On June 18th, 2008, some eight and a half million people downloaded the latest version of Mozilla Firefox. A powerful browser, built on the Gecko engine its greatest advantage is the fact that it is so easily expandable and customizable through powerful add-ons.
There are a few new features that are most decidedly practical. One of them is a “Verified by” function, which simply means that when you are visiting say, a Microsoft site, the addressbar shines up like this:
Another nifty function is the “Most Visited” button, which lists your ten most visited websites:
The password-saving feature is still there, but comes up as a noticebar, instead of a dialog box:
Designwise, the changes are minor, but noticeable. There are new buttons, like so:
All in all, Firefox 3 seems to be a decent browser, and it simply works, which is always nice. By the by, everyone who downloaded Firefox 3 in the first 24 hours were part of a world record setting event, and got to download a Download Day certificate like this:
Blog
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Firefox 3 – First impressions
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Turning off the mail count in the Windows XP login screen – Registry
The other day, my girlfriend had been using my computer, and logged into MSN. When I restarted the computer, I noticed this message:
This is both annoying, and it really looks stupid. I mean, sure I get a bit of email, but I rarely have as many as 20 emails in my inbox, and even if I did, my hotmail inbox is not my primary email. Add to that the fact that this count has been taken from my girlfriends’ hotmail and we’re starting to get to the bottom of my frustration. Frankly, I don’t want it to tell people whether there are any unread email at all.
Apparently, there are a few programs that feed into this count; Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird and MSN Messenger to mention but a few. So, how do we remove it? As it happens, it is pretty simple to do just that, but it does require some fiddling about in the registry, so if you’re not comfortable with that, just leave it alone and clean up your inbox. Here’s how to do it:
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Software I cannot live without
Almost anyone that works with computers collect a few programs they can’t live without. For me, there are a few of them, and here they are:
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Creating a shortcut and hotkey to Windows’ "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog
In a previous post I talked about using Windows’ “Safely Remove Hardware” dialog to avoid losing data from USB drives. Having done some more research, I’ve found a way to create a shortcut to this dialog.
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Corrupted data, and avoiding it
I more or less always carry a USB Flash drive with me, for several reasons;
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Posting code examples rendered like text
When writing my last post I had a problem that parts of the code was parsed into the page, meaning that the result, instead of the actual code, was seen. As you can see in the post, I solved the problem, and here’s how:
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Adding an infobox to your wiki
As you may or may not know, I’m maintaining not one, but two wikis. One of these is my personal website. In both I’ve added an infobox on the right to make some articles stick out. Here’s how it looks:
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How have I done this you ask? It is really boxes within a box. Let’s go through it line by line. I start with a comment: -
Logitech VX Nano – first impressions
I’d been wanting to get a new mouse for my portable computer for a long time when I actually did. Up until last week, I’ve been using your regular two-buttons-and-a-scroll-wheel kind of mouse, and I wanted a little more functionality when on the road. I’m used to using one of Logitechs larger mouse with my desktop computer, and wanted something like that, only smaller.
I remembered a product test I did a while back, of Logitechs newest portable cordless, with their smallest receiver yet, called Logitech VX Nano Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks. I also remembered liking it, so I decided to go for it.
Functionwise, it’s great. The scroll-whell has two modes, (almost) friction-less and regular. It has backward and forward buttons, sideward scroll, and a total of five programmable buttons. Comfort is also excellent. It lies very well in the hand, and the gripping pads on the side makes it very comfortable to use.
The greates feature is the receiver though. It is small enough to fit in the back of my laptop, even when it is docked. It is to me the epitome of plug-in-and-forget.
The conclusion is simple; though not cheap, this is an excellent little bit of kit, which works beautifully. It is definitely the best mouse in this size I’ve ever tried, and I am very content.