Fixing the “AwesomeBar” in Firefox 3
If you’ve never tried Firefox, it might be a good idea to give it a try now that version 3 has been officially released.
While there are a number of great improvements in this version of the browser (with the memory leaks being fixed one of the most important), there was one feature that I wanted to fix as soon as I downloaded the official version this morning.
The Mozilla folks have ‘improved’ the address bar so that it shows a number of “suggestions” while you’re typing an address into the bar. At first these are based on popular sites, but eventually it’ll start picking up on your browsing history, and making suggestions based on that.
It’s hardly foolproof, though. When I enter “reader.” into the address bar, it should pick up on the fact that (based on my past browsing) I want reader.google.com to come up. But, neither of the two suggestions point to Google Reader. Instead they assume I mean a couple of GR sites on Blogger. And this is with me visiting the GR site on a daily basis.
So I set out to find out how to disable this feature, as it’s not something that I want in my browser. And Firefox is supposed to be the customizable browser, right?
So, with a bit of time on Google, I found the answer. You’ll need to enter ‘about:config‘ (minus the quotes) into the Firefox address bar, and make a change to one setting on the resulting page. In the filter, enter browser.urlbar.maxRichResults and the key should appear. Double click on it, and change the default value from 12 to 0. Once that’s done, the Firefox suggestions should stop.
This makes Firefox back into the browser that I want to keep using. Now if the add-on developers could finish making their add-ons compatible with the new version, it would be better still.
Strange Email Issue
Okay, I need a little help with this one, if anyone has any suggestions.
I’m in the process of moving rodtempleton.net email over to Google Apps. I currently use Google Apps to host the mail for windowsnotes.com as well. Both accounts are hosted in the same location, and in fact, windowsnotes.com sits in a directory off the rodtempleton.net root.
Sending email to any address at windowsnotes.com gets through, but mail sent to rodtempleton.net addresses fail with the following error:
“PERM_FAILURE: Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 553 553 sorry, relaying denied from your location [IP Deleted] (#5.7.1) (state 14).”
Sending to a windowsnotes.com address from the same account gets through fine.
Managing the rodtempleton.net domain in Google Apps shows this:
It looks like your domain is configured incorrectly -
For email to be delivered correctly, you’ll need to change the “MX record” in your domain settings. If you skip this step, you’ll still be able to create accounts, but you will not be able to send or receive email.
Now, before someone says, “Hey, dumbass, it’s giving you the answer right there!”, here’s what the MX records look like for both accounts:
Which generally indicates that both accounts use the same values for their MX records, and yet one accepts mail, and the other doesn’t.
So if anyone, particularly Google, could explain what’s wrong here, I’d sure appreciate hearing about it.
The Flip Comes To Canada
Okay, this is something I’ve just got to have a look at. According to Tyler, the Flip Ultra is now available in Canada, initially at Wal-Mart, but eventually at other retailers for about $149.00
According to the press release that they put out, the Flip is the second highest-selling camcorder in the U.S. - only seven months after its release.
I’m currently using a Canon E550 Super-8 camcorder for any video that I need to shoot, but it’s time for something a little more modern. Getting the tape digitized is not always the easiest task, and the USB interface on the Flip would make things so much simpler.
Although shooting video isn’t something that I do a whole lot of, this is most likely due to the fact that using the E550 is cumbersome, and the lack of digital versions makes it a lot tougher to produce DVDs of what I shoot.
So, if anyone’s looking to have a review done on the Flip, and would like to furnish a review unit, I’d be more than happy to write it up and send it back. Otherwise, I’ll eventually pick one up myself.
(Photo courtesy of sizemoresr on Flickr)
Fraser Valley Regional Library: Site Re-Design…PLEASE
Okay, kids, it’s rant time. Last night we decided to go to the library, so I went to have a look at the website to see how late the branch was going to be open. Entered the URL into Firefox - http://www.fvrl.bc.ca -and it reported that it couldn’t be found. Hmm….tried again. Nothing. I knew that that was the right URL, so I went to Google and entered Fraser Valley Regional Library. Google brought up its results, with the first one being, of course, http://www.fvrl.bc.ca. Clicked on it and it brought me right to the site. Uh, okay.
Library was open till 9, so we decided to head down there (it being only 7:30 and all) and while we were there,decided to get some kids books on cats. No problem, says I. I’ll just pull up the information from the catalogue. Entered ‘cats juvenile’ into their search box and it came up with a number of books, none of which appeared to be at the branch we were at. Hmm….okay, there’s got to be a way to sort based just on the branch we’re at. There is, but it’s not easy to find. Under ‘Limit/Sort Search’ there’s a number of drop down boxes, one of which is marked as ‘Where Item is Located’. Sounds about right to me, and it turned out to be what I was looking for.
I selected the branch we were at, and tried again. It seemed to return more results, except for the fact that by the time I got to about the fourth book listed, it wasn’t listed as being in the local branch, but at three different branches out in the valley. How the !@# is this relevant?
Finally I decided to request a couple of books be brought in. I logged in, and got an error message, and to please try again. Repeatedly. I gave up and used my wife’s card. She had never used the card to reserve books, so had never put a PIN number on her account. No problem, said the system. Just enter a PIN and if there’s not one already assigned, it’ll report that as being the case and ask you to confirm the choice of a PIN number.
Wrong. Six times it reported that there was an error of some kind, and to please try again. Using a *third* card, we were finally able to get books reserved. When I went to inquire about the problems we’d been having, the staff flew around their system and were able to do everything I’d been struggling with with no problems. Now, I’ve been using computers since 1982, and websites since about 1995. I’m no clueless luser. But quite clearly, the website that the FVRL uses for its catalogue system is designed for librarians, and not for customers. Which is about the very worst thing possible.
If you think that customers having problems and then coming to library staff is a good thing, then something’s very wrong with you. It’s supposed to be EASY for users to find what they’re looking for, not having to click on a bunch of drop down boxes hoping that they’ve provided the correct parameters for a search.
That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s time to rethink how you provide information to your customers, FVRL.
Patent Stupidity
From this post on the excellent Culture of Ownership blog, which in this case pulls its info from Ars about how patents are now being granted on certain elements of play in video games.
The example that they give is that Sega was recently granted a patent on the idea of "driving a car around a city with an arrow pointing towards the next destination". Excuse me? I’m pretty sure that it’d be easy to show prior art on this one, which would invalidate the patent.
And with very broad language being used for the patent application, it’ll be pretty easy for a patent holder to claim violation on something that’s only vaguely related to the issued patent. How stupid could it get? Think of a patent issued for the gameplay of a first-person-shooter. Or if EA were issued patents on the gameplay of the NHL or NFL franchises. From that point on, it’d be impossible for anyone to come out with a competing, potentially better game.
Uh, wait. Don’t give the NFL any ideas.
I’m not even a gamer anymore, and I think this is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. And if you think that it’ll only happen once, I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime in the near future you hear of a patent being issued to a new gaming company for something that’s been around in gaming for five or ten years. Count on it.
And then the same type of patent will be applied to a method of doing something in another type of application. Imagine, for example if Adobe were granted a patent for the method of creating a PDF by printing it to a specialized print driver. Where would that leave any of the many third party PDF generating applications, which pretty much all do it the same way? S.O.L., that’s where.
Hopefully this isn’t an idea that’s going to get a lot bigger.
A Look at Firefox v3 Beta 3
I’m a long time supporter of Mozilla’s Firefox browser, based on it’s stability, customization, and the wide range of add-ons that can make the 
installation uniquely yours. When the version 3 betas (and even the alphas) came out, I wanted to jump in and give them a try, but each time I went away thinking that they needed to put some more work into it.
Admittedly there are big warnings all over the installation that tell you that it’s a development release, and really shouldn’t be used for a production environment. They’re right about that. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a better experience with Beta 3, although this one was probably my doing more than anything.
When I first installed it, I did everything that was recommended - create a unique profile to avoid torching your stable version, etc. And when I got it running, I was impressed. Things were a LOT better than they had been in the previous versions. And it was a lot faster, as well, although this may have been due to the fact that there were no extensions installed.
I played around with it for a few minutes, and was really considering putting it into use as the primary version on my work machine, and then I remembered that I’d seen on Lifehacker somewhere that you could make your extensions compatible with the version 3 beta. I should have left well enough alone, but that’s not what I like to do.
Essentially you go into Firefox’s configuration and tell it two things:
- If an extension is not compatible with this version, ignore that fact and run it anyway
- If an extension is a security risk, ignore that fact and run it anyway
Scary, huh? Now you know why it’s not recommended for a production machine (among other reasons). So I gave it a try and things seemed to be going all right, until I restarted the app after the extensions were installed.
And then it crashed on startup. And again. And again. Uh oh. I uninstalled and reinstalled the whole thing and tried again, but this time didn’t drop all of the extensions in at once. And it happened again. With the IE Tab extension, I believe.
Oh well, let’s go back to 2.0.11 and life can continue on. Uninstalled the beta and started up v2. And found that all of my settings had been removed again. This was not cool.
I keep all of my extensions stored on my local machine, and my bookmarks are in del.icio.us, but still. If I hadn’t had the stuff saved, I would have been screwed, big time. Part of the risk of dealing with beta software, I guess.
So, long and short of it is, if you want to give Firefox 3 Beta 3 a try, go ahead, but go in with your eyes open and know that there could be potential problems.
And be sure to let me know how you make out.
I’ll be waiting for the release version, thanks.
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