Several months ago, Steve ventured into myspace.

Well, not myspace, but rather myspace.

After determining that he was alive some time later, I figured I’d try it out. Why? Uh, I have no idea. To be honest, more than anything I joined because I found out my little sister actually had a myspace, um, space.

And what is my overall opinion after spending a little time using the site’s services? Well, let’s just say I am supremely disappointed that I cannot be my own best friend, as demonstrated by this screenshot.

Mozilla Firefox is rounding the corner on a 1.0 release. I’m pretty much in love with Live Bookmarks. The new Find Bar is exactly what it should be. Integrating FoxyTunes‘ media player control and a Gmail Notifier into Firefox has also been great fun.

Ben Goodger on Market Dominance:

Netscape had it by being first.
Microsoft has it by being everywhere.
Firefox will have it by being best.

We’re coming.

That’s truth well said.

It’s a couple days before I leave for the grand U S of A, and I figured I would share a gem of the internet I discovered while I was here. Well, discovered lends me too much credit. I shamelessly stole this addy from my Korean host’s bookmark list when he wasn’t looking.

The site is www.bugs.co.kr

I obviously haven’t had the chance to try it out from the states, so I don’t know if it’s banned or restricted. But I have to say it’s quite incredible. The site is similar to Amazon.com. You can search for artists and look up their songs, discography, album pics, ect. Unlike Amazon, which will allow you to preview perhaps 10s of select tracks, you can usually listen to the whole album. For free. In a winamp-ish minibrowser window. If you have an account with the site you can even save tracks to a custom playlist. What it boils down to is that you don’t need to own a single CD, just an internet connection and IE (it won’t work in mozilla). I can’t vouch for the audio quality; I’ve been listening with cheapy headphones on my laptop.

So provided you can connect to the site, you will see a smattering of Korean. Actually, you’ll probably see a bunch of “???” or ASCII characters since I doubt you’ll even have Korean installed on your computer. No matter though, simply click “Music” at the top menu, then fill in the band or track name you want to search for in the (only) text box. I’ll not insult your intelligence any further; you should be able to get the band playing in your ears in no time from there. If the audio icons next to the tracks are greyed out, then they’ve been told to stop offering those songs. Some of the most popular bands (U2) will have all of their albums greyed out, but other, more obscure bands may be fully available for listening. Don’t try to download the music, that option isn’t offered. Though I suspect that the tracks are placed on the computer somewhere…

There’s a rumor that this site will start requiring a paid membership in the near future (2-3 months) so get your headphones on now. I’ve found this is a great way to preview bands you’d never have had the monetary guts to risk earlier. But of course, if you like something, buy the CD. Artists get paid too little as it is…

I’m done here.

I love the new theme for Firefox. The back and forward arrows are beautiful. I’d put them up against any theme’s arrows. Same with the reload button.

Here are my thoughts on the rest of the buttons. Most of these thoughts have to do with scaling and amount of space taken up. The other issue here is sticking consistently to the theme of the beauty found in absolute simplicity.

Note: because I always use small icons to maximize my browsing space, I am only describing my experience with the small icons, although some of this commentary would certainly apply to the larger icons. I do understand that with smaller icons, you’re far more limited in what you can do, but I’m going to express my opinion anyway.

Give me more space! – Ben Goodger’s “Why Firefox” article says, “We place a great deal of importance on space for web pages in Firefox. That’s why our browser has more space devoted to web pages than Internet Explorer, Opera, or Mozilla.” I for one am a big fan of tons of browser space. For this reason, I always put my address bar and my navigation tools on the top line with my menus. I want my toolbars small, which is why I use the small icon set. But here’s the trouble: the small icon set actually forces the menu bar to use much more space than it should.

– Here’s what the menu bar, no icons next to it: –

– Here’s what the menu bar looks like with the small icons: –

Especially note the menu section. Whoa, Nelly! Look how much space there is from top to bottom, as well as how much distance there is between the icons. It might help to get a look at how IE deals with its small icon set when adjusted in this way.

– Here’s what Internet Explorer looks like with a similar setup: –

The same setup in IE takes up less space both horizontally and vertically.

So what is the problem? I don’t know. I played around with this a bit in Photoshop, but it didn’t seem like there was much reason to make the icons so far apart, or for the height to jump so dramatically.

– Here’s what I think the small icon layout should look like in Firefox: –

Notice that this moves the back and forward detail buttons closer in, as well as pushing the icons closer together. It also cuts dramatically the space required at top and bottom of the icons. In the end it seems to produce a more attractive look in my opinion. There are two main things at issue here:

Icons need to be closer together – A lot of space is getting chewed up horizontally by the distance between these icons.

Icons don’t need as much headroom and legroom – This leads to the text menu getting an enormous amount of space.

If Firefox is striving to place browser space as a top priority, it seems this would be a valuable thing to look into taking care of before 1.0. I know I would love to see this (minor) adjustment made. Note: In all fairness to the theme, it must be said that adding anything other than text items to the top menu adjusts the height dimensions of the top toolbar, including the address and search bars (something I’d also like to see changed).

Is the “new tab” button a toaster? – I am still quite unsure what that big white thing is at the bottom of the “new tab” icon. My first guess is a toaster, but I just don’t know. In all seriousness, I would recommend an even simpler new tab icon. Perhaps just a tab with a large green “+” in front of it, much like the “new window” button.

“New tab” and “new window” buttons need a bigger “+” when made small – The inset white “+” in the green circle is not very intelligible. If, instead, there was a green “+” instead of a little green circle it might look better and be clearer what the button was trying to do.

“Page history” icon: less page, more history! – Sticking to the simple theme, and keeping consistency, it might look much better to have a round clock style history button about the dimensions of the beautiful stop and reload button without the picture of the web page behind it.

Well, that’s it! Hope this is constructive. I really like the new Firefox theme and I would love to see it get a little bit better before 1.0.

Once in a while, a peice of software comes along that changes the world. Mozilla Firefox is not that peice of software. But Firefox did sit next to a peice of software that changed the world and it studied him.

No, Firefox didn’t change the world. That was Netscape Navigator. But Firefox sure changed my world. I truly believe I’m a better person for having used Firefox. And I know I’m a better browser because of it.

Okay, I’m done being silly.

I’ve been using Firefox since, I think 0.4 (called Phoenix), back in October 2002. I have used it as my primary browser every single day since July last year. And now I want to tell you exactly every detail of why Firefox means the world to me. Or, uh, at least the world wide web.

Why write why I’m so high on the Fox? Especially when there’s Ben Goodger’s great “Why You Should Switch to Firefox” article sitting on the Mozilla Foundation’s server? I feel there is a great deal I can contribute to the ongoing dialogue regardin—never mind. I can’t add anything. Oh well. Here goes anyway!

Browsing Security Essentials Left Out of IE
These are the most obvious reasons to use Firefox. Intelligent pop-up blocking. Zero security risk. Zero adware / spyware / browser hijacking via ActiveX. Dang! If that was it, that would be good enough, wouldn’t it? But wait! There’s more!

Tabbed Browsing
From the first time I touched Opera many years ago, I was in love with tabbed browsing. There’s no going back once you’ve used it for any length of time. Especially if you are an attention deficit browser like me. Really, I wish more applications would use this feature. (Like Microsoft Office! And Photoshop! And Dreamweaver! And Pagemaker! And Windows Explorer! Pretty much any and every application could be enhanced in some way by tabbed document switching.)

Find as You Type
I’m thinking of something orange… Something orange… Wait! Maybe I should type “something orange” into my browser window and see if I can find it! Or would I rather go back to the old days of Ctrl-F? Hmm… nope. Then “Find as You Type” it is!

Keywords and Keyword Search
Keywords provide a great feature for anyone (like me) who has bookmarks and still types URLs for their regularly visited sites. And the ability to make a keyword for a search is pretty darn cool. But when I discovered that 0.9 added a feature that made it possible to get a context menu item called “Add a Keyword for this Search…” I drooled on my desk chair, mouth open in awe.

Built-in Customizable Search
If it’s not enough to go to the address bar and type your custom created search, you can add your preferred search engines to a built in search toolbar. Forget the Google Toolbar… or the hundred other search toolbars.

Fast, Period. And Getting Faster
Early on, Firefox (Phoenix / Firebird / Whatever) was on par with IE in the speed department. But every release since 0.6, I have noticed significant gains in speed. The latest release is no different. Who knows? By the time 1.0 is released, the browser may actually deliver content to your desktop without you having to do anything! Oh wait. That’s RSS. That gives me an idea. How about Mozilla Chinchilla: the Mozilla RSS Aggregator! Oh, nevermind. Already had that idea.

Creative Coders, Creative Community
Wouldn’t it be great if…? Oh? Firefox already does? Seriously, I have never used software that seems to spontaneously choose to cater to my every whim. Some of the greatest thinking comes through in the easy-to-install extensions. Some of my personal favorites include Bookmarks Synchronizer, BugMeNot, Download Sort, AdBlock, Edit CSS, and Web Developer. And now, thanks to the brand new Mozilla Update, Themes and Extensions have reached a new level of organization.

But beyond extensions, the always active Firefox sections of the Mozilla Forums provide a powerful resource for tweaking, personalizing, and perfecting your browser. And every now and then, you can catch some hot flame action! Okay, very rarely. (Unless themes are involved.)

Enough reasons for you?
Then get Firefox 0.9, just released late last night. Not enough reasons for you? Then do check out “Why You Should Switch to Firefox” for more reasons.

And if that’s still not enough reasons, go get Ad-Aware to get your imminent adware and spyware problem under control, the Google Toolbar for your pop-up blocking and integrated search, and visit McAfee.com for your ActiveX-based virus-scanning needs.

After having spent the past week enjoying the various builds toward Mozilla Firefox 0.9, I had a thought. There are many people who believe, to some degree, that the future of the web is RSS. Microsoft doesn’t have an RSS reader. In fact, there are no major names in the RSS ring. A little odd, if it is the future of the web, right?

There’s currently so many options when it comes to RSS. It’s great to have so many competing products, but it sure makes it frustrating when there is no single stand-out reader. I have a few favorites, but there isn’t a single RSS aggregator that I’ve used consistently because the features I like are spread around a variety of good programs, mostly developed by one or two people.

I have a very successful and creative friend and mentor who says regularly that ignorance is an asset. If you don’t know enough about something, you don’t know the million reasons why it can’t be done. If necessity is the mother of invention, ignorance is the father.

So, speaking completely in ignorance, I have a question.

Why doesn’t the Mozilla Foundation take a bold step into uncharted territory and develop the world’s best RSS Reader? Why not beat Microsoft to desktops everywhere?

Just an idea.

Update: I’m retarded. Mozilla Thunderbird’s roadmap has RSS integration listed as a new feature for the next release, 0.8. Please excuse me for not actually looking first at the one place it would be most intelligent to integrate news readers.

“April Fools turned into Christmas very fast.” The screen shots have circulated a bit, but Sean Palmer gives an early review of gmail. One interesting comment of note:

“I’m told that there will even be a way for users to export email in case they want to switch to another system…”

But will there be a way to import from another system? I would love to take my Outlook .PST and Googlize it!

Wow! Thanks to Joseph of Make-Believe.org, I am using Sauce Reader 1.3 to post this. It seems there’s a small wave of new “blog this” type tools just now arriving. Scoble has been talking about his new “Magic Folder” (OutlookMT) from Kunal. And now Sauce Reader’s latest upgrade includes this feature. This brings me to another point: I probably need to rewrite my aggregator review now that I’m not using RSSReader as my default. Maybe I’ll get to that today.

RSS. You’ve probably heard of it. Maybe you haven’t. But it is “The Thing” on the Internet today – and has been for sometime among most bloggers.

If you’re unfamiliar the concept works like this. Remember when “content delivery straight to your desktop” was the big wave? I think it was around 1997. The latest versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape both had “channels.” The idea was great, but it didn’t take off and it wasn’t applied well. Today, the concept has been much refined as it has evolved into RSS and Atom.

I have been reading news feeds for quite a while. They’re the quickest way to sift through many web pages in minutes. Along the way, you’ll find yourself using your RSS reader first and then your browser to read sites you regularly frequent. With my RSS reader, I can tell at a glance if some of the sites I visit often have been updated, which saves me from checking on four or five at once.

The difficulty I’ve had is that I can’t ever decide and stick to a specific reader. I find little frustrations with one and turn to another too frequently. FeedReader seemed occasionally unstable. NewsGator gave Outlook problems occasionally. The otherwise superb FeedDemon doesn’t (to my knowledge) allow a complete “at a glance” view of all your feeds listed on the left pane, and instead forces you to pick a category. All the web-based RSS readers I’ve tried (including AmphetaDesk, WinRSS) seem too clunky to me.

SharpReader, , NewzCrawler, RSSBandit, and RSSReader are pretty similar upon first glance. Some are free, some are shareware, some are better than others. All depend on .NET.

FeedDemon, to me, is so close to being perfect, it’s just painful. The brilliant idea of creating a well laid out – and easily styled “newspaper page” of a group of feeds is very appealing. I was so impressed with it that I didn’t mind the concept’s shortcomings until after the novelty wore off. The problem with this wonderful feature is that some feeds should be given the flexibility to take up more or less space on these newspaper pages. The ability to customize this to a greater degree by “prioritizing” feeds within the layout page would make it very practical. With this feature taken to the full extent, you have the potential of building your own version of Google News. Without it, the feature is merely a unique idea.

Do I sound picky? I am when it comes to applications that I use on a daily basis.

But I think I have finally settled on one RSS aggregator: RSSReader. At least I’ve stuck with it longer than any of the others I’ve used!

The only two features I would add to it would be FeedDemon’s “newspaper” concept and tabbed browsing windows – and I can live without these for now.

I might end up moving to FeedDemon, but for getting a quick glance through a ton of information, RSSReader does it quickly, simply, and elegantly. It has the best import/export feature of any of the readers I’ve used, which is great since any day I use at least four different computers. Plus, it’s 100% freeware.

To Enjoy RSS on RSSReader:

If you haven’t already, install Microsoft’s .NET Framework(required prior to installation of RSSReader)

Download and install RSSReader

And to get you started, you can import a short sampling of my list of RSS feeds I frequent.

Will I stick with RSSReader forever? Maybe not. I could see myself shelling out the 30 bucks for FeedDemon if it progresses a little more in the areas I described, as I’d expect it to. But until then, RSSReader gets the job done. And done well.

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For more information on RSS Readers, I recommend this wiki, which gives very quick information on a number of RSS Readers, as well as links.

If RSS is a part of your Internet reading, what do you use? I am still in search of the best and most flexible

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(By the way, I also like Steven Garrity’s idea of using the new web-based kinja as a simple public weblog aggregator. With a little more customizable design, I think it would function enjoyably in this way.)

Sheesh. I am all about customization today!