I'm not dead...

... and I have 6 Gmail invites for the first 6 comments with a proper email address.

Update (2004/09/16, 16h35 GMT) All the invites are gone to the Spread Firefox RobinMonks's GMail project.

No More Ads in Gmail!mozilla pagerank

Yep, it can be done with Firefox. No bookmarklets though; I've found that the interaction between frames and Javascript generated content is not very nice.
As I haven't found in the program policies nor in the terms of use that it is forbidden to hide the ads, I'll share with you. You only need to add the following line to your userContent.css file:

#ad { display:none !important}

And voilà!

Update: well, it seems I'm late again. Asa had pointed out a better solution almost four months ago.

table[class="metatable"]{display: none !important;}

and ims (in a comment below, thanks!) pointed out an even better solution using URIid

body#gmail-google-com table[class="metatable"] {display:none !important;}

Update 2: Phillip left a better solution:

body#gmail-google-com div[id="ad"] {
display:none !important; }
/* increase the width of the msg area
so it covers where the ads were */
body#gmail-google-com div[id="ch"] + div {
margin-right: 5px !important; }


Now We're NT4 Cooking!

Back from the SHGetSpecialFolderPathA hell on NT4... bug 253101 was filed on the 26th of July and was fixed in less than one day. Of course, the patch was already on the trunk and it "only" needed porting to the aviary branch, but it took quite a long time for a smoketest blocker to be corrected !

Comment #3 From Asa Dotzler
If NT is supported, then this is a smoketest blocker.

Since the official Win32 20040728 [Br/Tr] builds were not yet out this morning, I verified that the bug was indeed fixed in the current nightlies with the hourly sweetlou builds.
It seems not many people are using NT4 anymore... hopefully NT4 will stay on the supported architecture list for as long as I have to use NT4.
Well it feels great to be in the nightlies train again. Woohaa! new features!

Firefox Branch Nightlies are a No-Go on Win NT4

Starting with Firefox build 2004-06-23 (branch), all Firefox branch builds have failed to start under Win NT4 with the error (according to bug reporter Matthew Hambley):

An error box appears containing "The procedure entry point SHGetSpecialFolderPathA could not be located in the dynamic link library shell32.dll". The firefox process then dies.

The trunk builds are unaffected. This is bug 251341 and this bug is still marked as UNCONFIRMED (though I can confirm it). Any kind soul who can help us people who have to suffer with Win NT4 and have now the increased burden of not having the latest improvements in Firefox, is most welcome.

Update This bug is a dupe of bug 246616, which has a patch (checked in in trunk) but not on the aviary branch. So now all we need is the patch to be checked in in the branch.

Who Are You, 4 Percent?

With all the positive reviews Firefox has been getting on CNET/Download thanks to the campaign launched by Asa and Blake Ross, I couldn't help wondering about the 4% of users who give a thumbs down to Firefox. Who are they, and what are they trying to say? As of today, Monday July 19th 7H GMT, there were 54 negative reviews.

These reviews pointed out the following problems with Firefox. Some problems feel silly but they probably should be looked into (I guess most probably have several duplicate bugs, but how have the other ones been resolved?). They are approximately sorted by the number of reviews with that problem.

• Extension issues: not enough features by default, too many of extensions takes a long time to get a running browser, handling of extensions doesn't work very well. (this is by far the most common complaint. Hopefully the next versions will address this issue.)
  
• Link handling in email programs, mostly Outlook (I have this one too)
• Memory leaks (this one I can understand but not really duplicate)
• Version 0.8 was better
  
• Installation is buggy
• Some websites don't work well in Firefox (time for some Mozilla evangelism!)
• Doesn't completely uninstall (I haven't tried it)
• Upgrading needs uninstalling
• Cannot install extensions (specifically, spoofstick (?))
  
• Support is not good/The forums are down when they are needed (hey, have you donated?)
• Prone to crashes (can't say I've hit many of them, but maybe I'm not a heavy user?)
  

Some comments complained about the marketing technique used by the Mozilla foundation on download.com (hey, that's life. Do the same for Opera/Maxthon).

The alternative browser of choice they recommended is Opera, followed by MyIE2 (now Maxthon), Avant and Slim Browser (the last three are IE based).

Finally, some comments seem to have been made in completely bad faith, and seem almost amusing:

• Firefox is riddled with security holes and installs spyware III
  
• Had to format hard drive to uninstall
• The installer program contains a gif image and a cookie.
  

User Style Bookmarklets in Gmail?

I've been trying to create a bookmarklet (Jesse has an excellent page on user style bookmarklets. Try as I might, no CSS style change seems to work. Maybe it's because of the complex way the pages are generated (a good deal of Javascript). Has anyone a clue?

On the brighter side and in other news, it seems that Gmail is preparing some cool new features: POP3 access, plain HTML version of Gmail, automatic msg forwarding, ability to save a draft.

What Do You Do When Someone Keeps Sending You Infected Messages?

I've been constantly "virus-spammed" for the last few months by someone sending spam from the address enrico.bertolaz. He seems to be a researcher in a university in Italy (you can google him if you like), but the flow of infected messages is so nauseating that I am assuming he is not doing it on purpose. What do you do in such a situation? I've of course created a filter, but why exactly is this happening? am I the only one being targeted? is the spam-bot on his computer, or somewhere else? Should I warn him, and if so, about what?