Standing in the Field @ Valley Forge

Standing in the Field

Notes from SJS Application Server Field Engineering

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Tuesday December 28, 2004
Another quick Safari to Firefox migration tip

If you want Firefox to open a new window when you click on a URL outside of Firefox (instead of the default: reusing an existing window), go to Preferences->Advanced->Tabbed Browsing and then select the "a new window" radio button.

I knew that this was a preference setting somewhere, but it took me a little while to find it again. If you are going to change Firefox to be your default OS X browser, this is a much more intuitive way to handle URLs in my opinion. (To change Firefox to be your default browser go to Safari and select Preferences->General->Default Web Browser, by the way.)

(2004-12-28 14:33:07.0) Permalink


Friday December 24, 2004
Switching to Firefox

Like David Johnson, I've wanted to switch to FireFox was but was annoyed by not being able to open a link in a new tab with the mouse wheel button.

I generally like Safari, but there are some Sun intranet pages that it doesn't render well. And even though Safari is fast on lightweight pages, it seems to get very bogged down on complicated pages and when too many windows are open at the same time. I had one complicated HTML page that used to take minutes to render in Safari. Some of the fault was surely on the part of the page designer, but FireFox was much better able to handle the complexity.

I tend to use tabs a lot and being able to open tabs with a single click was important to me. I also want my browser to be able to sync its bookmarks via iSync and to be aware of the system proxy settings. I already knew how to getting around the sync'ing problem by using the Bookmarks Synchronizer Plugin. And while the SwitchProxy plugin doesn't add system proxy awareness, it does make it easier to adjust the proxy settings.

But I didn't know of a plugin that would add the ability to open tabs with the mouse wheel button. After reading David's post, however, the answer became clear. If you can't change the app, change the mouse. I downloaded the Logitech driver for my mouse and modified the mouse wheel button to be command click. Now FireFox works perfectly.

And while I was in the Logitech control center, I added a few more cool shortcuts. Copy/Paste buttons on the thumb buttons. (Why do non-UNIX keyboards have caps lock, but no Copy/Paste?) Tab left/Tab right buttons by the mouse wheel. And my favorite, an Expose button in the middle of the mouse.

Just goes to show you how the my obvious solutions can sometimes elude you.

(2004-12-24 13:03:32.0) Permalink


Thursday December 16, 2004
Frelling Comment Spam

I'm absolutely swamped with comment spam, as is the rest of blogs.sun.com. I'm shutting down comments for a while until this storm passes.

(2004-12-16 07:57:48.0) Permalink


Wednesday December 08, 2004
Some Famous Faces

I'm at a Java conference at Sun's headquarters. Yesterday I saw Tim Bray and a bunch of people I knew I should recognize, but couldn't quite put my finger on.

Now I know what was going on. What a cool thing to be happening. I'm excited both because we are welcoming cool technologies like Python and Perl into the Java world, but also because we just being more open to the innovation outside of Sun. Although now I'm kicking myself for not recognizing Larry Wall.

(2004-12-08 16:58:17.0) Permalink