The folks over at spreadfirefox.com have started accepting pledges from users to download Firefox 3.0 the day it is officially released. So far, no concrete date for the final release has been set. They are hoping to set a Guinness World Record for the number of software downloads in 24 hours. For all the details, and global pledge totals, head to the Download Day page at Spread Firefox. I’ve pledged!
I’ve already written in the past about the beauty that is Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. After using it for several months now, I have to say that the new features such as Quicklook, Time Machine, and Cover Flow are all fantastic.
Despite all that, the best new feature, as far as I’m concerned, is Spaces. It is the one feature of the OS that I can’t function without. At first, I didn’t make much use of it, but over time, I have come to utilize a four-desktop system that makes me much more productive. I put my email and chat program on one desktop, web browsing on another, and iTunes on yet another. It is so much better than using a single desktop with all of my open applications in my way. Now, when I want to start something completely different than what I’m running, I switch to a new blank Space. And the ease of hitting F8 to see all of my Spaces at once is just great.
Spaces is so terrific that if you’re still using Tiger, I can’t help but feel sorry for you. I once tried disabling it, and Leopard suddenly felt like a caged animal. I know Linux has had an option for multiple desktops for a long time, and not everyone will agree that Spaces on the Mac is as great as I make it out to be. It depends on your computing habits. But for me, it’s absolutely wonderful!
If want to try the new Firefox 3.0, and plan to copy bookmarks between different computers, there is something you should know. Firefox no longer stores its bookmarks in the traditional bookmarks.html file. It is now using some type of database system to make up Places, a new way of managing your bookmarks and browsing history. While this new system is a big step forward from the days of old, it gave me a lot of grief when trying to move my bookmarks from one computer to another.
The problem was, I had no idea about this new system. I kept trying to copy my bookmarks.html file between computers, only to find that when I loaded Firefox, the same old ones kept appearing in the browser. It took me a long time to nail down what was causing it, but after some research online, I found out that you have to go about this in a slightly different way.
First, within Firefox, choose Organize Bookmarks from the Bookmarks menu. Then, export your bookmarks from your source computer. You’ll find importing and exporting options within the pull-down icon displaying a star within the Organize Bookmarks Library window. You may notice that the file size of the exported HTML file is half the size that it used to be in the past with Firefox 2. (I don’t know the technicalities of why this is, but it’s all the better.) When you get to your source computer, choose to import bookmarks and use the HTML file as the source. Done. I only wish there was an option not to duplicate existing bookmarks. I found it necessary to delete all of my old ones before importing the new ones to avoid having a duplicated mess.
I was not aware of any of this until I failed repeatedly at trying to copy my bookmarks after upgrading to Firefox 3. This may explain why the Foxmarks extension has not yet been updated to support Firefox 3.
One of the gifts that Laura bought for my birthday was a really cool device that I never knew existed. It is an iTrip add-on for my iPod, made by a company called Griffin. It is a small device I plug into the bottom of my iPod Nano that broadcasts the music from the iPod to any FM frequency of your choice. So pick a blank spot on the dial, and set it to that, and bam! It totally works. We used it in the car this past weekend on a road trip, and were able to hear hundreds of songs through the car stereo. Wow! No wires, no fuss, no muss. All the power needed is drawn from the iPod itself. Granted, the audio quality is not that quite that of a CD, it is a little brought down by the FM radio transmission, but it is still very enjoyable. Great stuff!
I’ve been using the Del.icio.us bookmarks site for a long time now, but recently decided to create a brand new account. I started from scratch and imported all of my bookmarks from Firefox. I had Del.icio.us automatically assign tags to them as they imported. It did a pretty nice job at that, for the most part. What troubled me is that it set all of my imported bookmarks to “not shared” status. This for your own privacy, I understand, but there is no option to make them shared. It appears the only way to turn them all into shared bookmarks, is to change each bookmark individually. One site I read said that Del.icio.us was working to add such a feature to change them in bulk. That site was dated back to 2005, and today, we still don’t have the option.
The available extension(s) for Firefox confuse me a little. I like using the traditional Del.icio.us Bookmarks extension, which simply puts two buttons on your toolbar (this extension still is not compatible with Firefox 3.0). At the same time, the site also has another extension, called Del.icio.us, which is much more bulky. It adds a sidebar, and integration with your local bookmarks. I don’t care for that much overlay. On top of that, while searching the site, Del.icio.us offered two local bookmarks to add to Firefox that uses some Javascript code to take you to the Del.icio.us site in a new tab, and you can add a bookmark to the page you were just viewing. Personally, I like the last approach the best. No extension is required, and it is very simple.
I do love the simplicty of the Del.icio.us site, but it feels like it’s in need of a bit of an overhaul. It is a little slow at responding sometimes, too, despite it’s lack of graphical flair. I still love it, and use it daily, it’s just that it’s starting to feel neglected by its owners. Hopefully that isn’t the case, Yahoo!
Lately, I have noticed a sharp rise in an already very disturbing trend. When I watch TV, I am constantly interrupted with beeps, scrolls, and various alerts. I’m paying a lot of money for my digital cable service, and I don’t want the picture shrunk while half the screen has warnings on it. Why not make a whole channel for this stuff, or do it during the commercials?
In the past couple of weeks, nearly every prime time show that I’ve taped on my DVR either has had a thunderstorm warning, amber alert, silver alert, or local election results on the screen during the show. It is ridiculous! I don’t care about any of those things! If I want live election results, I don’t expect to find them on the channel showing American Idol. If a bad thunderstorm is coming, then too bad. What do you want me to do? I’m already at home! If a child or old person has gone missing, then I probably can’t help you. The person you are looking for is not standing in middle of my living room, so I suppose I won’t be seeing them tonight.
I think I’m at the front of this complaint. I believe the voices against this will grow louder once it becomes more commonplace and obtrusive. This must stop immediately! It makes me feel like every channel is going to go the way of the TV Guide Channel, which today has about 1/4 of the screen still reserved for the program listings, while the other 3/4 are ads and pointless programming. Gimme a break!
The release candidate for Firefox 3 is now available from Mozilla! I have downloaded it, and I’m very impressed. I’m very happy with the new default theme. This new interface is especially good on the Mac. It finally looks and feels like a true OS X app. So far, I’ve found Firefox 3 to be incredibly fast, and page scrolling is now silky smooth. I only hope that 3.0 compatible expensions are soon available for all of my favorite add-ons. Some extensions, such as Adblock Plus are already available for Firefox 3. Others, like Del.icio.us Bookmarks and Foxmarks, are not.
I love tinkering with Linux, and the new Ubuntu 8.04 is unparalleled. I am running the new Ubuntu on my laptop as I write this blog post. Linux has come such a long way, and Ubuntu is the easiest distro to install and use. This new release of Ubuntu has some groundbreaking features.
The coolest thing about Ubuntu 8 is that you can install it from inside Windows with the new Wubi installer! I tried this method of install, and it worked flawlessly. I can’t tell you how much better this is compared to partitioning your hard drive. That said, I have never had a problem with Ubuntu installing the “old way” where it partitioned my drive on its own. Not everyone is going to have Windows installed, but if you do, the Wubi installer is the easiest way to go.
Ubuntu immediately found my WPA-protected wireless network and communicated flawlessly. In the past, I’d often had issues with wireless cards and Linux. I was pleased to see this work right out of the box. Once online, I checked for updates. Ubunu 8.04 has only been out for a few weeks, but there were already 78 updates to download. Holy cow.
Ubuntu 8 has cured another of my Linux pains in the simple way that it downloads extras such as Flash Player, Java, and proprietary graphics drivers. While browsing with Firefox, I went to a Flash site and it told me I needed to install plugins. I did so within Firefox (as you would with Windows) and it worked perfectly! This is the first time I have seen that work properly. Ditto for Java. It installed the same way.
I looked in the Hardware Drivers settings of the OS to find that 3D acceleration was not enabled for my ATI graphics card. When I clicked the box to turn it on, it immediately prompted me to download the necessary proprietary drivers. This was painless. After a reboot, I enabled the desktop effects. I didn’t turn the effects on full blast, but chose the light setting. Every so often, the effects have been little choppy, but they are nice overall. The chopping only occurs when restoring a minimized window, I should add. Overall, the smoothness of the desktop effects will depend on your computer hardware.
I’m not crazy about the fact that Ubuntu chose Firefox 3 beta 5 as the default browser for this release. I wish they would have stuck with version 2 for now. Perhaps that is because Ubuntu 8 is a long-term-support release and it seems foolish to have a beta browser as the default. That said, I’ve had no negative issues with Firefox 3b5. Foxmarks, one of my favorite extensions for Firefox, does not yet have a version compatible with Firefox 3, so I couldn’t sync my bookmarks as I normally would. That will be resolved in time. For now, I had to manually import my bookmarks.html file from my other computer.
In the past, when installing Ubuntu on a separate partition alongside Windows, it would automatically mount my Windows NTFS drive partition. This was not the case this time. Perhaps it is due to the Wubi installer and how I chose to install Linux. I could probably get this working, but I don’t really care to at the moment. I thought it was worth noting that it didn’t do this automatically on my machine, as I would have expected. Your results may vary.
I wish that the folks at Ubuntu would create a more attractive default theme for the OS. While the orange and brown look isn’t terrible, it could be a lot prettier than it is. Still, you can change themes in the system preferences. There are some subtle new visual pleasantries in this Ubuntu release, such as the selected text box on your page has a highlighted glow, as one example.
I have read some complaints about the implementation of PulseAudio within Ubuntu 8, but I don’t know enough about that to comment. I’m not entirely certain what those issues are about, and they haven’t affected me. If that is something that concerns you, know that rumor has it that Ubuntu is going to eventually release version 8.04.1 with fixes for PulseAudio. Perhaps in that release, Firefox 3 will be finalized as well.
If you are interested in Linux, Ubuntu 8 is the one to try. I have had no problems at all, and haven’t once had to resort to the command line to get something done. Hooray! I’d suggest booting to the live CD to check that your Internet connection is going to work before you install it outright. If you use an Ethernet cable, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
As a footnote, I should mention that Fedora has just released version 9 of its Linux distro, which graphically has the prettiest interface, in my opinion. Also, OpenSuse will release version 11 of their distro in about a month. I have found past versions of Fedora and Suse to be a little harder to manage (espeically Fedora), so I have decided to stick with Ubuntu, for simplicity and ease.
Once, I bought a $20 Microsoft USB wireless mouse to use with my laptop. I found it in a drawer the other day. I don’t know why I had ever quit using it. I suppose the battery went dead, because it works great.
Anyway, I was so excited to find it, I kept it for myself and plugged it in my Mac. I’m now hooked. It works so incredibly well. And there is no cord to snag on the back of the desk! Before now, I hadn’t used it on my desktop computer. I had always used it with the laptop while on the couch, or some other less-than-adequate surface for a mouse. Having used it for the past few days at my desk, it is heaven.
I know a wireless mouse may sound like overkill, but it’s so much better. I highly recommend buying one. And the single AA battery that mine uses will last for several months at a time, so that is no factor. Plus, the mouse even works from across the room. Personally, I’m not going back!