The Open Source Process In Action

Via Projectionist comes this impressive animation of the Python language's development over time ...

Firefox 3 Download Day

The last time I checked, a number of the plugins I rely on were still incompatible with Firefox 3. However, I'm hoping that will be sorted out before the final version is released.

Irrespective of whether that happens, I'll still get involved with Firefox Download Day.

Yes, it's really just a little silly, but what other chance am I every likely to have to get involved in a Guinness World Record attempt?

Of course, the actual date hasn't been announced yet, but if you follow the link, you can register to be alerted once it has been decided.

No To All

You just have to wonder sometimes, whether those boys in Redmond went to the bookstore, found every tome on good user interface design and marked each good practice as something to be avoided like the plague!

Have you ever tried to copy (or move) a number of files at once, only to receive a popup like the one pictured, asking whether you really want to process a particular file?

While there's a "Yes To All" button, if you don't want to continue for that file, all you can do is say "No". There's no button to say "No ... and don't ask me again".

However, thanks to Download Squad, it turns out there is a solution. If you hold the shift key down when pressing the No button, it's interpreted as "No To All".

Why the hell did they not just put that button in the dialogue?!

Tag Scanner

Thanks to Download Squad for pointing me to Tag Scanner.

It's a Windows tool that lets you update tag information for various kinds of audio and video files and to rename the files themselves, based on the tags.

I could have used this a couple of days ago, when I needed to rename some MP3s so that they played in the correct order on an MP3 CD player that didn't take notice of ID3 tags.

Of course, a small Ruby script sorted out that problem ... and provided a welcome distraction from my socio-babble assignment :-). However, not everyone's a hacker, so this looks like a useful tool.

ClipX

ClipX is yet another Windows clipboard manager.

I've been using it for a while now, to gather links for my blog posts, and it works quite well.

ClipX has a plugin mechanism to allow the addition of new facilities.

The two I'm using are "Stickies", which lets you keep some predefined text in the list and "Dislog", which stores your entire history on disk, so it's available in the long term.

A number of hotkeys are available. In particular, Ctrl+Shift+V pops up the clipboard history next to the mouse cursor, saving you having to navigate down to the toolbar icon, and Ctrl+Shift+G takes whatever is in the paste buffer and looks it up in Google.

All up, it's a nice simple program, with just the right features to make it useful.

Shidewin

Thanks to Download Squad for alerting me to this neat application.

Shidewin is a simple tool that displays a list of all the windows your various applications have open. Choosing one then makes it visible on the current monitor.

It's mainly intended for the situation where you have dual monitors, especially a laptop with an external display.

You know the problem ... you're sitting at your desk, with an external monitor connected and close your laptop, without moving any apps on the second screen to the main one. When you get home and open it up again, you can't get at those windows, because you can no longer see them!

Mind you, I've certainly been in situations where I could have used it on a single monitor.

Sometimes windows just end up completely off the screen due to some kind of programming bug, so being able to reposition them would be handy.

Coverflow For Firefox

Bookmark Previews provides an interface similar to the one Coverflow does in iTunes and on iPods.

I'm not sure whether this is a better mechanism for working with your bookmarks, but it should have the same value as Coverflow in that it's a simple way to stumble upon items you've not looked at in ages.

Personally, I've almost completely stopped using browser bookmarks. Most of the sites I'm interested in have RSS feeds, so I follow them via Google Reader. The only bookmarks I have now are reference sites, like train timetables and my ISP's volume usage page.

There are precious few of those, now, too. As I've mentioned earlier, I now create keywords for any reference sites that provide a search box.

Thanks to Download Squad for the link.

Rapido Resizer

Another thing Paul was interested in was an easy way to resize images.

I showed him Drag 'n' Scale, which is pretty good.

However, via the same article I mentioned in the last post, I found Rapido Resizer, which looks like it might be even nicer.

Serendipity

My good mate Paul asked me yesterday whether there was some way to silence that obnoxious boing that Macs make when they're powered up.

Sadly, I had to tell him that I'd previously looked for such a tool, but never found one.

However, this morning I was reading an article by a switcher, which pointed me to the Startup Sound preference pane.

Problem solved!

Fiddle OS X's Secret Preferences

There are plenty of OS and application preferences that can be changed via the command line, or by editing property lists, but that do not appear on any preference pane ... until now.

The same chap who created Quick Silver has come up with his own preference pane, called Secrets, that lets you set them.

It's Leopard only, but I'm sure you've upgraded by now, gentle reader.

Thanks to The Unofficial Apple Weblog for the tip.

Update: I should just echo the warning, which has been placed on the Secrets webpage since I wrote this article, that changing some of the preferences it makes alterable can potentially cause problems, so use this utility with care.

Smart Sleep

There's nothing worse than opening the lid of your laptop, only to discover that it's been sleeping for so long that the battery is completely drained.

Smart Sleep is a preference pane that allows you to control whether your Mac goes into sleep mode or hibernation mode when you either shut the lid (or it's been idle for a while).

You can specify that it should always sleep, always hibernate, sleep then hibernate or "smart sleep". The latter lets you specify a percentage of battery capacity at which the laptop will start to hibernate.

One thing to note: you need to install the preference pane in the system folder ... /Library/PreferencePanes ... rather than in the one under your home directory. So, don't just double click to install it, copy the file to the folder manually.

Dashboard Dashed

While I think Dashboard is an interesting idea and looks pretty, I don't like having to press a key to switch to it ... especially on my 24" iMac, where there's plenty of screen real estate.

What's more, I've never found any widgets that I consider remotely useful.

So, I was very pleased to read about DashQuit, which allows you to shut Dashboard down.

I'd really prefer a way to have Dashboard not even start up, but this will do for now.

AccelMan

AccelMan from Flexigensoft is a Windows Explorer replacement that looks pretty good.

Personally, I've been a Salamander person ever since my good mate Paul showed it to me ages ago. However, AccelMan has a few features that could make it a useful complement to Salamander.

A couple of features I particularly like are the ability to have more than two panes, to filter the display to only show files with a set of extensions, bookmarks and the fact that you can even have multiple tabs per pane.

Directory Listing Printer

I've only ever wanted to do this a couple of times, but each time it was a pain.

Karen's Directory Printer is a free Windows utility that generates nice listings of the files in a folder.

You can specify how the files are sorted and what properties are included. Very nice.

Thanks to Uneasy Silence for the link.

Opera 9.5 For Mobiles

I've posted a couple of times recently, regarding the new SkyFire web browser for Windows Mobile based phones.

Well, Opera aren't standing still, either. Here's a video explaining some of the improvements and new UI features of Opera 9.5 for mobile devices.

I have to admit, while it looks good, I didn't get the impression that it was on a par with SkyFire. However, your mileage may vary.

Thanks to Gizmodo for the link.

Interesting Firefox Plugins

One of the first applications I installed onto Tao was Firefox.

Of course, a fresh install is bereft of plugins, so I last night decided that was a good excuse to see what interesting ones are around.

There were a few that I were definitely on my "must have" list ... Ad Block, Customise Gmail, Better Gmail 2, Better Greader and Grease Monkey, so they went in first.

Here are the others that I found during my search ...

Chroma Tabs

Colours your tabs to highlight which sites they are displaying

CSS Viewer

Does as its name suggests

Fisheye Tabs

Similar to the dock zooming in OS X (say goodbye to those annoying little arrows on either end of the tab bar)

Fox Clocks

Puts a set of international clocks of your choice in the status bar

Hyper Words

Allows you to do all manner of things with highlighted text

Live HTTP Headers

Apart from the obvious, it also has links to things like the whois database

Pic Lens

A nice interface to sites like Flickr and Google Images

Restart Firefox

Very handy when it Firefox starts eating memory

Tab Catalog

Kind of like expose for tabs

Video Download

Allows downloading of YouTube and other video content

My dear mate Paul had mentioned some of them to me previously, but this is the first time I got around to installing them.

There are so many that I've not evaluated them in detail yet, so take this list with a grain of salt. I may throw some of them away over time and will very likely add to them, too.

SkyFire Review

Brighthand has run the beta version of the SkyFire browser for Windows Mobile through its paces.

Their review is very positive, indeed.

As I've said before, WM is so horrible overall that I'd never buy a phone that uses it, but this browser definitely looks excellent.

SkyFire Browser

While I think the Safari browser on my iPod Touch is pretty awesome, it's annoying that it doesn't handle Flash video ... at least not yet.

This new browser for Windows Mobile, called SkyFire looks pretty damned good.

There's no chance I'll ever buy a WM-based phone, because the overall interface is so crappy. However, for those masochists who have, this looks like a very nice addition.

It's currently in a closed beta programme.

I'm In Love!

I generally think Apple does excellent user interface design.

However, from the first five minutes with my first Mac, a number of years ago, one thing that has driven me nuts is that to resize a window you need to navigate your mouse into a small section of its bottom right hand corner.

Madness, I say!

Well, today I discovered Zooom. It's similar to a Windows app I posted about recently.

The way it works is that you hold a couple of modifier keys (which you can configure) while moving the mouse pointer. One set moves the window, while the other resizes.

In addition, holding either pair of modifiers and double clicking is the equivalent of clicking the green button at the top left of the window.

It cost me around AUD18, but my sanity is worth at least twice that! Of course, having coughed up my dough, it's almost guaranteed that I'll shortly discover a freeware equivalent :-). That's just how the universe works.

TUGzip

It's not often I want to create an archive and when I do, I just use WinZip.

Most of the time, I'm looking inside them and Salamander does a fantastic job of that. Come to think of it, I've never looked to see whether Salamander can create archives; I wouldn't be surprised.

In any case, TUGzip looks like it could be quite useful, for those who aren't happy to cough up money to achieve these goals, since it's free.