Joho the Blog » firefox

The Firefox difference

davidw — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:34:19 +0000

Sebastian Anthony points to a distinguishing philosophy of Firefox that was not clear to me until I read it. The title is “Firefox is the cloud’s biggest enemy,” which he in the comments admits is not entirely apt. Rather, Firefox wants you to own and control your data; it uses the cloud, but encrypts your data when it does. This is a strong differentiation from Google Chrome and Microsoft IE.

Gmail now crashing two browsers

davidw — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:47:27 +0000

Wow. I’m impressed. For the past few days, Gmail has been hanging when I try to attach a file. It doesn’t matter what type of file it is or how big it is. More times than not, it hangs. The hang happens as soon as Gmail shows the bar that displays the percent loaded. I have to force-quit. This is with the latest version of FF and of Snow Leopard. (I use Gmail as part of Google Accounts, and I have https turned on.)

I assumed this was a Firefox problem. I created a new profile and slowly added my add-ons back in. Eventually, the problem returned. Removing the add-ons I’d added did not take care of the problem.

So, I switched to Opera. Nice browser. But I just had exactly the same problem. No add-ons. No Firefox. Same problem. Yes, I have run Disk Utility to repair permissions.

Further, Safari so far has always been able to attach the very same files using Gmail. In fact, when FF or Opera have failed, they leave a draft of the message. I’ve opened up that very same draft in Gmail on Safari and have successfully attached the very same attachment.

I am, shall we say, puzzled.

Tips that made me go D’oh! #8567 & #8568

davidw — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:32:16 +0000

#8567 If iTunes — one of the least intuitive user interfaces around — isn’t transferring podcasts onto your iPod (which, except for the wheel, is a UI so badly designed that your first instincts are almost wrong):

1. Click on your iPod in the “Devices” section of iTunes

2. Click on the “Podcasts” tab in the window on the right. (See here for instructions and a screenshot.)

3. Click on “Sync”

4. Click on “Apply” in the bottom right.

5. Smite your forehead and say “D’oh!”

(I’m not proud of this. It just never occurred to me that syncing podcasts would be off by default. And I had always clicked through the very top level of the device, not recognizing it as a preference pane. Hence the self-inflicted D’oh!.)

#8568 If you are using Firefox and want to quickly scroll among the many, many, many tabs you’ve accumulated, install the add-on All In One Gestures and set the mouse wheel preference so that you can then:

1. Position your mouse cursor over any tab.

2. Spin the wheel away from you.

3. Watch the tabs fly by.

4. Spin the wheel towards you.

5. Watch the history of your tabs pass before your eyes.

4. Smite your forehead and say “D’oh!” [Tags: tips itunes firefox ]

Microsoft the good sport

davidw — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:49:28 +0000

The Microsoft Internet Explorer team sent a nice cake yesterday to the Mozilla Firefox team, congratulating them on the shipping of version 3.0, as they did when Firefox 2.0 shipped. Nice. Seriously.

Here’s an idea from one of the comments that’s funny but would be unnecessarily not-nice to actually do:

I reiterate what someone said when the last cake appeared – Mozilla should send a cake back, include the recipe, and ask for advice on how to improve it. ;)

: )

[Tags: firefox mozilla microsoft internet_explorer competition business ]

SpeedDial for Firefox

davidw — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 00:19:36 +0000

The SpeedDial add-on for Firefox brings the useful Opera thingy to FF. Its a page of thumbnails of pages you want to get to quickly. Ah, add-ons What cant they do? Thanks to Ev for the tweet.

Tags: addons firefox opera speeddial