have this sick habit, which is my tendency to keep track of bug reports I have submitted to projects. As uninteresting as it may be, here is my latest report to WordPress:

Leak’ Outside Bounding Border

[Latest nightly in use]

The appearance of the dashboard is inarguably impressive, so call it a pet peeve perhaps: I find the following box spillover somewhat of an eye sore, which should be trivial to fix. The “Write post” box is extended when the items on the left are expanded, but what about those the reside on the right-hand-side?

Local Screenshots

I sometimes feel like a bug report which is not recognised or awarded for (if not financially, then at least on a personal level), there is little or no incentive to intervene and assist further.

I must admit that I lost a fair bit of passion for WordPress development. I have been less willing to help once it began to drift onto a commercial agenda (Automattic). But as I digress, I may continue to contribute to a project whose code is GPL‘d; a project that has impact on many sites and enriches people’s on-line experience. I still feel discouraged to do more debugging when somebody else out there gets paid for it. The forum mavens have expressed similar sentiments before.

Feed readers are merely everywhere nowadays. They are especially popular among bloggers and sufferers of the information overload age. To some, feed readers have become an application whose importance is on par with that of the E-mail client and the Web browser.

In a new review of on-line feed readers (as opposed to native desktop applications) Feedlounge, which I am/was somewhat involved in, was probably one among two winners, Google being the other contender. I once mentioned Google as the primarily threat to Feedlounge — a fact that Feedlounge founder were quick to grasp. Will all readers prevail or will only a few survive?

Other reviews: A decent overview involving 10 prominent Linux distributions, even a comical review of Windows Vista

I choose Firefox primarily because of its
extensions. Some site continue to snub it.

ROWSER discrimination, as it is frequently referred to, is always a bad idea. Sadly, many sites still use deprecated JavaScript code to distinguish between Netscape and Internet Explorer. In reality, most of today’s Web sites can be rendered almost ‘pixel perfect’ by Camino, Safari, Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, Firefox, Internet Explorer and several more obscure Web browsers, even Konqueror.

Vis-a-vis Konqueror, functionality in Konqueror is being extended all the time and its renderer (KHTML) improves rather quickly too. It no longer plays catch-up, but the acceptance of new browser is hindered by vain user-agent sniffing, which in itself is a terrible practice. In the case where proxies are being used, the assumptions might be wrong. In other circumstances, this promotes agent forging/spoofing, which only adds noise to Web statistics, adds bloat the applications and makes an unhealthy industrial environment for all to compete in.

EVERAL months ago, Google’s co-founder denied rumours and shattered hopes of a so-called ‘Google Office’. It was by all means rumoured to be ‘in the works’. This story was alluded to in the context of Web-based Office. This was the time of Web 2.0 and AJAX hype. Many Web 2.0 startups laboured hard on Web-based, Office-like productivity tools, which were (still are) in the making, as well as began to penetrate the commercial market.

As it now turns out, Google indeed enter a territory that could potentially lead to a Web-based Office, directly challenging Microsoft’s Live Office, as well as the existing desktop-bound Office. ‘Live software’, as it has been called, has the intent of complying with Gates’ Web-ward migration memos. This move by Google will urge Microsoft to take their Office tools on-line, thereby making the Web a primary batteground, not out of choice. OpenOffice is yet another threat to Office, yet Microsoft already fight it with dirtier tactics.

Also in the news on Google: GDrive – the upcoming on-line service for storage and backup. It has already become highly controversial due to privacy concerns. The latest of Google Desktop raised similar concerns as Google may hold copies of people’s hard-drives on their servers, making it more susceptible to exposure.

Calendaring in the Open Source Horde project

HOWN above is a screenshot of the Web calender which is closely integrated to my mail. As it turns out, as well as speculated years ago, Google are working on their own implementation. Their Web-based software will actually be called CL2 on the face it. Some screenshots are revolving around the Web nowadays. They depict what could potentially kill many other Web-based calendars.

Related item: Managing To-Do Lists On-Line

My old del.icio.us bookmark

previously mentioned del.icio.us, back in the days when it was a fairly new and hot phenomenon. The context and points of focus were ways of escaping it (exporting), along with all the acquired data, which had of course been put on a third party. I mentioned the dangers of ‘offshoring’ data once in the past; quite explicitly and bluntly so as a matter of fact.

Matters can be simplified however, assuming you have systems administration skills. There is a polished new tool called Scuttle, which enables any Webmaster to set up his/her little, super-flexible and highly-functional del.icio.us clone (social boomarks with bookmarklets to be precise) on a personal site. The software requires PHP support from the Web server and it can use MySQL, among many other database types. Here is an installation of mine. It is less than a day old, so it is naturally immature and somewhat depleted. Feel free to join in and add your bookmarks to this pool. The installation is here to stay and my site is registerted until 2014.

The WordPress dashboard, as secure as ever

ORDPRESS continues to be a secure and robust piece of Web-based software. Rumours, however, sometimes stand in its way. Below is one example among several, which have been ‘severe’ enough to trigger high-profile advisories. All the hoi polloi was, needless to mention, in vain.

It sometimes appears as though such rants are desperate attempt to stir up a hornet’s nest. WordPress has become a prime target due to its popularity and existence as Web-based software, making it more exposed to the factor of traffic en masse. Google have become a target for rumours, the reasons being very similar.

Apart from minor wishlist items or bugs, such as one that I recently filed, there are more pressing issues that need resolving and require open clarifications from the community. More latterly, a concern was raised over the visibility of WordPress plug-ins to all site visitors. My opinion on the matter was phrased therein (see full thread for context).

Directory listing, which in turn exposes plug-in names, is never being linked to. Thus, it will not be indexed by search engines and flawed plug-ins will not be easily discoverable.

You could trivially scan many blogs using a script in attempts to find vulnerabilities. PHP-Nuke, Advanced Guestbook and Coppermine are notorious in that respect.

All in all, getting a list of plug-ins may be a convenient way for learning the blog’s composition. If you target a particular vulnerability (due to third-party code), it gives the hacker no advantage. That, marke1, is why your argument and its ludicrous, overstated backing are void.