B10[mg]: Yet another non-informative, useless blog

My top 10 Firefox extensions

2005/01/30 filed under /software

I still see people using -and "enjoying"- the Microsoft Internet Explorer, but after last weeks WINE experiment to get MSIE running on my Debian machine, I can't really understand why.

The biggest thing I miss in other browsers (used to love Opera) are the Firefox extensions. So I decided to list my favorite ones here:

The winner of my all time favorites is, of course, the Web Developer extension. This one includes so many handy tools that I would highly recommend this even to non-web developers! A good runner up would be Diggler I use this so often that I sometimes think it's a default button in Firefox!

I wasn't sure to make mozex nr. 2 or 3, but here ya go, the poor bastard ended after Diggler. Mozex allows you to use Vim in <textarea>'s. Note: you will need to install Show Old Extensions for mozex to work in newer versions of Firefox.

AdBlock! What a gem. Sites with too much advertising beware, AdBlock will filter it all. Very handy in case you're going to use my next featured extension: StumbleUpon. Great fun for lost hours of true boredom.

LiveHTTPHeaders will show you the headers that are sent and received by your browser. Handy, especially when debugging forms and/or cookies.

I needed some time to really appreciate Linkification. It's useful for websites that show you URLs without linking them. Linkify them and you can click on them. Pretty neat!

ColorZilla is probably only useful for web developers. It let's you copy the color code of any pixel in your browser.

Bloglines Toolkit. A must for bloglines users. Includes a notifier to let you know you've got unread feeds.

Add Bookmark Here will help you to prevent a mess of bookmarks. Order them in folders easily with this extension.

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Cloudy (x)planet

2005/01/30 filed under /web

The great xplanet gets even better with some enhancements. Joffie makes it really simple to add a cloud map (and other things) in his xplanet tutorial. Easy to follow, great results, can't wait for more ;)

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (1)

Multi-Luser OS

2005/01/30 filed under /random_thoughts

After a recent crash of one of the old Win98 machines that are still around at work, the user in question (let's call him Mike) was pushed to install WinXP. After the installation, usage of "LanTalk" (yeah, it's horrible, but at least it works with LinPopUp ;) seemed "different". Instead of the regular username as sender, now it said "Administrator".

I don't know much about WinXP, but I was fairly sure this behaviour was caused by ... duh ... loging in as "Administrator". Luckilly the "experienced WinXP user" (let's call him John) explained those hard-to-understand-words to Mike.

John: "Ah yes, of course! You are logged in as Administrator. You will have to rename that user to 'Mike'."

Mike: "Uh ok, how do I do that?"

At this moment I just had to jump in

Me: "Ermm, guys. What about creating a new user, called 'mike'?"

John: "Oh yeah, and when you want to install anything, get the annoying 'You lack permissions to do such and such', right? No way!"

Me: *sigh*

Mike: "Oh no, don't need that!"

Me: "AARRGHHH! Ok, ok. I bet you love to delegate some of those powers to cute worms too..."

Then I wondered. Why-oh-why is it so hard to understand that using a simple user account is (close to always) better? Is it a scriptkiddy feeling, that more admin powers is more 1337? Bill, good luck educating your l-users. Thanks to them (and your team of highly educated programmers) virii and worms annoy my mailbox.

Anyways, I wonder how long it will take before this virgin WinXP system is gonna crash.

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (3)