First Impressions on Google Chrome

I went ahead and bit the bullet and downloaded Google Chrome, the new browser by Google.

I haven't had much of a chance to tweak it yet but I do like the minimal look of it, the thumbnails of recently visited sites is kind of cool but more flashy than necessary in my opinion.

I tried importing bookmarks and settings from Internet Explorer, maybe I'm just not sure where to look but it seems to have imported only a few. Which is surprising since I use the bookmark option on Google's very own search bar installed on IE.
In the options window there is a button that allows you to display all installed cookies and delete the ones you don't want or clear them all, that option I do like.
There is a website that I go to that relies heavily on Java, it doesn't seem to be compatible with the installed Java on my machine at all, Chrome does require the installation of Adobe Flash Player to display youtube videos and such.

I'll experiment with it some more and post my impressions as I go along.

CutePDF Writer

Here's one those free software applications that's been around for a while but everyone kind of forgets about. Create your own pdf files as easy as printing out a document.
Just select CutePDF Writer from the print drop down box and have your document converted.

CutePDF Writer

Create professional quality PDF files from almost any printable document. FREE for personal, commercial, gov or edu use! No watermarks! No popup Web ads! Now supports 64-bit Windows.

Easy to use and the price is right.

Cuil, Pronounced "Cool"

A new search engine created by former Google engineers.
Take it for a spin.
Cuil

Five Hours Later FireFox 3 Vulnerable

After much hype and hullabaloo FireFox released their version 3 browser. As if it wasn't bad enough that their Guinness World Record went awry but then this:

Firefox 3 Vulnerability Found

Five hours after Mozilla officially released Firefox 3.0, researchers found a vulnerability in the new browser.

Tipping Point has verified the bug and reported it to Mozilla, Tipping Point said on Wednesday.
Since Mozilla is still working on a fix, the researchers won't share details about the problem. Tipping Point ranked the severity of the vulnerability as high, but said that users would have to click on a link in an e-mail or visit a malicious Web page before being affected. The issue affects users of Firefox 3.0 as well as Firefox 2.0.
Once the problem is fixed, Tipping Point will publish an advisory on its Web site, it said.
Tipping Point found out about the vulnerability through its Zero Day Initiative, which lets researchers earn cash by submitting new vulnerabilities to the company. Once Tipping Point validates the issue, it pays the researcher for the information and notifies the relevant software vendor of the technical details.
Mozilla did not respond to a request for comment.

No fix as of yet.

Breaking the Internet

Just a warning.



So be careful.

Logical Drive Strings and FBSL

When I do any coding I use FBSL almost exclusively because of it's powerful command set, including access to the windows API.
As an example here's a quick script that returns logical drive strings:

---------------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------------

' Console or GUI type

$apptype console

' declare API

#dlldeclare kernel32.GetLogicalDriveStrings

' dimension variables, $ for strings

' % for whole numbers, ! for integers

dim $pSdrive * 255,%ret,%i,$drives * 4

' Label for console

' Like in the old basics ?

' can be used instead of "print"

?"Logical Drives"

?"--------------"

' Call GetLogicalDriveStrings to buffer

ret = GetLogicalDriveStrings(255,@pSdrive)

' extract strings from buffer

For i = 0 to ret step 4

drives = GetMem(pSdrive,i,$4)

' Print strings

?drives

Next
Pause

The result can be seen up above.

If you would like to learn more about FBSL , then visit the forum.

More on FBSL

I've blogged some about FBSL before and even set up a web page with a few of my own examples here.
Well I've had a little time off and have decided to go into a little more depth on why I use this interpreted language almost exclusively anymore.
For one thing it's easy to install, just go here and find the latest release, download to your computer and install. It's as easy as that.
Included in the install is an automatic update feature than you can use to check for periodic updates (which happens often because the developer is very involved with the language).
Now that you have it on your computer simply open notepad and type in something like:

$Apptype console

Print "Hello World ---- From Half Bytes"

Pause

Then save as Hello.fbs, double left click and you have a console program running, to exit hit any key.
I'll be posting examples of how I code with FBSL and putting up useful programs on my web page Half Bytes Coding.
In the mean time if you want to learn more check out the FBSL forum.