browser maker has announced that it will be adding full support for H.264 in Firefox in the first half of 2014.

 Mozilla opted not to build the H.264 codec into the Firefox source code. Rather, if needed, the browser will be able to automatically download the binary code that Cisco is making available. Users will be able to disable this feature though.

What this means is that Firefox will be able to run any H.264 video it encounters on the web, plain HTML5 videos or even WebRTC streams, if H.264 becomes part of the WebRTC standard.

Softpedia

This could "widen support for web-based video chat":

WebRTC promises plugin-free video chat in our browsers, but it has been stuck in limbo due to format squabbles -- some companies want royalty-free standards like VP8, while others insist on the wider support of H.264. Today, Cisco is proposing a truce between the two camps. It's planning to open-source its H.264 codec without passing on the royalties it pays to MPEG-LA, effectively making the standard free when used in web conversations.

 And:

If all goes well, though, we won't have to fret much over the apps and devices we use for our video discussions.

engadget

Nicer fonts in Debian XFCE

In a previous post, I looked at how to improve font rendering in the Chromium browser, which doesn't conform to font settings in the XFCE GUI.

After making these changes, I noticed that font rendering had changed in Iceweasel and other applications too. The only thing in my .fonts.conf file not in the XFCE fonts setting GUI is a setting for lcdfilter. It seems this enables LCD hinting. There is a way to do this without a .fonts.conf file.

LCD Hinting

On some systems LCD hinting results in better fonts. But because this is not working on all system, this setting is not configurable through the interface. You can set it with a simple query.

xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Xft/Lcdfilter -n -t string -s lcddefault 

Other possible values are lcdnone, lcddefault, lcdlight and lcdlegacy. You can check if the property is set property, run xrdb -query in a terminal. To fully apply the LCD hinting, it is advised to logout and in again (for restarting the X server).

XFCE Docs.

It's subjective of course, but I think I prefer the slightly softer rendering of fonts with LCD hinting enabled. Here are some before and after screenshots that illustrate the difference.

How to post code in Blogger

In my previous post, I wanted to post some XML code, but Blogger kept interpreting it as HTML and displaying it wrongly. Here's a solution I found. It converts characters that are interpreted as code into a format that is not, but which is displayed in a browser as the original character. NB the "friendly" text is posted in Compose not HTML in Blogger.

Postable.

Reading the explanation page for Postable, I realised that the Blogger friendly encoding will also solve a problem with the < and > characters I've had when posting in Blogger. To get them to display correctly, use the "safe" encoding:

&lt; and &gt;