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There's no doubt that Firefox 3, and 3b4 in particular, is a fantastic improvement over Firefox 2 - addressing just about all the little quirks and annoyances which were getting in my way.

Firefox 3b4 is even faster, and on Mac OS X, beam sync has been disabled, meaning scrolling, resizing, and other UI actions feel much smoother and more comfortable.

There's one problem.

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­I've got no idea what kind of crack the UI designer was smoking. Maybe I'm just the odd web-surfer in a million - but I find that button design absolutely revolting. Not only does it completely clash with the rest of the interface, but it doesn't make much visual sense.

Why is such emphasis given to the back button? What valid reason is there for continuing the history drop-down's button around the forward button?

Thankfully, there's a way to get around this, without building a modified theme. And it's pretty simple too. Very simple.

1. Right Click (or CTRL-Click) on the toolbar, and select Customise from the resultant menu.
   

   

2. Down the bottom, select Use Small Icons and click OK.
   

   

3. Phew! A disaster averted!
   

   

Since the buttons on Minefield for Windows are even more disgusting, gaining an ultra-heavy soylent green shine in addition to the bemusing shape, I'm sure people will be glad to know the procedure works on Windows too.

1. Before:
   

   

2. During:
   

   

3. After! Over 300px of interface bloat lost! (Admittedly, the small buttons on Windows are still pretty awful.)
   

   

Update:

Firefox for Linux escapes the ugly buttons unharmed:

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This might make your computer turn into a smouldering pile of rubble. Pretty much what happened to mine.

Gotta cut back on those gaussian blurs...

I'll admit I've been working on this for some time.
Pretty close to finishing. You're looking at a web based remote access application, running an iTunes control module on a Nintendo DS. The server side is an OS X Native Objective C application, hooked into Personal Web Sharing (apache, and mod_perl*.)

• Not sure what to call this yet. We do have a codename.
• Runs on desktop browers, mobile browsers, and more - and offers a complete and completely custom interface depending on the platform.
• The interface is extensible, and customisable (on the fly) from any device.
• Uses a nice XML and AppleScript/PERL glob format for modules.
• Has a unified skin format, which cascades accross all modules
• For those that want it, an advanced Flash Web Operating system can load the modules. Yup, this is where SSOE went.

Uh.. that's about it. For now.

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*Because PERL is for real men (and women.)

Simple.

1. Open Terminal
2. Type:
   

   rm -Rf ~/.Trash/*

It's so simple! I can't believe I'd never thought of it before.
Every other method I've seen for force-emptying the trash has been a pain in the arse.

It seems, that the more people see of the Mac OS X Leopard dock, the less they like it.

Personally I really like the look of the new dock - it reminds me of the task launcher/bar from Looking Glass Desktop - in fact, it looks almost exactly the same, but it isn't as thick, green, or transparent. Admittedly, I don't use it on the side of the screen, which may have affected my judgement.

One thing I don't like about the new dock, and probably the only thing at that, is the new Dock indicators. They certainly look very good, but they aren't in the slightest bit usable. They're far too faint, and are especially hard to see when there's lots of them.

Luckily, Mac OS X's package based application structure makes it really simple (almost trivial) to edit the resources of applications on the system. As I'm sure you know already, simply right-clicking on an application or package gives the option to 'Show Package Contents', which opens a Finder window with all the resources of that application.


Opening Dock.app (/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app) allows a person with Administrator privileges on the system to replace its image resources, most of which are stored as PNG files in the /Contents/Resources folder. Virtually every dock image can be customised - including Dashboard images and icons as well.

Interestingly enough, the much reviled 'crosswalk' or 'zebra crossing' dock divider is titled 'abbeyroad.png'.


The indicator image we will be replacing is called 'indicator.png'. Mock up your own image (its dimensions must be 42x14 pixels, or some strange alignment issues can occur.)

Copy your image into the resources folder, and kill the Dock. If all goes to plan, the Dock should relaunch with the new image.

It took me some time to get it right, but here is my replacement indicator.
Here are screenshots of the development of the indicator. I was often surprised - what I thought would look good on the dock just looked awful. I think even the final version needs a lot of work, but it solves my original problem with the dock indicators not being terribly visible.

Internet Explorer is Annoying.

A symptom of Microsoft's fear of change and lack of total control in the computing industry, and its subsequent panic, Internet Explorer has long represented Microsoft's desire for complete control over the internet, users, and user's computing lives. (This is not a conspiracy theory.)

Not being an Internet Explorer user, (thankfully) I wouldn't have a problem with the browser, except for the fact that the lazy, stubborn, non standards-compliant way it was implemented means I have to do a huge amount of work to get pages working in Internet Explorer that I shouldn't have to. It severely impacts on creative possibilities, and doesn't support a whole lot of standard technologies which mean that designing pages which work in the browser is limiting, and annoying. It doesn't make sense. It is full of bugs. Its implementation was designed to force Netscape out of the market, not to actually work like it should.

Internet Explorer 7... (sigh.)

While the rest of the world moved on, and invented lots of exciting new technologies for the web, Internet Explorer 6 remained stagnant - primarily due to Microsoft's complacency. They'd all but killed off Netscape in the previous millenia, and they were completely adamant that a new competitor could not appear in the Internet Explorer saturated market.

Well, it did. Multiple times. From the ashes that were Netscape, Firefox and the Mozilla foundation appeared on the scene, and gained instant appeal with switched on Web surfers. Today, Firefox is the fastest growing browser in the world, and Internet Explorer is rapidly loosing ill-earned market share to it. (This is a Good Thing.)

Because of Firefox, Microsoft was forced to update Internet Explorer, finally including features which had been around in other browsers for almost a decade, including Transparent PNGs and Tabbed Browsing.

This was a Good Thing... but still not good enough. If you're still on IE 6, heed my call - pleease, pleaase, pleease, update to IE 7, or better still - Get Firefox. Thankyou. :)

I sincerely apologise for any delays, especially in transporting a working copy of SSOE accross to cgiffard.com, but I'm building the site with ICE v2, which technically isn't finished yet (but it will be soon.)

That said, I'm still open for business, and any queries about Web/Multimedia/Software development are welcome.