moving parts of the kasper clan

I’ve been using Firefox 3, beta5 for a while now and am very much liking it. It’s crashed a fair bit, but that’s understandable being that it’s only a beta5. One thing that has bothered me, though, was that quite a few of my must-have extensions aren’t released for FF3 yet. TinyURL Creator, for one, is notably absent. Well, thanks to this page, I found a really simple workaround to enable (possibly dangerous and a bad idea to do) your old extensions in FF3:

All I had to do was to create a “extensions.checkCompatibility” boolean field in the Firefox about:config and set it to false. As you can guess, this disables the compatibility check for the extensions, and all the disabled incompatible extensions are enabled (with warning messages). Of course, this does not guarantee that the extension will work.

Yay! TinyURL Creator works again!

Hm, and while I’m on the subject of browser betas, Opera’s latest beta is looking really nice and finally works with the latest Flash plugin. And is it just me or is there a horrible vacuum where there should be some nice Firefox 3 themes? The only tolerable one I’ve found is the updated Qute theme.

Okay, well, I mean, it’s always been cool.  I’ve been using it for a few days instead of Firefox and it’s nice to see some of the new things in the Opera camp since I had last used it.  I like the widgets idea, although I can’t find any widgets that will let me post to my blog.  And I miss the del.icio.us buttons/extension that is available for Firefox.  I definitely like the feel and organization of Opera.  It just feels better and more solid.  Like the theme and appearance management.  Seriously… having to reboot your web browser to just change a theme or add in an extension… seems… really… silly.

Then again, Opera seems to have some quirks with Gmail (”#” doesn’t delete always??  keybindings stop working
until I click on the page often? textareas don’t linewrap sometimes? in fact, Wordpress’s textarea editor is now
not linewrapping, grr…).  *sigh*

Anyway, it’s nice to have a little variety every once in a while.  =:)

Oh, and I found a nice little technical comparison of the PSP and the new PSP slim at pspzine.  Verdict: seems like there’s no good technical reason for me to be lusting after a new PSP slim, so why am I jonesing for one so badly?  =:/

Okay, seriously, I think we could just delete 90% of the firefox themes on addons.mozilla.org. Truly, I am almost physically ill after spending a few minutes looking through them.   And the ones I’ve found on deviantart are out of date and unusable.  Surely, there must be a top-secret repository of really good Firefox 2 themes somewhere, right?  Certainly this can’t be all that there is?

Bah humbug.

You know what?  I think I’d even consider paying some small amount of $cash for something truly beautiful and groundbreaking.

Please explain to me why, in… what year is this again… 2005… people… nay, COMPANIES… insist on using stupid, dumb, ridiculous, unnecessary, proprietary, exclusionary, browser-sniffing, One-Platform-ONLY “solutions”????

CNN, please explain to me how you can legitimately not care whatsoever about the growing population of Internet users who might like to use your site who CANNOT or CHOSE NOT TO run Internet Explorer, Windows, or Windows Media Player??? Just because I choose not to (or maybe can’t afford to??) use Windows, you think I’m unworthy of seeing the videos that make up the user experience on your site??? How about doing something sensible like providing a link to the media file regardless of what OS your visitor might be using, and maybe following it at the bottom with a disclaimer along the lines of “this site might not work if you don’t run Windows and have WMP installed”, if you absolutely think that’s necessary???

If you care, here’s where you can tell CNN what you think about their absolutely ridiculous exclusion of non-Windows/non-WMP site viewers.

As if I wasn’t already in a foul mood….

In case you’ve been living under a rock, or working at some large, silly corporation that develops only for Internet Explorer, Opera has just released version 8 of their excellent web browser. You can check out what has changed yourself–I won’t bore you with the list.

Again, in case you’ve been living under a rock, or working at… somewhere less than clueful… Opera is a standards-compliant browser, is feature-rich, fully skinnable, has an excellent e-mail program, does lots of Really Cool Stuff (TM), and in general, is the browser that I normally try to make Firefox mimic when I occasionally switch back and forth between it and Opera. The things that Firefox does well are largely things that Opera has been doing and doing well for quite a while. And, I LOVE the community and general feel behind Opera!! The graphic above (the graphic currently found on Opera’s home page) exhibits this nonchalant, cool attitude that is so refreshing to see in a company.

This is definitely not intended to be a bash on Firefox. I love Firefox, and am the biggest advocate of Open Source that you’d ever want to be caught in a torrential downpour with. And honestly, that’s not entirely the point of this brain-dump.

I’ve been using Opera for Linux for years and years (don’t remember how long, but it’s been quite a while). And I’ve always used the free version, because, well, quite honestly, if I don’t have to spend money, I will not volunteer myself to. And Opera has been getting better and better and better and… you get the idea.

Wellsir, I believe that I have reached an epiphany today that brings me to a different point in the road. You see, today I invested $39 of my not-easily-given-up money into buying a license for Opera.

And it wasn’t being sick of seeing the advertisements that show up on the free version of Opera that made me do it. And it’s not that I couldn’t have found a cracked registration key so that I wouldn’t have to see the advertisements. And it’s not that I think it’s the only viable web browser for Linux (every browser for any platform has issues).

So why did I, a Very Outspoken Open Source Advocate (VOOSA, heretofore) actually pay money for software (Opera in this case) when I could have shunned this as Communist behavior and confined myself to using/supporting only a fully Open Source solution (Konqueror or Firefox, namely)?

I came to the realization today that:

1. Opera (the web browser) is a very, very good product. It certainly fills the needs that I require in the product. It’s actually the best browser I have ever used for any platform, in fact.
2. Opera (the company) is committed to Linux as a platform to develop for. I am a member of the opera-linux mailing list and am VERY impressed with the community around this product and the quick and capable responses from Opera developers to the Linux community.
3. Opera (the company) has been committed to Linux as a platform for longer than I can think of any other company being. If I recall correctly, they were releasing their browser for Linux way back when Netscape 4 (3 even??) was the only other alternative for Linux.
4. Opera (the company) is exactly the kind of company that we as Linux users should be supporting!!! This is what we keep asking for, right? Companies to take the Linux platform seriously–to develop products for Linux, to support products for Linux, to be involved in a community that takes Linux seriously, etc. That’s what they’re doing! And in my book, they’re doing it REALLY well and should be supported in their efforts.

So, I feel very good about having put my money where my mouth (and keyboard) are. And, I’d encourage you, my fellow VOOSA, to do the same. Show companies like Opera that we appreciate their products and support of our Open Source platforms. Don’t join the frothing crowd of lunacy that would tell you that you should never have to pay for any software. Maybe in another hundred years when we’ve all joined the Borg, perhaps, but not in the reality which we presently occupy. Currently, you have to make money to stay in business. And how will companies be motivated to continue to develop for our Open Source platforms if they can’t make any money from their efforts?? You think they’re doing this because they’re stupid or charitable? Maybe. I think not likely though–and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that–it’s a part of the society and reality we live in.

What is wrong though, I submit to you, is if we refuse to put our money where our mouths are and encourage companies to develop for the Linux (or FreeBSD/NetBSD/*NIX) platform by allowing them to be profitable by doing so.

We’ve all worked really hard to create this beautiful thing in Open Source desktops.

Wouldn’t it suck if we never succeed at seeing it reach critical mass because we refuse to show the companies who are developing for our desktops that it’s worth doing so?

So, I’m using Opera again for a bit. =:) Actually, I’m using the just-released Opera 7.60 TP2 for Linux, and it is REEEHEEEEHEEEEALLY nice!! I have always been very impressed with the Opera team, but this release is the best one evar. It looks like they’ve finally improved (dare I say “fixed”?) the printing issues in Linux!!! And this release works with gmail now too!!

All I can say is… Opera guys, you are doing a FANTASTIC job! Please keep the great work up!!

So, here’s the thing. I get bored VERY easily (like you care…). And, to make matters worse, I have a love/hate relationship with both Mozilla Firefox and Opera. I run Linux, of course, and as such, don’t have the option of using Internet Explorer (Bill of the Gateses hasn’t seen fit to provide a version for Linux yet, and oddly enough, I’d not use it even if he had). So, my options for the browsing of all things webbish are limited to Konqueror, Mozilla and its derivatives (Firefox, Galeon, Epiphany, etc.), and Opera.

Of all of these, Opera wows me the most. It is the simplest to configure, it does everything I want it to from a user interface perspective right out of the box, instead of having to go hunt firefox extensions down every couple of weeks/months. It’s smartly designed, based on a very strong toolkit (Qt), small, does many things right, etc., etc. Feels bloody solid too. My complaints are mainly due to its oddities that may or not be tied to the Linux version. My biggest beef is with printing. I have NEVER gotten it to print correctly on pages that mozilla’s engine handles correctly 100% of the time (mapquest, cnn.com, many many others). But I don’t print all that often, so I can overlook this glaring problem… until I have to print something… and then I get all in an uproar and switch back to Firefox. =:)

Oh–which brings me up to this post….

I switch back and forth between Firefox and Opera every couple of weeks/months, most often out of boredom, and occasionally because of irks like printing non-functionality. So, I’m using Opera now. and it’s unable to render my stinking WordPress posting page correctly! Rather than rendering all of my categories, etc., on the right hand side of the page like Firefox renders them, it sticks them on the left and pushes down the post area by 2 pages.

I guess that’s all for now…. I’m all worn out and tired.