“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny …'”
Isaac Asimov
Technology
FireFox Extensions
Here is a list of the extensions that I have installed for FireFox There are some duplicates, as some extensions fit more than one category.
General Web Browsing
- Adblock – Provides the ability to block advertisements – not just pop-ups, you can block the ads displayed in the middle of a news story too. The best part about it, is the fact that you can set up blocks using wild cards, so after some configuration, you discover that the vast majority of the sites you browse are now ad-free. This is a must have!
- BugMeNot – Provides dummy login/password combinations for hundreds of sites that require registration. This is extremely useful when you need to read something, but don’t have the time or inclination to go through a lengthy registration process.
- CookieCuller – Provides additional control of the cookies placed on your machine by Web sites.
- Download Sort – Adds the ability to set up filters for downloads, so you can define where downloads are placed automatically based on the file type or the Web site from which you downloaded it.
- Googlebar – Adds a replica of the Google Toolbar to Firefox, including the ability to search the currently viewed site, search word/phrase highlighting within the page, access to a cached copy of the page and the ability to navigate the directory tree.
- GooglePreview / McSearchPreview – Each of these plugins enhances search engine results by providing a a preview image of the Web site, or an image of a product (from Amazon) next to each search result. I am testing both of these to determine which I like more.
- IE View – A super simple, but very useful extension. IE View adds an item to the right-click menu which lets you open the current page in Internet Explorer. Some sites are poorly developed, and only work with Internet Explorer, so you can use this extension to quickly switch to IE for viewing. For those of us in Web development, is speeds up cross-browser testing as well.
- Tabbrowser – Provides expanded functionality for the tab interface, ideal for those of us who tend to keep many sites open at once.
- Image Zoom – Provides the ability to zoom in on an image within the Web page, saving the trouble of saving the image and opening it with a different application.
- QuickNote – A handy little text pad extension, allowing you to store snippets of information so they are close at hand while browsing the Web.
- Spellbound – A straight forward, but feature-rich spell checker for form fields. Check out the screen shots to see it in action.
Bookmark Management
- Bookmarks Synchronizer – Allows you to synchronize your bookmarks across multiple machines, even across operating systems. I have set it up to automatically synchronize my local bookmarks with a copy on my Web server each time I open and close Firefox, ensuring I have a backup.
- Flat Bookmark Editing – Let’s you skip a couple of steps when you want to edit the properties of a bookmark.
- OpenBook – Improves the Bookmark dialog box, providing much more functionality, and making it easier to add and work with bookmarks.
- Sort Bookmarks – This allows you to sort your bookmarks alphabetically, putting folders at the top. This functionality really should be built into Firefox, and I expect it to be in a future release.
Web Development
DOM Inspector (comes with Firefox – choose custom installation, and ensure ‘Developer Tools’ is checked) – Extremely helpful for Web developers
- IE View – A super simple, but very useful extension. IE View adds an item to the right-click menu which lets you open the current page in Internet Explorer. Some sites are poorly developed, and only work with Internet Explorer, so you can
- Image Zoom – Provides the ability to zoom in on an image within the Web page, saving the trouble of saving the image and opening it with a different application.use this extension to quickly switch to IE for viewing. For those of us in Web development, is speeds up cross-browser testing as well.
- User Agent Switcher – Useful for Web development, and getting around sites that require a specific browser to view, this extension let’s you spoof the site into thinking you are using a different Web browser and/or operating system.
- Web Developer – An amazing set of tools for Web developers, if you build Web sites, this is a must have.
Clothes Should Clean Themselves
BioEd Online: Biology Article: Clothes launder own fabric
> Scientists have invented an efficient way to coat cotton cloth with tiny particles of titanium dioxide. These nanoparticles are catalysts that help to break down carbon-based molecules, and require only sunlight to trigger the reaction. The inventors believe that these fabrics could be made into self-cleaning clothes that tackle dirt, environmental pollutants and harmful microorganisms.
Reply Header in Thunderbird
Sarah Sweeney posted a tip to the eVolt list which I have found very helpful. One of the few annoyances I have had with Mozilla Thunderbird, my e-mail client of choice, is the fact that it doesn’t include the date of the original message when replying. So, when I replied to people, it would place the text “John Doe wrote:” before their message instead of “John Doe wrote on July 28, 2004:”. Sarah’s tip describes how to easily modify that reply header to list whatever you so desire, all you need to do is add the following code to your user.js:
// Change the reply header
// 0 - No Reply-Text
// 1 - "[Author] wrote:"
// 2 - "On [date] [author] wrote:"
// 3 - User-defined reply header. Use the prefs below in conjuction
// with this:
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_type", 3);
// If you set 3 for the pref above then you may set the following
// prefs.
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_authorwrote", "%s wrote");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_separator", " ");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_ondate", "on %s");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_colon", ":");
// The end result will be [authorwrote][separator][ondate][colon]
Make sure that you are not running Thunderbird while making these changes. One note, if you don’t have a user.js file in your profile folder, create one as a blank text file and place this code in it.
OS X Broken Drag and Drop
Sarah’s Mac recently decided that it wasn’t going to allow her to drag icons around her desktop or use the cursor to move objects within Adobe Illustrator. After a good bit of searching via Google, and browsing through Mac OS X Hints, I determined that the problem was due to the fact that coreservicesd, the process responsible for dragging and dropping, wasn’t starting when the computer booted up. So, after I tried a ton of different possible solutions, none of which worked, I finally came across the article OS X Odyssey 431 – More Nickling And Diming From Apple and Checking Out XDock Dock Utility which provided these instructions from MacFixIt reader Kevin Grant that actually solved the problem:
I have discovered the cause in my case: ‘coreservicesd’ never starts, and this might happen if the file /var/run/StartupItems/coreserviced.run already exists. This is an empty placeholder file, which apparently (if coreservicesd crashes) never gets removed.
After deleting the placeholder file, we rebooted the Mac and were pleased to find that drag and drop works again. An easy solution that was hard to find.
Transfer Files Between Macs Using FireWire
Just a quick note to myself documenting a handy tip Eric Meyer posted to his site: FireWire Transfer. Apparently this is known as “Target Disk Mode“.