Speed Up FireFox! This Makes FireFox Faster

I learned this from the Tekzilla Daily show (from Veronica Belmont who is way hot).

1. type about:config into your firefox url address field.
2. Right-click (or control-click if you’re on a mac) on the blank space
3. Select “New” and from the sub-menu,  ”Integer“
4. Name it nglayout.initialpaint.delay
5. Set the value to 0 (zero)

This will make Firefox load webpages more like Safari does.  You will see the page instantly and slower-loading parts of the page will come up later.

 

OMG

 

Thank you Tekzilla!

MySpace iPhone App Coming Soon

This looks cool. Thanks, Arin for the heads up.

I wish it wasn’t necessary for developer to build their own APIs for these social sites like myspace. I wish there was just a comprehensive API to begin with.

WordPress Developers: PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME USE FIREFOX

I’m writing this through FireFox. I’m only using FireFox because Flock and Safari are both shit-out-of-luck with the recent wordpress.com back-end upgrade.

I hate this.

I hate using FireFox. I like Safari because it’s native to osx and it’s not buggy (and it’s fast). I like Flock for all the reasons people like FireFox, and then some.

Why do i have to use FireFox if I don’t like it? This sucks.

I can’t post blogs with either Flock or Safari.

I’m using OSX 10.4

Please fix this, WordPress wizards!

Flock Problem With WordPress 2.5 - WYSIWYG Ajax Link Popup is Jacked up!

I like The New WordPress basically. It’s gonna take some getting used to though.

But on my first post, I noticed I can’t use the link adding popup thing. IT’S BLANK!!!!

ARGH!

I finally got this whole multi-browser system down and now WordPRess doesn’t work with Flock?

NOOO!!!

Unsubscribing to Engadget (and others) Taps Playing In The Background

Now that I have NetNewsWire going, and can finally really manage as many feeds as I want in a totally efficient way, I’m realizing that I need more specific focus for my information gathering.

Engadget, one of the best consumer electronics blogs out there (the other is probably CNET’s) is getting laid off.  It’s just not relevant enough to me.

It’s Monday afternoon even after spending my usual hour or so reading and scanning, I still have 2988 headlines I have not even glanced at yet.

224 of those are from Engadget.  Sorry Engadget.  I’m just not, on a daily basis, that interested in

• digital picture frames,
• handsets
• bigscreen TVs
• every little detail about all gaming related products
• the vast world of portable media players

Gotta trim the fat sometimes… Another likely candidate for the chopping block is digg.com’s technology feed…

I can’t help but think of Digg as more of a pastime than a news source, although nearly every time I get bored enough to actually spend any time there, I find something really interesting to me.

WebKit is the Sharpest Knife in My Drawer of Web Browsers

UPDATE: I’ve had to change this post.  I learned after posting this that WebKit is merely the rendering engine that Safari uses.  Although Safari updates will eventually include the latest ’stable’ version of the WebKit engine, by running an instance of Safari using the latest ‘beta’ version of WebKit you can take advantage of improvements being made to the engine now, but at the risk of encountering bugs etc, which so far I have not.

Anyways, I’ve had a hard time completely abandoning Safari for Flock. It turns out, while Flock has some features I really like and use on a daily basis, as well as the ability to run FireFox Extensions, it is a little clunky compared to Safari. I found myself still using Safari because it’s FAST. It’s just a more efficient App.
And I just recently learned about WebKit.  Running Safari this way seems even faster than normal. They update WebKit on a nearly daily basis -seems like about every other day.

Anyways I’ve found that I’m using different browsers for different things. This is nice for two reasons. First, I’m taking advantage of each browser’s strengths, choosing which one to use depending on what I’m doing. Second, I’m addicted to Keyboard shortcuts and I love being able to Apple+Tab between the various things I’m doing.

One thing that would make doing things this way a lot better would be to have an aggregate view of my browsing history from across all the Browsers I use, Safari, Flock, NetNewsWire & FireFox. Then when I look at my history, it could be in chronological order regardless of the browser I used, but returning to an item in my history could open it in the same browser I opened it in the first time. Alternately, maybe a contextual (right-click/Control+click) menu could let me choose amongst them. I bet there’s a way to set this up using Automator, or maybe someone has thought of this and there’s an app out there somewhere. We’ll see.

Here’s what I use the various Browsers for as of today:

Safari w/ latest WebKit release

• System’s Default Browser… The articles that come in on the feeds in NetNewsWire usually get opened with this.
• Extended research sessions. I can’t stand waiting for Flock when I’m really trying to get some learning done or whatever.
• Quickly grabbing links and such while I’m blogging in Flock

NetNewsWire

• RSS/Atom Feeds for News, Blogs, continual queries of certain sites like craigslist

Flock

• My “HomePages.” Flock is set with three tabbed homepages, My WordPress Dashboard, FaceBook and MySpace. I don’t go too far from home with Flock
• Quick Web Searches via the add-on capable search thingy. I have stuff like dogpile, wikipedia and del.icio.us in there (and a ton more) (I wish pipl and definr would work in it)
• Generally I blog using Flock, Apple+Tabbing over to reading materials open in NetNewsWire, and the two instances of Safari I’ve been running at the same time (with and without the latest WebKit release).
• Flock’s blog editor comes in handy for quickly editing lite HTML while blogging, commenting or doing things like updating my MySpace (I’m such a dork).

FireFox

• I use FireFox for all the Extensions I don’t need to have in my face and clogging things up during normal operation. Stuff like the Google Toolbar, The Web Developer Toolbar, Etc Etc Etc… Ugh! Disgusting. I hate all the toolbars. So much clutter.

Safari

• I still find myself opening the normal version of Safari to have two history paths, or to be able to have one more space to Apple-Tab over to… But basically right now I’m mostly content with the “WebKit version.”

Anyways, I wish there was an automated way to always get the latest stable or near stable version of WebKit automatically…. It’s getting annoying constantly downloading disk images, mounting them, dragging the app, ejecting the image… An automator script maybe?

NewsGator is Rad. Desktop App Syncs with Online Version

For a while now, I’ve been using Bloglines. It’s OK. But today I decided to dust off my old NewsGator account after hearing from BetaNews that NewsGator purchased the Macintosh feed reader NetNewsWire. I thought at the very least this would mean some decent drag-n-drop-ability, but that’s just the beginning.

So now, NewsGator offers a desktop client (they have one for Windows too) that syncs with the online version of the service. Of course it’s free.

The UI is very similar to Apple Mail, the advantage being, among other things, that something isn’t marked as read until you actually highlight it, revealing the content in a resizable reading area. And if you double-click on the Headline, the article maximizes to take up all the space, aside from the main sidebar on the left and a tinier sidebar on the right that allows you to toggle between the two views.

When you do read something, it doesn’t go away, it’s just ‘read,’ so it’s not bold and there’s no blue bullet next to it. Oh, and like Mail, you can reorder stuff by name or date (but not by flag or read/unread).

I noticed while using Bloglines, that my behavior started to change in a bad way. Since as soon as you see something in Bloglines, it goes away, I found myself not wanting to glance at my feeds until I knew I had pleanty of time to process all the articles. So this past week, for instance, my feeds were piling up and the more they piled up, the more afraid I became of getting started. Certainly this is not the way to go. And NewsGator solves all of this for me.

The best thing about NewsGator though is definitely the fact that when you manage (add, delete, move) your feeds locally, the online version gets updated and vice-versa. Sweet!

Unless this thing starts crashing all the time, I’m never looking back. Goodbye Bloglines. Sorry.

Heard of the WWW? How about the GGG?

Tim Berners-Lee recently posted on his blog about the idea of the “Giant Global Graph,” an alternate name for the Semantic Web which is also called “The Data Web” (as opposed to the “Document Web”) “The Web Of Data” (as opposed to the “Web of Documents”), and even “Web 3.0″

Cool quote from his article:

“The less inviting side of sharing is losing some control. Indeed, at each layer — Net, Web, or Graph — we have ceded some control for greater benefits.

People running Internet systems had to let their computer be used for forwarding other people’s packets, and connecting new applications they had no control over. People making web sites sometimes tried to legally prevent others from linking into the site, as they wanted complete control of the user experience, and they would not link out as they did not want people to escape. Until after a few months they realized how the web works. And the re-use kicked in. And the payoff started blowing people’s minds.

Letting your data connect to other people’s data is a bit about letting go in that sense. It is still not about giving to people data which they don’t have a right to. It is about letting it be connected to data from peer sites. It is about letting it be joined to data from other applications.

It is about getting excited about connections, rather than nervous.”

2008: Popular Realtime Online/Offline Apps (My Prediction)

There’s a ton of things to speculate about right now.

Here’s my little prediction.

I think this will be a big year for Online/Offline convergence. The noise this last year about Pownce, all the Firefox-Extension-centric stuff like StumbleUpon (and its acquisition by eBay), The widespread adoption (and Acquisition by CBS Interactive) of LastFM, and in the development world, the introduction of Adobe AIR, MS Silverlight, and others are all good indications of where things are headed in my humble opinion.

Online Video is a big craze right now because we finally have the connection speeds for it. Well we now also have the connection speeds to make much more synchronization possible. I think the time is right for more services/applications/whatever designed with this in mind to start sprouting up all over.

I should mention, as I configure everything during Flock’s probationary period on my computer (or in my Life), opening the browser is more and more like opening my computer. Many of the things I regularly do on the computer are all integrated into one portal-like interface. If my Flock settings, subscriptions Etc were all saved remotely (at flock.com?), perhaps I could sit down at another computer, log in, and be right where I left off. Imagine that.

I think this is clearly where things need to go.

And there already a ton of projects out there like DeskTopTwo that are anticipating the OS moving more and more online, although I think Local, with Online Integration/Synchronization/Storage is closer to what we’re after.

Obviously, there are privacy issues involved with this sort of thing. Privacy issues. It’s always privacy issues.

Bill Gates did a presentation about this a year or two ago and I’m trying to find the video of it… If/when I do I will post it here.

Fluid: Site-Specific Browser Creator.

Super basic Idea… It makes an instance of the browser that is just for one Site, with it’s own name and shortcut you can stick in the Dock. I think it also tweaks the search form of the Browser to be only for that domain by default too… Not much else, according to this video.

I instinctively try to use Apple-Tab to switch between Open Browser Widows all the time, and since Apple+`(the key above Tab) switches between the open windows of the app you’re in, I have preferred multiple windows over tabbed browsing in many contexts for that very reason.

I could see using this to have a WordPress Browser, allowing me to tab back and fourth between my reading and my writing.

What would make this really cool, is if you could map buttons in the Web App to Commands in the File Menu, Edit Menu etc… I love Keyboeard Shortcuts and would love it if I could bo things like Apple+B for Bold in WordPress’ wysiwyg… Or have Apple+S save the current draft/post.

Anyways… this is another baby-step toward better convergence of the Online and the Offline. More on that later.

Flock’s RSS/Atom Feed-Reader Capability is Definitely Better Than Safari’s. Multiple HomePages Too!

Thist is my 3rd post so far about Flock (the Web Browser), as I’m trying it. There will probably be one or two more because I have more to say about it but I’m working on some music right now and I don’t want spend the time to go all-out, all at once, and do a big ol’ review-of-Flock post so it’s gonna have to be bit-by-bit like this.

Feed Bookmarking is one of the main reasons I have refused to switch to Firefox, Safari’s way of doing it being way better than Firefox’s. I am subscribed to a ton of blogs in different categories including the Semantic Web, General Technology, Social Software News, My Friends’ Blogs, SEO News, IPTV News, many craigslist queries (as feeds of course), as well all the craigslist free stuff in my area (you never know!). Flock has a few different sidebars, one of which is the Feed Reader.

(A picture of the Flock Feed-Reader Sidebar with just a few of my things added)

Like Safari, Flock’s reader lets you see an individual feed or an aggregate of multiple feeds by folder. Two things that Safari doesn’t do are:

1. Flock has a ‘Mark as Read’ button. OMG you have no idea how many times I’ve wished for this! After a weekend of being a normal person who doesn’t read a ton of blogs, I’ve often wanted to flush a feed and start fresh. If I don’t stay on top of reading everything, or at least letting it display for a second, next thing I know I have like a THOUSAND unread posts from somewhere like digg/technoloy and even opening the feed is crash-material. With Flock, I can just right-click on the title of the feed and, as metallica would say, kill em all. Thanks Flock.

(a Safari Bookmark Folder full of unread Feed Articles… Yuk.)

(Flock’s Right-Click Menu from a Feed’s title. Yay.)

2.UPDATE: (This is probably a much bigger deal) Flock’s Browser-Based Feed-Reader will sync with a few different online ones. Yes folks, sync. I said Sync.  No It Doesn’t.  It only allows OPML import and export, and a feature that makes it so when you click on a link to a feed, it will take you to the subscribe page of your online reader, similar to how a bookmarklet works for del.icio.us or digg.com.  No syncing going on around here. 

I have tried online readers in the past and have always preferred my feed-reading to take place in the drag-n-dropable realm of my closest friend, OSX. Many, many, many times I have been away from my machine and wished I could access my feeds, which of course is the best, if not the only argument for online feed-readers, as far as I’m concerned. Since Safari can’t do this syncing thing, I have had 2 choices: Either stick with Safari and have my feeds in a UI I like but only have access to them at all when I’m on my machine, or use an online reader and have a UI I hate all the time but with the assurance that I wont miss a beat if I’m camping out on another computer. I have chosen the former, but now, if I do switch over to Flock as my primary browser, which is looking pretty likely at this point, especially after pecking out this post, I can have my RSS cake and eat it too.

I have to say though, I haven’t tried the syncing yet so there may be reasons to not use it but I’m definitely going to try that out soon.  I’ve tried Bloglines out now, and although Bloglines is pretty cool, there is definitely a shortfall with regard to integration in this area.  I will continue too keep my feeds backed up at Bloglines, but read with my browser here on the desktop.

One big annoyance with Flocks feed-reader is this: When looking at a feed, the things you have not seen are bold (in safari they’re a different color), and Flock even knows how far down you’ve scrolled which is nice, but the effect is that as you scroll and scan, the headings are changing from bold to normal! Changing font-weight is just about the worst thing you can do to aid someone in scanning a lot of headlines/summaries. It’s a nice idea gone terribly wrong. I would like it better if they were blue, but then turned black or something. Or a Three-Second delay maybe? … Anything but going from bold to plain instantly as I scroll and scan. Awful. Why don’t you shine a super-powerful bright light in my eyes while you’re at it, Flock? (or better yet, just quietly change that feature to make it a little better)

Finally (not really finally, cause there are going to be more posts about my quest for a better Web Browser(and Firefox is NOT it)), I have to say that another thing I really like about Flock so far is that it supprts multiple HomePages. Duh! When I launch the browser, I pretty much always go to the same few places: My FaceBook, my MySpace, My Blog Stats on WordPress Etc… Flock’s Social Sidebar has Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and many others covered. I launch a window and all that info is loaded and up-to-date. Thank You. Finally! As for MySpace and my Blog Stats and any other miscellaneous pages I glance at frequently, why load them one-at-a-time, one-after-the-other? Just give ‘em to me! Flock allows you to do a lovely little thing that reveals itself when you are in the preferences for the app. In the Homepage section it says: “Use current pageS.” with an “S” as in plural. More than one.

(Flocks Home Page Settings)

When I saw this I thought:

“No. That would be cool but… No way.”

I was wrong! It works. You can have different pages as your homepage and they’re all tabbed and pretty waiting for you to do your glancing at them when you launch the window. What’s next, telepathy? Ok, maybe it’s not that big of a deal but if things keep moving in this direction, browsing may just get a little more helpful here and there. Baby steps.

Wow. I think I’m having a good reaction to Flock. No they’re not paying me or anything. I saw a little spot about Flock on Mahalo the other day and thought it looked like they had done some cool things with it.

More later.

Comments welcome of course.

Testing Flock’s built-in blog editor with WordPress

test. Hello? I don’t see a way to save a draft. Only “Publish”

Blogged with Flock

EDIT:

OK. There’s obviously a few problems with this.

I can’t save as a draft online.

I can only publish in one category.

I Don’t like Firefox. It’s filled with bugs and it’s slow.

Firefox makes me feel like I’m working on a PC. Clunky, cartoon-y, Flimsy, un-intuitive crap.

EDIT: If you’re on a PC, I guess you don’t have a choice. You’re probably happy that anything is working at all. Congratulations.

I use it to post here because the WordPress wysiwyg ‘advanced editor’ isn’t available to Safari, and I like being able to drag-resize images. Beyond that, I totally avoid using firefox.

And from what I’ve been hearing, the next version of Firefox is going to be even more screwy. Puke.

I can see why everyone wants to have a bunch of extensions. Some of them are helpful sometimes.

But I can’t help but feel like adding extensions to a browser is the wrong approach. Each one is like a little jerry-rig added in place of a real fix for interactivity between online services and my OS.

This is cool. This browser can Interactive-ize Web Pages.

There are other Apps that do this, basically Screen-Scraping via a GUI.

But this one is looks the most user-friendly so far. User-friendly that is unless you’re on a mac :(

Still cool. (Thanks Mike Hedge!)