Web Browsers

FIX: Google Toolbar resets/breaks/messes up IE7 toolbars

urig — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:42:00 GMT

Ever since I've upgraded from IE6 to IE7, I've noticed that whenever I reopen my Internet Explorer, all my toolbars get messed up. It's as if they are reset to the original "factory" setting, regardless of how carefully I've tweaked them before previously closing IE7.

Clearly something was wrong, but to my surprise the fault lay not with "Evil Microsoft" but with the "Benevolent Google"'s beloved Google Toolbar(!). I've learned here that the Google Toolbar uses some evil voodoo ("hijacks ITBarLayout from within its satellite BHO") which interferes with IE7's layout mechanism.

Luckily, a site called IECustomizer.com makes a simple solution available here. It's a small Windows Registry .reg file that disables the Google Toolbar's BHO with the effect of restoring IE7's toolbars to their normal self, while keeping the Google Toolbar alive and well.

I've tried it and I'm pleased to say that it works. Now it's up to Google to fix their code so other people don't have to go digging for third-part solutions. I wonder how I can submit a bug report...?

Barcopedia - Turn your webcam into a barcode scanner

urig — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 20:48:00 GMT

StreetTech just ran an item about a website called LibraryThing. It lets you populate an online catalog of your books by scanning the barcodes on the covers into your computer.

The interesting question is - How do you scan a barcode into a PC and onto the web? Gareth from StreetTech suggests using something called a CueCat. This is an old barcode scanner gadget that was distributed freely to magazine subscribers a few years back (all Wired subscribers received them at some point).

These things are no longer manufactured - the company went bust after it was discovered that the company kept track of what specific users had scanned violating their privacy. Buying a standard barcode scanner like the ones you see at your local supermarket is somewhat expensive (starting at ~100$). Problem.

The solution? Barcopedia! This website connects to your webcam and if you point it at a barcode, it will scan it in real time and give you the full details for the item (provided it's is in their DB of course).

I can tell you I was as excited as a little boy the first time I scanned a book, the website pinged and the details showed up on the screen.

I wonder what other magic can be done to barcodes via Barcopedia and how extensible it is. If it has a decently open API, I can imagine myself cataloging my entire library through their service.

YubNub - A command line interface for to the web.

Uri Goldstein — Mon, 22 May 2006 12:47:00 GMT

I've just learned about the coolest web app - YubNub. I read about it in Roy Osherove's blog.

What it does is, it gives you a "command-line interface" to the web by allowing you to type in simple commands and then transfering you to corresponsing URLs.

For example, to browse an entry in WikiPedia, I usually type-in to my FireFox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X where X is the entry I'm looking for. In YubNub all I have to do is type-in wiki X and whammo! I'm there.

YubNub has tons more of useful commands that users added to it, there's a command to list them and search through them (the command is 'ls' of course :) ). Anyone can add new commands pretty easily. In addition, it's available as a FireFox search plugin (which I've installed ASAP).

And in a counter-revolutionary sort of way, there's a YubNub command that does "anti-YubNub". The command 'gui' accepts another YubNub command as its argument and gives you a GUI for inputting arguments into that command. Tres cool.

Now all we need is a batch language that can harvest the output from YubNub commands and funnel it to others we'd have the easiest framework ever for making mashups. Anyone up for it? :D

Bork Bork Bork! The Muppets' Swedish Chef on your FireFox

Uri Goldstein — Sun, 14 May 2006 12:57:00 GMT

Bork Bork Bork! (now at version 1.4) lets you view web pages or mail as spoken by the Swedish Chef. Or as the Chef himself would say: "Feeoo veb peges oor meeel es spukee by zee Svedeesh Cheff."

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta 2 for download!

Uri Goldstein — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 16:52:00 GMT

As of yesterday, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta 2 is officially available for download!

Source: IEBlog

Fix for FireFox memory leaks

Uri Goldstein — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:02:00 GMT

For a while now I've noticed that my FireFox v1.5 is eating up my system's memory (Windows XP Professional btw).

This is called a "memory leak" - FireFox reserves chunks of RAM, uses them, but does not free them and does not return them to the system once it's done using them. FireFox is caching pictures downloaded from the internet into RAM. The more you browse, the more images are cached, the more memory is used up.

A quick fix for the problem is to set a limit, in FireFox, on the amount of memory the browser can use for caching these files. Here's how to do it:

Open FireFox and enter about:config into the location bar.
A page with many lines will open up. Right-click inside the page to open a context menu.
In the context menu click "New', then click "Integer"
When asked, enter this 'preference name' : browser.cache.memory.capacity and click 'Okay'.
Now enter the maximum size, in kilobytes, of memory for FireFox to use for caching. I recommened '32768'.
Close and reopen FireFox and the problem is solved.

You might wish to play around with the numeric value if you experience any negative effects on browser performance, but I doubt you will :). Good luck!

Screen shots of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Build 5299 (Beta 2 Preview)

Uri Goldstein — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 19:47:00 GMT

jCXP.net have obtained screen shots of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Build 5299 (Beta 2 Preview).

I haven't noticed anything exciting in the screen shots - certainly nothing that FireFox doesn't already offer. Does anybody know of any interesting new feature coming from Microsoft in IE7 ?

MSIE Developer Toolbar Beta 1 Refresh

Uri Goldstein — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 13:57:00 GMT

There is a new version of the Microsoft Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar that I mentioned a while ago. It's called "Beta 1 Refresh" (Why not simply call it "Beta 2"? :) ) and is available for download from www.microsoft.com.

Jeff Varga of Microsoft's IE developement team reports that it includes several new features and the following bug fixes:

We have fixed element bounding box calculations to be accurate

Outlining of elements is now significantly faster

We have fixed the image report crash

The installer no longer asks you to reboot (Beta 1 users will still be prompted to reboot because the Beta 1 Refresh installer invokes the Beta 1 uninstaller). We hate reboots as much as anyone!

The "Resize" option no longer causes confusion with the state of the maximize/minimize buttons in IE

The "Select element by click" bounding box is now more visible on pages with blue backgrounds

The attributes editor (middle pane) now has variable width fields (e.g. you can type beyond the width of the box)

A few fixes to get around some pages never firing OnDocumentComplete

We’ve fixed the consistency of using "element" rather than "tag" in the menus (thanks to everyone who pointed out this one)

Scrolling and using the ruler now works better

Enabling/disabling images no longer closes and reopens IE

The installer now puts more options on the resize menu by default

Editing a property no longer lets keystrokes "leak" back to IE and navigate without the user expecting it

Trying to use the ruler while IE is in "folder mode" should no longer crash the browser

FireFox 1.5 Launched

Uri Goldstein — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 17:31:00 GMT

FireFox 1.5 is offically out - w00t!

Get it here.

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

Uri Goldstein — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 16:01:00 GMT

Here's a neat expansion for MSIE: the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar.

It's a BHO that adds a toolbar to your IE with a variety of useful tools for people building HTML pages. It has:

A ruler that measures the distance between objects in the page.
A DOM inspector that lets you add CSS attributes to page elements on the fly.
Outline modes that mark different page elements with a red outline for you to easily spot them.
HTML / CSS validation buttons.
Quick links to clear the browser cache and cookies

It's a pretty unstable Beta but the tools are very useful and it won't crash your IE often, so long as you disable it when you're not using it.

If anybody knows when this comes out of beta, please let me know.