Thanks for all from #myoss who help me went through my first-time linux experience.

Well, here’s a quick snapshot of my new Ubuntu (thumbnail) and an enlarge version:

• Treppenwitz:  Schnappi das kleine Krokodil
• Schnappi in Wikipedia

Well, I have to say: I really love it!

Weaving to the new era of web social culture – blog… blog blog blog blog..! (sounds like Chritmas is near.. Hint: yummy )

As they promise, it will be an open license, cross-company collaboration, and a complete application framework solution for industrial web projects. And, Zend will start to release the codes to public web community in coming January 2006.

Well, I’m looking forward to taste it soon, especially its URI Mapping support feature (which will eventually replace the job of Apache’s mod_rewrite with native PHP coding).

Mean while, feel free to enjoy their 1-hour webcast hosted by php|arch. You will grab the whole idea of the framework easily after the webcast. Basically, it will be a MVC-like framework, with a collection of simple-ready-to-use components for rapid web developments.

(Notice the running time-meter at the bottom of webcast after reaching 1 hour.. Hint: bug)

After the new firefox installed, I immediately launched it to try get its “first taste”. As an online reader (who just use browser for reading), at a first glance, I couldn’t even notice any changes in my new firefox. But a few clicking around, ahah, I managed to point out some differences:

New Tools > “Options..”

A new layout (but rather formal-looking) for Options dialog box. Honestly, I miss its previous fancy-looking appearance.

New Tools > “Clear Private Data.. (Ctrl+Shift+Del)”

Ah, here’s a quick shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+Del) to clean up browsing information (e.g history, saved forms & passwords, cookies, cache and even authenticated session) in a single click.

New Help > “Check for Updates…“

Another “just a single click” new function for users to check updates for firefox itself and all the extensions,themes and search engines updates.

Missing A Monkey..

Greasemonkey 0.5.3 is not working anymore in Firefox 1.5 and has been automatically disabled. However, I managed to google the fix just five minutes ago: Greasemonkey 0.6.4!

CSS Error Error Error..

I never notice previous Firefox 1.0.7 will display CSS parsing errors in its Javascript Console window, but well, we have that now in Firefox 1.5.
Guess what I found in Google’s stylesheet:

h3{font-weight:normal;font-size=100%}

Opps! Who’s the careless programmer? Ah.. don’t forget to use ‘:’ instead.

After all, not much “woah” in the new Firefox 1.5 from an online reader’s POV. However, for web developers, Firefox 1.5 is surely bringing along some excitements (here’s a brief) and for themes/extensions/monkey’s userscript geeks, well, you have start your debugging sessions once again.

I have noticed this bug since then. When you run the LiveHTTPHeaders window, everything are just cool until after you close it, the Javascript Console will be flooded by a repeating error:

Error: Components is not defined Source File: chrome://livehttpheaders/content/LiveHTTPHeaders.js Line: 427

Thanks to Daniel Kabs’s workaround, now the bug is bypassed (as he said, it’s not a fix yet). However, rather to extract the whole jar and modify many unnecessary files (shown in his instruction [a] and [b]), I chose to extract only the particular file, modify it and add it back to jar. Here’s what I did:

1. Find livehttpheaders.jar – I’m using Win2k installed in C drive. So normally firefox keeps all extensions under C:\Document and Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxx.default\extensions directory. From there, you can find the livehttpheaders.jar file under {8f8fe09b-0bd3-4470-bc1b-8cad42b8203a}\chrome directory.
2. Extract LiveHTTPHeaders.js with WinRAR – I think both WinRAR & Winzip will do the job. Just browse into the jar file, find LiveHTTPHeaders.js under content directory and extract it.
3. Add two lines of code to LiveHTTPHeaders.js – as suggested by Daniel, quoted as below:

   // This is the observerService's observe listener.
   observe: function(aSubject, aTopic, aData) {
   +		if (typeof Components == 'undefined')
   +			return;
   if (aTopic == 'http-on-modify-request') {
   aSubject.QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIHttpChannel);
   (added the lines with the + at the beginning,
   but add them without the +!)

4. Add LiveHTTPHeaders.js back to livehttpheaders.jar - just drag & drop it back into the WinRAR window, WinRAR will do the job for you. BTW, make sure you close the firefox before you add the file, otherwise it will fail as firefox is using that jar file.

Yeah, that’s all!

Several days ago, I installed the web developer extension into my firefox. I don’t have a chance to *actually* use its functions, since I do more reading recently rather than playing with codes. However by accident, I do find a function which is *suprisingly* useful for online readers like me to protect our eyes from long hours browsing.

So, here’s the suprising function: Display Topographics Information under Information tab. Eventually, it turns the whole web page into grayscale tone. Well, I’m not really sure what is its original intention; but now, I’m using it to darken the page’s background to reduce the direct bright light from hurting my eyes.

(oh, here’s a screeshot.)

It seems like I’m misusing the technology now.. ha, but it really helps me to solve my eye-tiring problem. BTW, it reminds me about an old joke of technology misuse (and they even made a movie clip for this joke, LOL)

While trying to reload and read back the entry I just wrote in RESTy Lab (well, just to check my English ), suddenly the page was returned without any CSS styling.

A big red “!” sign then appeared in my Firefox’s Web Developer toolbar, nagging about an error as below:

Error: The stylesheet http://wordpress.com/invite/wp-newblog.php/wp-content/themes/connections/style.css was not loaded because its MIME type, “text/html”, is not “text/css”.

Wow, what’s happening? When I viewed the page source, I found that all links’ prefix has become http://wordpress.com/invite/wp-newblog.php, rather than the correct prefix: http://toydi.wordpress.com. Opps, a hiccup!

Anyway, thanks to Donncha who already fixed it, while I was sending him the complain.

Well, all the best to WP.com! BTW, looking forward to have a chance to submit a small wish list according to our user-experience about WP.com blogging features. Or is there already a place for us to drop a line?

As an online reader, I wish my browser to have these features:

• Saved Session (as in Opera) – able to recall which page and until where I read in the last browsing session.
• Easy-To-Trackback History (as in Opera) – a list of previous browsed web pages sorted by last accessed date, so I can track back what I’d read (Nightmare.. if trying to track back the last accessed web page in IE’s history).
• Custom Styling View (as in Opera) – able to view web page in customized styling. As I always prefer a darker background when I read novels in long hours.
• Tabbed Browsing (as in Opera, Mozilla) – I love to follow hyperlinks and open them in new pages. I do read multiple pages MUXly at once, sometimes.
• Feeds Reader – (as in Opera, Firefox) blogrolls are growing in my bookmark, I wish to have a feeds reader intergrated into my browser.

As a programmer wannabe, somehow I wish my browser to have extra features:

• Custom User Scripts (as Greasemonkey) – well, I love the idea where users should able to take control of what will be executed in their own box.
• Web Development & Debugging Tools (as in Mozilla Suite) – they really helped me so much to during the degree’s thesis project.
• A Playground to Hack – hack into the codes.. adding features of my own..

So, this evening, I decided to try to setup an *ideal* browser with features described as above. Here’s what I did:

1. Download & install Firefox 1.0.7
2. Install a new theme/skin: ifox 1.6
3. Install extension: Sage 1.3.6 – the feed aggregator
4. Install extension: Greasemonkey 0.5.3 – the user script manager
5. Install extension: SessionSaver .2d * nightly 30 – restore last browsing session

And here’s what I have now!

A browser with Saved Session, EasyToTrack History, Tabbed Browsing, Feeds Reader and a *cute* monkey. Suprisingly, I can use Sage to watch out my gmail too!

Well, I will install some Web Development Tools once I need them, I think. Now, there is still one thing, my new browser cannot view page using custom styling mode (as “User Mode” in Opera). I just couldn’t find the appropriate extension yet, please tell me if you have the extension that just do the job.