Category: Web/Tech

I was using markup languages for documents when html was just a gleam in Berner-Lee’s eye. I couldn’t remember when I first saw html or a browser, so I found A Little History of the World Wide Web. Odd to think that it has just been fourteen years since he coined the name World Wide Web.

I remember my first impression of html: “hmm…how limited.” (I was used to a rather fabulous markup language called Bookmaster, which was used by IBM to produce documentation.) This was when Jack first showed me a browser running on our XT machine here at home, not too long after we moved to Colorado. “Boy…this is sure going to suck up a lot of bandwidth.”

I was right on both accounts.

I am posting this via mozex, which is a hard to configure put powerful Firefox extension that allows you to choose an editor for Firefox (and Mozilla) textareas. Browser support for editing textareas is usually quite poor, so it is nice to have the ability to specify a “real” editor. This NewsForge article explains how to set it up.

I am using Quanta as my editor, since it allows me to preview pages easily.

Another not particularly obvious feature of Firefox is the ability to use Ctrl and the plus and minus keys from the numeric keypad to make the text bigger (in the case of Ctrl-+) or smaller (in the case of Ctrl–). This is probably the feature I miss the most when using Internet Explorer, because I don’t usually even notice when I resize the text at a site. This tip only works for text, not images.

You can also use the pulldown menu View->Text Size->Increase or View->Text Size->Decrease, but the Ctrl keys are much faster.

One Firefox feature that I am starting to like a lot is the ability to type a few words in the address line at the top of the browser and having Firefox go to the most appropriate site for that combination of words. For example, typing the words “amazon joe haldeman” turns up “Forever War” by COSine 2005 guest of honor Joe Haldeman. Firefox uses the Google “get lucky” search to perform this function. And yes, typing in my name brings up Five Acres with a View. As another example, “imdb The Lion in Winter” brings up the entry at IMDB for the 1968 movie starring Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn.

To get to the address line quickly and clear it, use Ctrl-L and then the delete key.

Friday, I installed Firefox on my mother’s PC, after spending some time installing and running a virus checker and spyware checkers. Her subscription to Norton just expired, so I downloaded AVG Anti-Virus for her. There were no reported viruses, but Spybot and Ad-Aware sure found a lot to complain about.

After that, I installed Firefox 1.0, and walked her through some of its features. She has a rather slow machine on a slow dial-up, and Firefox seems faster to both of us. Just the pop-up blocking ought to save her some download time.

I like the line in the review of Firefox that I found in the Washington Post: Internet Explorer, you’re fired. For even more reasons: Why Switch?

A CNET article called Google star of Firefox’s new browser discusses the use of a Google home page in the newly released Firefox 1.0. (This post is a test of the JustBlogIt extension.)

Last night I upgraded to the beta version of WordPress 1.3. I broke plugin handling in the process, but decided to press on with 1.3 rather than back it out. Yes, the look has changed a bit: I am trying to make Five Acres work better in terminal with low resolutions by paring away some of the frills.

QuickNote is a Mozilla/Firefox extension that sets up a sidebar for taking notes. It will allow you to gather selected text along with the url.

Jack and were comparing which Firefox we load this morning, and he recommended AdBlock. I asked, “Why don’t you just right click on the image and block the images from the server?” He wasn’t aware of that function, so I tried to find an image to demonstrate. I had to go to seven sites before I found some that weren’t already blocked, including my.yahoo.com, cnn.com, and ustoday.com. I don’t block ad servers until they serve flashing advertisements, so I guess they are fairly common.

I really hate flashing advertisements.

TargetAlert is Firefox plugin that I found when someone mentioned it for its ability to alert that a clicked link will attempt to load an Adobe Acrobat file. What I really value though is that it warns (by a little icon beside the link) that a clicked link will open in a new window, allowing me to Ctrl-Right Click (or Middle Click on Linux) so that it will open in a tab instead.

I don’t know if it was due to Dougal’s TarPit plugin, but the comment spammer seems to have gone away for now. He is not missed.