Open in Firefox … from Chrome?

Back when I was a Firefox user on Windows I used an extension called IE View. The simple idea behind it was to right-click on a link within Firefox and be able to open it in Internet Explorer. There’s also an OperaView extension which does the same thing for Opera, which is a lot more practical for people who have made a decision to use an OS other than Windows.

Now that Google’s Chrome (as well as the open source Chromium project, which is what I’m using to write this and has lead me to refer to this browser as Chrom[e|ium]) is so popular someone’s come out with an extension to let you open a link in Chrom[e|ium] from within Firefox. There’s just one problem. Sometimes you’re on a site and you want to use an extension that is only available in Firefox, such as DownThemAll! (DTA) I ran into this when I found a site with wallpapers for the EarthHour project.

Right now I have to snag the URI, open Firefox, and then paste the URI into the Firefox location bar to get the benefit of DTA on the site. What a pain in the arse. Can someone help make a Chrom[e|ium] extension to give us this flexibility? People are finding that Firefox doesn’t “float their boat” anymore and Chrom[e|ium] is a great alternative for them, but some of us have to keep the fox around just to be able to use some of their favorite Fx extensions. An extension to open a link in Firefox from within Chrom[e|ium] would be a very popular addon.

What about the Epiphany browser? I’m definitely falling out of love with it since they killed the Gecko version, but that’s the subject of another post, which I’ll hopefully be able to write this weekend.

Snagging videos in Firefox more easily

Last year I finally got tired of the Firefox bloatware and made the switch to the GNOME project’s Epiphany web browser, although I kept the Fox around for those rare times that I simply couldn’t do in Epiphany, or at least couldn’t do that easily. One of the tasks that I kept Firefox for was downloading videos. While Epiphany does have a very nice extension for downloading videos it simply isn’t as robust as the Video DownloadHelper extension for the Fox. Not only does the Firefox extension let you prefer high quality YouTube videos and even pick which high quality vid you want to use if there are more than one available, it is also smart enough to use the video name from YouTube.

Disclaimer: This tutorial is solely intended to help you enjoy Flash videos when your system runs slowly enough to make you want to view it in a desktop video player like Totem. It is written purely for your own personal entertainment and not to help you download videos for the purpose of sharing them with others. Remember, if you find a video that you just have to share with someone you should send them the URI. That way the hosting web site gets to see how popular their video is.

My problem is that while I can enjoy videos in Epiphany the Flash plugin ends up making the video stutter, which can be a royal pain in the arse. This is especially annoying when I’m trying to enjoy highlight videos from Dodgers games so I tend to save those to my hard drive and simply fire them up in Totem. Unfortunately Epiphany’s extension doesn’t know how to snag videos from mlb.com, or the videos from my local CBS affiliate (I tend to snag video weather reports for my E100 so I can watch them when I’m away from my comp) so getting vids from either site sends me to Firefox. For some reason the Video DownloadHelper knows how to grab vids from both of those sites so until I can help port that info to the Epiphany extension I’ll have to turn to the Fox to help me watch them.

The problem comes when you try to download a video from these sites because there’s no descriptive name affiliated with the video’s filename, so even if you have that option selected for YouTube videos when you try to download the video you get what is shown on the right. (All images on this post will open in a new tab/window so you won’t keep having to use the Back button to get back to this post.) If you only want to snag a single vid it’s no problem but if you want to get at least a pair of vids you end up having to rename the vids yourself.

Today I found a way to get the name set for sites that don’t have a setting for knowing where the video name is located. The very first thing you will need to do, once you have the extension installed, is to enable the option in the preferences. If you have an icon visible simply right click the icon and select Preferences. Now go to Capture > Smart Naming and check the box for Enable Smart Naming.

Close out the Preferences window and select the name of the video as it’s shown on the webpage. Right click the selected text and select Smart naming > Define media title location. You’ll see a dialog pop up where you simply need to confirm that the text listed as the Value for this page is the same as the title you want to assign to the video. This is perfect for those times when you inadvertently select the entire text, and you need to add a letter or so to the beginning or end to the Value. Once you have it matching the text on the web page simply click on OK.

Now when you use the icon to select which video you want to save you get a much more informative filename.

The best part is that every time you visit the page the extension now knows where to look to get the video name, and if you look at multiple videos before deciding to grab one it’s a piece of cake to tell exactly which video you want.

Unfortunately this won’t work on all sites, as I found when I tried to get the latest weather forecast. The bottom line is that if you can’t select the text it won’t work since the function relies on having HTML code to look at rather than text with a Flash application as my local CBS affil uses.

Peng’s links for Sunday, 2 August

Holy crap it’s been a busy month and a half. Remember the long links post I wrote last month? I’m afraid this one may be even longer, in fact when I started writing it on Friday and I ended up having to save the post and finish it later. I honestly hoped it would have been published on yesterday, but that didn’t work out like it that.

I’ve pulled some of the older items I had flagged for posting, but there are still a few from early this month that I just couldn’t justify not passing along.

• Andrewsomething: GNOME-Colors in Karmic. I’ve played around with some of the Shiki-Colors themes available but I ended up sticking with the Mac4Lin themes. Your milage, of ourse, may vary. Which is the beauty of open source software. Andrew even has a screenshot to help you see why you may love GNOME-Colors.
• Dustin Kirkland The Ubuntu Museum. With Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) reaching the end of it’s support lifespan Dustin put together a great site with some great info and images from Ubuntu’s past. If you want to know more, just go to Dustin’s post. It’s one museum you don’t even have to get dressed to go visit.
• Chenthill Palanisamy: What’s cooking in evolution? There are some nice additions coming down the pike for GNOME’s email client, and Chenthill has some info.
• Tyler Mulligan: The “easy” way to listen to internet readio in Ubuntu. Tyler has gone through the usual pain of trying to listen to his favorite ‘net radio station while running Ubuntu, and he’s found a way to do it that is probably easier than any other way, including Rhythmbox and Exaile.
• Alan Pope: Migrating from WUBI to Full Ubuntu Install. Have you (or a friend of yours) looked at Ubuntu with the WUBI tools running on Windows? If so you may have decided you like Ubuntu and don’t really need Windows around anymore. If that sounds like you or someone you know Alan has a nice tutorial on making the switch to full Ubuntu without losing any of the data you currently have.
• Martin Owens: Learning: Identifying Computer Ports. Alan is teaching a System Adminsistration course, and he’s had to come up with some of his own materials for it. Luckily he’s sharing his guide to computer ports with the rest of us. Thanks, Martin!
• Christer Edwards: Updating Default GDM Theme: Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty” and My Ubuntu Look and Feel. Christer has posted a pair of tutorials that will show you just how easy it can be to change how Ubuntu looks. Who says you have to settle for how an operating system looks when it comes from the “factory”? Not a GNU/Linux user, that’s for sure, although in all fairness it’s getting to be easier for other OSes as well, although Linux users have a crap load of possibilities to choose from.
• Matthew Helmke: The Official Ubuntu Book, Fourth Edition — first review and more. If you have a copy and want to get an updated edition, or if you’ve been meaning to get a copy and never have yet, you can now get it in PDF format rather than in dead tree format. Matthew”s even got a link for you to get a sample chapter if you’re not sure you want to get it yet.
• Muammar El Kahtib: Flash player in Google Chrome for Linux. If you’re testing Google Chrome, or even Chromium, you can now enable plugins such as Flash in Chromium! No more having to open another browser just to see Flash applets, whether it’s cheezburgers or something as simple as the MLB Gameday applet to keep up with your favorite baseball team. You can also get some addition info in a post by Omshivaprakash H L.
• Marc Deslauriers: Goodbye Apple. Marc and his wife have had quite a few iPods, but they won’t get another one. I’ll let you read his post for more details, and it’s not simply an I-frigging-HATE-Apple post. I will say, however, that once I can get some details worked out with the device I got a month ago I’ll be posting info on getting another company’s digital media players (DMP) working with GNU/Linux. There’s just one or two annoying little bugs I’m trying to get resolved, but I will say this: You can get a DMP that plays Ogg Vorbis files right out of the box, and as soon as you get it out of the box you can load not only Ogg Vorbis files on it, but also text, pictures and videos (but sadly not Ogg Theora vids) on the little buggers using nothing but your favorite file manager.
• Andreas Nilsson: A tale of menus. I really hate saying this, but they’re at it again. The GNOME devs are changing the themes yet again, this time adding 256×256 icons for places, etc. But it’s not all bad news, unless you’re a third-party theme designer like the good folks at Mac4Lin. At least this time we’re forewarned.
• Garrett LeSage: Nautilus, streamlined. The GNOME artwork devs have come up with a bit of a winner: a simplified Nautilus that gives you more space for the things that count, the filespace you’re working with. There’s a PPA with the new look and I have to say that it looks like it fits with the Mac4Lin themes really well.
• Hylke Bons: Adding fonts in GNOME. Yes, we have yet another post on adding fonts to your system, but Hylke is working on an even easier way to do it, complete with visual mockups. I have to say I really like what he’s come up with so far. Thomas Wood has a followup with a little more work on the idea.
• Linux * Screw: Top 3 Linux HTML editors. If you’re running the MacOS or Windows there are a plethora of options for doing HTML coding, including the old standby “real web designers code  by hand”. Let’s face it, some of us just like having a visual editor handy when we write or change HTML code, even if it’s just for some of the time. The guys at Linux * Screw have looked at three tools you may want to add to your Linux toolbox.
• Steven Rose: Removing Evolution Mail is NOT dangerous in the slightest… Some people want to remove Evolution from their Ubuntu installation, because they prefer another email client, and others are quick to predict doom and gloom if they even attempt to uninstall Evo. Personally I love Evo, but not everyone likes the same apps. Steven dumps some of the FUD and brings the truth of the matter of removing Evolution. And guess what, it doesn’t unleash the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Although you can have my Evo when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
• Mark Brown: Full quoting. Yes, it refers to replying on email lists, but it’s not another rant about the right way to write a response. In fact he says nothing about replying above or below the quoted message, although Mark reminds me I need to spend another half minute (or less) before I hit Send on any email response.
• Jono Bacon: Change for Change. Jono’s got a great idea for some of the loose change we keep finding in our pockets and purses. I can’t wait to see it get started and make its way to Beantown. It’s a hell of a lot better idea than all of the stemmers I keep finding outside of stores and restaurants, but then I know some stemmers who make more money in a given day than I do.
• Dougie Richardson: Replacing Firefox. I admit it, the moment I saw his post title I flagged it to read later, but now that I’ve read it I knew I had to share it. Dougie needed something leaner to use on his netbook and looked at all the possibilities “from Epiphany to Opera”, and he decided to go with a Webkit browser. He looks at Midori and Arora in his post, complete with some screenshots. If you need a browser for a device with a smaller screen (and available memory) you owe it to yourself to read his post. He does bring up some bad news, namely that some apps in Ubuntu’s repositories aren’t exactly current, and while he doesn’t have a solution he does have some good information.
• Shane Fagan: Reply to Ballmers recent interview. You may have read or heard an interview with Steve Ballmers on cNet, especially his comparison with Mac about quality and price. Shane has a great response for Ballmers, and no matter what OS you prefer you should see what Shane has to say.

For those who voted for Mac4Lin in the SourceForge Community Choice Awards, I’m afraid to say that they didn’t win. Anirudh Acharya, the main dev for Mac4Lin, does thank all their supporters and mentions a very nice surprise in the final tally. There was also a great article in Linux Magazine comparing Ubuntu 9.04 with Mac OSX, and while it doesn’t mention Mac4Lin it does present Ubuntu in a very nice light.

Baseball fans were made very happy last week with the news that Vin Scully, the voice of the LA Dodgers would keep working for one more year.You may remember that almost a year ago I posted the good news that he’d be working for this, his 60th year, and even if you hate the Dodgers you have to respect that man’s talent. There’s no better example of Suclly’s talent was shown just last month when Manny Ramirez his is pinch hit grand slam. Check out the video on that page if you need any more evidence of Vin Scully’s wisdom and class.

And for those who hate baseball and need a smile on this first Sunday in August, there’s a post by directhex from last weekend that I dare you to read and not smile at.

That’s a full lid. Have a good week, or at least have as good a week as you want to have.

Peng’s links for Monday, 16 February

• Stuart Langridge: IE6′s backlash. A short, sweet message to web designers.
• Dave Neary: Migrating to Linux: Tip 1: Do DHCP and DNS first. Moving your computer network to Linux isn’t as painless as we’d really like, but Dave points out why we should do one thing before anything else.
• Michael Rooney: Setting up a fingerprint reader with ThinkFinger in Ubuntu 8.10. Remembering passwords is so 20th century. If you’re lucky enough to have a fingerprint reader on your laptop it’s easy to get it working in Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex).
• TualatriX: UbuntuTweak 0.4.5 released! Among the goodies and fixes in the new version is the ability to catch error messages, ad well as the ability to change your panel logo or even revert it back to the default logo. But that’s not all in the update, so check out TualatriX’s post and screenshots.
• Jordi Hernandez: Gloobus-Preview 0.03 RELEASE. Jordi is working on a coverflow-like app (from Mac OSX) for Linux, and while it’s still early in development you can help make it better by giving feedback on how things are going so far.
• Debian Package of the Day: localepurge: Automagically remove unnecessary locale data. For every locale you have installed not only takes up extra space it also makes your system install needless extra loacla when you install new packages. You may only need this app once every good while, but you’ll be glad you have it.
• Michael Rooney: Lightweight personal finance just got easier with wxBanker in Jaunty! If you’re looking for a native GNU/Linux app to help you manage your finances (like a lite version of Quicken and it’s ilk in Windows) you may have heard about wxBanker. People who have looked at it like it (here are some screenshots) really like it, and I may have to check it out myself. It may end up replacing GnuCash, which really doesn’t seem as easy to use as I’d prefer.
• Martin-Éric Racine: Roadmap to a better FreeDesktop: ridding us of the Firefox filth. Martin-Éric looks at Firefox and Linux web browsers, including why users put up with the bloat that seems to keep fining it’s way into Firefox releases. Personally I hope Epiphany devs read Martin-Éric’s post and gets to work making the official GNOME web browser better. As a person who switched to Epiphany to get away from (IMO) the boneheaded decisions the Firefox3 dev team have and are making, I really wish Epiphany was easier to use than it is.
• Jon Beebe: How does Ubuntu make you productvity? Jon is looking for people who would be willing to write articles for the Ubuntu Productivity blog.

Before I head off to take care of some things I want to congratulate the Debian team on Saturday’s release of Debian 5.0 “Lenny”. I look forward to seeing the improvements in Ubuntu 9.04 (which, like all Ubuntu releases, is basen on Debian), and if you can’t wait Julien Valroff has packages in his personal repo. I wouldn’t recommend using his packages unless you know what you’re doing because they may cause some conflicts and other issues in your system.

Peng’s links for Saturday, 7 February

I’m baaack! It was nice to get emails from readers asking when I’ll have a new post, but it took me longer to get caught up on two weeks worth of newsfeeds than I expected. A big part of that is thanks in part to the way some of the planets I’ve subscribed to are set up. Most newsfeeds are set up so that when someone’s feed reader hits the server it presents the 10-20 newest posts, with a few sites offering as many as 50 posts. Some of the planets I read went so far back that I’m not certain but I think I may have gotten all of the posts I hadn’t seen yet.

Anyway, I had over 100 posts waiting to be read from enough sources that when I finally got Evolution fired up earlier this week I ended up with over a thousand posts and messages to deal with. I’ve decided to not share many of the older links I had found before my power supply died (yoooouge thanks to the friend who bought me a new PSU!) but I do have some posts I want to make sure you guys and gals know about.

• Jun Auza: Linux Keyboard Shortcuts: Safe Way to Exit During System Freezes. We’ve all had times where our computer seems to lock up in the middle of doing something. Windows users run some serious risks of borking their system if they simply shut the computer off and turns it back on (also known as a hard reset), but Linux users can do that with the risk of little more than losing any new data they were working on. Jun knows ways to get the system responding to you without the data loss that Ctrl-Alt-Backspace can cause when you force the end to your current session. I need to add these to my PDA so I have them handy the next time I need them.
• Jon Beebe: Installing Fonts in Ubuntu 8.10. It’s the rare user that never adds any additional fonts to their computer, and as the Mac4Lin dev team discovered the process changed when Gnome 2.22.2 was included with Ubuntu Hardy (8.04). Jon gives us the skinny on how to add fonts in Ubuntu Intrepid, and you’ll probably want to bookmark his post for future reference.
• Thomas Thurman: So why is Human so slow? It turns out that Human, the default theme on Ubuntu, takes longer then any other common theme to finish drawing the screen. (Thomas has numbers to back that statement up.) How do we fix that? (@infra: We may want to look at the Mac4Lin themes in the light of this article.)
• Michael Rooney: Gnome Do 0.8 released, awesomeness ensues! The latest version of GNOME Do has been officially released, and while I covered it when it was in alpha stage Michael gives some additional coverage to the one thing I dislike in it: the Docky theme. Some folks love it, but I’m in the camp that will stick to AWN for my dock.
• Ken Kovash: Some Firefox Users Still on Fx2. The metrics team over at Mozilla is wondering why some users haven’t upgraded to Firefox 3 yet. Ken looks at the issue, but probably doesn’t realize that some users hate the UI decisions that the Fx3 dev team made and may even hate Fx3 with the heat of a thousand nuns. I have Fx3 installed but I use it only as a backup to Epiphany and I’m considering rolling back to Fx2 as my backup browser. I sure as hell don’t want to touch Fx 3.1 with a 50-foot pole thanks to some of what I’m seeing in terms of UI decisions. (Granted, I haven’t even looked at the daily build threads over at Mozillazine in a while because I honestly don’t care that much about what the Fx devs are doing. That’s how much I hate what I’ve seen.)
• Michael Rooney: How Windows Vista, Digg, and Ubuntu landed me a Sweet Job. And you thought Vista wasn’t good for anything. Monkeys aside, Michael has a great story to tell, and anyone who has any interest in open source software should read it.

That’s almost it for now. I have two free PDF downloads that you’ll want to get onto your hard drive, but I’ll put them in a separate post.

Peng’s links for Monday, 22 December

[Sis? Why is your name showing up as the author of this post? I'm pretty sure I'm the one who wrote it. - Peng]

Yes, I’m still alive. Just busy over the last few days do I’ve collected a bunch of links I’d like to share with our readers.

• Mozilla Developer News: Firefox 3.05 and 2.0.0.19 security updates now available for download. Alas, the support updates for Firefox 2 are over, and the Windows version has seen a 2.0.0.20 release to deal with a “non-critical issue” specific to that OS but other than that they don’t expect to release any additional security and stability updates for the once top web browser. At the end they decided not to include the Phishing Protection service that Firefox 3 offers, but that doesn’t break my heart since I’m pretty observant when it comes to possible phishing links. That and Gmail filters those out for me anyway. Once the holidays are past I’ll be on a full court press to see if Epiphany can be my primary web browser and I still have no intention of taking Firefox 3.1 when it comes out unless I have clear evidence that they’re going to let the users decide where the New Tab button goes. I know Cat Thief has once again ridden to the rescue, but I’m tired of having to install remove-ons just to countermand the questionable usability choices that the Firefox devs shove down or throats. Even if that means I have to pass on Firefox 3.1′s support for the <video> tag and Ogg Vorbis/Theora files. Otherwise when will enough be enough?
• Linux Today: The Wrong Way To Sell Linux and More Tips For Documentation Writers (You Too, Ace Coders). Mackenzie Morgan (a GNU/Linux chick who flat out rocks) was kind enough to pass these articles along to me. The first article has some great thoughts on how we promote our favorite OS and the second one should be required reading for all documentation writers. The second one may also show a great way to help support those favored FOSS OSes and apps that we can’t live without. Thanks for the links, Mackenzie!
• Normand Bissonnette: The Diversity Of Linux Window Managers. In Windows you have a choice, 95, XP or Vista, for how your desktop looks and behaves. OSX users don’t have much choice, but they like it that way. Linux users have a veritable alphabet soup of desktop environments (GNOME, KDE, and xfce just to name the three that can come with *Ubuntu -flavored distros), and it can be pretty confusing. Normand wrote a nice, fairly short article with a number of links as he looked at the freedom that having so many desktop environments give us.
• Jun Auza: Extensive List of Keyboard Shortcuts for Ubuntu/GNOME Desktop. People who have used computers for a while know what a time saver keyboard shortcuts are, but there are a number of possible places to look up shortcut key possibilities. Jun has been kind enough to compile a list of keyboard shortcuts for GNOME-based GNU/Linux distros. You’ll definitely want to bookmark this page so you can refer back to it until you learn what all the time savers are.
• Siegfried Gevatter: Nautilus: File size below the icons. I don’t know about you but I usually use Nautilus in Icon View and it can be tedious when I have to find out how bug a file is (select the file, look at the status bar to see how big it is, then select any other files you previously had selected, …), but Siegfried has a great tip for us that he came up with after reading am Ubuntu Brainstorm idea. I have to say it’s one of the best bits of info I found last week.
• Mackenzie Morgan: Adobe Flash: Avoiding Checksum Errors. Yes, another link from the über Mackenzie, this time a tip to make updating Adobe Flash easier along with an explanation of why it can be such a pain in the rear.
• Sayak Banerjee: VLC Celebrates Christmas! I haven’t been able to get it working myself due to something borked on my end, but VLASIC has a delightful little way of helping you celebrate Chrismukkuh.
• Matthew Revell: Launchpad news: Exaile media player. A number of users are discovering the GTK-based Exaile media player, especially with it’s recent updated beta release, and Matthew was kind enough to talk with the project’s founder about Exaile and why they decided to use Launchpad.

I’ve got more links to share, as well as a response to a post by Jono Bacon, but they will have to wait until tomorrow as my time’s getting short. I don’t know why we’re getting so much traffic today (over a thousand hits today after usually staying in the 300-400 range), but if you’re new to our little blog then welcome! I hope Nanci and I have some content that will give you reasons to visit us again.

Is Epiphany ready to replace Firefox?

(Woops! This is an article about the Epiphany browser, not the Evolution email client. I’m blaming it on the fact that the names are so similar and I switched to Evo some time back. -Peng)

I mentioned yesterday that I’ve been hunting some things down for Epiphany, the GNOME web browser, and I was hoping that Epiphany 2.24.1, the current version in Ubuntu Intrepid, was good enough to let me kick out Firefox when version 3.1 comes out. While I’ve gotten really spoiled by some of Firefox’s features and extensions I’ve got some things that I have to be able to do in Epiphany if it’s going to replace Firefox.

• I have to be able to import my bookmarks from Firefox, if not the saved passwords
• I need to be able to open a new tab and have that new tab be the selected tab without having to do anything besides middle clicking on a link
• I need to be able to use Ctrl key combinations to zoom the text
• I have to be able to run Adblock Plus
• I have to be able to spellcheck my writing
• I need to be able to write blog posts without doing anything different

If any one of those things isn’t possible in Epiphany it could be a deal breaker for me. I know that there are a few extensions available for Epiphany, and there are some I’d like to be able to use, but they’re nice-to-haves, not Must Haves.

I went into my Firefox bookmark manager window and exported a fresh set of saved bookmarks, and when I tried to import them into Epiphany they installed without a hitch. Already this is different from what I experienced when I tried to do the same thing before Firefox 3 was released, so I started to hope that I’d end up pleasantly surprised by Epiphany. I set up my initial home page, a customized page I created several years and keep updated as I have new sites I want handy, and opened tabs with the two other pages that make up my Firefox “home page”, and the tabs opened in the background but that was something I’d check on later. I opened the preferences window and tried to set my home page to the three tabs I had open, but all that happened was to make the tab I was in the home page. That wasn’t what I had hoped for, but it’s a nice to have, not a deal breaker. The new tabs opening in the background? That didn’t make me happy. It was time to use my two Ubuntu-related search engines to see what I could come up with.

I found an question on Launchpad about the problem and found out someone made a third-party extension called Tab Foreground. I went to the page they linked to and found a page full of Epiphany extensions that weren’t part of the official extension package. Among them is Tab Foreground, and it looked like it would do the job, except for one problem. The newest version of Epiphany that the extensions supports is version 2.22 and I rub version 2.24. I installed it and enabled it, but it didn’t work. I emailed Chica, the person who wrote the extension to thank them for writing it anyway, and in a second email later I let them know it doesn’t play well with the newest version of Epiphany. Not to whine or complain, because I’m really thrilled that someone would take the initiative and put the time and energy into writing it in the first place.

Between the list of official Epiphany extensions, the list of third-party extensions and a separate list of unofficial extensions that I found  I found most of the things I’d really like to use in my Firefox replacement, and I was starting to think it might actually be close enough that I’d be able to make something other than Firefox my default browser. Yes, I’d miss the Smart Location Bar after all, but I’d just get used to not having it again. I tried to zoom the text in and out with the Crtl-+/Ctrl– (Ctrl and either plus or minus) and was pleased to see the size of the text change. Resetting the zoom with Crtl-0 didn’t work so well, but it’s easy enough to use View > Normal Size to reset the zoom level. Three Must Have’s down, three to go.

Make that four down, because when I first opened Epiphany and opened Tools > Extensions I saw an ad blocker with no other installation needed, I just had to make sure it was enabled. (It may have been enabled by default, but I don’t think so.)

When I was posting yesterday’s links I found out that the last two items on my Must Have list weren’t so easy to cross off. The first problem I saw is that I’m used to simply selecting text and then hitting Ctrl-B to make some text bold but when I hit those keys in Epiphany it opened the Bookmark Manager. Huh? That’s not what I’m used to from other browsers I’ve used. I put the mouse over the Bold button on my WordPress.com post editing window to see if a shortcut key was available and it showed a shortcut of Ctrl / Alt+Shift + B, but no matter what I tried I couldn’t bold text from the keyboard. You may find that an annoyance but I consider it a pain in the ass.

I finished writing the post I was working on and I looked for a spell checker but i couldn’t find one. Usually GNOME apps that edit text (like Gedit and Evolution) have a spell checker built in, but I couldn’t see where to turn it on. I saw a Link Checker and an HTML Checker, but no spell checker. I went back to my search tools and found a regression on Launchpad about not being able to use spell checking on Ubuntu Gutsy and another bug that keeps me from being able to edit the setting in about:config.

Epiphany isn’t ready to be my primary browser yet, but if you use a GNOME-based GNU/Linux distro and are looking for a replacement for Firefox you should definitely take a look at Epiphany. You may find it just what the doctor ordered, especially since the Firefox devs keep making decisions that make us want to either throw something at our computer or throw our computer itself out the nearest window. From what I’m seeing Firefox 3.1 will make things worse, not better.

Peng’s links for Thursday, 4 December

• Stefano Forenza: Has Torvalds finally won? The father of Linux once said that he’d have won if Microsoft ever makes an app for Linux. Some people might say that the availability of a beta version of Moonlight, GNU/Linux port of Silverlight, means Torvalds got his win. But Stefano isn’t so sure.
• Jono Bacon: Governments And Free Content Policies. The current website for president-elect Obama used to protect their content with a traditional copyright. But not anymore. Jono has the details, if not the scoop.
• xkcd: xkcd store. You love reading the strips. You may even have some of them on your fridge or the wall of your cubical. Now you can slap it on your clothes. If you order by the 12th you’ll get it by Chrismukkuh Eve if you’re in the States. If you’re in the EU they’ll try to get it to you in time, but you need to order soon.
• TualatriX: Ubuntu Tweak became Brothersoft Editor’s Picks! Congrats to the gang at Ububntu Tweaks for their latest, and very well deserved, honor. And he says the next version “will come soon.”
• Uwe Hermann: Playing Starcraft on Linux using Wine. I wasn’t sure how big a deal this is until I mentioned it to a Windows-loving roomie and big-time gamer, and he was impressed. That tells me that I need to post a link to the story, especially since it’s a tutorial.
• Dr. Horrible News: DVD Launch on Amazon! Earlier this year we had the joy of enjoying a three-part video written specifically and produced for the web by Joss Whedon and company. The DVD is finally coming on the 19th of December, and it will include “Commentary! The Musical!” I can’t wait. Amazon also has a behind-the-scenes clip you can watch for free. Now if we could only buy a CD or tracks without having to go through iTunes. Do I need to have Jayne Cobb have a talk with Joss about it?
• Biella Coleman: FLOSS Manuals. I’m going to cheat here and tell you that Beilla has a very short post about an easy way to get manuals for a wide range of free and open source programs. You definitely want to go get the links from her. And my little blurb about her post is longer than her post is, but she’s got the links you want.
• Nick Ali: Linux Basics Classes at Micro Center. If you need a nice introductory course to using GNU/Linux you better get to MicroCenter and reserve a seat. Nick’s got the date and links.
• MJ Ray: Do Your Shop Photos Leak? Do you take pictures with a digital camera and then post them online? You may be sharing more information than you realize.
• Mozilla Developer News: Firefox 2.0.0.18 users to be offered a free upgrade! Firefox 2.x will soon reach the end of it’s support, and the Mozilla devs are giving users one more chance to use their upgrade mechanism to get Firefox 3 without having to manually download and install it. Although this is one user who is damned sorry to see Firefox 2 reach the end of its security updates, and I can’t promise it won’t be used from time to time. The interface is still better than Firefox 3′s because it doesn’t need remove-ons just to keep the default behavior that Firefox users have been using for so long. And Firefox 3.1 is going to bring the need for even more remove-ons. Sometimes I hate Mozilla devs with the heat of a thousand nuns because of some of the add-ons they fold into the base product. What the hell happened to using add-ons to add new behaviors rather than removing them?

Peng’s links for Tuesday, 2 December

• Richard Hughes: PackageKit and Pango are now friends. When Pango comes across a document specifying particular fonts that you don’t have it can now ask if you want to install them.
• Herman Bos: From Evolution to Thunderbird (Part II). Last month Herman decided to go the opposite direction from me and move from Evolution to Thunderbird and he’s given us an update on how things are going. Personally I like how Evolution is working for me, although I wish it were easier to theme so I could get it working better with Mac4Lin.
• Mackenzie Morgan: Compiz? Emerald? Metacity? What’s the Difference? This has got to be one of the most asked questions Ubuntu users get (apart from what’s the difference between GNOME and KDE) and Mackenzie gives us a great article on straightening out confusion. In fact her article should be required reading (or at least really easy to find) for all Ubuntu noobs.
• Dustin Kirkland: Tux on a Groom’s Cake. Dustin read an article about Ubuntu bread (he has the link) and was reminded of the groom’s cake at his wedding. We should get one for the next Ubuntu release party.
• Miguel de Icaza: Moonlight 1.0 Beta 1. The Linux port of Microsoft’s Silverlight is finally available for beta testing. Now Linux users can enjoy the content that silly webmasters put up using Microsoft’s proprietary attempt at dethroning a very popular proprietary web media format, Adobe’s Flash. He also has a link to a page of sites you can test Moonlight out on, although Major League Baseball isn’t one of them. I tried watching some of their Silverlight video content and got stuck at “Loading…” forever so I’ll have to check it out on one of the sites they link to. He also has a nice article on Moonlight’s media stack that has some good info on Moonlight’s media rendering.

Before I put a lid on today’s post I need to point you over to a writeup about a new Ubuntu reference coming out in January. Even better? It will also be available in what looks to be a free PDF version. Thanks to this week’s Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for the heads up.

Firefox 3.1 brings new features and forces yet another Remove-on

No sooner had the Mozilla devs released Firefox 3 that they had already begun work on Firefox 3.1. I’m not helping test it this time, but I’m hearing that they’ve redone the JavaScript engine and they’re adding a nice tab preview feature that reminds me of the Shift Switcher in Compiz-Fusion, but I’m also hearing that they’re changing yet another default behavior: They’re pulling the New Tab button off the toolbar and putting it to the right of the tab bar itself. It turns out part of the problem was that some people didn’t know tabbed browsing was available, possibly due in part to the fact that the default behavior was to hide the tab bar unless more than one tab was open.

Before anyone tells me how nice that feature is, especially in other browsers, let me point out the fact that this is yet another feature that’s currently available in an extension. As was the case when they rolled out the Smart Location Bar this change has prompted quite a bit of discussion, and the moderators of the MozillaZine Forums have had to work pretty hard to keep the topic constructive.

Luckily our friend Cat Thief has once again come to the rescue with her New Tab Button remove-on. The Mozilla support crew is already telling people about it, despite the fact that Cat Thief flat out refuses to have her extensions on AMO.

This begs a question: If an existing feature is available via an extension, why the hell do the Firefox devs have to add them to the base package? I know they get a lot of requests to do this type of thing, but Firefox has always been a quick little browser that can be customized with the use of extensions. Now they’re adding so many extensions to the default browser that it may not be all that small anymore. I also know that this particular feature is a popular feature of IE7, but I’ve said this before and I’ll say this again: Firefox is not IE, Opera, or Safari. Firefox is Firefox, and people love it because it’s different from the other browsers. If we wanted to use IE or Opera we’d use them, but we don’t (and yes, I can run IE on Linux, but why would I want to?). We use Firefox, although some of us are less happy than we used to be.

If someone wants to put out a web browser that has the speed of Firefox 3 but with the default behaviors of Firefox 2, I’d love to help test it. I bet there are some others who would kill to be part of the testing team for it, if not helping code it. Otherwise we need easier ability to add extensions like Firefox has in Epiphany or Opera. I’d use Epiphany myself except I can’t see how to add some third-party add-ons or change behaviors like being able to select new tabs as they’re opened.

Please, will somebody come to the rescue of all of us users who hate what has happened to our beloved red panda?