sometimes a blog by Dan Greene
The Firefox ad finally made it in the Dec. 15 New York Times. I had to zoom in on the PDF quite a bit to find my name, but here it is. (Daniel E. Greene)
I thought about buying a copy of the Times, but I decided to buy a NY Times Firefox Poster. I just think it’s cool my name was in the New York Times.
After one day of using the new versions of Firefox and Thunderbird, I can say that a fresh install of the basic programs is extremely well polished and nicely done. With any install other than that, there are problems.
First, I’m never quite sure how to upgrade. Do I uninstall the old version and install the new one? Or do I just install over the top of the old version? I had been using the over the top method for earlier releases, but this has lead to listings in Add or Remove Programs that I can’t delete. So this time I used the uninstall/install method and that seemed to work well and preserve my settings. But ideally the installer should do everything for you. Why it doesn’t is beyond me.
My other problem is that installing a new version breaks 95% of the themes and extensions. There needs to be a better system for maintaining them during an upgrade.
That said I’m really liking the new RSS support in Firefox and Thunderbird. I personally think RSS is a better fit for an email/newsgroup program than a web browser, so I’m using RSS feeds in Thunderbird. Strangely, RSS support is not enabled by default in Thunderbird. To add it go to Tools, Account Settings, Add Account and choose RSS News and Blogs.
Once the account is created, click on it, then go to View Settings for this account, and then Manage Subscriptions. There you can add or delete feeds. It’s a bit more complicated than bookmarking feeds in Firefox, but I think of RSS feeds more as newsgroups than bookmarks.
Slashdot is reporting that Firefox 1.0 PR, Thunderbird 0.8, and Mozilla Suite 1.7.3 have been released.
Read Slashdot to find out about new features/bugs and download away.
I’m trying out Sharp MT 2.5, yet another blog posting tool. I’ve been using w.bloggar 4.0 beta, but I just thought I’d experiment. Looks like a nice program, however, I’m not sure how well it supports XHTML tags.
With all the holes and security problems found in Internet Explorer lately, people have been looking for alternatives. Wired has an article on alternatives to IE. PC Magazine also chimes in. Personally, I use Mozilla Firefox.
You can enhance Firefox by installing extensions to add new features. Wired has an article on some of the most popular extensions. One of my favorites is Copy Plain Text. Mozilla Update has a comprehensive list of extensions.
SETI@home is transitioning to BOINC. Last month I mentioned BOINC and how you could run several projects with one client. SETI’s client was getting a little long in the tooth, and BOINC lets new calculations be done on the data without totally rewriting the client. I think part of the reason they switched is that SETI@home is losing it’s appeal. By switching to something that can run multiple projects, SETI@home increases the chances that people will stick with SETI, even if they also run another project.
I’m still running the old command line version on the iMac, but I installed BOINC on the PC. It can can in the background and can kick in when the user is idle, I have it set to start working after I’m idle for 10 minutes. It seems to work okay, although I’m not sure how the credit system works.
If you have any doubt that searching for ET life is a nearly impossible task, check out this page on the famous Fermi Paradox. Fermi’s paradox serves as a reality check for the Drake Equation.
Slashdot is reporting, from various sources, that work on Internet Explorer has been restarted. I think Windows Longhorn is going to take longer than expected and Microsoft realized they can’t let their web browser stagnate that long.
Well actually, I’ve got Gmail. librarymonk@gmail.com to exact. Gmail is Google’s new webmail service, currently in a closed beta test. What makes Gmail special is spam filtering, a fast interface, and oh yeah 1 gigabyte of storage space. Feel free to sent me email at this address, it’s not like I’m in danger of maxing out my storage quota anytime soon.
And also Google related, here’s what to tell someone when they ask you a dumb question.
New licences have been announced for Movable Type. The biggest change is a new Unlimited Personal Edition for $99.95. It allows “for an unlimited number of authors and weblogs for personal use”. This is really what people wanted, and why there where huge complaints about the new licence. The cheaper Personal Edition, $69.95, now allows for unlimited blogs and 5 authors. I bought the Personal Edition within a few weeks of the new licence. Six Apart upgraded me from the Personal Edition to the Unlimited Personal Edition for free since I was an early adopter. Six Apart is really trying to mend fences now, but the damage has already been done I think. WordPress still looks pretty good, for those that want totally free and open source solution.
The Firefox browser is version .09 and the Thunderbird mail client is now at version 0.7 Both programs look great when you use the Charamel theme. But there is also a new version of Opera out. (7.5) You remember Opera don’t you? The non open source, free (with ads) browser made by a company in Norway? Opera 7.5 sports a new (and very nice) user interface and everything Firefox has, standards compliant rendering, tabbed browsing etc. Plus an intergrated mail client with spam filtering. It’s definitely worth a look.
Firefox 0.9 has been released. I liked the theme for 0.8 much better, but Firefox is my favorite brower, especially since Internet Explorer 6 is probably the last new version of IE for a while, and IE 6 has been around since October 2001.
