Recent Entries
Gimme My Keys, Firefox!
I’ve been a long-time user of Firefox, but for a while now I’ve actually been browsing with Camino as the regular browser on my mac. After using Firefox 3 (FF3)for a while at work and my other computers, I figured it was finally time to switch back on my mac, too. So, I downloaded and installed it, copied over my more recent bookmarks, and went about my life.
That is, until I noticed that FF3 wasn’t following one of the altered keyboard shortcuts I’d set up the last time I used Firefox to change the Quit shortcut. (For me, ⌘-Q to quit the app is dangerously close to ⌘-W to close a tab.) I use the standard OS X method to alter/reassign keyboard shortcuts, so I just went back and redid the Quit shortcut change for Firefox like before. Except it didn’t work. Sure, my reassigned shortcut of ⌘-⌥-Q worked, but so did the old ⌘-Q, rather defeating the purpose.
So, I started my hunt for an answer. A Mozilla support thread let me know that I wasn’t alone in this frustration and also pointed me in the direction of a Macrumors thread. This, in turn, gave me the actual Bugzilla entry for the issue, including discussion from some of the developers and users. Apparently, a fairly late change in FF3/Gecko 1.9 made it so that system-assigned shortcuts weren’t being observed and it’s unlikely to be fixed really soon. One of the developers mentioned it ought to be possible to get around this with an addon/extension, though.
Now it was off to find an extension to help solve my problem. After far more searching than I’d prefer, I found Keyconfig, an extension by “doranado” that’s been around for quite some time, but looks to have been recently updated. I installed the extension, restarted FF3, reassigned some of the shortcuts (you’ll find the option under the main Tools menu to open up Keyconfig), and held my breath. Thankfully, this seems to have done the trick and I no longer need to worry about accidentally hitting Q when I meant to hit W on a shortcut. I figured this info might be useful for other FF3 users out there.
Posted Sunday August 10, 2008 in Computers & Software by Chris Curtis
Tips For Your Vehicle Gas
I recently received one of those “chain letter” type emails, this one purporting to be from someone working in the gas/oil industry and giving some tips on how to get the most out of your gas. (It also, of course, encouraged me to email it on to ten friends to “get the word out”, but that sure ain’t happening!) I typically don’t much care for those sorts of emails, but this one actually had some pretty decent sounding advice. So, I figured I might as well look into it to see how legit the advice was.
Not surprisingly, snopes.com has an article dealing with these very tips. The consensus point is that following the tips certainly shouldn’t hurt you (aside from possibly taking extra time), but that for the most part the gain you’ll see in practical terms is pretty modest. Anyway, I figured it might be worth passing this info along to anyone else interested.
Posted Friday May 9, 2008 in Real Life by Chris Curtis
VeriSign’s at it Again
Well, it looks like VeriSign (aka Network Solutions) is at it yet again: being one of the scum of the internet. This time, they’re proactively squatting on domains that people are looking up. Check that link for details, but the short, short version is that if you do a who-is search that uses a VeriSign/Network Solutions service and the domain wasn’t previously registered, VeriSign puts a hold/lock on it that means you can only purchase it from them and not other registrars. I’ve mentioned VeriSign multiple times before. Clearly, they’re not one of my favorite companies.
Posted Saturday January 12, 2008 in Computers & Software, Rants by Chris Curtis
Still More 24 Ways
For the third year in a row, Drew McLellan is serving up another 24 helpings of web design/development goodness. I’ve mentioned the other two years previously, but the annual 24 Ways site is always great.
So far, the day one Transparent PNG article, the trick for warning about CAPSLOCK, and the table of available fonts look particularly good. However, just about everyone should be able to find something useful in this batch of wonderfulness.
Posted Tuesday December 18, 2007 in (X)HTML and CSS, Web Development by Chris Curtis