Recent Posts

226

General Software Discussion / Re: Current IE8 build renders the ACID2 Test correctly!

« Last post by nontroppo on December 20, 2007, 12:43 PM »

A compelling reason to upgrade to IE7?

How about real PNG support, better CSS, and javascript improvements!? Those who don't upgrade to IE7 are ensuring the even more sluggish adoption of critical standards. Web developers still see large IE6 stats and keep the horrid hacks in place, the awful table-based mess of semantic offensiveness. Everyone should upgrade to IE7, and ideally also run an alternative browser as their main portal to the internets.

IE8 does Acid2 - congrats to the IE team, but let us note that Acid2 is only a subset of relevant CSS rules. Their DOM support is so atrocious it is not worth even discussing...

227

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a Profile Desktops

« Last post by nontroppo on December 15, 2007, 04:00 AM »

it is pretty cheap though - he even states "give a good reason and get visidesk for free"

still, a more modern version of this coded by you would be even better

228

General Software Discussion / Re: My Latest Stupid Internet Explorer Question.

« Last post by nontroppo on December 15, 2007, 03:48 AM »

I don't see any errors on http://www.mogware.c...leHamster/index.html - it is google's tracking script IINM (perhaps geotargetted?). Anyway I'd suggest posting it on the mogware forum.

229

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a Profile Desktops

« Last post by nontroppo on December 14, 2007, 04:10 PM »

While downloading lovely hi-res prints of Hieronymous Bosch and Dante's Inferno, I saw this linked at the great visipix, have you tried it:

http://visipix.dynal...esk_intro/index.html

Download: http://visipix.dynal...m/sites-en/visidesk/

230

General Software Discussion / Re: My Latest Stupid Internet Explorer Question.

« Last post by nontroppo on December 14, 2007, 07:59 AM »

Why is FileHamster triggereing IE at all - it doesn't here (I have Plus installed), do you use a specific plugin? Try posting that error on their forum, they're a friendly bunch ;-)

Another annoying thing IE does is trigger popups when it thinks a script has looped too many times, this can be fixed: http://support.micro...oft.com/?kbid=175500

231

General Software Discussion / Re: Keyboard Navigation for Google

« Last post by nontroppo on December 12, 2007, 12:57 PM »

By the way, for Opera users not wanting to use the Google-specific keyboard options here are the analagous functions in the default keymap:

[Select]

Key           Action
-----------------------
Shift+Down    Selects the next result.
Shift+Up      Selects the previous result.
<Enter>       Opens the selected result.
Tab           Puts the cursor in the search box.
<Esc>         Removes the cursor from the search box.

232

General Software Discussion / Re: Keyboard Navigation for Google

« Last post by nontroppo on December 12, 2007, 12:38 PM »

And if you want the Alternate views enhancement, add &esrch=RefinementBarTopViewTabs to the search URL.

http://www.google.co...nementBarTopViewTabs

233

General Software Discussion / Keyboard Navigation for Google

« Last post by nontroppo on December 12, 2007, 12:28 PM »

There is a pretty cool experimental feature for Google search enabling keyboard navigation. To enable this in Opera's search term, Preferences > Search > Google > Edit and change the URL to (note &esrch=BetaShortcuts is all I've added):

[Select]

http://www.google.com/search?q=%s&sourceid=opera&num=%i&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&esrch=BetaShortcuts

Then after doing a "g searchterm", you use:

[Select]

Key Action
--------------------------------------------
J Selects the next result.
K Selects the previous result.
O Opens the selected result.
<Enter> Opens the selected result.
/ Puts the cursor in the search box.
<Esc> Removes the cursor from the search box.

I normally use Opera excellent spatial navigation and fast-forward and back, but this is a nice addition. You can make this change in Firefox at least though I've forgotten how.

Test it here...

234

General Software Discussion / Re: Noah is almost fantastic, but what is it?

« Last post by nontroppo on December 12, 2007, 12:18 PM »

nontroppo, can you post the thread in the opera forums here?
I'd like to give it my support.

I didn't make a proposal in the wishlist but debated directly with developers etc. Access points were asked for bookmarks a long time ago; if you want to read more:

http://my.opera.com/...or-everything-part-i
http://my.opera.com/...0/the-curses-of-hope - item 2

One Opera employee would ideally like a CLI for Opera, kind of like FARR for the browser, this would require tagging and unified data for full effectivity:

http://my.opera.com/...7/unleash-the-powers

I wrote a manifesto for unified data storage about 2 years ago but that is not publically available...

235

General Software Discussion / Re: Realtime Disk Access monitoring?

« Last post by nontroppo on December 11, 2007, 06:40 AM »

Although the initial filter dialog *is* quite daunting ;-) it is as fast to use as filemon's. I then use the toolbar file/reg/process toggle buttons and everything is faster from there on. PM has a much better logging engine than FM; when tracking down a huge performance regression in Opera startup using filemon, FM would simply choke to death, so someone had to binary patch it to temporarily fix it. PM easily handled the same situation without breaking into a sweat (reliability wins over simplicity)...

236

General Software Discussion / Re: Realtime Disk Access monitoring?

« Last post by nontroppo on December 10, 2007, 08:04 AM »

Process Monitor is the update of Filemon, and it is *much* better. Most importantly, it has great post-capture analysis. You can filter by application then sort by file and access type; this is great for beta testing apps...

237

Living Room / Re: World's Fastest Vista Notebook: The Apple MacBook Pro

« Last post by nontroppo on December 09, 2007, 05:18 PM »

...some of the Dell reliability.

-Ralf Maximus (December 09, 2007, 12:45 PM)

Yikes, UK Dells must be built differently to yours; most laptops purchased in our University are Dells, and they break with an uncanny reliability ;-)

238

Living Room / Re: World's Fastest Vista Notebook: The Apple MacBook Pro

« Last post by nontroppo on December 09, 2007, 06:32 AM »

Getting past the fact it's only got one mouse button

I thought this too for the first 10 seconds of using my macbook. But the *great* feature of Apple trackpads is you simply chord two fingertips and click. This is simply faster and causes less strain on my hands; it really is better than a second button. Oh, and two fingertips and slide scrolls horizontally, vertically or both - this is just fast and ergonomically brilliant. I dread using my older Acer with its crappy Synaptics hotzones for scrolling or contorting my hand to its 3 buttons.

I would never go back to a standard laptop trackpad ever again. This is one case where Apple hardware got things really right (they are doing penance for also designing the mess that is the mightymouse). IMO.

Oh, this may sound pointless, but the Apple laptop power supplies are so much better designed. Smaller  overall, you can swap the wall->supply cable with a direct plug for portability, and with little popup wings to neatly fold cables they make fornicating-snakes cable hell when travelling less hellish. A small detail but it does make a difference.

239

General Software Discussion / Re: Mouse Gestures

« Last post by nontroppo on December 09, 2007, 06:13 AM »

Ah, StrokeIt - I used since it was a young pup. I'm always amazed how few people use mouse gestures. I love the keyboard too but sometimes one has the hand on the mouse and it is quicker to gesture than to click through menus or move to the keyboard. Whe you guide people to use simple gestures in e.g. Opera they often have a halleluja moment. The only thing I missed in StrokeIt is was flipback and flipforward — where you click left then right or visa versa. It is a blazing fast gesture great for navigation.

For the one other OS X user out there, XGestures is a fantastic gesture system:

http://alum.hampshir...du/~bjk02/xGestures/

240

Find And Run Robot / Re: Lifehacker interview with Quicksilver Developer on its Future

« Last post by nontroppo on December 08, 2007, 05:55 AM »

QS has been in a semi-abandoned state for well over a year. Nicholas has always been very clear that he didn't have time to work on it. QS is an app which is still way ahead of anything else on OS X it hasn't really suffered for this stasis at all. And the first developers are already starting to clean up the OS code base, getting more stability and hopefully moving QS forward.

http://lipidity.com/...ning-up-quicksilver/

241

General Software Discussion / Re: ghacks post: "Why I decided to uninstall my Antivirus software"

« Last post by nontroppo on December 08, 2007, 04:55 AM »

The achilles heel of SBIE is personal data - it is still possible for an app to read a file from your OS and then dial that info out onto the web. So although SBIE is very good at isolating your system(I saw a great technical review of it but can't remember where now), it cannot protect personal data in its default configuration.

242

General Software Discussion / DoMercury - another Quicksilver/FARR type program

« Last post by nontroppo on December 07, 2007, 10:41 AM »

Yep, the new skin is much better - I would get rid of the default skin, or at least make QSkin the default. DOMercury is advancing quickly! 

Why do I need to use [ALT]+[ARROW] when exploring the file system, the arrow key alone is easier.

I also got the following error a few times:

[Select]

System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
Parameter name: index
   at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentOutOfRangeException(ExceptionArgument argument, ExceptionResource resource)
   at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentOutOfRangeException()
   at DOMercury.Forms.Mercury.lbItems_DrawItem(Object sender, DrawItemEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ListBox.OnDrawItem(DrawItemEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ListBox.WmReflectDrawItem(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ListBox.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

243

General Software Discussion / Re: Noah is almost fantastic, but what is it?

« Last post by nontroppo on December 06, 2007, 08:00 PM »

The problem with metadata, as Armando clearly posited, is portability. Currently as it is Leopard has fantastic metadata support (they hired the BeOS file system designer after all!). There are some 120+ core metadata attributes for any file in my system, this is accessible from any app, or even the command-line. A daemon, mds (metadataserver), uses FSEvents notification so when any new file lands in the file system from anywhere, it scans the file and fills up as much metadata attributes as it can. Any developer can code a metadata importer to import their proprietary formats metadata in the same transparent way. All of that is immediately available via spotlight, or whatever UI you want to build round the core framework. And as a core part of the OS and file system (not some 3rd party hack on top), this service is available to all. Apple even have a way of saving this metadata on non-apple drives, where a sidecar file is generated (like XMP in some ways).

BUT - when I give my file to my colleague who is not using OS X, they can't use all that juicy metadata goodness. I and many others were hoping Vista would pick up the can from the crappy metadata support in XP, so that a bridge could be built. But alas.

Another problem is stasis. People are used to folders, they've twisted their mental models to traversing up and down hierarchies like an indecisive mountaineer; of arbitrarily having to classify something as "a" OR "b". And so though the technological base is finally there at least in one popular OS (BeOS not being so popular sadly ), adoption of it will take time, and people are wary of change. I want the future today goddamit! But until then clumsy stopgaps and programs like Noah will have to do.

244

General Software Discussion / Re: Noah is almost fantastic, but what is it?

« Last post by nontroppo on December 05, 2007, 03:32 PM »

This app appears to start down that road

But this should be done at the OS, not application level. Metadata is going to be useless in Noah when all your other applications know nothing about Noah's way of doing things. Metadata is my hobbyhorse. I've long campaigned for Opera to unify its data stores; currently we have page history, bookmarks, mail, RSS, IRC chat all in their own little fiefdoms. I wanted all this to be stored together with rich metadata, and the browser to be broken down into a data miner, in much the same way Noah is structured. But really that just pushes the problem one step further, because then that data is inaccesible to my file manager, my global search interface, and any other software that could take advantage of it.

245

General Software Discussion / Re: Run apps as non-admin with SetSafer to avoid spyware.

« Last post by nontroppo on December 05, 2007, 10:49 AM »

This thread, short on details, gives links to sudowin which seems ideal:

https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=7127.0

I agree with f0dder, escalating rights ala sudo is the way to go.

And sandboxie, is great, though I only use it infrequently (I trust Opera, and rarely run unknown apps in Windows anyway)

246

General Software Discussion / Re: Rumor: Windows Apps Running Native on Your Mac

« Last post by nontroppo on December 05, 2007, 10:45 AM »

AFAIK, OS X 10.5 have read-only support for the ZFS filesystem.

Though not confirmed, I think ZFS was going to be a new fully supported file system, but they couldn't stabilise and it got pulled, leaving only the read support (probably the write support is just disabled). The developer tools which come with Leopard enable read/write for developer testing.

247

Living Room / Re: Interesting article on homeopathy - from a medical perspective

« Last post by nontroppo on December 04, 2007, 12:08 PM »

Yes, Quackometer sits with Bad Science in my RSS subscriptions ;-)

248

General Software Discussion / Re: Rumor: Windows Apps Running Native on Your Mac

« Last post by nontroppo on December 04, 2007, 11:29 AM »

Hey f0dder, quit ruining the salacious gossip with logic   

249

General Software Discussion / Re: Noah is almost fantastic, but what is it?

« Last post by nontroppo on December 04, 2007, 09:52 AM »

When Operating systems get better metadata support, the needs for these kinds of apps will diminish. These apps are really just glue to overcome the ugly, weak folder hierarchies and lack of comprehensive search in traditional file systems. But while tagging and metadata is a wild hit on the web, OSes keep dragging their heels.

250

General Software Discussion / Re: Rumor: Windows Apps Running Native on Your Mac

« Last post by nontroppo on December 04, 2007, 09:47 AM »

According to some far-out theorising, there are claims that Apple already has a fully licenced XP API (something to do with their 5 year cross-licencing deal initiated in 1997), rumours furthering that people have seen this mythical beast already running in Cupertino:

http://www.pbs.org/c...20060420_000893.html


More smoke'n'mirrors here (better comments at least than Wired): http://origin.arstec...un-windows-apps-soon

r.e. Darwine - it works well apparently. Also there is a commercial spinoff which guarantee's compatibility with a subset of Win apps, which is pretty popular: http://www.codeweave....com/products/cxmac/