Don't Back Down

The latest nightly build of Firefox adds a cool new feature. I've become somewhat addicted to tabbed browsing, despite my earlier comments, and I hate it when I click a link in an email or something and a whole new window opens up. For starters, it's slower. Beyond that, it's an extra window and a pain.

With the latest release, the default behavior is to open in the currently selected tab in the most recent window, which I don't particularly like because I may have been on a page I wanted to keep. Luckily, you can also make it open a completely new tab in the most recent window (my favorite) or even open an entirely new window like it did previously. I know it's small. But it's sweet.

I've just released an update to the Bloglines Toolkit. Mostly because a new nightly build of Firefox broke my installation to some degree, so I figured it was time to let it loose.

Read "Bloglines Toolkit 1.5.0" »

Just three years after it happened, we finally know what brought down American Airlines flight 587 in New York. Strangely enough, we've known this for three years: The tail fell off of the plane. But now, the issue is who is at fault. American says it's Airbus. Airbus says it's American.

No surprise. Everyone wants to blame someone else. But let me ask the question they ought to ask: If you were to build an airplane, and by simply using the controls, even improper use of the controls, the tail can fall off, who do you think is at fault? Here's a hint: No amount of training is going to change the fact that the tail broke off the plane.

If the pilot goes the wrong way and crashes into a mountain, I can see it being pilot error. If there is an explosion of some sort and the plane breaks apart, I'm okay with it being a design problem or perhaps even terrorism.

But come on - he's operating the controls and the plane falls apart? Even if he wasn't trained right, the plane shouldn't do that. In a nod to my wife's profession, perhaps it wasn't in the requirements. I can understand some organizations using that as an excuse, so let me be clear: If your vehicle can be operated in such a way that it can fall apart, you ought to spend some more time in the design phase.

I made some small changes to MT-SomeDays, so I'm releasing a new version.

This version adds a new attribute for the <MTSomeDays> container, yearly, which will select to the beginning and the ending of the year(s) you have selected. For instance, say you want to show everything since your blog started - each and every date.

Read "MT-SomeDays 4.1.0" »

It's safe to say that my use of Firefox as my regular browser is pretty well embedded by now. I fire up MSIE on two occasions: When Firefox doesn't work (rare, but it happens - for instance, with certain Outlook Web Access functions) and when I want to check my site to make sure it doesn't look completely horrible in IE. As I mentioned a while back, I'm not catering to IE - and I haven't. But I do like to make sure it's not completely whacked. That's it.

With that, and with the ongoing development of the Bloglines Toolkit, I'm convinced. The experience is just better. And if it's not, I can change it. I think that's what really made the decision for me.

Don't get me wrong - there are some things that Firefox cannot do. The difference is that I can find ways to do them. Not possible with IE. In order to accomplish things, I simply load up the extensions. I'm down to only a handful that I use on a regular basis.

Bloglines Toolkit - Goes without saying. I'm addicted to the notification function. For what it's worth, I don't really use the context menu, so I have it disabled - but that could change.

Clone Window - When you CTRL-N in IE, you get a new window with all the history of the one you cloned. This extension does the same for Firefox. It also allows that CTRL-N key to clone the existing tab and open it in a new tab, even though it's really supposed to work on windows.

EditCSS - No comparison in IE. This extension allows me to dynmically change the CSS of the page I'm viewing. Immense help when updating the color scheme of a web page (or redesigning a layout). There are other extensions that offer this ability, but I like EditCSS because it's clean and simple. Does what I need and nothing more.

Focus Last Selected Tab - I just love having the last tab that I use selected when I close the top level tab. It just makes sense. I know where I will be when I close the tab. Simple as that.

LastTab - Despite an amazingly similar name, this is actually a different extension. This one allows me to CTRL-TAB back to the previous tab (or SHIFT-CTRL-TAB to the next one), just as in most Windows apps. Without it, CTRL-TAB goes everywhere. Maybe it has some rhyme or reason to it, but I can't figure it out.

And that's it for now. But because the browser can be extended by users, there may be a different list next time around.