Peek at your browser detection script
As Opera released the first two digit version of browser in the world, web developers should look at their browser detection script. The scripts are using regex code that will parse the user agent signature provided by every browsers. Most of them are only capable to detect one digit of browser version, thus Opera 10 mostly would be detected as Opera 1.
Later on, it’s just one day before 2009, I would like to say happy new year to all of you. Hopefuly the year will be great for us developer, and the greatest hope I have is to see Internet Explorer to be more developer friendly as it was known as best developer’s nightmare.
I met three great guys
At saturday last week, I went to a seminar with Pengki at a local university. Opera software was the sponsor, they sent Bruce Lawson and Zi Bin Cheah as the note speaker. Not forget to mention, there was Putri, the one in charge to arrange the seminar schedule all around Indonesia.
Zi Bin spoke about Opera software in Bahasa Melayu, it is almost the same as Bahasa Indonesia. Then Bruce delivered presentation about the future of the web and HTML 5. I never noticed HTML 5 draft before, but after his speech I just realized how helpful HTML 5 will be. It’s super easy to deal with forms and videos. Can’t wait for the release.
Continued to saturday night, we have an Opera user meet-up at V-Art Gallery. It’s not only a gallery but also a cafe, the meals are pretty good. I went there with Alle and Ngodod.
At the gallery, I didn’t talk a lot with Zi Bin because he’s busy. Some students were demonstrating to him how to exploit other Windows machines using metasploit in his Mac box. So I had a chat with Bruce, he shown us his children photos, they are so cute and chubby.
I think Bruce is a very nice guy, a bit different with other westerns I knew. And Zi Bin, I don’t know why I was thinking that he’s a naughty boy ha.ha.
Update:
I read Bruce’s blog and found that Putri got sick after a heavy journey. Take enough rest and get well soon Put.
How to make Zenwalk Linux more compact
I’m a daily user of Zenwalk Linux and love it very much for the simplicity and their philosophy of one application for one task. The ISO is only 400+ megabytes and only require 2gb of harddrive space for full installation. And hey, it run fast on Pentium 3 machine.
But I found my own way to make this linux become smaller than before. Everytime I finished installing this linux on my machines, I always remove IceDove, IceWeasel, Transmission (BitTorrent client) and GnView.
As replacement for IceDove, IceWeasel and Transmission I installed Opera browser. This free browser is not only a web browser. It’s an email client, IRC client, BitTorrent client and also feed reader. Very great.
The last, I replaced GnView with GPicView. It’s simpler and faster.
Current Working PHP Youtube Downloader
I have updated my PHP Youtube Downloader, shorter code but it works. Previous script is no longer working.
Direct download at: http://php-youtube-downloader.googlecode.com/files/youtube.lib.php
Installing Zend Studio 5.5.1
While installing Zend Studio 5.5.1 I found following error:
Locking assertion failure. Backtrace:
#0 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0 [0xb1ff4727]
..etc..
..etc..
java: xcb_xlib.c:82: xcb_xlib_unlock: Assertion `c->xlib.lock’ failed.
Aborted
After googling around I found one hit solution, using so called sed command. This is step by step of how to solve this problem around.
- As root, call the installer from the command line:
root[pilem]# ./ZendStudio5_5_1.bin - Watch the screen carefully, it will display something like:
Preparing to install...
Extracting the JRE from the installer archive...
Unpacking the JRE...
Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...
Configuring the installer for this system's environment...Launching installer...
Once you see 'Launching installer...', press Ctrl+Z quickly.
- If you press Ctrl+Z in the good time, you will see this message:
[1]+ Stopped ./ZendStudio5_5_1.binOtherwise, you must restart from step 1. This trick will put the process into background so you can interupt the process.
- Find a libmawt.so in the temporary installation directory. It might be located at /tmp/instal.dir.xxx/
root[pilem]# find /tmp/install.dir.2656/ | grep libmawt
/tmp/install.dir.2656/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so
/tmp/install.dir.2656/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/motif21/libmawt.so
/tmp/install.dir.2656/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/headless/libmawt.so
If you see more than one instal.dir.xxxx then you should choose the latest one. - We have found where libmawt.so is located. Now this is the trick:
root[pilem]# sed -i ’s/XINERAMA/FAKEEXTN/g’ /tmp/install.dir.2656/Linux/resource/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so
Press enter, nothing seem happen on the screen. Don’t be panic. - Type
fg
and press enter to bring Zend Studio installer into foreground. Congratulation, now you should see the dialog window appear.
I don’t know what’s wrong with this, whether the Zend Installer is having bug or the Java distribution. It never happened before.
Opera 9.6 Quick Review
Yesterday I downloaded Opera 9.6 for my ZenWalk linux at the first day release. It’s interesting because in the past I have to wait for 1-2 days before the tar ball is ready for my linux distro. Can’t wait any longer, I installed it on my machine. My first impression was there were seem no improvement at all, unless the Opera scroll marker.
Then I took a look at its email client, I was surprised because there were 5000+ messages in the trash! I read some messages randomly and found that the messages were the orphaned mail, messages that lost in the past due to Opera crash.
In the previous version of Opera, I have my mail crashed a few times and I have to create new email account and lost my downloaded messages. Then I see them there, inside the trash. So I quickly empty the trash, Opera run faster than before. Great!
Now I feel that this is the most stable Opera release for Linux. And I love it so! 
Google Chrome At Glance
Just a few hours ago, I’ve downloaded Google Chrome and give it a try using Windows XP running on VirtualBox. Interesting browser, fast and very user friendly. But I got a difficulty when I need to change the language into English (the default was set into Bahasa Indonesia, with funny translation).
I was thinking that this is a hybrid of Opera and Firefox, adopting the good parts and patch their leak. For example, something like Paste and Go
is a familiar thing in Opera. Also the thumbnail for most visited pages remind me about Speed Dial in Opera.
I love the task manager
, incognito mode, and the way they use tabs. Very handy and visually appealing.
But I think this browser miss some features: option to enable and disable stylesheet and option to display or not display image from web page. Menu to enable or disable javascript or plugin is also missing. But I can say this is very good for the first beta release 
Google Chrome, seem to be a promising browser
Browser war are now getting hot with the future brand new browser from Google, named Google Chrome:
Using Webkit engine, Google is going to create a browser with a different approach. They say that all current browsers are old style while current people need a new browser that can adopt the new web generation.
For me, the best part is the usage of memory alocation for each tab. It’s very cool because I do hate to close browser with entire tabs just because one single mistake on a single tab. Please take a look at the comic to see what this browser would look like. Too bad, Windows version will be released first.
Midori Web Browser
Midori is a brand new web browser built using webkits and still on its heavy development to become a reliable web browser for daily uses.
Based on information from Midori’s official page, there are several features provided:
- Full integration with GTK+ 2
- Fast rendering with WebKit
- Tabs, windows and session management
- Bookmarks with XBEL and token support
- Flexibly configurable Web Searchbox
- Custom context menu actions
- User scripts and user styles support
- Extensible via Javascript
My own review is this browser NOT good enough for my daily browsing activities but looks very promising in the future. Go ahead Midori!
Shell Script: Opera Auto Backup
I’m using Opera 9.5 on my machine with Zenwalk Linux for the operating system. Sometimes an error is occuring on Zenwalk when I compiling source code etc and I have to force shutdown my machine. If it happens when Opera is performing connection to mail server or checking for RSS updates, big chance that there will be a crash and destroy all my mail account and RSS feeds.
So I wrote a simple shell script to perform backup Opera’s files everytime I start my machine. I save this file as opera-backup.sh.
#!/bin/sh
SOURCE="/home/sandal/.opera"
TARGET="/home/sandal/.backup"
FILE=`date +%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M`
tar cfzP $TARGET/$FILE.tgz $SOURCE;
Then I add this shell script into Autostarted Applications (XFCE Menu - Settings - Autostarted Applications) so everytime I start my machine it will backup my Opera files. Whenever Opera crashes again, I can simply restore it from backup.
And by the way, Opera has released Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta, currently for Windows Mobile version.