January 24th, 2006
Bug 308396 - UE fixes for tabbed browsing landed in the 2005-01-21 (Trunk) build of Firefox, bringing with it “tabbed browsing usability enhancements” (and I quote Ben Goodger from the bug page).
One fix that I really like is the one related to moving focus after a tab is closed. Right now, if a link opens in a new tab and gains focus, and you close that new tab, you are taken to the right-most tab you have opened. The fix makes it much friendlier by taking you back to the “parent” tab that opened that link. Hurray!
Another change is the addition of big “X”s (crosses) on the right of each tab which you can click to close tabs. Something like this:
Well, rather nice for people with only 2-button mice or using specific OS ports of Firefox (I’m thinking some flavors Linux desktop environments, but I’m not sure), since they can now close tabs in a single-click (instead of right-click -> Close Tab). Personally, I prefer to middle-click tabs to close them or hit Ctrl-W, and the additional close widgets are just unnecessary clutter (so it’s a good thing this can be turned off via about:config at the moment). Anyway, if you’re using a 3-button mouse and are closing tabs with right-click tab -> Close Tab, stop doing that! Middle-click the tab. Middle-clicking is (or should be) the new “close me” in any environment that involves tabs - think IntelliJ IDEA and editors like PSPad. If we could just get other applications to follow this “new convention” (think Eclipse IDE, EditPlus).
Great conversation pieces when you name your computer “vagina”. (0)
January 23rd, 2006
An update: I’ve actually deleted the existing extension on the Firefox Add-ons site and added a new one per Patrick’s suggestion below, and it is now available there. And yeah, I didn’t put any of the changes you guys requested in there besides getting it to work for Firefox 1.5…
I’ve seen your emails and comments about updating the Unread Tabs extension for Firefox 1.5, and I apologize if I haven’t responded to your email personally.
Anyway, yes, the fix is extremely simple, and in fact I did try to fix it once and upload it onto the Firefox Add-ons site a long time ago last year when the extra character in the GUID was brought to my attention (to explain this a bit - each extension has its own GUID which is universally unique 32-character string, and somehow I screwed it up by inserting a GUID with 33 characters). Well, the problem is, in the developer section of the Firefox Add-ons site, the “Add New Version” function enforces the rule that a new version of an extension should have the same GUID, which is perfectly fine and expected.
So I’ve been trying to find a way to get in touch with the guys over at Firefox Add-ons to workaround this and to see what implications this may have, but can’t find any form of contact information at the site (and no, I’m not gonna email the mozilla.org webmaster to bug him unless no one really knows how to reach the Firefox Add-ons guys). Anyone has any clue? Or maybe I should just email the mozilla.org webmaster…
Whatever the result of that, here’s an updated Unread Tabs for Firefox 1.5 with a new GUID:
Install Unread Tabs | Download Unread Tabs
January 20th, 2006
Remember back when you had to use a hack like a Greasemonkey script for one-click deletion of emails in Gmail? Well, Google has added a Delete button.
(You’ll have to log out and log back in if you don’t see the button - well, at least I had to.)
The Daily WTF has screenshots of some hilarious pop-up error messages over at it’s Pop-up Potpourri: Sixth Time is the Charm post. And cute that CVS servers send the string “I HATE YOU” whenever your login is incorrect. (1)
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