The substr function of the String takes an index and an length, not two indexes, so eval( "12345".substr(0, (5-1)) ) returns the (5-1) characters starting at index 0; that is, "1234".
Re: Greasemonkey
on
Firefox Hacks
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Speaking as one of the "cognoscenti" who contributed to the book, I'd say that yes, Greasemonkey is a bit too new to have made it into the book. When I came onboard in late October 2004, most of the hacks had already been thought up and allocated. The deadline for the first draft of the hacks was November 22, and contributor's reviews were due by December 11.
Looking at the CVS repository for Greasemonkey ( http://www.mozdev.org/source/browse/greasemonkey/ ), it looks like the oldest files are four months old, which means that yes, Greasemonkey is too new to have had a chance to get in to the book. I imagine that it'll *probably* be featured in any subsequent editions. The problem is that Greasemonkey is really quite code-centric, far more so than most of the stuff in the last few chapters, and those chapters are already striking some as "too technical." Writing a hack would be tricky, as you'd have two main options, neither of which are particularly appealing:
* Delve into the nuts-and-bolts of programming to show users how to Get Stuff Done with Greasemonkey, which is outside the scope of the book, or * treat The Code That Does Stuff as magic, and use e.g. Butler as an example of what can be done.
Of course, hacks.oreilly.com does allow you to submit your own hacks. If you want a job done right...
Re:What could firefox hacks possibly cover?
on
Firefox In Print
·
· Score: 1
Actually, yes, there are hacks on modifying the chrome XUL/JavaScript/CSS that defines the behavior and appearance of Firefox's interface.(Basically, the same thing extensions do.)
I don't recall offhand whether *compiling* the C++ source is discussed.
Yes, blanks can, in fact, be dangerous. I remember a comment from one of the guys responsible for the guns in the Matrix, and he commented that at close range, the force from a blank can be almost as deadly as a regular bullet. Shoot someone, at close range, with a blank, and they just might die. Not good when that person is a civilian paying your salary.
A much simpler solution presented itself to me some time ago: put a wall between myself and the computer.
Well, actually, the secret here is that the wall behind my monitor is very thin wood paneling (3 or 4 mm) separating the main basement from the workroom, which isn't used much. Cables thus run from the desk in the basement through a 2" x 3" hole in the paneling under the desk and into the computer. By closing the door that separates the two rooms, I simply cannot hear the computer, even during hard drive activity and full fans blasting.
There is, of course, one unfortunate aspect to this: I have to take about five steps to access the CD drive; this problem could be solved by buying an external drive, but I don't use the CD drive often enough for this to be a problem. The benefits, however, are twofold: no computer sounds, as previously mentioned, and also, because of the colder air in the other room and the full-power fans, I can run a 2.4 GHz P4 overclocked to 3.0 GHz at 27 degrees Celcius idle, maxing out at 35 degrees C under full load.
Oh, yes: the hole I mentioned earlier... I named it Glory
"As gaming becomes more mainstream, it's inevitable that many girls will join the ranks of the die-hard gamer. Gaming is typically reserved for those with that extra chromosome, which poses the question; in a world dominated by the male sex, why do women choose to put themselves in the position of the minority? As a female gamer, Dots @ Snackbar Games discusses reasons why it's ok for girls to enjoy gaming just as much as the guys do."
It seems like a rather simplistic view to ask a question like this, because it seems to imply that the only difference between females and males are, say, their genitalia. It reminds me of the Dr. Seuss book The Sneetches, in which half the Sneetches had a star on their belly, while half did not, and machines that could add or remove the star caused a great many rhymes and so on... the point is, the "ranks of the die-hard gamer" are not asking whether you have stars on your belly or not; if you want to join, you play games.
Perhaps, as Steven Pinker discussed in his book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, the reason that more girls aren't gamers is that they simply aren't interested. The book points out that the entry ratios for male and female applicants to undergrad math/science/engineering courses are often about 50:50, but many more female students than male decide to persue other interests; when interviewed, they often reveal that they attended the math/sci/eng. course due to pressure from family or teachers.
Pinker also makes note of the fact that while professional women (snicker) do often make less money than their male counterparts, they usually do so because they place a higher priority on leaving the office in time to spend time with their children and families than do most corporate-ladder climbers missing a chromosomal arm; they are willing to trade money and status for things that males are not.
Of course, I'm not trying to make sweeping generalizations, shoving people into cubbyholes, but statistically, this is what seems to happen.
You'll need a number of things to even have a chance of being successful. Keep in mind that you'll be competing against things like the iTunes Music Store (hopefully coming to Windows by the end of 2003); thus, price per song will have to be less than a dollar; not a big deal.
Selection is important, but not in the same way as with popular, "name-brand" songs/artists; this is indie music, after all, and so the specific songs won't be as important as the general number (and don't forget quality somewhere in there...)
Having a good UI will be vital: people should be able to find the songs they want easily, find other songs to match their preferences, etc.
Providing artwork is a good idea. I really can't stress enough how important it is to have a good interface, especially with something like this.
"It's obvious it will only ever be a marginal product on a even more marginal platform."
So, not only does Chimera suck, Mac OS X sucks harder. Am I translating that right?
I think what he meant by the word "
marginal" was that Mac OS X has, at best, maybe 6% of the computer market. Of that six percent, probably less than 20% use Chimera as their default browser. That is to say, marginal relating to size, not quality.
(at last glance there was still no button to close a tab).
That's because there doesn't need to be. Instead, Command-W has been overloaded to close the currently open tab, and if there are no tabs open, then to close the window. Or, you could add such a button to Chimera's toolbar. Or, if you've downloaded CocoaGestures, you can use mouse gesutures to close tabs (and windows), and to cycle through tabs.
"If you can't read the titles, the advantage of tabs evaporates."
There are, in fact, some instances where the titles of tabs don't even have to be present in order for the tabs to function correctly. The most common instance of this type of situation would be looking at a series of images, where one opens a series of tabs, each containing one picture. The series of images can then be looked at sequentially, and when you're done, you're back at your starting location.
"it's hard to beat the ease of use of command-` for cycling through an application's open windows."
I'll tell you a secret: Goldilocks
hates command-`; it's either too fast or too slow. If the Command key and the ` key are both held down together, then the windows cycle too fast for the eye to be able to discern what the content of each window is before the next one flashes in front of it. If the Command key is held down and the ` is tapped, however, it will take about a second per page to register the contents of each page. Tabs are random access; windows are serial access.
"tabs are a bad solution to a problem that we don't have."
Tabs are not a perfect solution, I'll agree. However, saying they're a solution to a problem that
we don't have is rather... unthoughtful of you. Just because YOU don't have a certain problem doesn't mean others do not.
I suspect that the main problem tabs were developed against was that in most browsers, if you opened a link in a new window, the new window eclipsed the old one, forcing you to either abandon your old perusal, or fight the UI to get the right window back to the front. Now, yes, OmniWeb (and Safari) allow you to open new windows in the background, but there are still a few disadvantages to tabs here: even in Safari, opening a new window is slower and more resource intensive, as well as more distracting, than opening a new tab.
Re: Juxtaposition of windows
The central issue with this is screen space; most people are, I would think, browsing the web at a resolution very close to 1024 x 768 on a monitor that is maybe 17 or 19 inches. At these screen sizes, there really just isn't enough room to look at two web pages side by side, unless you make the browser windows unbearably small.
Screen space also crops up with multiple staggered browser
windows, although since the multi-windows thing is really more personal taste than anything else, I'll not bother making any sort of argument about it.
You talk about "all tabs or all windows;" well, fine, it's all within the same browser. If you don't want to use tabs, you don't have to, but please, whatever other arguments you may make about the abstract shortcomings of tabbed browsing, please try to remember that millions of people find them a useful method of organizing their webpages.
Slashdot Mirror
That script is broken, in more ways than one, but here's the code that you're seeing:
In the DateFormat() function, the line that says
vDateName.value = vDateName.value.substr(0, (vDateValue.length-1));
is responsible for chopping off the last digit.
The substr function of the String takes an index and an length, not two indexes, so eval( "12345".substr(0, (5-1)) ) returns the (5-1) characters starting at index 0; that is, "1234".
Speaking as one of the "cognoscenti" who contributed to the book, I'd say that yes, Greasemonkey is a bit too new to have made it into the book. When I came onboard in late October 2004, most of the hacks had already been thought up and allocated. The deadline for the first draft of the hacks was November 22, and contributor's reviews were due by December 11.
Looking at the CVS repository for Greasemonkey ( http://www.mozdev.org/source/browse/greasemonkey/ ), it looks like the oldest files are four months old, which means that yes, Greasemonkey is too new to have had a chance to get in to the book. I imagine that it'll *probably* be featured in any subsequent editions. The problem is that Greasemonkey is really quite code-centric, far more so than most of the stuff in the last few chapters, and those chapters are already striking some as "too technical." Writing a hack would be tricky, as you'd have two main options, neither of which are particularly appealing:
* Delve into the nuts-and-bolts of programming to show users how to Get Stuff Done with Greasemonkey, which is outside the scope of the book, or
* treat The Code That Does Stuff as magic, and use e.g. Butler as an example of what can be done.
Of course, hacks.oreilly.com does allow you to submit your own hacks. If you want a job done right...
Actually, yes, there are hacks on modifying the chrome XUL/JavaScript/CSS that defines the behavior and appearance of Firefox's interface.(Basically, the same thing extensions do.)
I don't recall offhand whether *compiling* the C++ source is discussed.
Yes, blanks can, in fact, be dangerous. I remember a comment from one of the guys responsible for the guns in the Matrix, and he commented that at close range, the force from a blank can be almost as deadly as a regular bullet. Shoot someone, at close range, with a blank, and they just might die. Not good when that person is a civilian paying your salary.
Well, actually, the secret here is that the wall behind my monitor is very thin wood paneling (3 or 4 mm) separating the main basement from the workroom, which isn't used much. Cables thus run from the desk in the basement through a 2" x 3" hole in the paneling under the desk and into the computer. By closing the door that separates the two rooms, I simply cannot hear the computer, even during hard drive activity and full fans blasting.
There is, of course, one unfortunate aspect to this: I have to take about five steps to access the CD drive; this problem could be solved by buying an external drive, but I don't use the CD drive often enough for this to be a problem. The benefits, however, are twofold: no computer sounds, as previously mentioned, and also, because of the colder air in the other room and the full-power fans, I can run a 2.4 GHz P4 overclocked to 3.0 GHz at 27 degrees Celcius idle, maxing out at 35 degrees C under full load.
Oh, yes: the hole I mentioned earlier... I named it Glory
Perhaps, as Steven Pinker discussed in his book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, the reason that more girls aren't gamers is that they simply aren't interested. The book points out that the entry ratios for male and female applicants to undergrad math/science/engineering courses are often about 50:50, but many more female students than male decide to persue other interests; when interviewed, they often reveal that they attended the math/sci/eng. course due to pressure from family or teachers.
Pinker also makes note of the fact that while professional women (snicker) do often make less money than their male counterparts, they usually do so because they place a higher priority on leaving the office in time to spend time with their children and families than do most corporate-ladder climbers missing a chromosomal arm; they are willing to trade money and status for things that males are not.
Of course, I'm not trying to make sweeping generalizations, shoving people into cubbyholes, but statistically, this is what seems to happen.
You'll need a number of things to even have a chance of being successful. Keep in mind that you'll be competing against things like the iTunes Music Store (hopefully coming to Windows by the end of 2003); thus, price per song will have to be less than a dollar; not a big deal.
Selection is important, but not in the same way as with popular, "name-brand" songs/artists; this is indie music, after all, and so the specific songs won't be as important as the general number (and don't forget quality somewhere in there...)
Having a good UI will be vital: people should be able to find the songs they want easily, find other songs to match their preferences, etc.
Providing artwork is a good idea. I really can't stress enough how important it is to have a good interface, especially with something like this.
Good luck!
So, not only does Chimera suck, Mac OS X sucks harder. Am I translating that right? (at last glance there was still no button to close a tab).