Day in, day out…

So Firefox 3.6 was released recently, it has some nice features.

In the list, there’s one feature addition that bothers me – default support for Personas. This is not exactly a new feature, it has been around as a Mozilla Labs project.

I usually stick with the default theme of any application I use. It is the one that developers have put most effort in. But just for kicks, I have tried out Personas in the past. Each time, it did not last more than a few hours before I uninstalled it.

In my opinion, Personas – no matter how popular, or highly rated they are – mess up the readability of Firefox window. I am sure it is a great distraction for people who spend most of their time playing with themes. But isn’t that why there are extensions/add-ons? If someone is so inclined, install the Personas add-on and you are all set to hurt your eyes!

Here, you be the judge:

Firefox with one of the popular Persona themes, hurts my eyes! (click to enlarge)

That is Firefox with one of the more popular Personas. And here is Firefox with it’s default theme:

Firefox with its default theme is much more readable… (click to enlarge)

Not sure about you, but I’d stick with the default theme.

But hey! no one is grabbing me by the collar and forcing me to use Personas. So it’s all good.

Only thing I am curious about is the thinking behind picking the Personas Labs project to be integrated into Firefox. Why not Prizm? Or Weave, that would be awesome! Or Ubiquity perhaps. All these add value to Firefox too. May be they all have the merit, but are not mature enough?

I hope Personas was not picked because Google Chrome has a developing themes ecosystem… (and bunch of folks claiming ‘Oh! look how cool my Chrome looks’).

Granted that Personas is still a work in progress (it does not theme buttons and icons, like actual themes do), and that it is a better way to implement themes. But in the end, I still maintain that Personas was great as an add-on, and it should have stayed that way.

With rants and opinions out of the way, what is your favorite Firefox 3.6 feature?

As you probably know from tons of different sources, Firefox 3.5 was released yesterday. For all the new features and security updates, I would highly recommend you to update to the latest release, if you already use an older version of Firefox. If you don’t use Firefox, this is as good as any other time to try it. So go grab a copy…

Upgrade the Web – Firefox 3.5 is released!

Like many of the past Firefox releases, I used this release (code named Shiretoko) from its pre-alpha stages. It has developed into a solid release.

Now that this release is out, there will be many users to use it and report bugs. For me, it is time to grab the latest nightly builds and start using them. Hopefully file some bugs to help with testing.

Plans for the next version of Firefox – called the Firefox.next – are already in the making.

Congratulations to the Firefox developers on yet another great release. Now back to work on the next one…

If you use Weave, you’ve probably noticed that Mozilla servers are currently overloaded. Accounts are not working. My account authenticates (If I access

https://services.mozilla.com/user/<user_name>/

it asks for and accepts my credentials), but I get a “Not Found” 404 error. The accounts that do work, are very slow.

Like always, I went forumming, trying to get to the bottom of this trouble. I came across some helpful posts at the Weave forums. Posts from covidium and netoak are especially useful. This post is just a compilation of steps I followed to get my Weave working again.

Get a WebDAV host
I guess there are only a handful of these, that are free. I tried to find one in the US, but couldn’t. I just used the one that covidium suggested. I opened a free account at myDisk.se.

Create directory structure
Weave expects the files to be in a specific directory structure. If you have myserver.com as your server, it will look for

myserver.com/user/user_name

To cater to this, I created a directory called user, then inside it, I created one called user_name.

In retrospect, I should have instead made

weave/user/user_name

directory structure. That would keep everything Weave together.

Set Weave’s Server Settings
Open Weave’s Server Settings (Tools -> Weave -> Preferences…) and then go to the Advanced tab. Replace the default Server Location with

https://mydisk.se/user_name/

mydisk makes my files available at https://mydisk.se/user_name/, other hosts may use some other path.

If I had used

weave/user/user_name

directory structure, I would set the Server Location to

https://mydisk.se/user_name/weave/

Try Weave again
In Weave preferences’ Advanced tab, click on the Advanced… button. Click on Reset Login and Reset Server Lock buttons. I did not think it would be required, but I had to quit Firefox and restart it.

Now, sign in to Weave again (Tools -> Weave -> Sign In). Follow the setup wizard as if you are opening a new account. Use username and password from your WebDAV server. Pick a strong passphrase.

At this point, you should be all set.

Do leave feedback to point out errors in the above process, so other readers can benefit too.

My current web host does not provide WebDAV. From what I read, DreamHost does. I wonder if Weave users who have DreamHost accounts already host their own Weave servers.

Its official, Firefox 3.0 will be released on June 17^th, 2008.

Join more than a million others by pledging to download Firefox 3.0 on the day of release. Celebrate the Download Day by setting a world record. Click on the image below:

To see what to expect from the new version of Firefox, watch this screencast.

Cheers!

UPDATE (06/12/2008):

There’s an excellent post on dria.org that lists the new features in Firefox 3.0, it is called Field Guide to Firefox 3.

Firefox 2 release has been posted on Mozilla’s website now.

Take it for a spin, I am sure you’ll like it!

Mac users, try the new Pinstripe theme too!

Like I said in my previous post, I’ve been playing around with Flock.

So far, the only really useful feature I’ve found is this blog posting tool – which could use a spell checker, by the way. The Flickr bar, the shared bookmarks are all good features but I did not end up using them a whole lot. Shared bookmarks don’t preserve collections – when I sync bookmarks, I still have to move new entries into appropriate collections. This may be a limitation posed by del.icio.us bookmark format. Whatever it may be, its no better than importing exported bookmarks between Firefox installations.

So, to me Flock seemed more like a dressed up Firefox – and the get up is not compelling enough. Flock seems to be heading in the right direction, so I will probably check back with Flock in near future to see how its developing, but for now, Firefox is still my default browser on both windows and Mac.

I’ve become a big fan of Firefox browser. I’ve been using it since its Phoenix days. Its been so great to see it grow into this awesome piece of open source software.

Near the end of 2003, I made the switch to Mac – making it my primary computer (an iMac G4). I do have a windows laptop – I mostly use it for money management, I could not find a software like MS Money on Mac OS X – nope, Quicken on Mac is ugly. Well anyway, since the topic is Camino, I’ll not write about how glad I am that I made the switch.

I am a satisfied user of Firefox on windows and linux systems. Even on Mac OS, I don’t have any complains about Firefox. At the level I use it, it works as good as it works on windows XP. Arguments in favor of Camino – which is a Mac variant of Gecko browsers, on its webpage are pretty compelling. So beginning with its version 0.8.0 or so, I started trying out the browser. I download every new version that comes, waiting to see if it reaches a stage when I can replace Firefox with Camino on the Mac system.

So far that hasn’t happened – although 0.8.3 came pretty close. I think the only thing I am missing in Camino is live bookmarks. Another thing that was missing was adblock extension, which has become something I cannot live without now. But I was pleasantly surprised by how Camino ExtraPrefs fills that void.

All in all, Camino has improved a lot in tha last few versions – and is getting better. I am looking forward to the day when it can finally replace Firefox on my Mac system. Currently, Firefox rules!

Mahesha.com now provides Live Bookmarks!

If you don’t know what live bookmarks are, you are probably not using Mozilla Firefox browser – which, by the way, you should try!

You can read all about Live Bookmarks, and other cool features of Firefox on its home page.

Once you have the Fox, use icon at the botton-right corner of the browser window to add a Live Bookmark on mahesha.com. Currently the only Live Bookmark published if for Albums @ mahesha.com.

Hope you like this addition!

You must have seen new graphic on my website…

Go, click on it and try the new Mozilla Firefox browser, and browse the web the way it is meant to. Don’t forget to read all about the browser and its cool features before you start using it.

Happy browsing!