Along the Way…

Archive for the ‘Web’ Category

I was helping Wendee fix up her blog’s theme, this evening, and decided it was time to explore a new look for my own blog. It’s been a couple of years since I last muddied the waters, so I figured tonight was as good a time as any.

The photograph at the top of the page is an old covered bridge that we found, one day, while we were exploring the area around Peninsula, Ohio, where we used to live. The countryside was so beautiful that we would frequently go on hikes through the woods, and this was one of those days.

I’m not sure the color palette is exactly the way I want it, yet, so don’t be surprised if it changes just a bit. If you have any suggestions, feel free to offer those as well!

I’ve attached a zip file, containing this theme, to this post so feel free to try it out on your own blog!

Here’s a handy-dandy way to listen to music online. It actually searches the web to find the music you want to hear (so, if your search results include YouTube, for instance, you’ll get video along with your music!)

StreamDrag – hear your favorite music.

OK, after I got all excited about Firefox 3 coming at the end of the month, I noticed Benjamin Golub posted a link over on FriendFeed, that says the Firefox team is hoping to release it on the 17th.

Whenever we’re asked “when is Firefox going to be released” we endeavor to answer to the best of our abilities, but the truth of the matter is that we’ll only ever ship “when it’s ready“. We have a lot of indicators that help us understand when the product is ready for release: feedback from our pre-release milestones, excitement in the community and the press, availability of compatible Add-Ons, and a large active beta community helping us ensure that the release is compatible with all the various sites on the Internet.

After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we’re proud to announce that we’re ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.

That’s even better news! Hopefully, they’ll pull it off…

Image via Wikipedia

Ever since Internet Explorer 7.0 came out, I’ve been a huge fan of Firefox! Of course, those of you who actually know me, know that I have a long history with Microsoft products, and I’ve been accused of being biased… though, as much as it’s possible to be objective, I genuinely think I do give a fair chance to a wide variety of technologies.

Granted, I just used Internet Explorer for most of my life on the web, but really that was more about the fact that I prefer to keep my core technology stack simple: stick with a single vendor as much as possible, to remove the inevitable conflicts and hassles that arise from too many cooks in the pot, so to speak.

Anyway, I’m digressing from my intended point, here. After IE 7 was released, I really tried to use it as my primary browser. I tried really, really hard to ignore the huge number of annoyances… as a software developer, I also prefer to keep my operating system configured the way most of my users will have it, so I learned to live with the new User Account Control (UAC) features of Windows Vista, that forever ask you if you’d like to grant permission to do this or that. Well, the combination of UAC and the obsessively over-strict security features of IE 7 just made my day-to-day life on the web unbearable!

So, I downloaded Firefox and started using that. Now, I can keep all of my open sites in a single browser instance, regardless of the “security zone”. There is a practically infinite number of extensions and add-ons that let me conform the browser to “my way” of doing things. The only reason I ever launch Internet Explorer, these days, is to log into my company’s web-based VPN that is also obsessively over-strict, and won’t work right with Firefox!

Since about Beta 4, I’ve been running Firefox 3. It’s been great, albeit missing a few add-ons. Well, it does crash quite a bit… but, I’m rather used to that, having spent the last ten years or so, using nothing but Internet Explorer!

Like anyone else who loves Firefox, as I have grown to, I am really looking forward to the final release of Firefox 3.0, but the Firefox team has been pretty quiet about the exact date they anticipate releasing. They’re requesting pledges from people to download their copy of Firefox 3 on the very day it releases, so they can set a world record for the highest number of downloads in a single day! Yet, they still won’t say just what day that will be…

Well, it seems they might have let the release date known to some key partners, perhaps, because I discovered this website tonight (thanks to Danny on Lockergnome for pointing it out):

Is June 27th the right date? I don’t know, but it gives us something to count down to, at least!

Image via Wikipedia

Years ago, when Google first deployed their “Notebooks” service, I played with it and dismissed it. It just wasn’t easy enough to be particularly useful to me.

Well, I opened it up again, today, and discovered they’ve really improved the workflow in using it! It’s actually quite handy for stashing the little snippets of information I find around the web, that I think will be useful to myself and my friends.

So, if you’re interested in seeing the sorts of information I’m saving to my notebooks, I have shared them to the public on this page. In fact, you can even subscribe to an RSS feed of them, if you cared to!