I’ve been using the new Firefox 4.0 Beta for about a week now and I LUV IT, certainly
enough to make a mention here! =P New features are awesome… tabs appearing in Win7 taskbar as if they were separate windows is great, the new way add-ons and extensions are handled and organized is fantastic, new look is quite pretty and a whole load of other new features are great as well. I also like the few new extensions that I’ve seen so far, that work with the new abilities of FF. The retractable add-ons bar for instance is quite handy.
I’ve always been a huge fan of FF’s customizability, and now there’s even more of that to be happy about. I also like many of the technical upgrade and oh, don’t forget the WebGL support. Aaaand the private browsing feature is pretty interesting too. You can check out the full features list here.
The only issue right now is that once you switch to the beta, 90% of your current add-ons will stop working because their version is not compatible with the new Firefix. The thing is, many of these add-ons can technically handle the FF beta, and only get disabled due to the version check. So you have 2 options:
- Disable the add-on compatibility check. To do that, go to “about:config” on FF, create a new boolean variable, call it “extensions.checkCompatibility.4.0b” and set it’s value to false. This works, but I DO NOT recommend it. Because this will suddenly enable all your old add-ons, some of which are sure to not work properly on the new FF. As a result all sorts of bugs and malfunctions will start showing up on your new FF. So… kind of a bad idea.
- Tweak specific add-ons to work with the new FF. This way, as soon as one of these add-ons starts giving your new FF hick-ups, your going to know it and get rid of the add-on. To do that, you’ll have to download the add-on first which you can do by right clicking on the download/install link of the add-on, even though you’ll see a “not compatible” sign on it. Then rename file extension from “.xpi” to “.zip”, and extract the “install.rdf” file out of the package. Open up the rdf file and find “em:maxVersion” in it, and change it’s value from whatever it is to ” 4.*”. Return the new version of the file to the package, change the extension back to “.xpi” and drop it into FF so that it’ll get installed.
I hope that helps someone. The 2nd one is what I’ve done to most of my extensions, and everything works like a charm so far. Really looking forwards to the final release now!
Multiple desktops on Windows is something that I’ve wanted [well more like needed] for pretty much ever. Well actually what I really want is an all connected scrollable ![cc817881.desktops2(en-us,MSDN.10)[1]](http://lh6.ggpht.com/_Tl7xVSHEwJs/S4oBh79A0MI/AAAAAAAAAS4/_k5lOLYhHmM/cc817881.desktops2%28en-us%2CMSDN.10%29%5B1%5D_thumb%5B1%5D.png?imgmax=800 "cc817881.desktops2(en-us,MSDN.10)[1]")
workspace, but getting my hands on an app that does this, has proven even more difficult than something for multiple desktops. There is only a single working application out there that creates a scrollable workspace on Win, and it’s way too old. Doesn’t really work on Win7 at all. I had come across virtual desktop apps that create multiple workspaces in the past, but that was long time ago and I didn’t really like what I saw then. So recently, I started searching again…. And here’s my findings:
Lets just say that to my experience, out of the bazillion virtual desktop apps out there, and I mean including the free and commercial ones both, I’ve only found 1 that works on a 64-bit Win7. The application is called “Desktops”, it’s free, and it’s available through Microsoft TechNet. It gives you 4 desktops that can be reached via shortcut keys or the tray icon. It has some limitations, including the fact that Aero style only runs on the main desktop, and you cant drag application windows from one desktop to the other, and a few other small issues. But at least it works, it’s NOT buggy at all and it uses a rather negligible amount of memory and other system resources.
So for the moment, this is what I’m going to be using.. until either me or one of you finds something better. You can download the app here.
I just felt the need to quickly mention here that I LIKE this! I’ve been trying out the Office 2010 Beta for a few weeks now, and so far I find it to be quite a nice bundle. Nice features, not all of them new of course but everything somehow appears to be smoother.
I’m mainly impressed with OneNote 2010. It’s lovely… try it…. trust me… 😉
This is something that I’m very much looking forwards to getting my hands on. It could very well be a life saver for me.
![1493928[1]](http://lh6.ggpht.com/_Tl7xVSHEwJs/S28a1ESiMxI/AAAAAAAAARc/SbrtsFZbQCI/1493928%5B1%5D_thumb%5B1%5D.png?imgmax=800 "1493928[1]")
“On Monday, National Instruments announced one such platform. It’s called LabView Robotics. In addition to LabView, the popular data-acquisition application, the package includes a bunch of tools specific to robotics. It can import codes in various formats (C, C++, Matlab, VHDL), offers a library of drivers for a wide variety of sensors and actuators, and has modules for implementation of real-time and embedded hardware. NI says engineers could use the package to both design and run their robotic systems.”
IEEE Spectrum: National Instruments Introduces LabVIEW Package for Robotics Design
In my search for a tool that would do for all eBook formats, what ComicRack does for e-comics, I came across Calibre. I’m using is for now since it’s the best I came across so far, but honestly it doesn’t make me as excited as ComicRack. It does create you a library, but no lists or folders. And there are a lot of nice options in there that simply get lost in the short comings of the UI… but oh well, it’s more or less a nice tool and it’s open source, so… going to keep using it for now. =)
As I’m certain I’ve mentioned a good bazillion times before, I read a lot of e-comics, and own a terribly large load of them. Most of my e-comics are in CBZ/CBR formats due to my pickiness regarding image quality, and I do have a small number of PDF ones too.
For a very long time I was using CDisplay to view / read comics. A light and small app that basically does nothing but displaying the images inside a CBZ/CBR archive. Nothing else. CDisplay is currently the most popular and widely used tool for viewing e-comics, and the few other more or less well known apps for the purpose are pretty much exactly the same. Nothing kool really. And if if wasn’t for my curious nature I’d probably still be using the boring app, except, well, it bored the heavens out of me and I decided to finally find a replacement.
After a great deal of digging and testing of nearly all the available tools, I can now say with confidence that I’ve found the koolest comic viewing application currently in existence, and it’s called ComicRack. You could say that ComicRack is something like iTunes for e-comics. It allows you to create an e-comics library with lists and categories, and can show a very neat preview of each comic’s cover. And that’s just the beginning… there’s tons of awesomely useful features to explore, and with all of that, the app is still a free one. So, well, safe to say that I’m totally in love with ComicRack now. So e-comic-ies… check it out! 😉
I just have to quickly mention here that I’ve been using Windows Live Writer for a few weeks now, and so far it has managed to impress the universe out of me.
It all started with WLM 9, and all it’s fancy new features. Groups, personalized layouts and everything else new. Since I was impressed with that one, I decided to give Windows Live Mail a try… which turned out to be a total YES. Windows Live Mail is basically Outlook Express evolved! Some great new features and hey, what can I say, I have a weakness for eye candy. 😉
So then I decided to look into the package again, and this time I picked Windows Live Writer for a trial, and I’m certainly glad I did. Blogging made easy! WLR connects to all my blogs on different apps, [including Blogger, WordPress and Serendipity] and makes it much easier to post articles, edit articles and organize my online writing in general. It has quick options for inserting tags, pictures, videos and etc, and interesting enough the publishing takes just about 2 seconds! It’s also very neat that it recognizes my blog template images, so unlike when I’m using the web-based editors, I’m actually writing on my template and not a white empty editor [so I can see what the final result looks like as I’m writing!]. And this is just very few of the cool features it has… there’s much more to be said about WLW. If you’re a blogger reading this, make sure you give it a try! 😉
I’ve been using RSS Bandit as my feed reader for a few years now and I’m a big fan of it. I even posted an article about there here [in 2005], and I like it now as much as I did back then, or even more. The cool thing is, apparently these folk never stopped working on the project and making improvements to the software, and now as a result, there’s RSS Bandit Phoenix. This is a new version of RSS Bandit who’s alpha installer is now available for download through the RSS Bandit Website. Phoenix has all the old Bandit goodies, as well as a whole bunch of kool and new features that make it even more of a joy to use. So whether you’re already a Bandit user or you’ve never heard of it before, and if you’re as much of a feed freak as I am, do check Phoenix out. =)
So today’s supposedly the FF 3 download day, but up to this moment I haven’t been able to get a hold of Mr. Firefox 3 due to apparent server overloads. I mean, come on, when you get _that_ many people to actually _pledge_ that they’re going to download the same thing on the same day, why wouldn’t you see to it that they actually _can_ do what you so badly want them to?
What I would like to know right now, is whether any of you, dear readers of this blog, have actually been able to download the oh so popular FF 3. Let me know if you have! =)
Update: Late at night I was finally able to download FF3. What makes me very very happy is the fact that the problem with Silverlight is solved! Yes! Silverlight now works with FF3.
![cc817881.desktops2(en-us,MSDN.10)[1]](http://lh6.ggpht.com/_Tl7xVSHEwJs/S4oBhaby89I/AAAAAAAAAS0/aIAc42JUAfE/s1600-h/cc817881.desktops2%28en-us%2CMSDN.10%29%5B1%5D%5B3%5D.png "cc817881.desktops2(en-us,MSDN.10)[1]")
![1493928[1]](http://lh6.ggpht.com/_Tl7xVSHEwJs/S28a0iz0PfI/AAAAAAAAARY/8IWM0Ivns5U/s1600-h/1493928%5B1%5D%5B3%5D.png "1493928[1]")
