16 Mar 07 Firebug
This makes me very, very happy.
Tags: firebug, firefox, software, Technology, web-design, web-development
16 Feb 07 Navigation Complete
I’ve finally released a “final” copy of the Navigation Theme for bbPress that I’ve been working on, with a couple of after-the-fact tweaks (suggestions from a friend) that’ll likely appear in any later release I do.
When I initially set out to port the Navigation Theme from WordPress to bbPress, I really hadn’t thought to undertake a major coding project. It’s been several years since I’ve really done any kind of web design work, and 90% of that was for my own personal website as I was learning and working with HTML. CSS language has changed a lot over the years, and I’ve gotten woefully behind on what it can do now. All I wanted was a functional template that looked at least something like what I use here in WordPress. What I ended up with was a week-long project hacking and crash-coursing CSS in between other real-life projects in order to quiet the perfectionist raging inside me.
And I’ve really learned quite a bit. Stylesheets can do quite a lot more now than when I was first exposed to them. I’ve been highly impressed. I can also say that I think I’ve become quite comfortable with most of the new commands and with forcing things to appear in the way that I want them to. (It’s amazing how much time you sometimes have to spend poring over code just to figure that adding one short line to an element will solve a couple of major problems all at once. It’s disgusting, really.)
The only problem with stylesheets is, you’ve got it, Internet Explorer. I actually worked really hard on this project to make sure that the theme would be as compatible across browsers as possible. Unfortunately, IE6 makes this extremely difficult because it doesn’t always acknowledge all the CSS commands. Or it executes code in really funny ways, making something that looks great in both Firefox and IE7 look like utter garbage when you load it in IE6. So, I had to funny creative workarounds in the stylesheet that would allow the theme to be functional in IE6 while still not breaking things in Firefox and IE7. A major headache, to be sure, but ultimately it turned out to be worthwhile. What I ended up with was a clean, attractive template that perfectly complements the one I use on WordPress.
So, if ever I find a good reason to use these two tools (WordPress and bbPress) in apposition to each other, I’ll already be set up and ready to go. I had fun messing with the design, but it’s time again to move on to some other things that have been waiting (im)patiently for me.
Tags: bbpress, firefox, Internet-Exploder, navigation, software, themes, WordPress
19 Jan 07 Editing Firefox’s Personal Spellcheck Dictionary
Jean posed an interesting question yesterday – how exactly does one edit their personal spellcheck dictionary in Firefox, particularly if you’ve accidentally added a couple of badly spelled words? It’s a question I’ve wondered about myself but hadn’t had the motivation to look into until now. It took me a few minutes to find the answer, but it’s actually really easy.
Find your profile folder in your Firefox directory (mine’s under FirefoxPortable\Data\profile) and locate the file called persdict.dat. This file contains all the words you’ve added to your approved spellcheck list for Firefox. Just open the file in your favorite spreadsheet program and delete the rows containing words incorrectly added to the dictionary, save the file again, and close it. Simple as that!
You can also find a few other ways to modify your dictionary here.
12 Jan 07 Google Loses Some Ground
I’ve changed my mind – I don’t like Google Browser Sync after all. I’ve been using it for several days now, except that ‘using’ is a bit of an overstatement. It’s more like it’s using me, and laughing about it. The add-on for Firefox worked the very first time, when I installed it, and it hasn’t worked since. I’ve messed with it quite a bit, trying to figure out if I did something wrong in the setup or configuration; I even double-checked my PIN to make sure I’d entered it correctly (I had). No dice.
So, I’m not really sure what happened, why it won’t work. The odd thing is, occasionally, when I go to leave a comment on a Blogger site, one of the ones that is configured to pop-up a new window for comments, then it’ll ask if I want to restore the session from my other computer – and that’s exactly the sort of window I don’t want to restore the session into. Why it won’t ask me when I initially re-open my main browsing window I don’t know.
So, Google Browser Sync has gone bye-bye. If they build a new upgrade with some bug fixes, I’d be willing to give it another shot – but not until then.
09 Jan 07 Google and Apple To Take Over the World
Google has made me a very happy camper recently. It started about the time I finally landed one of those much coveted Gmail beta-tester accounts – I’ve never been happier with email. Then, I discovered how powerful the Google search engine really is – Google Search is now the only search engine I’ll ever use.
Recently, I switched my RSS feed reader over to Google Reader. I’d been looking for a suitable replacement for Mozilla Thunderbird – much as I love Thunderbird, it was just a little bit too difficult for me to use it on multiple computers, even as a portable app. My computer at home is actually a bit too slow to handle running any applications from a flash drive (I really need to upgrade to USB 2.0 one of these days). I’d started using a server-side feed reader, but it didn’t automatically update the way I wanted. Then, I’d heard about Google Reader updating their services, so I decided to give them a second try (the first time around I was less than impressed). Now, I’m very satisfied with this program, and it fits very nicely into my Firefox browser, making it very easy to add new interesting feeds as I stumble across. It updates automatically and organizes everything in a logical manner.
Add to that one more service I think I like – Google Sync. This is a slick little add-on for Firefox that allows you to use Firefox on several different computers but keep your browsing session in sync on all of them. This includes history and saved passwords (encryped, of course), bookmarks, history, and tabs and windows. I’ve been using it for about 24 hours now, and so far I like what I see. Eventually, I’d like to simply run Firefox Portable from my flash drive everywhere I go, but again, that requires USB 2.0 to be really effective. So in the meantime, this is an effective solution I can live with.
I’ve also been keeping my eye on Apple recently. This is one company that continues to dish out some really neat products. My wife has had her eye on a G5 for quite some time now – she has a background in multimedia and video work and would love to be able to set up at home. I’ve had my eye on either an iPod or an iPod Nano. Now I come to find out that Apple has produced the iPhone. I’ve kind of kvetched recently about combining too many digital devices into one thing, but I have to say that this iPhone idea holds a bit of a glamour for me. This one looks like it might actually be usable. Of course, I don’t really have much interest in owning a cell phone, so the iPod solution is still probably the best one for me. But if I were to get a cell phone, the iPhone would certainly be one I’d be interested in.
Tags: apple, firefox, gmail, google, iphone, plugins, software, Technology
17 Nov 06 Uninstall
I’ve decided the time has come to say goodbye to a couple more of my Firefox extensions. And I have to say, I’m not really going to miss them.
The first was coComment. I’ve been using this one for a while now to track comments I’ve left on other blogs. But the trouble is that the service has been terribly unreliable. Sure, it’s logged every comment I’ve left since I started using it, but then it only updates the ongoing discussions very infrequently. This then forces me to follow-up on a conversation by clicking through from my coComments page, which seems to pretty much invalidate the whole point of using coComment in the first place. But, I’ve been living with this draw-back for a while now; it was something I’d decided I could live with (coComment is, after all, still in beta). The straw that broke the camel’s back came when I noticed this morning that coComment was suddenly trying to track all of my forum discussions, as well (something which, on a couple of boards, it will never be able to do since it requires a username and password to access). And there’s no way (that I could find) to disable this feature. I just decided that, with this, enough’s enough; it’s time to put this one away and move on to other things. Maybe one day someone will actually develop a comment tracker that does everything I want it to do (and more) and lets me have a higher degree of control over what it tracks.
The second extension I “fired” was for Trailfire. I’d given it a whirl on the recommendation of a friend. What Trailfire does is allows a user to 1) create a logical trail on the Internet of related websites, and 2) see and follow the trails of other Trailfire users. Interesting concept. I’ve just had absolutely zero use for it. So, it had to go away.
I love my Firefox extensions. There are a lot of good ones out there that turn Firefox into a fierce little web surfing beast. It’s just that, sometimes, some of them have to be sent west.
10 Nov 06 Firefox 2.0
I’ve been holding off on upgrading to Firefox 2.0. It’s the first version after the release candidates, so naturally I’ve expected it to have some bugs and glitches. I also wanted to wait until some of my favorite extensions were updated for the new version.
I finally upgraded this past weekend. I’ve been using 2.0 for the last several days, and overall, I’m not a fan. Sure, there’s some new features that I absolutely adore. For instance, there’s the built-in spellcheck. Very slick. Very snazzy. And I love the fact that session restore is now part of the package, requiring no extension to be added on.
What I don’t like, what’s causing me to seriously consider reverting to a previous version, is the new tab scrolling feature. I’m a power surfer – always have been. At any given time, I have anywhere from 15 to 50 tabs open. It used to be that you could have that many tabs open and they would all be visible in the tab bar. In FF2.0, however, tabs now scroll off the sides, with scroll buttons that let you slide back and forth to find various tabs. You can adjust some of the about:config settings, of course, in order to make tab sizes as small as possible before the scrollbar kicks in, but ultimately, you can’t make the scrollbar go away completely. And I hate that. It defeats the whole point of having all your tabs in a single browser window because I have to scroll back and forth to find the tabs I want. One of the most important reasons for putting all tabs in one bar was to save time, make browsing more efficient by not having to switch between windows all the time. Now, however, I have to do virtually the same thing by sliding back and forth on the tab bar. Sure, it saves space on my Windows taskbar, but it still makes browsing the Internet inefficient.
There is also the fact that there are still some glitches that are proving to be aggravating. I’ve been trying to find a good solution for the scrolling tab bar (i.e. a way to get rid of scrolling completely). People on the Firefox support forums keep saying that the upgraded Tab Mix Plus extension will get rid of it. So I installed it – and it’s not true. Sure, you can get rid of the scroll buttons, but the tabs still slide off the sides of tab bar. Now, though, you simply can’t access them or see them. You could go with the option of having multiple rows of tabs, but then you start eating into the visual space of the browser. None of the three tab bar options that Tab Mix Plus gives you is what I want (i.e. FF1.5 tab bar behavior), so I uninstalled it – only to find that my FF2.0 built-in session restore no longer worked. Frustrating? You betcha. So, I’ve had to re-install TMP just so that my FF session restore feature will work properly again.
I love Firefox; I love what I can do with it, but this version of the browser has more problems than I’d like to see right now. Sure, it’s open source and built by volunteers, and sure any new version of software has its problems to go along with the new (and very cool) features. That’s par for the course. I’m just hoping that the developers get some of these issues ironed out in the next upgrade, and that they do it soon.
Tags: firefox, firefox-2.0, software
11 Oct 06 Image Zappo
I must say that I really, really like the Adblock extension for Firefox. In addition to just being able to clear all those really annoying advertisements that many sites have, if you come across an image that bugs you on a site you frequent, just adblock it. Voila! No more annoying image. I sometimes forget I have this installed, so some images annoy me for far longer than they ought. Lately, I’ve been using to block disturbing avatars on a couple of forums.
26 Sep 06 Just the Way You Are
I’d rather laugh than cry: he loves me anyway
It’s a common ideal in American culture that our women must have a certain look in order to be considered attractive. They must all be slim and curvacious and positively dead-sexy. Supermodels are the ideal, the standard by which all women must measure their own beauty.
I think that Christine’s jesting anecdote shows both sides of the issue. Women feel pressure to cover up flaws with makeup, hide blemishes, disguise signs of aging and fatigue – whether or not any of those things actually exist. Mike’s response is, I believe, the embodiment of the mindset of most men – we would much rather see our women “in their natural”, sans makeup. Part of this is simply the desire to see them free of that kind of stress, free of the chains of living up to a shallow cultural ideal. And part of it is simply that we love them just as they are. There’s no need to ‘get all gussied up’ for us, no need to hide behind all that stuff. We appreciate the natural beauty of the women we love, not the kind of fake beauty that comes from a tube. That’s just the way we are.
So, ladies, the pressure you feel to make yourselves more attractive is, by and large, your own. Any man worth his mettle is never going to pressure you to dress up and will, in fact, encourage you in quite the opposite direction. Take strength from that. You may even find that your makeup collection will start to shrink.
He loves you just the way you are.
Update: I just had to do it – I decided to give Trailfire a whirl and see if I could find something on other blogs to validate this. Here’s what I’ve found so far.
Update: Christine has a great follow-up post on this issue. I’m really not sure I’ve ever heard it explained from this perspective before. I learned something new, and it changes the way I see things. Thanks, Christine!
21 Jul 06 StumbleUpon
I literally stumbled on this great website. I noticed early this morning that Flashes of Speculation was getting a lot of hits from a site called StumbleUpon. It wasn’t one I’d heard of before, and I was half afraid it was another one of those spamming websites. But I decided to go ahead and check it out. I was surprised to find that Stumbleupon is something along the lines of a social bookmarking site. What’s different, however, is that StumbleUpon has a toolbar that installs into Firefox (there may be one for IE, too; I’m not sure), allowing the user to sign up for an account. Once this is done, you can ‘Stumble’ through sites under your chosen categories of interest, revealing little gems that may have heretofore gone undiscovered. You can also rate sites you like, tag them, review them, and thus share them with others stumbling through the same tagged categories.
I’m working on adding some of the sites I frequent, hoping to direct a little more traffic towards them. If you’re interested in seeing some of these places, feel free to stop by my profile and look down through. And any traffic you might be willing to send here or to Flashes would be greatly appreciated, as well.
Tags: firefox, flashes-of-speculation, plugins, software, stumbleupon
