Giving Opera Another Shot

Okay, so I ran across a program called Ad Muncher at BetaNews about a week ago, and decided to try Opera 8 again using it in the background. While Ad Muncher creates some problems (specifically, using FilePlanet with K-Meleon), it works very well with Opera. But it's shareware with a 30-day timeout, and I don't think it's worth $25 when I can just use Firefox with the Adblock extension.

And that's a shame, because Opera 8 really is vastly improved over the six and seven branches. There are still issues with standards compliance; I'm writing this in Opera and the Blogger preview function doesn't work at all. But it's nice and fast and most of the interface weirdness is gone (or maybe I've just gotten used to it). I also like the download manager, which is integrated into a new tab, more than Firefox's and at least as much as I like K-Meleon's. Unfortunately, it's cluttered up more than ever thanks to feature creep, though the download size is still relatively small at about two-thirds the size of Firefox 1.0.3. They've also gone the Netscape route by planting links to Opera all over the UI. You get five Opera bookmarks, two Opera searches, an Opera home page, and of course those big Opera banners in the free version.

So basically, its the best Opera yet, but does that warrant spending $40 to register it when Firefox, K-Meleon, and Avant Browser are all freeware and can handle everything Opera has to offer except email? And Thunderbird is also OSS and therefore free as well. Sure, its 5.7MB, but its also the best freeware email client ever written.

I'll keep using Opera 8 until the Ad Muncher trial expires, but then I'm done.

Update, 11:00pm:

Almost forgot about this. I realize that the Opera people are excited about actually having a popular product for once, but really, what the hell is this?

Blogger Needs More Templates

Well, it's been a few months, so it's time for another template shift. Why? Because I bore easily, and I spend more time staring at this blog than any of you guys, whoever you are. This new template actually required very little modification. All I did was throw in my links.

I've decided to simplify. I've uninstalled Mozilla Suite and Opera, and I'm going to stop reviewing them. I know what works for me, and I'm sticking to it. I will continue to tell you what I think about significant new releases of Firefox, K-Meleon, Thunderbird, and Avant, as well as anything else that works for me. I'm still focusing on open-source software, because, let's face it, that's where the bleeding-edge software comes from.

And speaking of, as soon as I can trick my ISP into letting me download the gargantuan OpenOffice ISO, I'll tell you whether you should uninstall MS Office and throw the CD into the microwave to watch the pretty colors.

More Opera News, and Also Aliens

Before I get around to the new Opera release, there's something more pressing I need to talk about.

Martians!

Maybe. But kinda likely, possibly. The details are technical and boring, but still, friggin' Martians! I really hope conclusive evidence of life on Mars is found, and the sooner the better. There's the whole staggering development in the way we view life itself on a cosmic scale thing, but there's also the prospect of watching a very vocal group of American creationists squirm while trying to explain why there's nothing in the Bible about life on another planet. Little green men! Suck on that!

Anyway, yeah, Opera 8 has gone final. Since one or two Mozilla people have mentioned this as being a pretty important release, I figured I'd take a look. So far, I haven't seen any significant changes between Opera 8 final and the first Opera 8 beta, and I wasn't too thrilled with that. It's pretty and all, but I agree with Asa: the UI is just not intuitive at all, and there needs to be a free version without that goddamn ad banner. Take away features, make it nagware, whatever. Just drop those ads. And how hard is it to make the status bar active by default?

Firefox 1.0.3, OSS, and Me

Final builds of Firefox 1.0.3 and Mozilla Suite 1.7.7 were released late last week. These are literally the state-of-the-art browsers now, incorporating fixes for recently discovered JavaScript security holes and a new class of pop-ups, as well as the stability upgrades you get with every MoFo software update. And speaking of, the new Mozilla Update site has gone live. No major UI changes; it just works now.

I've managed to get around most of my modem crash issues by browsing the problem sites with K-Meleon, my second-favorite browser, with images turned off. One of K-Meleon's default toolbars is something called a "Privacy Bar" (disabled by default) that allows you to disable or enable cookies, images, Java, Javascript, Pop-ups, or Flash with one click. Between Firefox, K-Meleon, Thunderbird, Avant Browser (for sites that render best in IE), and musikCube (for its flawless freedb integration), I probably have the most complete internet suite I've ever used. Every one of those apps is freeware, and all but Avant are open-source. OSS is the cutting edge now, there's just no questioning it anymore. If you don't believe me, just take a look at TheOpenCD.org.

And that reminds me, I need to download a new GTK environment.

Update: While I'm watching this GTK update slowly heave itself onto my backup hard drive, I thought I'd mention that I've finally gotten some speakers for my PC. I was at Walmart the other day and I dropped a fat 25 bucks for an Altec Lansing 2.1 set. The satellites have virtually no high-end, but musikCube's 18-band EQ compensates for that. The little subwoofer, though, is surprisingly powerful. The whole setup carries very well throughout the house, but only when I'm using Cube or PowerDVD, which also has excellent inherent audio. I don't think I'll ever switch from a good set of headphones for gaming, though. I also bought my mom a mid-grade Logitech optical mouse. All she does is email and Pogo, but she needed it.

Hitachi Needs Counseling

This Get Perpendicular flash movie is absolutely the most bizarre thing I've seen all year (and yes, I saw the "dolphin-man" episode of South Park). The fact that it was made by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies makes it even more painful. There's just no reason for this to exist. Why explain some new data-storage method in a Schoolhouse Rock-style cartoon, complete with disco music? Why? Now my brain hurts.

Anyway, some former Mozilla employees have left to form a startup called Round Two, which seems to be a reorganization of the MozSource project. Hard to say right now if they will only be developing Firefox extensions, or if they will be releasing a custom version of the browser at some point. Nice looking site, though.

Finally, I ran across a German-made variant of the open-source musikCube called wxMusik. Looks like it functions exactly like Cube, but with tons and tons of superlative content added. Some people might call that "feature-creep" or "bloatware." Not me. But some people.

Firefox and musikCube Extensions

Those two Cube plugins I mentioned earlier, miniPlayer and Playlist Import/Export, work very well. Mini in particular is a must-have if you use Cube as your primary mp3 player (like I do), and the playlist importer is convenient if you've already saved some complicated playlists as .m3u's.

And I figured I'd put up a list of the Firefox extensions I use, because everyone else seems to be doing that, and I've never been one to stray far from the herd. And also because everybody loves lists, right? Of course they do.

Adblock
Download Manager Tweak
Image Zoom
LiveBookmark This
Show Image
Save Image in Folder
Tab Mix

I'm not currently using any Thunderbird extensions at all, but I just started using it as my primary RSS feed viewer (in addition to email) and I'll be looking around for a way to improve how it handles those subscriptions. I switched from using Firefox's LiveBoomarks because I was tired of waiting for them all to load every time I opened the browser.

Incremental musikCube Update

musikCube 0.92.2.1 was released today. No major changes, but the long list of minor ones can be found at BetaNews here. Also, the musikWiki launched yesterday. Along with the usual OSS developer info, you can find a nice help page there. I grabbed a couple of plugins from the official site today, but haven't installed them (or even unzipped them) yet. Perhaps I should have before writing this update. Oh well.

Last week I installed WindowBlinds for the first time in years and years. Surprisingly, there seems to be twice as many Win98 WB themes as WinXP themes out there. I would have thought WB would have gotten more popular over the years, given XP's lack of native themes. In any case, WB 4.5 is much more stable than I remember the older versions being, and the UI is an order of magnitude better. But there's still a noticable performance hit, on my machine anyway.

Opera is Confusing

Last time I used the Opera 8 beta I set the home page to a blank page. But that was stupid because when I opened it the other day I didn't know what the hell was going on. It turns out that Opera ties the navigation controls, address bar, tab bar, search bar, and just about everything else into the currently selected tab, so if you have no open tabs, it's literally impossible to do anything or go anywhere without selecting a link from the bookmarks context menu (or, I suppose, using that "Panels" toolbar thing).

The same day, I downloaded the browser/composer-only version of Mozilla Application Suite 1.8 beta. I don't really have a reason for that. Version 1.7.6 (and the forthcoming 1.7.7) are much more stable, and 1.8 is never going final, as it's just a Gecko test bed for future Firefox and Thunderbird releases.

My new favorite application is a WinXP/2000 mp3/ogg player called musikCube. I used this app for five minutes and swore off Winamp forever. If you take the time to maintain the id3 tags in your mp3's (specifically artist and album info), Cube is just brilliant. A totally bare-bones, elegant player with awesome playback quality and, if you want it, an 18-band equalizer. I would pay good money for this player, but, incredibly, it's open-source. Here's a screenshot.

Oh, and I finally broke down and ordered Quake III Arena from id Software. I'm expecting it tomorrow or Monday.

April Idiots

I'd forgotten how much I hate the internet on the first of April. Slashdot was completely useless today, spammed to hell with fake stories. Stories so stupid one look at the RSS feed was enough to keep me away. All day long, the only bearable prank story came, not surprisingly, from a comment posted at Asa's mozillaZine blog. Somewhat more surprisingly, it comes from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. Finally, conclusive evidence of water on Mars.

Anyway. The Mozilla Application Suite will officially remain at 1.7.6 and receive only security updates from now on. But the project will apparently continue, under a new name to be announced in the future, and not supported by Mofo. I still don't understand why anyone would want to continue to develop what is essentially a better version of Netscape 6, but then again, I don't understand why Ashlee Simpson is famous, and she's got a multi-million-dollar home and her own TV show.