February 27, 2003
Bookmark Context Menu
Asa lets us know of Pierre's excellent recent work with context menus now working in the bookmark menu in Phoenix. Here's a screenshot from the latest nightly build:
I've been waiting for this one for ages since I have most of my bookmarks in folders in the bookmark menu. It was always a pain to open Bookmark Manager just to delete or rename a bookmark.
Preferences Toolbar updated for Phoenix
Aaron Anderson has updated his Preferences Toolbar to work with Phoenix. The new "Kill Flash" button is also quite useful. Here's a full list of what's new.
Maybe it's because I installed two extensions at the same time, but when I installed it on Phoenix, I had to go to Prefs | Themes and Extensions screen and click the Enable Extension button for the Pref Toolbar.
February 24, 2003
New Splash Screen
According to Bug 194291, Mozilla will soon have a new splash screen. No more green lizard everyone love/hates. From the bug description:
It is possible that this bug will receive a certain amount of attention. Before you comment here, listen carefully: This is not bug 32218. There will be no discussion of which of the many available splash screens is "best". Please do not attach other screens to this bug, or comment with URL locations. This screen is what we are having. It remains possible to install your own splash screen if you are the sort of person who has too much time and needs to get out more.
Here's the BMP of the final revision of the new splash screen. Note: the BMP loads in Mozilla, but in Phoenix 0.5, I get the error message "The image cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Update: here's a link to the PNG version of the splash screen.
Huzzah! Tabs in Safari!
If you have access to a super-secret pre-release beta build of Safari (beta 62), you can start to use Tabs today!
If you activate the hidden debug menu, you will be able to open a new tab with the press of "command-t".
Link via Think Secret
February 21, 2003
The continuing saga of Minotaur...
Should I get my hopes up?
Bugzilla Bug 173084
Minotaur is getting resurrected again. Here is an updated config patch against the trunk.
More to come...hopefully...
February 19, 2003
First Phoenix, now Chimera
In a post on his blog, Chimera devloper Mike Pinkerton writes that Chimera 0.7 has been delayed because "we can no longer legally use the name Chimera".
And no, it wasn't Tom Cruise and the makers of that Mission Impossible 2 crap who raised the issue. The minutes summary from the a recent mozilla.org staff meeting suggest that chimera.org, makers of a web browser for UNIX-based machines running the X window system, had issues with the name.
Mike asks that people not send in any suggestions, mentioning the headaches involved with "finding a name that doesn't suck and clears legal."
The two top contenders now are Camino and iVoyage.
Mozdev RSS Feed
Andrew Woolridge writes "This is an hourly updated feed of all the extensions available through mozdev.org. it's perfect for either adding to your favorite newsreader, or building an extensions manager on top of!
An extensions manager or 3rd-party installer would be cool. Someone could even build an addon that lets you know when your favourite addon has been updated. There could be lots of cool stuff you could build with this feed.
Mozilla based RSS Aggregators
I've tried a few RSS aggregator's and gave up on most of them quickly because they embedded the IE control for browsing, which of course means popups, banner ads, no tabbed browsing, etc....
NewsMonster is a Mozilla based RSS aggregator. It integrates into the Mozilla sidebar, which means you get to use all of Mozilla's features in your RSS reader. Newsmonster has an impressive feature set and there's even more coming soon. Beta 1 is available now for download.
There are a few more aggregators listed on Mozdev like Aggreg8 and Satimoz, but both are in development and unavailable for download/install.
February 10, 2003
Sitemeter in Mozilla
If you're using Site Meter counter and statistics tracker on your website, you may notice the tracking code generates extra html comments in Mozilla. For example, check out the individual link pages at Gizmodo. To fix this, use the following code:
<script type="text/javascript">
var site="your-SiteMeter-site-ID";
var g_leavenoscript="true";
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="your-SiteMeter-counter-URL"></script>
More information available here. [via MovableBlog]
February 07, 2003
Mozilla Coming Attractions
Mozilla.org has recently added a new article to their status update section called Progress and Future of Mozilla-the-application-suite.
This article includes a summary of where Mozilla is now, where it will be in the next six months and what to expect in the future.
One interesting item in the "New since 1.0" category is:
- Midas, apparent Mozilla has built in support for Rich Text editing control. News to me. Take a look at the demo here if you have a Mozilla build after 01/26/03.
For the next section "What is planned for the next few months (2/2003 - 6/2003)?", the list seems pretty bland. Hopefully, this is still a document in progress since it mainly refers to cleanup and working on existing features.
Finally, in the next section, "What might be after that?" we have
- stand alone mail?, ahh! Will Minotaur never arrive!!!
- breaking apart the suite into separate applications, which seems very tied to Minotaur
So, what's left out? What features/fixes/etc would you like to see in Mozilla in the next six months?
February 06, 2003
Change the Phoenix Icon
Lim Chee Aun has created some nice icons for Phoenix
Currently, Phoenix uses the same icon as Mozilla. To change Phoenix to use this new (or any other icon) follow these instructions:
- In the directory you installed Phoenix, go to chrome directory and create the subdirectories icons/default
- Save the phoenix.ico file in this /chrome/icons/default directory
- Rename phoenix.ico to main-window.ico
- Restart Phoenix and you should see the new icon in the taskbar.
This worked for me using Phoenix 0.5, but not the latest nightly builds works in nightly builds too!
February 01, 2003
Ad Blocking with CSS3 Selectors
joe comments on the old ad blocking post:
Check out my use of CSS3 selectors supported by mozilla and NS7. I use it to block ads based on substring matches in the href of a link for links that contain images. I find that matching on the link href is more reliable than matching on the image src.
His site shows how to add a few lines to a userConent.css file in the chrome directory of your profile dir to remove ads that originate from subdirectories. For example, the following line
A:link[HREF*="/ad"] IMG { display: none ! important }
blocks all images from the /ad subdirectory, which the current "Block Images from this Server" feature doesn't handle.