Monthly Archives: February 2005

From Mozilla to Firefox/Thunderbird

This blog seems to be degenerating into the usual “this vs. that” technology, so here goes: I recently went from Mozilla 1.7.1 to Firefox/Thunderbird (Mozilla’s new browser/email client). Verdict so far: Mixed. I have gained a better email interface (faster and less errors, and the great ability to save searches as folder). Firefox is also a marginally better browser than Mozilla 1.7.1, with better bookmark handling, RSS inclusion (though I use Bloglines, so it shouldn’t matter much – or perhaps that was Thunderbird?) and more robustness.
However, I have lost the easy integration between email client and browswer, and the (admittedly not wonderful) HTML editor is gone. I cannot click on a link in an email and choose “open in new tab” or even “open it new window” – instead, it will open in the top window of Firefox, pushing aside whatever I had there. I can do ctrl-m to compose a new email message when in Firefox.
A good thing with F/T is that if one app crashes (and face it, it happens), then I don’t have to shut down the whole suite. But the integration I am referring to should be easy to accomplish. And how do I easily link in an editor under Firefox – I would very much like to be able to hit ctrl-e and go right ahead editing.
As it is looking now, I will probably keep Thunderbird but go back to Mozilla 1.7.1 for browsing and editing.

MacCharlie resurrection


Via Gizmodo comes this mocked up Mac Mini back-pack docking station. Let me be the first to point out that this looks uncanningly like one of the weirdest computer products ever to see the light of day: The MacCharlie, a wrap-around PC-compatible computer that turned a Macintosh into an IBM clone back in 1985.
Those were the days…..

Upside down world

Interesting idea by Dana Blankenhorn – how about Apple buying Sony? Would make an interesting inroad into portable cellphones/MP3 players, and also get them access to a lot of digital music for iTunes. I wonder to what extent there would be institutional obstacles, though. Sony is an old Japanese company and the shares may not be as licquid as a listing on NYSE should indicate.

Dream desktop getting closer


Once upon a time (in the mid-1980s to be slightly more precise) I expressed a wish for a desktop that would be real and electronic – that is, it would be the size of a real desktop, with a touch-sensitive interface. The idea was to create the paperless office (anyone who has seen my office knows what a pipe dream this is) where only the coffee cup would be “real”.
Now, we seem to be getting a tad bit closer with this beautiful screen from Wacom (via Gizmodo.) Let’s see, if we set about four of these side-by-side….

HTML Editor?

I recently upgraded from Mozilla 1.7.1 to Thunderbird and Firefox (email client and browser, respectively). The benefit of the upgrade is increased speed and certain features, especially in Thunderbird, that are useful (such as better search and stored searches (“all emails to and from Doug”, for instance).
Mozilla 1.7.1 is good, but a tad slow, and I have a tendency to have 10-15 windows running at the same time, with lots of tabs in each, three edit windows up at the same time, etc., etc. Since all this is essentially one application, a crash in one forced crashes in everything. Plus, modularity is preferable if you want to stay current.
All of which leaves me without the (annoying but simple) Mozilla editor. I have done all my editing either in Notetab light or in Mozilla, but it is about time I move to a better HTML editor, especially one that supports CSS. Free/cheap is nice, should be able to handle relatively simple web pages and it would be very nice it if could handle synchronization between my hard disk and my web server, as well as helping me manage my many course pages efficiently (especially nice if I could have sub-parts of courses, learning modules, that could be stored so that I did not have to make changes many places). There are lots of them out there – any suggestions?
Of course, I could create a blog for each course. I could also do everything in Blackbored, our lame courseware option. But I like straight HTML and open access to courses. I could also install Macromedia (we have a license at the school) but that is overkill for me, I just don’t want to learn all that. So, what to do?