Archive for September, 2004

External tab control, Bug 172962, almost FIXED!

Something I’ve been waiting for since the day after tabs went into Mozilla has finally arrived. Bug 172962 has seen some great activity in the past few days. A few great patches were attached, got some even better suggestions, and when Ben Goodger got back from New Zealand, he started pounding on them. Well, today the patch collection got +r, +sr, and finally approval to be checked into the Aviary branch where FirePanda and ThunderPants live! I’m so happy I could skip down to the ince cream store (but I won’t). Now if someone can design an extension to fix Bug 233122 I could go use Firefox full time. Man, this stuff just keeps getting better. I even got to post a newsbit rounding up a trio of Mozilla/Firefox articles today.

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Buttons Redux

Gerv has informed me that he shot first and asked later. Bart, Ben, and company don’t see a problem with people making their own buttons using the logo. Which is good, considering they offer blank buttons for just this purpose. So, I’ll be restoring the buttons to their original glory with the original logo shortly. In the mean time, I’m launching a preemptive strike on England to depose Gerv and disable his weapons of mass confusion. 🙂

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Wanted: MS Optical Wireless Mouse user.

If you own one of these: Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse, please let me know. Thank you for your attention, we now return you to your regularly scheduled blog already in progress.

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Games! Woo!

This is one fun little game. It’s easy. You’re the black square. use it to grab the other black squares as they fly by. Hit a pink square, you die. Grab a black circle, and you get various features. It’s quite fun.

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The Logo, Transmogrified

Well. It seems I’ve had my first official trademark infringement letter! Gerv mailed me and said if I didn’t change the logos he’d send over Vinnie to break my knees. No, actually, he reminded me of something I already knew, yet forgot. We have to be proactive and protect the trademark so the foundation doesn’t lose it, and to help keep people from making official-looking buttons that say stuff like “Firefox – Now With Spyware!” or “Firefox – Now With Alien-Tentacle-Rape Hentai!” (he didn’t mention the alien-tentacle-rape hentai, but I figure it’s a good example). So I remembered Jon Hicks had blogged a little about his thought processes in creating the Firefox logo. I specifically liked this little guy. So, I used that as an inspirational base, and made this guy. I’m not the artist Jon is, but I like it. So, all the buttons listed in this post have been changed to reflect this, except the FireCthulu button as evil is trademark free.

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The Browser, Transmogrified.

Sure, we have these, but I want something snappier. So I made these.
 
 

Update: I am not alone! My fellow amateur humorists have made more of these lighthearted FireFox buttons. FIberfox is my favorite.
Techincal Jiggery Pokery I love the name of this guy’s site. British slang like this tickles me.
Techory A rambling technogeek.
Also, I’ve just added some new parody buttons inspired by the other buttons linked right above here, and will add more as I make them. 🙂

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No business being in business…

I went to a local Subway today, as I do every once in a while. The guy that runs this local shop though has no business being in business. Let’s start at the beginning. Just shy of two and a half years ago, I ordered a couple subs, and I also bought three chocolate chip cookies. Subway’s cookies are usually great. These, however, were stale beyond reason. They were not crispy, not crunchy, they were like ceramic disks. So, I went back later, with the cookies, and mentioned how stale they were, and if I could get three fresher ones. The owner was there, and stared at me, looking stunned. Then he proceeded to argue with me about the cookies without looking at them. I took one out, held it several feet above the counter, and dropped it. It thudded into the counter, with a loud noise, and skidded to the side. It did not break, it did not bend, or dent, or deform in anyway. There were barely any crumbs. He angrily snatched the bag from my hand, and informed me the fresh ones would be done baking in a moment. So, I said thanks and had a seat. A couple minutes later three fresh cookies in a bag landed in front of me on the table. He didn’t set them, or hand them to me, he just tossed them on the table. “There are your damn cookies.” I was stunned, and just thanked him and left.

Six months later, I was in the store, and he was as well, as opposed to other employees. I ordered a few more cookies. This didn’t sit well with him. “Oh, are you sure they’re fresh enough for you?” Six months later, and he’s still griping about three cookies. I said, “Wow. Look, that was six months ago. You served three crapy cookies, it happens, act like an adult and get over it. If you can’t hack a little criticism once in a while, you shouldn’t be in business.”

So, I’m in today, and his son is there instead of him. As I’m ordering the sandwiches, one of them was to have the mozarella cheese on the side, as opposed to being on the sandwich, so it stayed fresher. I was informed this was extra.

I asked, “Wait, the cheese is extra?”
He replied to me, “No, having it on the side is extra.”
I blinked. “Ok, so, if I have you put the cheese on the sandwich, it’s included, but if I have you put it in a little baggie on the side, then it’s extra?”
“Yes.”
“Bizarre. Fine, whatever.” I didn’t feel like arguing about it.

Several minutes later, after finishing the other sandwich, long after that part of the conversation had died a natural death, he then says to me, “It’s extra because he [the owner, this kid’s father] is losing money. It costs him to put stuff on the side.”
This pushed me a little too far. The experiences in this place were just too surreal to ignore. I took the bait. “Ok, it costs him more money to put the topping on the side than it does to put on the sandwich?”
“Yes.”
“So, it’s free if you put it on the sandwich before you give it to me, but if I have you give it to me separately, that costs more.”
“Yes.”
I’m reeling here. This is twilight zone. “No, I’m sorry, this is insane. It doesn’t cost him more. I buy a sandwich, and I can select from this assortment of toppings. There is no magical savings by putting it on the sandwich. That slice of cheese costs two cents whether it’s on the sandwich, on the side, or on my head. It doesn’t cost more because it’s to the left of the sandwich.”
“Well, he says it does and he says he’s losing money.”
I replied, “Maybe it’s because he’s nickle and diming his customers to death, and they’re tired of his lousy service and disposition.”
He steps out from the back of the restaurant office, apparently listening all the time.
“Yes, sir, that’s right. You have lousy service and a lousy attitude. I’d already accepted the extra twenty cents for the cheese and let it go when your sone ressurected the topic to argue. That’s horrible. If you manage to sucker a customer into an extra fee, the last thing you should do is then argue with them trying to justify it.”

People like that have no business being in business.

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Scavenged Dreamcast and PS1

Well, my neighbor threw out a Dreamcast and an original model PlayStation. I grabbed the PS1 for no particular reason, but the DC can run Linux, so I was excited to see it. But, no accompanying cordage came with it, so I’m on the look out for free/cheap AV cables and controllers. If anyone has some they want to give away, let me know. I love old hardware. 🙂

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Missing Features…

Oy. Ok, I tried to like it, I really did. I used to for almost a week now. It is faster than Seamonkey, but I’m really missing some features, and tonight, I hit the wall. First, I can’t middle-click from Mailnews anymore, because it opens a link in a new Mozilla tab, instead of a new Firefox tab, and non-Linux users don’t get anything like Linux’s -remote openURL([URL],new-tab) funtionality (bugs 104204 and 121969). I’ve lived with that for a long time, and it wasn’t TOO bad since I use Mozilla for mailnews and browsing.

Second was the nice dialog for selecting with remembered login set for sites where you have saved multiple logins. Clicking in the username field, typing the first letter of the login you want to use, then selecting it from a drop down, THEN logging in or whatevre is NOT easier that clicking on a list in a popup dialog.

Third was sidebars. I use the HTML 4.01, CSS2, and DOM2 reference sidebars constantly. I could live without them if I had to, just use bookmarks in new tabs.

Fourth is the numerous toggles I’ve got to flip to get it more Seamonkey like in function. Also livable, since I don’t have to do it too often.

The last straw was tonight though. There’s no decent download dialogs. I hated the Download Manager when it debuted in Mozilla, and it’s prettier but just as useless in Firefox, and now there’s no alternative. This is bug 233122 which is Verified Wontfix. Frankly, this sucks.

There’s a lot to like about Firefox, but these make it unacceptable to me. I can’t wait until someone whips up an extention for these issues. Pulling odd features and moving UI points is one thing, but removing commonly used features like download progress dialogs is just dumb. A simple XUL dialog like Mozilla has, and even a toggle in about:config would be far far better than this situation.

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