I have used Visual Studio 2005 for a while now. Liked it from the start, like every other VS version I have tried. Of course it used a bit more resources then it predecessors, but it also added lots of great functionality I these days can`t live for out.
But it didn`t take me long to get my first problem. At the time I was playing with Managed DirectX to see if it could have any advantages over my daily DirectX programming. But after installing the Platform SDK problems thorned up. And for some reason they where in the Platform SDK it self, and I couldn`t understand why. Lots of lines like this was spewed out in the console window.
So off to find a solution it seemed at first to be no official fix to this, but editing this line:
C++ code:
typedefvoid * POINTER_64 PVOID64;
in winnt.h to:
C++ code:
typedefvoid * POINTER_64;
typedefvoid * PVOID64;
seemed to do the trick at first, and I forgot about the whole thing. Until today.
Firefox has for a long time been my favorite browser, even though I use Opera quite a lot too. And one of my "Internet friends" (Ryan Jones) have for a while been using lots of his spare time to patch bugs in Firefox. And I felt it was my time to spend some of my time to give something back for a wonderful project.
But after setting up a development environment and starting to compile Firefox for the first time, errors started to pop out. And again it was in the winnt.h file. 2 seconds later and I remembered what I had done a few months ago. Changing it back the way it was did the trick, and Firefox was happy. What should a poor man do!
PS: I am very aware that half the links on my page is still not working. I`ll get to that too, but there is just too many interesting things in the world that gets in my way..:)
For those who you who are so brave that you have tested the upcoming Firefox 2, you might have seen that they have added a new feature called "Search Discovery". It has already been added to the upcoming IE 7 too, so this more or less proves that if open standards are good enough. They will get through to the big companies too.
After reading a blog entry about it`s appearance in Fx, I decided to add it to my web page too. And here it is. If you are now using one of the latest builds of Fx (2.0 something) you will see that the magnifying glass in the upper right corner is turning red on this web page.
If you now click on this magnifying glass, you can see you have the option to add my web page to the search feature in Fx. If you add it, it will be added just like google and all the other searches you have in your quick search. And you can search my home page whenever you want.
Not that I think many will do that on my web page. But it is more for passing out the word, and make it known, so maybe bigger sites where it is actually useful will add the functionality. There is lots of pages I can see how useful it is. So hope they will pick up on it soon.
If you want to do it on your own web page, you can find easy instructions here , that even I managed to follow after some small directions.
The battle between Firefox and Internet Explorer just reached a new level. In the old days when Netscape started to take their market share, you had to pay for your browser. But Microsoft suddenly changed that business model, and made their IE free.
All you need to do is download a script and add it to your homepage. Then everyone visiting your homepage with IE will get a notification telling them that they should try Firefox and why.
So where does the money come from? Well it is actualy google that gives out money to you. Which seems to be even a new way to steal market share from Microsoft, but this time Google is not the one that are winning it. But Mozilla Firefox is. Seems a bit odd to me, but then again, I also read today that Firefox is the first third party product has been featured on google’s main page! Go Firefox!!!
I read earlier today that Internet Explorer is a dead albatross . But I am not so sure about that. First of all. Microsoft don`t tend to lose battles like this. Second of all, they have been a bit on their heels before, but managed to hit back. Just think about the Netscape era.
And I am affraid it will be like that this time too. Too many are not willing to put in enough effort to understand that there are alternatives. I have several friends and Ex Girl Friends that think Internet Explorer is the same as the internet, and don`t understand that it is just a tool to help you get online.
But there is still people who is hoping that Firefox will overtake IE in relative short time . But we can`t forget that IE is soon out in a new version. And this time they are better prepared. Well it is maybe a few more lines of code they need to beat other popular browsers both in compability and usability, but they are getting close.
But one of the things Firefox for example have been really good at lately is to build up a user group. And especially by letting their fans build extensions and themes for the popular browser. But this time IE will try to do the same. They just released the new add-On page for IE 7. By first climps it looks very promissing. But we just have to see if the IE fans will be just as creative as the Firefox fans are when it comes writing up small usefull add-ons.
When I am first on about browsers. I can also congratulate Opera with finaly comming out with a public beta of Opera. Their first Opera version that will pass the Acid 2 test.
About the same time as my own Firefox breaks all time high , and then went on and died, I noticed that the flicker competition is now open. There has been a 150+ films already sendt in since December, and more is comming ever day. Here is the first taste for you, so have a look and then move over to Firefox flicks to have a look at the rest:
On an other hand, just read over at Zbigniews that the Gecko Reflow branch passed the Acid2 test today. Great news. Will still take untill Firefox 3 in 2007 to see it in action though.
PS: Ironicaly enough, I had to use IE in the end to see the movie.
Finaly I found some time to do the bug fixes people have reported to me since last update. I think I got them all. But please tell me if I didn`t or if I added aditionaly bugs to it. I`ll try to be faster next time to fix them.
So you can just update the extension my pressing update button in the extension window, or just simply wait untill Firefox tell you new updates are ready to be installed.
If you don`t already have the great extension and you do post quite a bit on vBulletin forums, then I suggest that you try it out for your self. And all feedback is welcome. And everyone that wants to help out making this an even better extension are also welcome.
I have for a long time wanted to do this. And now I have done it. In the simplest way possible, but at least done it. Made a small tool to pack up and unpack the extension I have been working on for a while now. It has been a lot of packing and un packing, and finaly it can be done automaticaly with a pack script and an unpack script.
At the moment it only works on Linux machines with ZIP, and Python installed. And I am not going to change that for a while I think, since I am only using Linux to develop the extension. And at the moment some of the names are hardcoded for the files, so right out of the box it will only work for this extension. But it should be easy to change the names like vbf.jar to something that you use, and vbf.xpi to what your extension is called. And if you have any problems using it, then please just give me a wink.
If you just want to have a look at the code, here is the pack script:
How you use them: Unpack: Leave the vbf.xpi file in the same folder as the unpack script, run the script and it is unpacked.
Pack: Leave the script in the same folder as the "chrome" folder and the "install.rdf" file, and run it. And it is packed again.
Enjoy. And please give me feedback if you need any help what so ever to use it. And just as a note, from the next version of the vBulleting extension these scripts will be in the vbf.xpi file.
Delicious del.icio.us. If you don’t know what del.icio.us is yet, then you have a lot to look forward too. So keep on reading. But why I wanted to write about del.icio.us right now, was not to educate about it’s existence, but tell you the great news about the upgrade they are having right now. They have just added inline editing, prettied up the URL info page, and right now they are doing some database changes so they can allow private bookmarks too. Which is a feature I have been looking forward too a long time. If you didn’t know what del.icio.us was before you started reading this, then you might have guessed it by now. It is an online bookmark/favorite storage space for you on the web. What this mean is that you can access your bookmarks on the web no matter where you are in the world. You can access the same bookmarks from work, from your Linux machine on your boys room, and the Windows machine in the living room or what ever. But since they are online, they have been public for everyone. Like my bookmarks can be found here. So obviously I can’t have bookmarks to my admin panel on my blog and stuff like that. I want to keep that secret. But now in the next few weeks we get private bookmarks as well.
There is so many other features with del.icio.us too that I could write about all day, like you can see what bookmarks are popular, see who else have the same bookmarks, and then again browse that persons bookmarks, and you have an inbox where you can subscribe too tags so you get a lot of bookmarks in your inbox with the same topic as you like. Great way of finding new and interesting pages on the web.
If you have ever used the Flock browser that I have talked about a few times here in my blog, then you have del.icio.us build into your browser. That means that your bookmarks physically in your browser synchronize with the bookmarks on the web. Which is a really really nice feature. Firefox came afterwards with a del.icio.us extension that made it possible to add bookmarks from within Firefox. After this, there has come several other extensions too to handle del.iciou.us bookmarks in Firefox. So go out there and try them out. I am sure it will be worth. It sure was for me when I got used to it.
Firefox has during it's last year taken about 20% of the market in Europe if we are going to believe the latest statistics.
Safety seems to be the biggest reason why people have switched browser lately. But also the very popular plug-ins can be a big reason.
Currently Finland is on the top of Firefox user statistics with about 38%, while poor countries like China, Russia, and the middle east is far behind with only 8%.
After losing ground, Microsoft have announced that they will come with a new version of Internet Explorer before Vista is out. Many users have already tested version 7 of the popular browser. Tabs and other things that has been implemented in Firefox and other popular browsers has this time also been implemented in IE. But only time will show if Fx will keep gaining ground. Or if IE again will raise as the king on the net.
And here it is. A new version of our extension is up, and with it a brand new web page. The extension really deserved a better web page now as it is number on on MSNSearch.com if you search on "fx extension". The new design is simple, and should be easy to navigate.
The extension it self don't have any new features. Some code clean up has been done, and smilies are now moved to this web server. This is the first of a few small steps that I am thinking about doing before we might try to get our extension up and running on the official Firefox extension home page.
I have also tested the ability to port the extension so it can be used in Flock. At the current time we don't provide that version. Since it ended up a bit buggy and slow. But I also hope that we can get it up and running in Flock in a short while. But for now, only Firefox and Camino users can use it. So hang in there in the mean time.
