About a year ago, I posted my technique for configuring the search bar in Firefox 1.5, complaining that it was far too small in the default UI layout that comes with the web browser. In fact, this bug still exists today and has 280 votes. But then again, your vote doesn't matter. Anyway, Firefox 2 alleviated the hacking that I had to do to get the search bar to expand to fill up remaining space. There's just one tweak in Firefox 2 that I still need for perfect search bar nirvana. Read the rest of this entry ...

§351 · March 30, 2007 · Firefox, Software, Technology, Tips, Web · 5 comments ·


Added a page to keep track of Open-Source Contributions

§350 · March 26, 2007 · SiteNews · Comments Off on 2007-03-26 ·


I think Mike Shaver said it best when he stated (in a podcast here) that an Open Source project should do its best to let willing contributors get in and get out quickly. As a busy father, husband, home owner, and engineer - I don't have a lot of time to contribute to open source projects, so when I do have some time, I'd like my efforts to count. Ideally, it's best if I can find a bug to fix that will directly impact the user experience (as opposed to changing some software plumbing underneath that doesn't have any immediate user impact). In other words, as a part time contributor with not a lot of time to invest, I want my efforts to have some immediate visible benefit.

Furthermore, it's best to pick bugs (at least initially) that don't require full-scale immersions into software architectures to figure out the root of the problem. This wouldwill likely change ifas more time is spent working with such projects.

I just spent a half hour or so fixing a couple minor errors in the Basic tutorial in Inkscape. I had some back-and-forth conversations with MenTaLguY and Bryce on IRC and mailing lists earlier in the week where I learned that the tutorials, while deployed as SVG, are actually stored as DocBook format in the SVN repository. So here's how I did things using my OpenSUSE 10.2 box. Read the rest of this entry ...

§349 · March 25, 2007 · Software, SVG, Technology, Tips · Comments Off on Ink On My Fingers · Tags:


I think it would be really cool if web browsers would allow me to select cells in a HTML table in a logical way: The same way cell selection works in Microsoft Excel. All browsers that I know about presume I'm selecting a "text blob" and that means if I click in a table cell and drag downwards, it will include the entire next row of the table in my selection. But 99% of the time, I'd really like selection in HTML tables to work at the cell-level (that means dragging down would only select the cell underneath the initial one). Read the rest of this entry ...

§348 · March 21, 2007 · Software, Technology, Web · Comments Off on Cell Selection In Browsers ·


Via Arve, Apple has made a strong statement that they have IPR on the Canvas functionality. What does it mean? Read the rest of this entry ...

§347 · March 15, 2007 · Firefox, Microsoft, Software, SVG, Technology, Web · 3 comments ·