2718.us blog » firefox

Mac: Chrome versus Firefox

2718.us — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:04:26 +0000

Seeing the announcement of Chrome 3 on Ars Technica reminded me of my desire for Chrome on the Mac. I’m not unhappy with Firefox, especially with the processor-specific-optimization builds, but it’s still slow and it just gets slower the longer I keep it open, constantly churning the CPU doing something and occasionally pausing for no apparent reason. (I dislike the interface and the feel of Safari, though less so with 4 than earlier versions.) So, I Googled Mac Chrome and found that they’ve got a developer preview up for Mac and I just had to download and install it. Both on my Macbook Air and on my Mac Pro, the SunSpider benchmark performance of “Shiretoko” intel-optimized Firefox 3.5.2 was 3-4x slower than the Chrome developer preview 4.0.207.0 (in which I am writing this post). This is huge. When I switched to “Shiretoko” from stock Firefox, I ran the SunSpider benchmarks and found a slight and significant improvement, but not even close to 2x, let alone 3-4x. I can’t wait for a final Chrome (or at least a Chrome that supports SOCKS proxy settings so I can securely browse over WiFi).

SSH Tunneling on a Mac

2718.us — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:55:27 +0000

Since my employer’s wireless network is unencrypted and since I use other open WiFi networks with some frequency, I’ve gotten in the habbit of tunneling everything through SSH, using the SOCKS5 proxy mechanism built in to SSH. In WinXP, there’s a nice little program called Tunnelier that makes the setup of the tunnel simple and it reconnects automatically, so the tunneling part is virtually automatic (even though proxy setup is still tricky and/or annoying).

On the Mac, however, I have tried several programs and never really been happy. So I wrote a little AppleScript that not only sets up the SSH tunnel, but also deals with switching my location to set the system’s network settings to use the proxy (the code is after the cut). Combine this with System Proxy for Firefox and all my application traffic goes through the SSH tunnel. Note also that if you’re using a SOCKS5 proxy with Firefox, you probably want to set it to do DNS lookups through the proxy.

This script also stores the info for creating the tunnel (server, login, pw) in the keychain.

Here’s the “library” script where I put the functions to do the underlying work (since I have various different tunnels I use):

on startTunnel(targetServer) –returns PID of ssh for killing later
tell application "Keychain Scripting"
set sshTunnelKeys to every Internet key of current keychain whose (name is "autoSSHTunnel") and (server is targetServer)
if sshTunnelKeys is {} then
set sshKey to my makeSSHKeyWithServer(targetServer)
else
set sshKey to item 1 of sshTunnelKeys
end if
set user to account of sshKey
set passwd to password of sshKey as string
set sshHost to server of sshKey as string
end tell
set sshCommand to "ssh -fND 9999 " & user & "@" & sshHost
set expectScript to "spawn " & sshCommand & "
expect assword
send \"" & passwd & "\\n\"
sleep 1"
do shell script "/usr/bin/expect -c '" & expectScript & "' &>/dev/null &"
set tries to 0
repeat
set tries to tries + 1
try
set sshPIDstring to (do shell script "sleep 1;bash -c 'ps ax -o pid,tt,command | grep \"??\" | grep \"" & sshCommand & "\" | grep -v grep | grep -v expect'")
set sshPID to first word of sshPIDstring
set gotPID to true
on error
set gotPID to false
end try
if gotPID then
exit repeat
end if
if tries > 10 then
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
if gotPID then
return sshPID
else
return false
end if
end startTunnel
on setUseTunnel()
do shell script "scselect 'Use SOCKS5 Proxy on localhost:9999'"
end setUseTunnel
on clearUseTunnel()
do shell script "scselect 'Automatic'"
end clearUseTunnel
on stopTunnel(pid)
do shell script "kill " & pid
end stopTunnel
on makeSSHKeyWithServer(targetServer)
tell application "Keychain Scripting"
repeat
set acctBox to display dialog "Enter your SSH login for host " & targetServer & ":" default answer "" buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} default button 2
set myAcct to the text returned of acctBox
set myButton to the button returned of acctBox
if myButton is "Cancel" then
–quit
else
if myAcct is not "" then
exit repeat
else
display dialog "bad login"
end if
end if
end repeat
repeat
set passBox to display dialog "Enter your password:" default answer "" buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} default button 2 with hidden answer
set myPass to the text returned of passBox
set myButton to the button returned of passBox
if myButton is "Cancel" then
–quit
else
if myPass is not "" then
exit repeat
else
display dialog "can't use blank passwd"
end if
end if
end repeat
set newSSHKey to make new Internet key with properties {name:"autoSSHTunnel", account:myAcct, password:myPass, server:targetServer, authentication:default, protocol:SSH}
end tell
return newSSHKey
end makeSSHKeyWithServer

And here’s the actual script I run.

property Lib : (path to scripts folder from user domain as text) & "Script Library:"
property sshTunnelLib : load script Lib & "ssh_tunnel.scpt" as alias
sshTunnelLib's setUseTunnel()
set sshPID to sshTunnelLib's startTunnel("fqdn.of.your.server")
if sshPID is not false then
set noPIDtxt to ""
set buttonTxt to "Kill SSH and Exit"
else
set noPIDtxt to " (but couldn't get PID)"
set buttonTxt to "Exit"
end if
display dialog "SSH-tunneled SOCKS5 proxy running on localhost:9999" & noPIDtxt buttons {buttonTxt}
if sshPID is not false then
sshTunnelLib's stopTunnel(sshPID)
end if
sshTunnelLib's clearUseTunnel()

shrinking gcal

2718.us — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:45:45 +0000

I’ve started to get really into using Google Calendar and it works all fine and dandy on my desktop (multiple large monitors), but when I get to my smaller laptop screen it’s hrd to see more than an event or two per day in the 4-week view (especially since I keep my browser window small-ish). This led me (through various googling) to the Stylish plugin for Firefox (I think it’s available for other browsers, too), and a few styles: Shrink Sidebar, colorize Saturday & Sunday, and Compact Header. These were a good start, but just not enough for me, so I hacked up my own version of Compact Header and added another style to do some more shrinking.

Here’s my version of Compact Header:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document url-prefix("http://www.google.com/calendar/"),
url-prefix("https://www.google.com/calendar/") {
#topBar > table > tbody > tr:first-child > td:first-child,
#ft {
display: none !important;
}
#cornerBookmarks {
width: 1em !important;
overflow: hidden !important;
}
#cornerBookmarks:hover {
overflow: visible !important;
}
#cornerBookmarks > .bookmarks {
padding: 4px !important;
}
#cornerBookmarks > .bookmarks > tbody > tr > td::before {
content: "\bb\a0\a0";
font-weight: bold;
}
#tc_top > table {
background-color: transparent !important;
}
#topBar {
margin-left: 1em !important;
}
#s {
padding-bottom: 0 !important;
/* margin-top: -5px !important; **ILG */
margin-top: 4px !important;
}
#s > input, #s > button {
font-size: 80% !important;
vertical-align: middle !important;
}
#nt1 {
margin-bottom: -2ex !important;
}
#nt1 > div {
padding-top: 4px !important;
}
#mt1 > .s > div {
margin-top: 1em !important;
}
}

Here’s my more-shrinking thing:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document url-prefix(http://www.google.com/calendar) {
body {
font-size: 8pt !important;
}
div#gbar {
display: none !important;
}
div#guser {
font-size: 8pt !important;
}
span#todrawfav table {
margin-top: 1px !important;
}
span#todrawfav font {
font-size: 8pt !important;
}
td.chip div label {
font-size: 6pt !important;
}
div#nt_0 div {
height: 13px !important;
}
div#nt_0 {
height: 15px !important;
font-size: 7pt !important;
}
div#addPT {
border-bottom: 1pt solid #999 !important;
height: 14px !important;
}
div#nt_0 div#addPT,div#nt_0 div#addPT div {
height: 14px !important;
}
}