Playing With Sharp Objects

Update 2007-02-18: Note that Google Toolbar is known to interfere with the functionality of the firefox feed handlers settings.

Update 2007-02-25: Firefox is at version 2.0.0.2 to fix a major security hole and to apply stability fixes.

What you are seeing in the following screenshot is integration of MonkeyChow into Firefox 2.0’s RSS subscription handoff.

Rather than provide us with a built-in RSS client, the folks at Mozilla wisely chose to make Firefox 2.0’s RSS Feed handling as flexible as possible. At a later date, should Mozilla choose to include an RSS reader in Firefox, they will still have that option. And so do the rest of us.

In the latest SVN release, Version 112, when you click on the Add Feeds link in the menu pane, MonkeyChow will check to see if you have Firefox 2.0 running. If you do, it adds a link that you can click on to make the above happen. You will be asked to confirm the addition of the link to the feed reading list.

Note that there is a bug in Firefox 2.0 that does not highlight user added feed readers in that list. Although MonkeyChow is not highlighted by Mozilla, rest assured it is selected and functioning.

The first time you click the orange icon () in the address bar, you will be asked if you always want MonkeyChow to be used for RSS feed subscriptions. OK this and from now on it will automatically be added to your subscription list.

This is just another reason to move to the greatest web browser and the fastest evolving web based RSS reader as your RSS platform!

If you’ve been plagued by Firefox memory leaks like I have, you need to read this article which covers the browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers preference value. This concerns how much cache is reserved for browsing. The default setting expects you to page back up to 8 pages. Because of tabbed browsing, I almost never page back, so I’ve set this from the default -1 (also equivalent to to a value of 0. My memory usage is now down by 33%. Thanks for the tip!!
Update: More tips on how to tune firefox.

Firefox 1.5 came out a few days ago. All the extensions I use had compatible versions ready to go: Adblock, ForecastFox, Google Toolbar, del.icio.us, Roboform, Download Statusbar, Yahoo Mail notifier, and Google Mail notifier. My beef with having a lot of extensions is that your browser often becomes cluttered with a lot of task bars, and I like my screen real estate. However, I noticed that a lot of extensions are now taking advantage of the toolbar customization, allowing you to take their toolbar components apart. In the screens below you can see portions of my browser that indicate the places where I’ve tucked toolbar components to keep the original browser layout.

Del.icio.us and Google PageRank next to each other by the navigation buttons. Notice that I use small icons and no text for economy of space.

That’s a Google “Search on Page” area next to the page load animation circle, above the Google search box. Note the highlighter button, letting you search through a page for individual query matches.

At the bottom right corner of the status bar are my mail notifiers. Lots of mail from the Rails mailing list in Google Mail, I see. The download statusbar doesn’t show if nothing has been downloaded.

ForecastFox is right next to Adblock. Adblock is THE one extension I can’t live without. Taking out giant banner ads is a big thing for me, but text ads are no big deal. As you can see, ForecastFox says we’re about to get socked with 5-8 inches of snow here in NJ.

Myk Melez has added a revolutionary idea to email client Thunderbird: tabs. Those of us familiar with Mozilla and Firefox tabbed browsing know that managing windows through tabs makes things really efficient. That’s what the taskbar in Windows is all about, but anyone doing any real work on a system knows that the taskbar fills up fast. That’s why on WinXP we have collapsing trays and similar windows grouped together, but things still get lost.

Taking a hint from Firefox 1.5, this is making use of the Mini-T extension features that were available separately for Firefox 1.0, which includes tab rearranging.

However, this feature is not likely to be seen an the upcoming Thunderbird 1.5 release. There have been quite a few Moz/FF patchings due to cross-tab vulnerabilities in the past. Since we are potentially involving SPAM/phishing/viruses in these panes, it should be banged on really hard before it is ready for primetime. Revolutionary, but definitely not trivial. Thanks Myk.

By the way if you aren’t on Firefox 1.5 yet, give it whirl right now. I was able to update my extensions and move right to it from 1.0. I have a link on the sidebar on the right that takes you right to where you can download Firefix 1.5.

UPDATE: Project has stalled!

The Mozilla group is running a logo contest for Seamonkey, the umbrella project for the Mozilla Suite which has Web, email, and chat clients all rolled up into one release. This is not the same as Firefox and Thunderbird, but is meant more for corporate use.

My logo submission:

Update 2005-12-03: The winning submission…