Category / Software

by Aaron

Valid Trust Anchor?

On the off chance someone understands this error and can help, I’m posting the wifi errors my Windows 7 Ultimate laptops started to encounter at work on wifi. My laptop is not part of the corporate domain (as it’s a personal laptop). Until very recently, everything worked without any trouble, and IT is not aware of any changes that they made that would explain these errors.

I’ve got Personal certificates installed in my user profile, and my employer’s Trusted Root Certification Authorities certificate is installed. Neither have expired.

The first symptom is that I now get prompted for credentials when connecting to the wifi access point:

Network Authentication

We discovered that just hitting OK here without providing any credentials was OK. It should have been automatically using the certificate I have installed.

After a few moments, this confusing dialog is displayed:

 image

“The credentials provided by the server could not be validated. We recommend that you terminate the connection and contact your administrator with the information provided in the details. You may still connect but doing so exposes you to the security risk by a possible rogue server.

The server XYZ presented a valid certificate issued by Company Name Certificate Authority but Company Name Certificate Authority is not configured as a valid trust anchor for this profile.”

Clicking the Connect button then seems to work. So for now, we agreed that it was OK – but, we have no idea what’s going on. If I learn more, I’ll post more details here. But in the meantime – if anyone else has an idea about this – I’d appreciate hearing about it! 

by Aaron

Waiting for Version 4.0 Of Firefox before I try it again…

I’ve enjoyed following the thought pattern of Stephen regarding the major iteration of the Firefox user interface and experience here. This latest post walks through the general clean up of the title bar, menu bars, address bar, and bookmark bar in Firefox.

I must say that the new proposals for Firefox finally take the UI from a all-too typical layout to something modern, hip, and clean. A web browser should not interfere with the one task it is intended to perform: view and interact with web pages.

For normal browsing (and not development) I use Google’s Chrome browser nearly exclusively, and when I don’t use it, I switch to IE 8. That combo works well enough (and best handles sites that are more IE friendly than they are web-standards friendly).

I particularly like Chrome’s clean approach to full screen web browsing. Admittedly, having more than a couple dozen tabs open tends to make the tabs a bit unwieldy (I’ve got 44 tabs open in Chrome right now).

image

Compared to Firefox (one of the proposals and the current 3.5 shipping UI), the proposals definitely modernize the user experience of Firefox, yet not quite maximizing the web application experience like Chrome does so well (Firefox images grabbed from Stephen’s web site):

Firefox 4 and Firefox 3.5 Visual Comparison

I’m not sure that the orange Firefox button is really necessary though for the average user (at the cost of a significant amount of horizontal and vertical pixel-estate). What kind of actions would users expect to find there? But more importantly, what would the UI for the drop down look like?

It would be a big failure if it was nothing more than a cascading drop down menu, for example, like I’ve configured in Firefox 3.5 with some extension who’s name I’ve forgotten.

image

image

Overall, I do consider this progress though, and appreciate the transparency of the design process with the next version of Firefox.

And I, unlike some of the commenters on Stephen’s blog, feel like it’s more important to make progress rather than be artificially held back by old designs, and not giving into lots of options and configuration choices which cater to vocal groups (so that they can never change). In this case, I’d follow Apple and Google’s lead (and even Microsoft’s to some extent when it comes to applications):  make it good, make it simple, don’t put it lots of bells and whistles and don’t make it too configurable.

by Aaron

Share My Location?

Yes, Google Maps, you’re more than welcome to have my current location (in Firefox 3.5 or Chrome).

image

However, I’m going to be honest. I think our cat could do a better job of actually locating our house than you have done. I don’t expect house level pinpointing without a GPS – but I’m shocked how awful this is. It’s not even the right state!

What’s more strange, is that I know Google and other advertisers know our general location much better than this – as they’ll often use the name of a local town in an advertisement.

I used a web site, GeoBytes, which readily identified the local town where I get internet from. So, why can’t Google do the same?

Do you have any luck with this feature?

by Aaron

Google’s Chrome Operating System

If you didn’t see the buzz about the Internet in the last 24 hours – where have you been? :)

Google announced officially that they are working on a new operating system, named Google Chrome OS (just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?).

The few interesting points made in the announcement blog posting:

  1. Targeted initially at netbooks
  2. Open source, Linux based with a new windowing system and not Android based as this will work on ARM and x86 chips.
  3. Fast and lightweight – only a browser – all running within the Chrome web browser on modern standards
  4. No worries about drivers and software updates
  5. Released available fall 2009 initially

The point that interests me is #4, as the rest of it isn’t a surprise at all.

I’m not sure I understand how they’ll handle the various cameras, printers, mice, etc. that everyone will still want to use? That’s where Windows has a huge advantage today – the wide availability of hardware for Windows. If users can’t plug in their camera and just have it work, they’ll be frustrated (and print it of course). Thankfully, there are more standards around camera connections these days – but ….

What about RAW file formats for those of that don’t shoot JPEG for example? There are frequent updates from Adobe/Nikon/Canon/etc. to handle the constant stream of new file formats and changes that occur from each manufacturer. Maybe they’ve got this all figured out – but my experience with Linux in the past is that far too often a piece of hardware that worked fine with Windows isn’t recognized by the Linux.

I wonder what Microsoft will do about Silverlight? I’d be disappointed if it didn’t work on this new class of devices if it takes off. But, I also wonder about Flash support. Just because it’s Linux doesn’t mean that Flash will work. Google believes in HTML 5 so much that I can see them not being very “open” about making it work.