I’ve been using Ubuntu Hardy Heron since I got my new laptop (ended up getting a refund for the CR-21 and got a CR-31) but when I tried to start Firefox 3 it complained that the majority of my extensions weren’t FF3 compatible. I didn’t really had the time to investigate the issue so I installed Firefox 2 (which is still available on Hardy’s repositories) and kept using it. However, I’ve been reading so many blog posts and tweets on how Firefox 3 is blazingly fast that I had to try it. And it is. It’s stupidly fast. I can’t even believe this is really Firefox. As for memory consumption, it’s too early to tell (I’ve only been using it for a few hours now) but so far seems better.
By the way, regarding the new laptop, I’m keeping a wiki page about it which I’ll be updating with more details later.
So, after searching for a while I found out that some of the extensions I use have beta versions which are already compatible with FF3, so I decided to give them a try. Here’s the list of extensions which are not FF3 compatible and how I managed to install them or the alternatives I’m using.
Adblock
Not compatible with FF3 but it seems kind of unmaintained anyway, so I installed AdBlockPlus instead (which seems like what everyone’s been using for some time anyway).
del.icio.us Bookmarks
According to this discussion the extension is ready but it only works over the next delicious version which has not yet been released to the public. I’ll be following the news on the delicious blog closely.
I ended up using a hack which bypasses the check for extension compatibility, but if this turns out to cause any instability I’ll use the bookmarklet.
Firebug
Had to install 1.1 beta from http://getfirebug.com/releases/.
FireFTP
Had to install the latest preview from http://fireftp.mozdev.org/developers.html.
FireGPG
Had to install the latest svn. More info on http://firegpg.tuxfamily.org/?page=install&lang=en.
Gmail Manager
Supposedly there’s a FF3 compatible version on this discussion thread but this is probably just a hacked version of the regular extension and FF3 crashes on start. This is a handy extension but I don’t consider it essential so I don’t really mind not having it around for a while.
Google Gears
Doesn’t seem to be compatible with Firefox 3 yet, but I don’t really use it much these days. Maybe I’ll drop it for now. The hack I talked about before lets the extension load but I prefer to disable it for now to avoid any issues.
Google Toolbar
Doesn’t seem to work either but I only used it to check on the Pagerank so I guess I’ll drop it too.
TinyURL Creator
No compatible version available, but works with the compatibility bypass. There’s also an alternative bookmarklet.
User Agent Switcher and Web Developer
Apparently, the developer of these two extensions refused to release Firefox 3 compatible versions until the Firefox 3 final version is out, but the Firefox developers are asking for add-on creators to update their add-ons to check for any issues so the creator says he’ll be releasing a test version soon. I just hope he hurries because this is has always been one of my favorite extensions and I’m sure lots of webdevelopers rely on this extension as a part of their work. Oh and these two don’t load even with the compatibility bypass.
Last night, after a tweet by Levi I decided to give another try to Tilda. In case you never heard about it, Tilda is a pulldown quake like terminal for Gnome, which would be something just great for me.
I had tried Tilda some months ago, but it was totally bug ridden and it didn’t respect Gnome’s HIG in terms of keyboard shortcuts (like changing tabs). After I posted this as bug report, it’s main developer seems to have liked the idea and changed it on the latest version. However there’s still one really annoying bug which, according to Tilda’s page is known:
Note: Apparently Metacity has started to not be very Tilda friendly by having focus stealing prevention on by default. Feel free to let me know if you have problems with Metacity but also let their developers know.
Right. So why does Yakuake (which is exactly the same app for KDE and has existed for a while longer) works so well with Gnome itself ?
I decided to stick with Yakuake for a while and try to get used to it. However, the stupid default keyboard shortcuts (for tab management) still annoy me and I can’t understand why it refuses to accept the same shortcuts I use in Gnome apps if i customize it that way (and no, they’re not KDE shortcuts for other actions).
One other little app I’ve been using a lot is Gnome Do. It’s just simple and perfect and eliminated most of my usage of the Deskbar Applet, which lately would be just for Tracker Live Search. However, Tracker seems to be having some problems as well. It used to work well but now it just can’t seem to find anything I want (even if the file name is all lower case and has been resting in my home directory for weeks). So that’s another app that it’s making it’s way out of my Gnome default session.
As for Glipper, it’s great to know that it was finally turned into a Gnome applet, but for some reason it keeps crashing on start. I’m using Hardy Heron, so I’m not really surprised about this.
Over the past few days I’ve been experiencing a really annoying bug on Google Reader. I’m not sure if it’s actually related to Firefox or Google Reader, but I’ve tried in Opera and it’s not happening, at least not on the same way.
Suppose I’m reading my feeds and I want to open some item. I can press the ‘v’ hotkey and everything is fine. But sometimes, when I have the mouse connected to the laptop I reach for the third button and click on the item title. I usually don’t go to that new window right away (I have this habit of opening lots of stuff and just wait for it to load and read it only after I finish all the feed items). The thing is, after I middle click the title, when I press ‘j’ again to go to the next feed item, Firefox’s “quick find” feature kicks in, so I’m just taken to the next ‘j’ character, which is extremely annoying. If I want the feed items section to regain focus, I have to left click on some item again.
I tried this on Opera, and it doesn’t happen, but after I middle click a title I have to move the mouse out of the link area, otherwise ‘j’ won’t do anything.
While trying this on other browsers I also found out that Google Reader’s keyboard shortcuts are not supported on Konqueror.
The weird thing is that I believe this only started happening after the last time Google Reader told me there was an update and that I should refresh. So, is this happening to someone else ?
Update
Looks like this was already noticed on the discussion group.
Update 2
The Reader team has replied to that thread from before saying they are working on a fix. Way to go guys !
Update 3
It’s fixed !
Everyone’s been saying how Trent Reznor has been going after Radiohead “offering” his album, but that’s not entirely true. Reznor had already stated his intentions of doing this a few months before Radiohead did it, and Saul Williams served as an experience for his idea:
“If I could do what I want right now, I would put out my next album, you could download it from my site at as high a bit-rate as you want, pay $4 through PayPal.”
And he isn’t really offering the album as most of the “reliable” news sites are reporting. Only the first 9 songs are being really offered, but as they say:
Undoubtedly you’ll be able to find the complete collection on the same torrent network you found this file
As for me, I’ll be getting the $10 version (unless the shipping costs are too expensive), but I’ll only be able to do it tomorrow due to some credit card issues.
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