Articles by ElGuru

Thunderbird 45 Released

Mozilla released the next major update for Thunderbird on April 12th, 2016. Thunderbird 45. There are many changes and fixes in this version which can be viewed in the Release Notes. One of the most noticeable changes is the addition of Correspondents column combining Sender and Recipient with an arrow on the left side of the email address. I don’t understand the purpose of this and even more so after reading Bug 36489 which dates back to almost 16-years ago (April 20, 2000). Frankly, I don’t like the change. It’s not the name change which I could use to, but rather adding the arrow. Good news…

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Firefox 46 Release Date Change

During this week’s Mozilla Weekly Updates Meeting, the release date for Firefox 46 has been pushed back a week from April 19th to April 26th. The channel merges for Beta and Developer Edition (Aurora) will also be pushed back a week. No information is available at this time why the release date was pushed back.

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2016 Thunderbird Releases

It has been a while since I have had a chance to update this site. Here are the most recent Thunderbird Releases: 45.0.0 — April 12th, 2016* 38.7.2 — April 4th, 2016 — Disabled Graphite font shaping library 38.7.1 — March 25th, 2016 — Disabled Graphite font shaping library 38.7.0 — March 14th, 2016 — Various security fixes 38.6.0 — February 16th, 2016 — Addressed couple behavior issues 38.5.1 — January 7th, 2016 — Introduced new SHA-256 signing certificate (Windows Only) * Thunderbird 45 currently available for download only (no update) as of April 12th, 2016. Users will likely be offered the update in the next few days.

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Windows 10 Anniversary Update

It has been about 3-months since I last posted. I had to retire the machine I was running Windows 10 on, an old Dell Optiplex as it was having hardware issues. I did not want to be putting money into a system that is over 10-years old, especially since I only paid $25 for it last year. Yet, I currently do not plan on upgrading anytime soon to Windows 10 on either of my two machines (Gateway Windows 8 Desktop and HP Windows 7 Laptop). Still not sure what I am going to do as I would like to try out Windows 10…

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Firefox News

Yes, it has been a while since The Guru has posted non-release news. Here’s some Firefox news from the past month. Firefox for iOS adds Security Features (The Mozilla Blog)- Changes to the Firefox Password Manager now allow iPhone/iPad users to add a 4-Digit password to the password manager for extra security. Inviting Conversation (Mitchell’s Blog) – Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Foundation Chair is looking to invite conversation about the Open Internet, Mozilla and Mozilla’s mission in a series of upcoming less “official” blog posts. Shipping Some Firefox Features Outside of the Release Cycle (Mozilla Future Releases) – Now new bloat features will be introduced more often and…

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Firefox 44 Released

Mozilla released the next major update for Firefox on January 26th with Firefox 44. New features in this release included: Improved warning pages for certificate errors and untrusted connections Enable H.264 if system decoder is available Enable WebM/VP9 video support on systems that don’t support MP4/H.264 In the animation-inspector timeline, lightning bolt icon next to animations running on the compositor thread Support the brotli compression format via HTTPS content-encoding Screenshot commands allow user choice of pixel ratio in Developer Tools Firefox Can Now Get Push Notifications From Your Favorite Sites There were some fixes and other items in this release…

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Mozilla to Adjust 2016 Firefox Release Schedule

Mozilla has announced they are tweaking the Firefox release schedule for 2016. They still plan on pushing out the same amount of releases per year, just the timing between releases is going to fluctuate between 6 to 8 weeks. Four years ago Mozilla moved to a fixed-schedule release model, otherwise known as theTrain Model, in which we released Firefox every six weeks to get features and updates to users faster and move at the speed of the Web. We studied the process carefully and learned a lot. We have also identified additional areas for improvement and it’s time we iterate…

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Microsoft to end Support Early for some Windows 7/8.1 Computers

Microsoft MSFT 430,53 -7,58 -1,73% has announced on the Windows Blog they will stop supporting Windows 7/8.1 on computers running the latest chips from Intel INTC 20,40 +0,20 +0,99%, AMD or Qualcomm QCOM 152,89 +2,49 +1,66%. Specifically these are listed as ‘Kaby Lake’ (Intel), ‘Bristol Ridge’ (AMD) and Qualcomm’s ‘8996’ (the base for the Snapdragon 820). Between them these chips will dominate sales of all new desktops, laptops, hybrids and tablets in 2016. This means for user of devices using these chipsets as well as the current generation Intel Skylake processors the Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 deadlines of January 2020 and…

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Microsoft To Get More Aggressive with ‘Get Windows 10’

Starting later this month business Windows 7/8.1 users will be included in the Get Windows 10 campaign. They too will start getting the nagware to upgrade to Windows 1o. According to a blog post from Matt Barlow, Microsoft’s MSFT 430,53 -7,58 -1,73% general manager of business group marketing, “Small businesses and organizations will soon be able to receive notifications about the upgrade and then directly upgrade to Windows 10,”. Microsoft defines small businesses and organizations as those with a device which: Running and licensed for Windows 7 Pro or Windows 8.1 Pro Configured to receive updates directly from the Windows Update service (i.e….

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Microsoft Has Ended Windows 8 Support

On January 13th, 2016, Microsoft Unfortunately, we could not get stock quote msft this time. officially ended support for Windows 8 and you better upgrade to Windows 10 while you still can for free. Okay, you may be asking since Windows 7 came out before Windows 8 and it is supported until January 2020 why would Microsoft end support for Windows 8 now? Well, Microsoft is referring to the original Windows 8.0 (though never branded as such). Okay, so I have Windows 8.1 I am good then? Maybe, maybe not…Microsoft’s FAQ: “Windows 8.1 falls under the same lifecycle policy as Windows 8,…

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