Month: August 2007

Firefox Needs To Go To School

Posted on by chris

I’ve recently been away (yes, it was great) but I’ll try to get back into my usual semi-regular blogging.

First up to the plate is the notion that Firefox Needs To Go To School (from WebProNews) meaning that unless kids are trained in the Fox Arts then the stranglehold that Internet Explorer has on the Internet will never be loosened. It’s not that I think IE is a bad browser, it’s made massive strides forward in the last year, but a bit of competition would be great against the worlds largest monopoly.

So I’m doing my bit. My 11 year-old son is currently using Firefox on Ubuntu Studio to write his blog. Step by step…

Geeking-up

Posted on by chris

Last night I attended my first GeekUp event. It was very interesting, but due to the fact the meetings are always on a Wednesday which is my busiest night of the week I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it to any more. However we shall see.

There were two short presentations in a 20:20 style because, as the Pecha Kucha website says:

…as we all know, give a mike to a designer (especially an architect) and you’ll be trapped for hours. The key to Pecha Kucha Night is its patented system for avoiding this fate. Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

So it was quite impressive to see two worthy contenders for the speed-presenting crown giving interesting talks on OpenStreetMap (see the website here) and eye tracking. Both were educational, and I’m sure 6 minutes and 20 seconds never seemed so short to the guys speaking.

The crowd seemed to enjoy it, too, especially as they were encouraged to heckle if the speakers went over the allotted time of 20 seconds per slide. And heckle they did, assisted by beer. I left early, but not before my good friend Steve managed to get chatting to two young ladies (yes, they were there for the geek event and not just random passers-by) so who knows what happened to him last night. He’s playing coy about the whole affair, so I guess we’ll never know…

I am the luckiest man alive

Posted on by chris

This week has been a tough one owing to a rather nasty cough I’ve had since last Friday (just call me “dog”). But signing into my Hotmail account has cheered me right up, as they say in Yorkshire. Not one, not two (not four, not even five) but three people have contacted me to offer “very confidential and lucrative investment transactions”.

I can hardly contain my excitement. This kind of thing never happens to me. I’ve never won anything on the lottery, but that may be because I’ve never bought a ticket. But still, this is a happy day.

I can’t give too many details as I don’t want to jeopardise these exciting business opportunities, but I will give you some quotes from their emails:

I procured your contact information from my search for a reliable person, who is capable of handling such a proposal of this great magnitude

In this account, he has (Thirty-nine Million Dollars) $39,000,000 only, which was credited in his favour

It has been resolved by the family that 30% of the total fund shall be your share for presenting yourself for this purpose/assistance you will give in this regard

My assurance to you is that this transaction is hundred percent risk-free

I secretly put in a box the sum of $30,000,000 million USD (Thirty million United states dollars) and deposit it in a security company abroad

I hope to trust you as who will not sit on this money when you claim it

BECAUSE OF THE SECURITY HAUNT FOR MY ARREST,I HAVE LEFT LIBERIA TO TAKE REFURGE IN TOGO BECAUSE OF SURVELLANCE HOVERING OVER MY LIFE

CAN I TRUST YOU? IF I CAN NOT ESTERBLISH MY CONFIDENCE AND TRUST ON YOU IT MEANS WE CAN NOT WORK TOGETHER BECAUSE I HAVE NOTHING IN THIS WORLD TO HOLD ON TO APART FROM THIS PARTICULAR MONEY.

IN RECOGNITION OF THE EFFICIENT PERFORMANCE OF YOUR DUTIES,I HAVE ACCEPTED TO GIVE YOU 20% OF THE TOTAL SUM OF $71,000,000.00 AS YOUR ENTITTLEMENT.

I LOOK FORWARD TO RECEVING YOUR COMPLIMENTARY ACCEPTANCE

Well, what can I say? It seems like nothing exciting ever happens to me, then I get involved in three highly exciting things on the same day. Luck must really be on my side. I’m curious how they all got my email address, but now’s not the time to ask silly questions.

If things keep going like this then I might even buy a lottery ticket.

Top 5 Firefox plugins

Posted on by chris

I’m almost rabidly in love with Firefox, the little browser that could. In fact the link I’ve just given you has been the *only* place I’ve been to in Internet Exploiter when I’ve installed a fresh copy of Windows on my machine. Of course I use Linux a lot now, so I don’t even have to do that.

Anyway, Firefox is easily extensible through a whole galaxy of plugins. Seriously, there’s almost certainly something in there that will reduce the number of applications you use every day. Before you know it someone will create a Firefox plugin that does away with an operating system. Happy thoughts.

As a web geek I tend to err on the side of development plugins, but I also use some other things as well. Here’s my can’t-live-without-them list of Firefox plugins.

  1. Web developer toolbar by . The guy deserves knighting for creating this wonderful collection of useful tools for web developers. If you ever mess about in HTML then you need this now.
  2. Firebug is to JavaScripters what the Swiss Army knife is to … well, the Swiss Army. You got JavaScript? Firebug will show you what’s happening inside the spaghetti.
  3. Blogging would be much, much harder if it weren’t for Scribefire. This little beauty gives you a blog editor right in your Fox. Want to blog about a page? Just right click and click “Blog this page”. Type your text and publish. Easy.
  4. We all hate adverts, right? Get rid of them with AdBlock Plus. It’s so good, and so unobtrusive, that it took me more than a few minutes to figure out why the adverts I was putting on a clients’ website weren’t showing up for me. Maybe I’m stupid, but maybe AdBlock Plus is clever.
  5. Speaking of clever, Greasemonkey is more clever than a packet of professors. How do I describe it? I’ll have a go: “Hijack any website and make it do what you want it to, all using easy JavaScript”. There. Get it now? Magic.

And some honourable mentions:

YSlow is a brand new tool from the clever people at Yahoo that works inside Firebug (my number 2 above) to help show you how you can speed up your pages. From suggesting content expiry dates (and showing you exactly which items don’t have them) to showing the difference in time between loading a page with an empty and full cache, this is a very useful addition to your Firefox.

If you have kids you’ll want to make sure they are protected online. Glubble does just that, but from within Firefox. Don’t spend your money on some parental filtering program when you can do it all from the magic ‘Fox.