![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Feb. 16th, 2008
Firefox 3 on Mac OSX
Feb. 16th, 2008 09:32 pmI'm trying out Firefox 3(.0b3) right now! I decided to download it on a whim; I was hoping that it would be less of a memory hog than Firefox 2. Because trying to run that plus Aptana (Ruby IDE) at the same time was bogging down my system horribly. For the record, it seems to be running more smoothly, but the test may not be fair since most of my extensions were disabled for being incompatible *g*
I love the new features, including the improved downloads interface, additional interfaces (such as the new Applications item, which is the filetype-to-action mapping) and what look to be better error messages. One of my favorite things is that there is now a shortcut for the JavaScript console. It may not seem like much, but the inefficient way to open the JavaScript console has always been one of those little things that irritated me to no end.
It is somewhat strange to see the form controls be styled like Safari's. And the window is a darker gray than I'm used to. I am not enamoured, but I guess I'll get used to them.
There are a few rough spots; sometimes the rendering is weird and elements show up in the wrong place on the page (the header for Vertigo does this often on the Explore page). Also, the cmd+shift+T shortcut does not seem to always work; I often have to use the menu instead. I'm hoping that these kinks will be worked out by the time it makes it to release.
I'm excited about their moving the preferences storage backend to SQLite instead of writing to the textfile (prefs.js) only when closing the browser properly. I think this affects the values saved by Greasemonkey as well; if so, then that means I won't lose the data from the current session if the browser suddenly crashes. I am almost tempted to try to crash something so I can test :-)
I'm also excited about the improved search and bookmarking (with tags) functions -- searching through the address bar brings up results based on the address, the page title, bookmarks, bookmark tags, and I'm finding it pretty useful. (For example, when doing Support work, I can just type "entryprops" and get the URL I want, instead of having to type "livejournal.com/admi...", selecting whatever URL comes up, then deleting the end and triggering autocomplete again with "entr..."). There's also apparently auto-resume for downloads, though I have not tested it yet.
I love the new features, including the improved downloads interface, additional interfaces (such as the new Applications item, which is the filetype-to-action mapping) and what look to be better error messages. One of my favorite things is that there is now a shortcut for the JavaScript console. It may not seem like much, but the inefficient way to open the JavaScript console has always been one of those little things that irritated me to no end.
It is somewhat strange to see the form controls be styled like Safari's. And the window is a darker gray than I'm used to. I am not enamoured, but I guess I'll get used to them.
There are a few rough spots; sometimes the rendering is weird and elements show up in the wrong place on the page (the header for Vertigo does this often on the Explore page). Also, the cmd+shift+T shortcut does not seem to always work; I often have to use the menu instead. I'm hoping that these kinks will be worked out by the time it makes it to release.
I'm excited about their moving the preferences storage backend to SQLite instead of writing to the textfile (prefs.js) only when closing the browser properly. I think this affects the values saved by Greasemonkey as well; if so, then that means I won't lose the data from the current session if the browser suddenly crashes. I am almost tempted to try to crash something so I can test :-)
I'm also excited about the improved search and bookmarking (with tags) functions -- searching through the address bar brings up results based on the address, the page title, bookmarks, bookmark tags, and I'm finding it pretty useful. (For example, when doing Support work, I can just type "entryprops" and get the URL I want, instead of having to type "livejournal.com/admi...", selecting whatever URL comes up, then deleting the end and triggering autocomplete again with "entr..."). There's also apparently auto-resume for downloads, though I have not tested it yet.
Flipping bits in MacOSX calculator
Feb. 16th, 2008 11:19 pmOh, I just realized that you can click in the binary section of the Mac OSX calculator to flip the bits and enter binary numbers. All this time, I've been wondering why there was no binary input mode (there's Hex, Oct, Dec, but no binary). So, whenever I needed to convert from binary to decimal, I'd convert it in my head, and then enter the decimal number, and then double-check against the displayed/converted binary.
It turns out all I needed to do was click in the right place(s)...
It turns out all I needed to do was click in the right place(s)...
