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Ben Firshman has ported the vNES into Javascript. Seriously… in JavaScript. While that’s pretty cool itself what it really shows is the blinding fast speed at which Google Chrome can handle JavaScript. In Google Chrome you get Full speed, 60 FPS emulation. Firefox… about 10 FPS. Now you can goof off with some cool old school NES games right from your browser… as long as your browser is Chrome (COMEON GOOGLE… GET EXTENSIONS IN THERE SO I CAN SWITCH!)

http://benfirshman.com/projects/jsnes/

Firefox uses SQLITE databases to store lots of its settings. By the time the databases grow and Firefox starts working slowly. It will take a lot of time to load during startup, the overall speed will be effected, and browsing Histories will be too slow. This is very common problem and it occurs largely because of fragmentation of databases.

SpeedyFox takes care of any database fragmentation and thus makes Firefox zippier. You might not see a difference if you try SpeedyFox on a fresh Firefox install, it works great after you have been using Firefox for some time. Just close Firefox, run SpeedyFox and point it to the profile you want to optimize.

Once installed, SpeedyFox automatically detects your Firefox’s default profile. If you have more than one profile, you can select the one you want to optimize from the drop-down menu. If you have portable version of Firefox, choose your profile path manually by selecting “Custom…” profile. All you have to do is hit the Speed Up Firefox button.

The optimization process can take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour depending on how large your databases are. The whole optimization process is safe as it does not effect your history, bookmarks, passwords, etc.

Download SpeedyFox here.

Yes, I’ll admit it… I *heart* GMail and FireFox; I use them everyday. I wish that GMail didn’t take up a full blown tab in FireFox tho (especially when on the netbook where screen real estate is precious!) You can permanently affix the Gmail (and Reader) tab in your tab bar, reduce it to show the tab favicon only, and display the number of unread items in each using a collection of Firefox add-ons (of course you can… that’s why we LOVE FireFox). See what it looks like in the image above: the Gmail and Reader tabs are on the far left, icon-only, with unread item counts–19 unread messages and 1k+ unread items (yikes!)–on the icons themselves.

To reproduce this setup in your own copy of Firefox, you’ll need four Firefox add-ons which Gina Trapani has put all together in a single collection. Install all the add-ons in the Icon-Only Perma-Tabs for Gmail and Google Reader collection. Restart Firefox.

Then, in Better Gmail 2, make sure “Unread Message Count in Favicon” is checked. In Better GReader, make sure “Show Unread Count in Favicon” is checked. Open Gmail and Google Reader in new tabs. Right-click on those tabs, and choose “Faviconize tab.” Then, to make them permanent (i.e., open automatically every time you launch Firefox), right-click again and choose “Permatabs->Permanent Tab.” Once you’re done, whenever you launch Firefox or even hit “Close All Tabs,” your icon-only perma-tabs containing Gmail and GReader will persist.

THANX GINA!

A day after Slashdot reported about a self-inflicted vulnerability in Firefox 3.5, Mozilla releases 3.5.1. It addresses the security issue in the TraceMonkey engine that would allow someone to exploit a system, but also fixes the annoying slow-startup on Windows.

Run Help – Check for Updates or hit this link to download 3.5.1!

Mashable does a great writeup on why IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On. The serious downsides to IE6 are:

- CSS v2 (Cascading Style Sheets): This is the code that enables almost all design on the web. In other words, designers have to hack up websites just to make them load in IE6.

- PNG Transparency: A great deal of .png images don’t display correctly in IE6. It basically kills using them in design work.

- General Security: Just like not updating your virus software can get you riddled with spyware, not updating your browser can be a gateway to attacks. There are even code snippets that will shut down IE6. I won’t tell you what they are, but you can find them on Wikipedia. It’s unstable.

- Digg , Facebook , and YouTube (soon): Both Digg and YouTube have announced that they’re cutting back on IE6 support. Facebook already gives you suggestions for better browsers if you try to log in with IE6. You won’t be able to Digg articles or browse YouTube via IE6 in the near future.

You should read through the entire article though if this is something that is of interest to you because they go into HTML5 as well as how IE6 is hurting web development progression in general. As a “web guy” I can’t wait for IE6 to die. When a client says they want to target IE6 (I usually say “current release + one version back” but sometimes they object) I utterly cringe because I know what a PITA it will be.

Catch the full article on Mashable.