Time seems to be constantly in short supply and with my work buzzing up and not being able to really sit down and write… it’s been quite a while since my last post.

Hopefully I will be able to find some time soon to do a more meaningful post.

So what have I been up to recently? I’ve been getting acquainted with TIBCO General Interface – an opensource toolkit for AJAX development. It has it quirks and issues but overall it’s quite an impressive and useful tool to consider if you are planning to do some AJAX applications. Once I can find more time, I’ll probably share more of my thoughts on it.

I’ve also been introduced to Conquer Club. It’s an online game that is somewhat similar to the boardgame RISK but with lots of different maps and variations. Each player is allowed 24 hours for a move in the normal games, speed games are available for paid members.

Until next time then. Bye!

If you play International Chess, check out Gameknot.

Games on Gameknot typically take a while to complete as its focus is not on immediate/interactive games. Time controls defaults to 3 days a move. However, if both players are online at the same time, things can move much faster.

Gameknot has a nice interface and features, and usually is easy to join or start a game.

Paid membership subscription is available with extra features but non-paying members, like me, have lots of features available as well, I don’t even make use of all of them!

My user id there is zhiqian, challenge me to a game today!

Java version 6 update 2 (internally 1.6.0.2) is now available. What version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) are you running in your browser? Does it matter?

To find out your JRE version, just click here. So does it matter what version you are running?

Typically the newer versions contain more features, bug and security fixes, and improvements.

As the newer versions are usually better, you should upgrade when possible. And version 6 boosts quite a significant performance improvement over version 5. I was quite surprised by how much faster it is.

The only thing to stop you is that some site that you need to use does not work with the new version. In that case, you may want to send them some feedback to upgrade their site.

However, do note that installing/upgrading to the new version does not usually remove the older versions. Therefore, it is possible for attackers to exploit known bugs in older versions. So unless you need the older versions, uninstall them. In addition to avoiding the attacks, you also save on disk space!

So what are you waiting for? Run along and now and experience the difference! By the way, unless you do java development, you only need to install the JRE and not the JDK – it’s a much smaller download. Have fun!

Introduction

Firefox is a free web browser that is fully customizable, secure and fast. If you haven’t tried Firefox, you should.

To start, download and install Firefox.

Next, start Firefox and start surfing (you may need to set up your connection settings first). Yup, that’s it! You have Firefox now, and for some this is sufficient. Plug-ins can be installed as needed while surfing.

However, there is so much more that can and should be done! Take a look at the extensive add-ons available.

Making it yours

Pick a theme, start by changing the way it looks! I prefer the cool Ice Blue theme.

Add relevant dictionaries for the spell check feature in Firefox to use when you write on blogs, forums, online word processors or web-based emails.

Get rid of annoying advertisements with Adblock Plus (just right click and block!). For those who prefer a less DIY approach, use one of the many subscription filters. I use Easy List and Easy Elements. There are some debates on whether it is ethical to block online ads, so you may want to think about that. Adblock Plus by itself allows you to choose which ads to block, if you use a subscription filter, then you may want to know what they are blocking and decide if you are fine with it.

The All-in-One Sidebar creates a simple sidebar with access to many things, convenient and looks nice too!

Download files? Use the download statusbar, this extension provides a easy to view and manage your downloads in a tidy statusbar.

I love tabbed browsing. And it’s even better with Tab Mix Plus!!

Want to customize how some web sites look? Or even the browser itself? With the Stylish extension, that’s exactly what you can do. These are the styles I am using:

• Colorize Firefox 2.0 Active Tab for browser user interface
• Hide unnecessary browser buttons and menus for browser user interface (compiled by me!)
• Sliding Menubar for browser user interface
• WellRounded 2 for browser user interface
• Stylish – Menu/Button Icons for Stylish user interface
• Bright Focus (for buttons, links, and textboxes) for all web pages
• Link warning (cursor hover) – various filetypes for all web pages
  • Original script applies to everything instead of all web pages only.
  • Add the following to the beginning of the script

  @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
  @-moz-document url-prefix(http), url-prefix(file) {

  • And add the closing “}” end of the script
• Style the “Highlight all” results (Ctrl+F) for all web pages
• Gmail with different and bigger attachment icons applies to mail.google.com
• Google Homepage (using a theme) Transparency Edits for www.google.com/ig
• Addson header styling for addons.mozilla.org

With Stylish, you can preview them and decide if you want to keep it. If you know some CSS or know how to copy and paste, you can update some of them to your liking. Some of the styles come with comments to precisely do that.

If you are a user of the popular Google Calendar and Google Mail, there are also extensions made just for them. Check out Better GCal and Better Gmail. They are really better!

And then you will come across sites that only supports IE, with IE Tab, just switch the rendering engine and you have IE in a tab in Firefox! You can set it up to always use IE for certain sites as well. By the way, IE Tab makes use of IE, so you still need IE to be installed on your system.

If you are a web developer, Web Developer provides you a whole suite of tools. If you are not, the proxy enable/disable feature is useful if you need to switch between the 2 modes, e.g. if you have a manual proxy setting that is only active in your office but not at home. By the way, if you just need the proxy feature, there are extensions that just provides that. I’m checking out FoxyProxy now. Just do a search on the add-ons page and find the one that suits you!

Want to know the weather forecast? Forecastfox gives you weather forecasts on your status bar. I have since disabled this but try it out for yourself.

For those who prefer smoother scrolling, try out SmoothWheel. I am still trying it out myself.

I have also recently installed BookBurro to play around with. It allows you to check the availability and price of books using ISBN on various sites including Amazon, BookMooch (book swapping site), and libraries (Singapore’s libraries catalogs may be available through WorldCat).

One final extension to take note of: Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey is to javascript what Stylish is to css. Basically, Greasemonkey allows you to customize a site using javascript and there is a lot that can be done. It can do more good but it can also do more harm… so use those scripts you trust. I have not got time to look into using this yet (I’m doing quite well with Stylish and specific extensions) but eventually I might.

Firefox Keywords

Firefox also supports keywords. Simply add a keyword to a bookmark for quick access.

If you have some search engines that you frequently use. Go to the search engine and right click on the search box. Simply select “Add a Keyword for this Search…” and you can then just key in the keyword and search terms and you will get the results page immediately. I have these search engines set:

• g for Search Google
• gs for Search Google for Singapore pages only
• sd for Search StreetDirectory.com for Singapore maps
• w for Search Wikipedia English pages

Going Beyond the Basics

There are quite a few things you can set. Check out the Tools menu.

You can limit the amount of caching done by Firefox. Go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Network and you will find the option there. I set it to 20 MB.

In addition, you can also change additional configurations via the “about:config” page. Most of these changes are more advanced (manual edits). Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return.

If you have a broadband connection, pipelining can speed up your page loads by allowing Firefox to load multiple things on a page at the same time.

• Type “network.http” in the filter field
• Change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):
  • Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
  • Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
  • Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a bigger number (you may want to jump in small increments and find what works for you)

You can and probably should reduce RAM usage when Firefox is minimized.

• Right-click anywhere and select New-> Boolean
• Name it “config.trim_on_minimize” and set it to “true”

By default, browser.cache.memory.enable is set to “true”. However, you may want to configure the size of the memory cache.

• Type “browser.cache” in the filter field
• Set “browser.cache.memory.capacity” depending on your RAM size
  • 256MB RAM – enter “4096″
  • 512MB RAM – enter “8192″
  • 1GB RAM and above – enter “16384″

Important: If you want to restore to default settings then change browser.cache.memory.capacity value to “-1″.

You have to restart Firefox for some of these settings to take effect.

Enjoy your Firefox

Well, I hope sharing all these will help you all enjoy Firefox better. Have fun and enjoy your surfing experience (whichever browser you decide to use eventually).

By the way, installing add-ons may slow down your Firefox, so do remove those you don’t need.

And let me know if you are experiencing slowdowns, I am hitting some recently and have yet to figure out whether it is due to my wonky notebook or my itchy fingers.

And here’s how my firefox looks like (after merging the top menubar and toolbar and removing unnecessary stuff like the search bar through the customize function):

Web applications have always been the source of mis-placed expectations from end-users who have been used to client server applications.

“It should still work when the network or servers are down” was one of the more surprising one that I got a few years back when doing up a web-based solution for a client.

Well, it seems that is what Google wants to achieve with Google Gears, currently in beta.

Already innovative websites have started offering offline web applications, like Remember The Milk, a web-based to-do lists management site that I’m also using.

Unfortunately, the security settings on my current laptop doesn’t seem to allow me to install Google Gears.

Anyway this is an interesting piece of technology that if it takes off would definitely change the way we use web applications. Keep your eyes on it!

Or maybe develop an offline web application, it could be the next killer application! If that does happen, don’t forget me!