 |
| 2008-06-18 23:54 |
| (Link credit: TUAW) |
| Public |
| macs, mozilla |
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Oh finally, PERFECT. Someone has slapped together the correct way (Mac only) to view PDFs in Firefox. (Downloading the file and opening it in Preview: incorrect. Installing Adobe's asinine plugin: incorrect. Click on the link and it just shows the damn PDF, right-click if you need anything fancy: correct. Thanks for playing, we have our winner.)
(Yes, Safari got this right years ago.)
2 Comments — Post A Comment — Add to Memories — Tell a Friend — Link
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| 2008-06-17 16:59 |
| (no subject) |
| Public |
| Iron & Wine—Beneath The Balcony |
| mozilla |
|
Happy Firefox 3 day! Hook it up!
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| 2008-05-17 13:04 |
| Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 |
| Public |
| Nirvana—Territorial Pissings |
| mozilla |
|
It's Firefox, it's fresh, and it's basically done. ("RC1" means that if nothing comes up during the shake-out period, this is the actual file that will be released as "Firefox 3." Something will probably come up. I still consider it solid enough to upgrade the parents.)
Back in the dim and distant past, on the eve of Firefox 1's release, there was a roadmap for three future versions of the app. Version 1.1 was to be a touch-up release, which made fixes and updated the Gecko engine while keeping the features and look mostly the same. 1.5 would be a medium-grade update, using the same engine as 1.1 but adding a nice pile of new features. And then there was Firefox 2.0, the major, revolutionary release. It would be built on a version of Gecko that didn't exist yet and have features that weren't possible without it, with an entirely new graphics layer, an undreamt-of speed boost, and a whole lot of things the developers had wanted all along but couldn't get. Ultimately, for various reasons, the version numbers were all pushed forward a notch: 1.1 became 1.5, etc. But the reason I bring up those old-ass (2004?) numbering predictions is that this release -- Firefox 3 -- is what became of that original, grail-like vision of "2.0." The last two releases were both evolutionary: visible improvements, but fairly pedestrian ones. This is the version that, right from the start, was intended to be The New Hotness. It is.
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| 2008-05-15 04:28 |
| (no subject) |
| Public |
| Lemon Jelly—The Curse Of Ka'Zar |
| mozilla |
|
Firefox 2's theme refresh was a total abortion, but the new themes for Firefox 3 look so good it's practically miraculous. If you'd like to see why, and whet your appetite while waiting for the RC1 release, I recommend this slightly obsessive post by one of the people involved in the project. No, seriously, it's interesting, honest!
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| 2008-05-03 00:45 |
| Focus |
| Public |
| Coyote Bones—Lightweights Drinking |
| mixology, mozilla |
|
If you ignored my advice and are using Firefox nightlies -- and happen to be doing so on Mac -- you'll want the bug 4067301-compatible GrApple theme,2 because it is pretty sweet.
Also, I just mixed my first Manhattan. I think I like these. But I need some bitters and some lemon slices, and a 3:1 ratio is way too much vermouth. Also, it turns out that a small metal tea-thermos makes a pretty good cocktail shaker.
_____
1. I swear, this is the most drama I've seen in Bugzilla since the multiline tooltip bug.
Me, I'm in the camp that says it's a crucial feature -- FF3 needs either a working de-focus effect (even at the cost of weird behavior elsewhere) or a total backout of the Proto theme and a reversion to FF2's thin-bar window design.
2. At least until the Proto3 changes roll through. And always remember to add
.searchbar-engine-image {
margin-left: -11px !important;
margin-right: 2px !important;
display: -moz-box !important;
background-color: #fff !important;
}
to your userChrome.css when using a GrApple theme.
3. I guess they're calling it "Firelight" now?
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| 2008-04-24 17:37 |
| Fire |
| Public |
| Vienna Teng—Harbor |
| mozilla |
|
The quicksand hasn't dried out yet, and new crasher bugs still blow through town occasionally in the nightly builds, so I can't in good conscience tell you to upgrade to Firefox 3 until it hits Release Candidate status. But believe me, you'll want to switch over as soon as it's safe.
Let me start with the low-hanging fruit:
- It's faster.
- It uses way less memory, especially on Windows.
- It's prettier, especially on Mac.
- It makes the web prettier. (Typographic ligatures and kerning! In a web browser! Holy shit! And color management, too, although you have to turn that one on manually.)
So yes, better in all the predictable ways, fine—the real meat is in the weirder stuff. There are all kinds of miscellaneous UI improvements, like the ability to move tabs from one window to another, the oversized back button (which I've decided I quite like), the post-facto password saver, the ability to easily disable plugins, and the increased exposure of the session-restore feature from FF2. But the standout among them all is the combo of the new bookmarks system and something known as... "The Awesomebar."
It sounds simple enough in summary (the location bar now searches your bookmarks and history), but I am using surprisingly little hyperbole when I say that the Awesomebar will change everything you know about web browsing. My ancient and hard-wired custom of filing a bookmark and then digging for it later is almost entirely gone—now I just "star" a page if I think I'll need it later, and when the time comes, I type a word or two into the Awesomebar and the sucker is there. And even if I forgot to star it, the Bar is smart enough to figure out which pages in the history are most important by combining the frequency and recency of your visits.
In fact, the Awesomebar eliminates the need for the entire "bookmarks" paradigm—everything is history, history lives in the location bar, and stars (bookmarks) are how you mark certain pieces of history as permanent and important (with optional tags for categorizing). It's a whole new approach to remembering things; not just a linear technical improvement, but a re-imagining of something fundamental in the way we use information.
And hey, if that doesn't turn your crank, at least it's faster, prettier, and uses less memory.
Also, if you've ever preferred to use a command line for a task, the Awesomebar has some special tricks for you. It's about the closest thing I've seen to a shell for the Web. --And I should mention that you can still use the bookmarks system in the traditional fashion -- your bookmarks menu and folders remain right there for when you need them. I haven't been needing them very often.
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| 2007-11-20 02:08 |
| (no subject) |
| Public |
| Wilco—I'm A Wheel |
| mozilla |
|
First beta of Firefox 3! Early prototype of new Mac theme! Get it while it's hot! If you're into that sort of thing.
EDIT: Haha, I'm kind of in a dueling bugs situation here — on the nightlies, the keyboard navigation and drag-and-drop for tabs is fucked, but beta1 still has that gnarly undo close tab bug, where if you ever hit cmd-shift-T on the keyboard, you lose undo close tab until you restart the browser. Oh well!
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| 2007-10-03 20:56 |
| Because I haven't yammered on about Firefox recently. |
| Public |
| The Mountain Goats—Wild Sage |
| mozilla, music, technobabble |
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So check out* the recent mockups for Firefox 3 themeage! Some people have been saying that it looks way too much like Safari, but I'm of the opinion that goddamn near anything will be better than the Firefox 2 theme. Ooh, and maybe they can get the close buttons on the correct side of the tab, this time! Anyway, I'm excited.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I encourage people using trunk builds to check out the link at the top of the right-hand column over at Aronnax's page. It looks a little bit silly without the still-in-development Unified Toolbar patch --
(  )
-- but it's a distinct improvement over the Frankensteined-out placeholder version of the 2.0 theme, so I figure you might as well go for it.
Oh, also, I made my first purchases from Amazon.com's new mp3 store today. Verdict: It is the shit. Awesome selection, helper application that doesn't suck, no DRM or other toxic substances. And now that the US dollar is swirling in the bowl, their prices aren't even getting trumped by Zunior -- for some albums, in fact, they're even better. Anyway, I grabbed the new TMBG, the most recent Loud Family, and the most recent Mountain Goats (plus a bunch of their B-sides). I think we finally have the online record store that will change these things permanently; from here on out, you'll be buying more and more of your records minus the actual record. iTunes was theoretically reversible; this is not. Also, having it around is going to be kind of hazardous for my checking account. _____ * They're in the Attachments area, about one screen down. The usual caveats apply -- Bugzilla is not a message board, play nice, etc. etc.
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| 2007-02-04 21:46 |
| Netscape 9 from Outer Space |
| Public |
| Over/Under—Possibilities |
| mozilla, technobabble |
|
No offense intended toward the hardworking people at Netscape, but can everyone who cares about this please raise their hands?
I mean, the problem with basing your new web browser on Firefox is that we all already have Firefox. It sucks minimally, upgrading to the next version is easy as hell, and it's an enormous fucking brand. And it's extensible, which means anyone who thinks harder about their browser than "Damn, better use what my daughter's using so I can ask her how to fix it without feeling like a dick" has probably already got it working the way they want it to work. What I'm saying is that you can't market "Firefox plus an extension or five." Or at the very least, you need to be kicking Flock's ass before anyone I know will care.
(Never mind that one of the plot points from Lulu is a modified build of Firefox.)
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| 2006-10-28 23:08 |
| The browser (war) is back |
| Public |
| The Mountain Goats—You Or Your Memory |
| mozilla, technobabble |
|
So I want to hear from anyone I know who's using either Firefox 2 or IE 7. What's up with that? Give me some wherefore and who.
I don't have the resources to try IE 7 yet. Everything I've heard, though, indicates that it is non-lame. Maybe it can't match Firefox yet, but it's up to about parity with Safari. I confess, that's exciting to me.
2 Comments — Post A Comment — Add to Memories — Tell a Friend — Link
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Firefox 2 has a few slick improvements to the search box. You might have already noticed them, you might not have.
First off: If you click the search-engine drop-down menu, you'll see an option at the bottom called "Manage Search Engines." This will give you a window (actually a sheet on Mac--note that Firefox's sheets can be resized for convenience) where you can easily delete and re-order your search engines, as well as resurrect the default searches if you accidentally deleted one. I've found this super-useful; I can put my three or four most common searches at the top of the list, and just use Cmd-Up and Cmd-Down to switch between them.*
Secondly: This one's kind of subtle, but it's awesome. Maybe web-changing awesome. To check it out, go to Technorati or Wikipedia and take a look at the search-dropdown button. See how it's "glowing?"** Click, and you'll see an extra option at the bottom that lets you add a search engine for the current site.
Granted, it's of limited use until more sites start supporting it.*** But I was just over at Mycroft (had to grab some searches for Alibris and Abebooks), and I noticed that they have a glowing search box too. Two clicks later, and I have the ability to find new search engines right from the search box. Then I imagined that being available on every site I need to search sometimes, and I was like, "Yeah."
_____
* You remember the search box keyboard shortcuts, right? Cmd-K puts your cursor directly in the search box. Cmd-Up and Cmd-Down move up and down the list of engines. Opt-Down reveals the list of search engines, and lets you select one to use with the arrow and return keys. (On Windows, substitute Ctrl for Cmd and Alt for Opt. I think.)
** On New Pinstripe, it just turns the arrow green. He's still putting the finishing touches on the theme.
*** You do it with a <link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" title="Mycroft Project" href="http://mycroft.mozdev.org/opensearch.xml"> tag; sub in your own title and plugin URL. If I'm remembering correctly, this is also the way MS Internet Explorer 7 does search discovery, and it definitely uses the same type of search plugin. Which is fucking awesome, and preemptively shanks the sort of incompatible bullshit we saw so much of in the last round of browser wars.
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| 2006-09-27 18:40 |
| THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT |
| Public |
| Regina Spektor—Fidelity |
| mozilla, technobabble |
|
1. Mozilla Firefox 2 (release candidate 1). It's Firefox, its fresh, and it's basically done.
2. Pinstripe 4.9. HELLS. YES. Install it right away. This, this is what a 2.0 theme is supposed to look like. It looks and acts more native, more attractive, and more modern than the widely-panned Radiant Core theme. Jesus, that sidebar.
Windows and Linux users will have to wait a little longer for an updated Winstripe, but your version of the new theme isn't quite the disaster that the Mac one is, so you'll probably live.
EDIT: Guys, I am seriously just opening and closing tabs for the pure joy of it. PINSTRIPE. Man, you just don't miss your water til' your well run dry.
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Now that they've done some fixing on it, I've spent a week or two with the Firefox 2 theme turned on for regular browsing. And it still is basically rubbish. It's just extremely anti-hip and un-Mac-like. The icons still look bad, the change in available icon sizes is still unjustifiably stupid, close-on-the-right is still wrong wrong wrong. It's a bad citizen on Mac OS, and a step back from Pinstripe in nearly every way that matters. It's fucking depressing to think the world's best browser will be shipping with this. Once the regressions in Pinstripe Classic get fixed, I'll probably be switching back for good.
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EDIT: Asa wants to know what you think of the theme, and good on him for it. If you've got anything to say, he's the one to say it to.
As others have pointed out, the new, "refreshed" theme for Firefox 2.0 is fugly and unusable. But most of the discussion has centered around the Windows version of it, which, to my eyes, is actually not that terrible. Buggy and in need of some choice de-fuglifications, sure, but it's a valid effort.
The Mac theme, on the other hand, is a fucking trainwreck. ( ...And wouldn't you know it, I forgot to take my pills this morning. )
In conclusion, WTF.Anyway, I don't think the new theme is unsalvagable. I actually like the new styles for the Go and Search buttons (they need a much sharper outline, IMO), and I like the spatial solutions they're finding for the tab-overflow functions. Radiant Core has some decent ideas, and once they build a working implementation of them, I expect to like the theme all right. But right now, a bunch of really obvious, glaring stuff, nearly all of which should have been fixed before Beta 2, is making it too frustrating to actually use. In the meantime: 1. Feedback is part of the design process. So go ahead and make some noise if you're not satisfied yet. 2. The classic Pinstripe and Winstripe themes are still available as add-ons.
5 Comments — Post A Comment — Add to Memories — Tell a Friend — Link
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| 2006-07-26 20:43 |
| Been a while, hasn't it? |
| Public |
| Something live at Acadia |
| mozilla, technobabble |
|
I am running into some serious black magic shit on these post Beta1 builds of BonEcho.
For starts, dragging and dropping recently got inexplicably and unsettlingly faster. You know how, on a G3, it used to kind of flicker and lag as you did a drag-rearrange on some tabs? Not so much, anymore. Likewise with dragging links—it actually seems even faster than dragging in the Finder.
Another thing—and I had to deduce from the mousewheel behavior* that this was going on—is that smooth-scrolling** almost works on a G3 now. Sure, it flickers a bit. But it doesn't mire and drag, slowing down the entire system. I was totally not expecting that to change until Cocoa + Cairo hit for FF3.
What else... Menus have gotten a lot more native-looking, tab-overflow is getting better (now they've got THREE coping mechanisms in effect, which is actually working surprisingly well)... Overall, it's shaping up to be a pretty impressive release, which is really nice, considering how skeptical I was when they dropped Places.
_____
* Mousewheel behavior in the bookmarks menu/manager is kind of fucked up right now on slow-ass machines... maybe I should file a bug. It seems slightly more responsive in browser windows, oddly.
** about:config, search for "smooth," double-click.
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Firefox 2 is getting significantly better!
EDIT: And oh, baby, that new "Recently Closed Tabs" submenu sitting right there in History? THAT'S what we've been waiting for. 1. Bug 343659 is in the process of being aggressively slaughtered. Seriously, that thing is fucked. Huge props to Dietrich for getting in its face. If you download a nightly build on the day after tomorrow, it'll probably be completely fixed. (If you want to use current nightlies NOW, you can patch the file yourself. 2. Tabbed browsing is getting MUCH better than it was when the scrolling overflow first landed. We now get some minimal feedback about where we are in the strip (the scrollboxes grey out when you're at either end of it), and the weird glitches are disappearing, but more importantly, Spitzer enabled/re-enabled two hidden preferences that let you basically make it act however you want it to act: browser.tabs.tabClipWidth—The width, in pixels, below which a background tab is not allowed to show its close button [X]. i.e. if this is set at 115 (the default) and there are enough tabs on-screen that each tab is only 100 pixels wide, the front tab is the only one that will display its close button. This preference exists to help keep you from accidentally closing tabs—once they're down to about 50px wide, it's really hard to select a tab without closing it. Before scrolling overflow landed, this was the only such defense being used. browser.tabs.tabMinWidth—The tab width, in pixels, at which the creation of new tabs will cause scrolling overflow of the tab bar rather than shrinkage of existing tabs. By default, this is set at 125. (Note that this means tabClipWidth is irrelevant—unless you alter these settings yourself, you'll never see background close buttons disappear.) The lower this is set, the more tabs you can fit onscreen before you have to scroll the tab bar to see them all. Personally, I like having a ClipWidth of about 80 and a MinWidth of about 60. I have pretty decent mouse/trackpad aim, so 80 is more than enough protection against accidental closure, and I don't like using tab scrolling unless I've got WAY too many tabs on-screen, so 60 is a decent limit for that. And for example: - If you want to have only one close button visible at all times, set ClipWidth to something like 260. - If you want to just turn scrolling overflow OFF and be done with it, set MinWidth to something really infeasible, like 5. (But for what it's worth, I DO think scrolling overflow is a really good solution to a big problem. It's only irritating when it kicks in too soon.)
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| 2006-07-05 22:41 |
| Yeah, I kind of need to be able to type? |
| Public |
| Planxty—Farewell And Remember Me |
| mozilla, technobabble |
|
Hey Mozillastalkers: Stay away from Bon Echo nightlies on or after June 30, for at least a little while. Bug 343659 is a pisser.
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| 2006-07-03 13:35 |
| Ah want security / Ah want it at any cost |
| Public |
| The Jayhawks (uh, I always get these guys confused with the Yardbirds.) |
| mozilla, twin cities |
|
The Central Library has wireless access for people who bring their laptops in. It only allows HTTP connections, which I suppose is fair, and in order to access it at all in a given 8-hour period, you have to first visit a login site and confirms to their router that the person using your computer's MAC address has agreed to the library's minimal code of internet contact.
This site is encrypted and authenticated, but it only supports SSL 2.0.
SSL is the protocol used by secure sites to both prove to you that they are who they say they are and to encrypt your connection. SSL 1.0 never shipped, so SSL 2.0 was the first public version. SSL 2.0 has some "known security flaws." Luckily, you can block those flaws by using SSL 3.0.
Mozilla Firefox 2.0 is dropping support for SSL 2.0. It's not even going to be available in the preferences dialog. You can turn it on, but only by using about:config. So if you're using the next version of the second-most popular web browser in the world, you can't connect to the library's login site unless you deliberately open yourself up to security holes, using an arcane process that probably only 10% of Firefox users even know about.
SSL 3.0 shipped in 1996 with the release of Netscape Navigator 2.0.
I reckon the library should probably upgrade their wireless login page to a 1996 level of technology; I passed the IT guys a friendly note to that effect through the guy at the reference desk. I know a few of you guys live in the Twin Cities, and it might be helpful if you could fire off an email or two as well. (Or better yet, talk to the reference desk people next time you're at Central.)
EDIT: Incidentally, you know the best part of doing your important stuff over at Central because it's too hot outside and it's a nice air-conditioned place where they won't kick you out if you sit for five hours and don't buy anything? If you suddenly realize you really really want a book, you can just... wander over and grab it. (There are five copies of that one in the system. Four are checked in. They're all at Central. This is why living in the City Proper is the shit.)
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I am REALLY not fond of the modifications to tab behavior that rolled in on two nights ago's Bon Echo build. Sideways scrolling with no relative position feedback using two buttons located on opposite sides of the tab bar? Are you smoking the crack?
When for one reason or another I had to wrangle a whole pile of tabs at once, shrinky tabs worked. This doesn't. Hope they've got a vision for how to make this non-painful before B1 hits.
Also, I cleaned the bathroom last night! (Speaking of usability.)
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Matt, a casual pal of mine from school, started working at the AF just recently, and while I was sitting next to him today yesterday, I saw him go to the actual Yahoo.com web page in order to run a search for something. He was browsing with Firefox anyway (the AF PCs have some revision of 1.5 installed), so I leaned over and suggested he use the search box in the right-hand corner instead, pointing out that if you click on the search logo icon in the 1.x series, it drops down into a menu of search engines (which includes Yahoo by default and can be added-to at whim). I swear I saw the top of his head come off. It turns out that he uses something called Netcaptor at home (which makes the second time I've ever heard of that browser), and the ready presence of that kind of raw power--by default--kind of blew his mind.
So I did the socially responsible thing and blew his mind the rest of the way, demonstrating (in rapid succession) Live Bookmarks, incremental find, and the use of apostrophe-start FAYT plus ctrl-enter to open links in new tabs without looking at the screen. (THAT one was the real pisser, since it turns out he's a mousehater.) Then I wrote down the URL for today's Windows nightly of Bon Echo and told him he should skip 1.5 and go straight for that, since it will let him start using the new inline spellchecker, beefed-out search engine manager, and improved feed handling well before the rest of the world knows what it's in for. I am pretty confidant that Team Mozilla has a new convert.
Man, imagine if I was this dedicated a shill for someone who paid me for it.
In related news, I randomly ran into (いきなり出会った、not "collided with") Josh today on the way to work, so we biked most of the way to Mac together. I'd forgotten he was in the city, and it turns out he's living like five blocks away from me. So we'll try and hang out once he gets back from his pending California trip.
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