Friday, October 27, 2006
How things change: Firefox gets single-window mode
Recent builds of Firefox - starting with 1.5, I believe, although it's taken until Firefox 2 for it to work properly - have had the option of opening all links in new tabs, instead of new windows.
I've managed to find the what I believe is the first time this was suggested on Mozilla forums, from late 2002. Note how "asa" (Asa Dotzler, a main Firefox player) rubbishes the idea part-way down the post. This same argument was trotted out many times over the years, and only recently has Firefox moved to Opera's single-window model.
Yes, Opera, the browser Asa hates so much!
I've managed to find the what I believe is the first time this was suggested on Mozilla forums, from late 2002. Note how "asa" (Asa Dotzler, a main Firefox player) rubbishes the idea part-way down the post. This same argument was trotted out many times over the years, and only recently has Firefox moved to Opera's single-window model.
Yes, Opera, the browser Asa hates so much!
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Signal vs. Noise made me laugh
The 37signals folks have written themselves a new blogging system, and by all accounts it's lightning fast compared to their old Moveable Type solution.
What's the funny bit? "We decided not to copy over all the old posts to the new system.". Yes, their new system is straining over the colossal load of approximately six, that's six, posts. All the hundreds of old posts and thousands of comments have been dumped to static HTML.
You know what, I reckon MT would be quite fast too if you deleted the database and started again.
What's the funny bit? "We decided not to copy over all the old posts to the new system.". Yes, their new system is straining over the colossal load of approximately six, that's six, posts. All the hundreds of old posts and thousands of comments have been dumped to static HTML.
You know what, I reckon MT would be quite fast too if you deleted the database and started again.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Carbonite free trial
Carbonite, the easy-to-use online back-up system I highly recommend, is running a 15-day free trial.
It's quite cunning - it will probably take that time to upload all your data. By which time, Carbonite clearly hope you'll just sign up to the $5/month service to keep your data safe.
It's quite cunning - it will probably take that time to upload all your data. By which time, Carbonite clearly hope you'll just sign up to the $5/month service to keep your data safe.
Monday, October 02, 2006
The nasty side of Youtube
Take a look at this great home-made video of Anousheh Ansari arriving at the ISS a little over a week ago (home-made, as in someone used a camcorder to record NASA TV playing in Real Player on their computer!).
Good, isn't it?
But then read the comments - they're pathetic! The spam is one thing but some of the posts are degrading and pathetic. I wish you could simply turn off comments on Youtube - there are a lot of sad people on there.
Good, isn't it?
But then read the comments - they're pathetic! The spam is one thing but some of the posts are degrading and pathetic. I wish you could simply turn off comments on Youtube - there are a lot of sad people on there.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Digg vs. Slashdot
For a long while I was a Digg reader (or rather, subscriber to their RSS feed). However recently I've deleted Digg from Bloglines and added Slashdot to replace it. Why?
The comments. For reasons I don't know, Digg tends to have very short comments, with little in them. Their javascript-heavy comments system takes a long time to render, even using Opera with its class-leading javascript engine. And if you set the comments to only show, say, +5 comments to cut out the dross, you still get a long list of titles of <5 point comments to scroll through. Finally, there seems to be a bug in their system so that, even as a logged-in user, it keeps forgetting what comment threshold I've set.
Slashdot is a breath of fresh air. After joining, I've set the comments to display in flat mode (easy to read), oldest first, with a threshold of 4 (out of a possible 5). This gives me a ready source of informed and intelligent reaction to the original story. I don't need to go searching through blogs, usually every side is well-covered on Slashdot already!
Slashdot comments also tend to be much longer and much more in-depth than the brief throw-away shots Digg seems to engender. Digg also has more visitors, and I think as a consequence has more "junk" comments (every story seems to start with a lame comment dug to -100 followed by several "that's so lame" posts dugg to 20...).
Slashdot has a tradition of more informed commentary and with a flat (or even shrinking) userbase, that tradition looks set to stay.
The comments. For reasons I don't know, Digg tends to have very short comments, with little in them. Their javascript-heavy comments system takes a long time to render, even using Opera with its class-leading javascript engine. And if you set the comments to only show, say, +5 comments to cut out the dross, you still get a long list of titles of <5 point comments to scroll through. Finally, there seems to be a bug in their system so that, even as a logged-in user, it keeps forgetting what comment threshold I've set.
Slashdot is a breath of fresh air. After joining, I've set the comments to display in flat mode (easy to read), oldest first, with a threshold of 4 (out of a possible 5). This gives me a ready source of informed and intelligent reaction to the original story. I don't need to go searching through blogs, usually every side is well-covered on Slashdot already!
Slashdot comments also tend to be much longer and much more in-depth than the brief throw-away shots Digg seems to engender. Digg also has more visitors, and I think as a consequence has more "junk" comments (every story seems to start with a lame comment dug to -100 followed by several "that's so lame" posts dugg to 20...).
Slashdot has a tradition of more informed commentary and with a flat (or even shrinking) userbase, that tradition looks set to stay.
