No More Typos

Why I haven't switched to Google Chrome...yet

2008-09-14T20:34:00.003+01:00

Since people have asked me over the last few days, thought I should write my first impressions of Google Chrome:

On the plus side,

super slick first-run experience and import of all my stuff from Firefox!
Noble attempt to de-clutter the browser space up

On the minus side, there are a whole bunch of bugs which mean I after playing with Chrome I went back to Firefox soon enough, namely:

My laptop scrollpad goes down but not up! Disaster (bug to track)
It makes a windows warning beep when you press Alt + D (bug to track)
No print selection yet, Chrome hates trees (bug to track)

And rather ironically, I can access google stuff better through Firefox than through chrome, like Google Bookmarks and Browse By Name.

At least I can sit back and and track these issues, so I'll know when Chrome 'works for me,' not yet though!

Million Pixels

2006-01-13T08:49:00.000Z

Nitin asks:

Are these million pixels for firefox actually going to the mozilla corporation?

Well, I can certainly say they won't be going to the Mozilla Corporation since it doesn't accept donations!

Bugzilla Spam!

2006-01-08T15:47:00.000Z

I think I've received some very targetted spam from my Bugzilla account:

Dear Gids,

Yoxel Systems is proud to present a demo account showcasing our exciting
on-demand software and IT project management services:

http://www.yoxel.com

The data used in our Firefox demo account is the actual data from Firefox's Bugzilla
that is represented in a way that allows you to have an alternative way of
viewing and analyzing the current state of the product. You can generate various reports,
graphs and charts which are not provided to anonymous users of the original database
otherwise.

While the purpose of the account is mainly to be a demo vehicle for
Yoxel Systems' services and capabilities we believe the actual content and its
representation could be of certain interest to you.

Happy New Year,
Yoxel Systems Info Team

------------------------------

-----------------------------------
Yoxel Systems is a privately held ASP company dedicated to developing
intelligent and flexible solutions to optimize and automate project
management and customer support.

If these people have been harvesting Mozilla Bugzilla perhaps someone should be cracking the whip, they could just as easily get legitimate publicity on Mozillazine or the like.

Jorge has it right

2005-12-21T09:50:00.000Z

Jorge Writes:
We're all in the same boat stuck with crappy hardware drivers, nearly non-existant ISV support, no common developer platform, and an increasing amount of momentum users willing to just give up on a Free Desktop and go buy Macs. And we're arguing about a print dialog! @!#$%@#$%!!!!

I can vouch for Jorge on that one having been in that exact situation. Trying to get people to use Linux and being stumped by broken printer drivers. The hoopla to get the thing on paper was akin to Danny Williams doing Ballet. To permit me a trashy metaphor, if the Linux Desktop is a steep hill, printer drivers are the sloshy mud right at the bottom, never mind if it's pretty nearer the top!

T-Shirt arrived

2005-12-17T12:08:00.000Z

My T-Shirt arrived in the post this morning. Very cool indeed.

Why I choose GMail over Thunderbird

2005-12-14T19:47:00.000Z

In Thunderbird

Select All--> Mark as Read ..... two minutes later ..... done

In Gmail

Select--> Actions --. Mark as Read ...... 10 seconds later ..... done

vive le difference

Firefox T-Shirt!

2005-12-12T20:39:00.000Z

Ordered a T-Shirt from the new Mozilla International Store today.

Hope all goes well with my order,

I'll blog again when it arrives (fingers-crossed)

Google Space - Firefox usability lab!

2005-11-26T12:40:00.000Z

Am I the only one to notice Google's new Heathrow Web Cafée computers are running Firefox? They make an ideal location for real-world usability studies!

Hat tip to ZDet for the image from their gallery

UK Users can flock to BBC 'Flock' Video

2005-10-31T10:40:00.000Z

If you're a UK Web user you can watch the Newsnight report about Flock and Web 2.0 at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4382626.stm - might be avaliable to everyone else as well. Was fun to see some the people who's blogs I read on a very cool news report.

IE: tearing down the web

2005-10-04T17:13:00.000+01:00

Who ever said IE was bug-free, well no-one I've ever heard. Anyhow, thought you might enjoy this picture I grabbed of Gerv's blog being torn up by IE Autoscroll.

Close, but still no 'Browse By Name'

2005-09-23T18:45:00.001+01:00

Asa writes that the Google Toolbar for Firefox is out of Beta, good work, but they are still insisting Firefox has Browse By Name built in.

Well, if anyone's listening...

'I'm Feeling Lucky is not Browse by Name'

Asa speaks

2005-09-14T09:07:00.000+01:00

Enjoyed listening to Asa Dotzler's keynote from ETech 2005. Added Asa's pronounciation of his name to his Wikipedia article as well.

Winamp search makes iTunes 5 look old hat

2005-09-11T15:20:00.000+01:00

When I saw the new iTunes search feature it reminded of the search feature that Winamp had introduced way back in Winamp 3. After all it seems pretty straightforward, you type a word and it finds everything that matches.

Hacking the Firefox Autoscroll icon

2005-09-02T14:23:00.000+01:00

Doing my usual Firefox related trawl across the web I saw a Firefox hack unlike any I had seen before. Hacking the autoscroll cursor! This reminds me of the IE5.5 Custom Scrollbars notorious 'feature.' Whilst the site in question uses the feature tastefully I wonder if this feature takes off, whether it will make Firefox users ask 'Who's browser is it anyway?'

sticky content

2005-09-02T11:45:00.000+01:00

Just visited the website emblazoned on my very cool japanese t-shirt (www.goo.ne.jp) comprising robots and the word 'goo.' Seems to be some kind of Japanese Portal.

From San Francisco to Bala Lake!

2005-08-20T12:43:00.000+01:00

I've been away the past few weeks so my blog has been neglected. I was staying near Bala Lake in Wales, though I did have my blog in mind when I got some stuff sent over there from the fine folks at Creative Commons which I can share with the world here, as well as people at Uni when I get back. May I take this opportunity to say the WIRED mash up CD rocks!
On the site I was staying on they had some systems running Xandros Desktop with which I battled but that's a rant I'll save for another time...

Ubuntu Documentation

2005-07-08T17:08:00.000+01:00

I'm not going to launch into a big tirade about how far Linux has to go, but I saw this intro to a help document:

"Music Player is an ID3 organised, music library and player for your MP3, FLAC or Ogg/Vorbis Music Files"

For a start, my copy of the Ubuntu Live CD can't even play MP3 Files. I guess an equivalent would be the introduction to Firefox Help being:

"Firefox is a Web Browser which can access your HTML files and remote URLs using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol"

You get the idea...

Firefox Google Toolbar sans 'Browse By Name'

2005-07-07T22:17:00.000+01:00

I was having a look at the Firefox Google Toolbar via Asa and notice it lacks the excellent Browse by Name feature of the Internet Explorer version. Someone needs to point them at Jesse's blog post and that someone may as well be me!

'Google to buy Firefox?' Impossible!

2005-07-07T17:27:00.000+01:00

Just reading some unfounded speculation over on Spread Firefox, 'Google to buy Firefox?'
Perhaps I'm wrong but I was under the impression that buying an open source project is impossible, what would a company buy exactly? Mozilla Foundation doesn't 'own' the Firefox source code. Even a project under corporate stewardship such as Helix Player can't really claimed to be 'owned' by RealNetworks even if it decides what gets in to the product.

Opera Keyboard Shortcuts

2005-06-28T15:43:00.000+01:00

Just finished up writing updated Keyboard Shortcuts for Opera for Bug 291877.
One oddity I found was that Opera has two shorcuts for the Address Field (Location Bar in Firefox-speak.) F8 is fine, unless you're in Full Screen Mode in which case it's useless and you have to use F2.

Let's just hope the Opera fanboys don't find their way to this post...

Channel 9 Guy in Microsoft propaganda

2005-06-22T22:13:00.000+01:00

I'm sure this is some kind of viral, contagious, (insert daft buzzword here) video from Microsoft but, who cares, it made me laugh, especially looking up at the Channel 9 Guy on my desk whilst I was watching a giant one.

I wonder how Blake's videos will compare, mind you I'm sure he has a smaller budget!

Draggin' it out

2005-06-17T19:35:00.000+01:00

With tab rearranging one of the new features of Firefox Deer Park Alpha. I thought it'd be a good time to compare the UI of Firefox and Opera for this feature.

The Opera UI certainly has a greater swish factor though that doesn't always translate into a usable feature. Opera also offers more widgets with close buttons on each tab and a New Page (tab) button as well.
In the end I think they are both good implementations and this is a really useful feature.

my first patch!

2005-06-15T21:13:00.000+01:00

After my previous experiences noted in my blog, I managed to scrape together my first patch thanks to the fine folks on the TortoiseCVS mailing list and on irc.mozilla.org/#documentation
...and here it is

I'll update my blog with it's progress (or lacktherof) through Bugzilla.

Just trying to help!

2005-06-14T11:13:00.000+01:00

The last few days I've been wrestling with CVS trying to fetch some files, make some changes to documentation and generate a diff, how hard can that be you ask? Well very if my experience is anything to go by. Anyhow I wanted to do something productive so I wrote up a Real Player Plugin issues page for Mozillazine KB.

The browser goalposts have shifted

2005-06-11T13:58:00.000+01:00

Reading through the rants, raves and occasional informed debate over at Slashdot about IE7 it occurred to me that the browser goalposts have shifted. Many of the highly moderated comments said 'what does this have over Firefox/Safari/Opera.' My answer is it doesn't matter! In the new browser war it's about execution not about features. The trick is to integrate and make the features you offer accessible.