To be honest I don't use GNOME or KDE, my most common activity is browsing the web (firefox), mail (thunderbird) and most other things I do are through a terminal window. Sometimes I use other apps (openoffice, media players, etc) but that's insignificant compared to normal usage.
The Gnome interface guidelines are different to what people are used to under Windows (e.g OK and Cancel buttons in a different order) which makes it annoying when using Firefox which conforms to these guidelines, because I'm swapping between platforms all the time.
Thiw isn't a firefox problem as they designed it to fit in with the Gnome UI guidelines, but it's not going to be successful unless they get guidelines that all main Linux apps use (Gnome, KDE, and other apps that don't fit into either like OpenOffice) otherwise it's just an inconsistant mess.
I've just had a look at the bugs mentioned and they're both being worked on. Therefore it's unlikely you'll see them when 1.0 comes out. However, like I said previously, the type of person who can design a good theme is unlikely to be able to help with the other bugs
Personally I think that's a good thing too. I for one perceive it as really annoying and intrusive when I install an app that insists on planting it's icons all over my desktop
Good news is they've checked into the installer options where you'd like to place your icons on the Windows desktop so you've now got full control over this (I think you might have to do a custom install which I do anyways)
You can do so in Firefox but they're implemented differently in Firefox than the suite.
If you click on a link to add a sidebar panel then it'll ask you where you want to file a bookmark, then to open the sidebar you can look in the appropriate place in bookmarks.
This bookmark approach also means you can turn any bits of HTML into a sidebar panel. Just bookmark a page, go to properties and check "Open this bookmark in the sidebar"
Re:And what was Firefix was for, again ??
on
A New Look For Firefox
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Firefox was *supposed* to be a *fast* lean-and-mean browser. One reason was given that bundling IE with OS works because people are too lazy to download another browser. That gap WIDENS as the download size increases. Already Firefox is 10+ MB!!!!
Don't be such a troll. The download size for Firefox hasn't been anywhere near 10 meg (except perhaps before they stripped out all the app suite stuff).
If you look at the latest branch builds you'll see that the current download is below 5 meg on Windows.
Re:Did they fix the Cancel/Ok buttons?
on
A New Look For Firefox
·
· Score: 3, Informative
That order is only in Mac/Linux builds.
The reason for it in Mac is because all apps should be that way due to the UI guidelines.
As for Linux apparently it's in the GNOME UI guidelines. However, I rarely use any other GNOME apps in Linux, most things I do are either in browser or in a terminal window - therefore the button ordering is frustrating for me when I'm in Linux because I switch between Windows and Linux more than Linux and Mac.
But technically they're doing the right thing - although ideally it'd only display in that order if you're actually using GNOME.
Well it is a pre-release, they're working hard to make sure that this is fixed before 1.0 - I think it'll be fixed in 0.9 too once all the theme changes have landed.
The problem is when you debate every little detail to death you get a browser like the Mozilla suite which progressed relatively slowly because everything was a committee decision.
Yes I do think this could have been handled a *lot* better because Arvid but a lot of work into this excellent theme and now is word will be getting a lot less attention as it'll now just be a downloadable theme on update.mozilla.org
Also as you can see from the forum thread mentioned in the original article you can see the information process wasn't the best.
However, ultimately difficult decisions have to be made and they can't satisfy everyone all of the time.
If you look at the original charter for m/b, Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox you'll see that they intended from the very beginning to have only a small group of people making the decisions.
To quote:
The size of the team working on the trunk is one of the many reasons that development on the trunk is so slow. We feel that fewer dependencies (no marketing constraints), faster innovation (no UI committees), and more freedom to experiment (no backwards compatibility requirements) will lead to a better end product.
I have to admit a lot of people are going to make that mistake, perhaps calling it 'winstripe' in the checkins makes people think it'll be more Mac like than it really is going to be
This is not informative. That's not the new theme. The article at the top points to the thread with the discussion about the new theme.
This is a port of the Mac Pinstripe theme, although the new theme based on Pinstripe but called Winstripe (the GNOME version is called GNOMEstripe - not Linstripe!) I assume these names won't be used in the finished product though.
Anyway back on track, although Winstripe will be similar to Pinstripe the icons will look more Windows like and therefore not a total Mac lookalike.
I did prefer the old look, but then again the new one hasn't been finalised yet and is still under active development (it's been checked in but not enabled yet).
Whatever the case, 0.9 will be an excellent release and well worth trying. However, please remember this release will have some major new features (better extension/theme management, migration of prefs from other browsers such as IE, Netscape and Opera) and then focus will be on polish and stability up to a successful 1.0 release.
How long ago was it since you tired an alternative? If it was an old Mozilla release then you're behind the times, Mozilla is much improved now, and Firefox is similar to IE in many ways and better in others that most IE users I know got to grips easily with it.
Perhaps your best bet is to give the alternatives a try again when Firefox 1.0 comes out. The forthcoming 0.9 will be brilliant, but there's some new features in there (including seamless profile migration from IE, Netscape and Opera) and the new features may need some more testimg.
I always click on them and if they offer me some free info in the post I go for it.
For these reasons: 1) A higher clickthrough means the marketing people see more success and continue to fund slashdot by advertising there - Linux websites could soon be self sustaining because of MS;)
2) It's good to see what MS are saying about Linux - it means we're better prepared to counter their FUD and also helps us think of areas where Linux is in need of improvement.
3) If the ad is pay per clickthrough then the ads will run out of circulation quicker and therefore those who are more likely to belive the FUD are less likely to see it - unless MS spend a lot more money!
We can then think of objective responses to all MS's points and can explain to our bosses or clients why MS isn't always the answer (sometimes it is the right tool for the job - usually on the desktop, but I think MS trying to crush Linux with marketing dollars is somewhat immoral - of course crushing free software will be an almost impossible task)
(One of the disadvantages of having a web design company is that you have to see the web in the same way as 90% of your customers and visitors, heheh)
Nothing to stop you using Firefox for personal browsing and indeed you need to have some Mozilla variant and Opera on your machine to see how the vast majority of the other 10% see your sites.
Well I'm running office XP under crossover office just fine. I'm not sure if there's any later version of office out now but that works for me and is more recent than 2000.
Other things that work fine for me in crossover is MSIE 6 (well to IE's limited ability anyway), Media Player and Trillian.
However, all my needs these days are really met by Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice - so I use crossover very few times.
However if I did need to use the complex features of MS Office that are not yet in OpenOffice I'd definitely recommend Crossover
I'd love to get an account just so I could see what it does that's so special that it only works with a limited set of browsers.
Although personally I use Firefox and so should have no problems that's no good for those that prefer to use Opera or something else.
Out of interest I know some post in an earlier slashdot discussion said they'd tried to set opera to identify as IE but it used some ActiveX when you did that (can you confirm that), have you tried setting it to identify as Mozilla and post your results here.
Now what I think they should do is what MS done with hotmail in a way. Make an addon to Thunderbird so that they can use it to read mails through Gmail while still showing a text ad pane in the mail client - this would obviously be free... for a small monthly fee then make Gmail available through IMAP ad free.
I know many would be able to get round the advertising in the add on, however these same people can easily disable Google ads through userContent.css or the adblock extension anyway. The vast majority of people would just leave the ads in as they'd know no better and would help the adoption of Thunderbird and lower Outlook usage which is good for the Internet in general.
Of course I believe that Google needs to fully embrace the main alternatives to IE because I strongly believe that a few competitors in the web browser market is what we need to reduce vendor lock in
Well GNER can't do anything about the commuter trains as they don't run any, all they do are InterCity type services which are usually OK (and they have lengthened some of their trains to ensure people can get a seat)
They're spending money on this to increase the number of people who want to travel on the railway therefore increasing income so more money can be spent on improving services.
Most of the safety issues are with Network Rail rather than the train companies themselves.
Oh well, add South West Trains to the companies enlightened enough to offer their customers the choice of whether they want to smoke or not. What's wrong with giving people the option, no one's forcing you to use the smoking carriage.
Apart from that I think South West Trains were appalling, only slighly better than the now defunct Connex and I've personally never been in a smoking carriage of a South West Train so it must only be certain services not all of them.
BTW I'm not a smoker, but I see nothing wrong in offering choice. I do travel with smokers a lot though and would rather have them happy rather than being in a bad mood all the way.
Slashdot Mirror
user.js is a file you can create manually in your profile directory (where prefs.js lives)
user.js takes the same values as prefs.js but the values in user.js will always override the prefs.js values
To be honest I don't use GNOME or KDE, my most common activity is browsing the web (firefox), mail (thunderbird) and most other things I do are through a terminal window. Sometimes I use other apps (openoffice, media players, etc) but that's insignificant compared to normal usage.
The Gnome interface guidelines are different to what people are used to under Windows (e.g OK and Cancel buttons in a different order) which makes it annoying when using Firefox which conforms to these guidelines, because I'm swapping between platforms all the time.
Thiw isn't a firefox problem as they designed it to fit in with the Gnome UI guidelines, but it's not going to be successful unless they get guidelines that all main Linux apps use (Gnome, KDE, and other apps that don't fit into either like OpenOffice) otherwise it's just an inconsistant mess.
It should be fixed in the latest branch builds. For updates on Firefox development see The Burning Edge
I've just had a look at the bugs mentioned and they're both being worked on. Therefore it's unlikely you'll see them when 1.0 comes out. However, like I said previously, the type of person who can design a good theme is unlikely to be able to help with the other bugs
Good news is they've checked into the installer options where you'd like to place your icons on the Windows desktop so you've now got full control over this (I think you might have to do a custom install which I do anyways)
You can do so in Firefox but they're implemented differently in Firefox than the suite.
If you click on a link to add a sidebar panel then it'll ask you where you want to file a bookmark, then to open the sidebar you can look in the appropriate place in bookmarks.
This bookmark approach also means you can turn any bits of HTML into a sidebar panel. Just bookmark a page, go to properties and check "Open this bookmark in the sidebar"
Firefox was *supposed* to be a *fast* lean-and-mean browser. One reason was given that bundling IE with OS works because people are too lazy to download another browser. That gap WIDENS as the download size increases. Already Firefox is 10+ MB!!!!
Don't be such a troll. The download size for Firefox hasn't been anywhere near 10 meg (except perhaps before they stripped out all the app suite stuff).
If you look at the latest branch builds you'll see that the current download is below 5 meg on Windows.
That order is only in Mac/Linux builds.
The reason for it in Mac is because all apps should be that way due to the UI guidelines.
As for Linux apparently it's in the GNOME UI guidelines. However, I rarely use any other GNOME apps in Linux, most things I do are either in browser or in a terminal window - therefore the button ordering is frustrating for me when I'm in Linux because I switch between Windows and Linux more than Linux and Mac.
But technically they're doing the right thing - although ideally it'd only display in that order if you're actually using GNOME.
Well it is a pre-release, they're working hard to make sure that this is fixed before 1.0 - I think it'll be fixed in 0.9 too once all the theme changes have landed.
Yes I do think this could have been handled a *lot* better because Arvid but a lot of work into this excellent theme and now is word will be getting a lot less attention as it'll now just be a downloadable theme on update.mozilla.org
Also as you can see from the forum thread mentioned in the original article you can see the information process wasn't the best.
However, ultimately difficult decisions have to be made and they can't satisfy everyone all of the time.
If you look at the original charter for m/b, Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox you'll see that they intended from the very beginning to have only a small group of people making the decisions.
To quote:
The size of the team working on the trunk is one of the many reasons that development on the trunk is so slow. We feel that fewer dependencies (no marketing constraints), faster innovation (no UI committees), and more freedom to experiment (no backwards compatibility requirements) will lead to a better end product.
I have to admit a lot of people are going to make that mistake, perhaps calling it 'winstripe' in the checkins makes people think it'll be more Mac like than it really is going to be
This is not informative. That's not the new theme. The article at the top points to the thread with the discussion about the new theme.
This is a port of the Mac Pinstripe theme, although the new theme based on Pinstripe but called Winstripe (the GNOME version is called GNOMEstripe - not Linstripe!) I assume these names won't be used in the finished product though.
Anyway back on track, although Winstripe will be similar to Pinstripe the icons will look more Windows like and therefore not a total Mac lookalike.
Well remember the people who design themes aren't the same sort of people who can fix resource leaks!
Also have you got a bug number for this? I've not had any major problems with Mozilla or Firefox for ages.
I did prefer the old look, but then again the new one hasn't been finalised yet and is still under active development (it's been checked in but not enabled yet).
Whatever the case, 0.9 will be an excellent release and well worth trying. However, please remember this release will have some major new features (better extension/theme management, migration of prefs from other browsers such as IE, Netscape and Opera) and then focus will be on polish and stability up to a successful 1.0 release.
How long ago was it since you tired an alternative? If it was an old Mozilla release then you're behind the times, Mozilla is much improved now, and Firefox is similar to IE in many ways and better in others that most IE users I know got to grips easily with it.
Perhaps your best bet is to give the alternatives a try again when Firefox 1.0 comes out. The forthcoming 0.9 will be brilliant, but there's some new features in there (including seamless profile migration from IE, Netscape and Opera) and the new features may need some more testimg.
I always click on them and if they offer me some free info in the post I go for it.
;)
For these reasons:
1) A higher clickthrough means the marketing people see more success and continue to fund slashdot by advertising there - Linux websites could soon be self sustaining because of MS
2) It's good to see what MS are saying about Linux - it means we're better prepared to counter their FUD and also helps us think of areas where Linux is in need of improvement.
3) If the ad is pay per clickthrough then the ads will run out of circulation quicker and therefore those who are more likely to belive the FUD are less likely to see it - unless MS spend a lot more money!
We can then think of objective responses to all MS's points and can explain to our bosses or clients why MS isn't always the answer (sometimes it is the right tool for the job - usually on the desktop, but I think MS trying to crush Linux with marketing dollars is somewhat immoral - of course crushing free software will be an almost impossible task)
Nothing to stop you using Firefox for personal browsing and indeed you need to have some Mozilla variant and Opera on your machine to see how the vast majority of the other 10% see your sites.
Well I'm running office XP under crossover office just fine. I'm not sure if there's any later version of office out now but that works for me and is more recent than 2000.
Other things that work fine for me in crossover is MSIE 6 (well to IE's limited ability anyway), Media Player and Trillian.
However, all my needs these days are really met by Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice - so I use crossover very few times.
However if I did need to use the complex features of MS Office that are not yet in OpenOffice I'd definitely recommend Crossover
I'd love to get an account just so I could see what it does that's so special that it only works with a limited set of browsers.
Although personally I use Firefox and so should have no problems that's no good for those that prefer to use Opera or something else.
Out of interest I know some post in an earlier slashdot discussion said they'd tried to set opera to identify as IE but it used some ActiveX when you did that (can you confirm that), have you tried setting it to identify as Mozilla and post your results here.
Now what I think they should do is what MS done with hotmail in a way. Make an addon to Thunderbird so that they can use it to read mails through Gmail while still showing a text ad pane in the mail client - this would obviously be free... for a small monthly fee then make Gmail available through IMAP ad free.
I know many would be able to get round the advertising in the add on, however these same people can easily disable Google ads through userContent.css or the adblock extension anyway. The vast majority of people would just leave the ads in as they'd know no better and would help the adoption of Thunderbird and lower Outlook usage which is good for the Internet in general.
Of course I believe that Google needs to fully embrace the main alternatives to IE because I strongly believe that a few competitors in the web browser market is what we need to reduce vendor lock in
Well GNER can't do anything about the commuter trains as they don't run any, all they do are InterCity type services which are usually OK (and they have lengthened some of their trains to ensure people can get a seat)
GNER press release
GNER WiFi site
The full rollout hasn't commenced yet but you can find out which trains are already running with WiFi
The on board menu
They're spending money on this to increase the number of people who want to travel on the railway therefore increasing income so more money can be spent on improving services.
Most of the safety issues are with Network Rail rather than the train companies themselves.
Most GNER trains are electric, just the ones to Aberdeen and Inverness need to be diesel although they may be used occaisionally on other services
Oh well, add South West Trains to the companies enlightened enough to offer their customers the choice of whether they want to smoke or not. What's wrong with giving people the option, no one's forcing you to use the smoking carriage.
Apart from that I think South West Trains were appalling, only slighly better than the now defunct Connex and I've personally never been in a smoking carriage of a South West Train so it must only be certain services not all of them.
BTW I'm not a smoker, but I see nothing wrong in offering choice. I do travel with smokers a lot though and would rather have them happy rather than being in a bad mood all the way.
They cite customer demand for the removal of smoking on Virgin, so write to them and show them it's not so.