MCAndre

When I was browsing through blog hosts, I chose WordPress because to me, the others looked simple or even ugly. WordPress had a variety of great looking themes, a few widgets like Delicious and Flickr, and a good overall management design. Gradually, I came to realize that the editor automatically deletes any serious HTML code, including JavaScript and Flash elements. I couldn’t even embed a YouTube video.

Sloooooowly, WP is catching on. There’s a tag cloud, though the actual “Categories” assignment interface is lame. Admit it, tags are much better than static categories. But enough about that. I’ve been emailing support teams every day for a month now: Flock, Twitter, Zooomr, Delicious, FoxyProxy, Stylish.

Who’s with me? WP readers surf through many other sites that have dangerous scripts. Restricting them ain’t helping anybody. If JavaScript is outlawed, only outlaws will use JavaScript.

Upgrading my Linksys router’s firmware turned it into a dumb hub. I need a new router. Should I get a D-Link or NetGear? I’ve heard varied experiences with Linksys, D-Link, and NetGear. I want a reliable wireless G router (preferably with N support). Maybe Dl-624? I’ll have to decide on a super fast router, Xtreme N Gigabit, and a possibly OpenWrt compatible one, High Speed Wireless 108Mbps. And there’s still the Linksys WRT300N Wireless-N Broadband Router, which uses Linux. Oh wait, the Netgear Rangemax Next Wireless-N Router Gigabit Edition has N and OpenWrt potential. Which should I choose?

Update: Don’t get a NetGear if you have a Macintosh. My highspeed wireless N model barely worked at all with it, so I got another one. The second NetGear worked fine for a few months, but my roommates (who have Macs) complained about connectivity. Now even I can’t get on it. I got the dang thing so I wouldn’t have to use Ethernet cables, but the wireless functionality has been dropping since I bought it. This stinks. I’ve had three routers in a year, and all barfed on me.

Come on, WordPress, get Twitter support, or let me put JavaScript in my text widgets. I suggest my twitter while these things develop.

Leopard’s out in October, huh? I missed the WWDC keynote as I didn’t have Internet access.

Firefox 3 alpha 5 is out, but I don’t see places on my Mac. I can’t wait for the JavaScript password management. Flock team, get ready to copy and paste!

Flock won’t update my feeds or remember which folders I have open. I want a setting to update my feeds every five minutes, and a button to force update feeds.

I had all my notes ready, then I decided to Quit. Alas, the notes were destroyed! Flock dev team, my most important request is that you include Blogging in the session manager, and ask the user before he quites, “Do you want to cancel your blog post?”

This is Flock 0.8.99, upgrading from 0.7.14 on my Intel CoreDuo MacBook with Mac OS X 10.4.9. Let’s have a look-see. A little look, a little see.

Overall, Flock 0.8.99 looks good. I like the favorites/feeds/clipboard buttons in their own special tab.

The upgrade kept my settings, but NOT my favorites, feeds, or accounts. The upgrade also added a big feeds button (though the symbol only had a blue flock logo; it did not look like a feeds button) to the left of the big favorites star. This is now redundant, so I took it away. The button disappeared forever when I dragged it to the toolbar items dump. Oh noes! I got some default toolbar favorites. I wonder, are they for the beta testers or users in general? I didn’t get any default feeds, either.

Tabs: change the behavior back. I like my tabs to always open in the background, regardless of whether they’re from a page or my favorites. Also, I’d like both Firefox and Flock to be able to ignore a page’s specified way of opening links. When I alternate click a link from GMail, I get two tabs, both loading the link. Add a setting to Preferences -> Tabs that lets Flock ignore HTML and JavaScript link targets.

I like the three icons in my address bar. I would like to be able to move and remove them.

As a social browser, Flock, wouldn’t you rather Yubnub be the address bar search engine (default keyword.URL:”http://yubnub.org/parser/parse?command=”)?

Flock gave me a dialog error the first time I tried to register Delicious. The second time, it worked. However, I still had trouble telling Flock to publish all my links to Delicious by default (the greatest feature of Flock, I think). I think once I register Delicious, the option should come up or automatically apply.

I moved the Accounts and Services to the end, along with a separator. I don’t see why it needs to be between the others. Note: My feeds don’t update as often as I’d like. Could you add a field for that? Also, the feeds keep resetting their names–what’s the use of naming then when Flock lets the feed reset the names?

When I tried before to drag and drop my toolbar bookmarks from Firefox to Flock, the bookmarklet created an unnamed and IMMUTABLE item in my favorites toolbar. I dare not see what happens now. Please tell me what happens on a Mac. Is it fixed?

Add an image insert button to the blog poster, sos I can include my photos. Or do you want me to open a topbar/sidebar, drag Command Tilde over and drop onto the editor? And make the blog poster’s topmost toolbar (the one with the new, open, save, configure, and paste buttons) customizable.

For Macs, let us manage passwords in our Keychains. And add Growl notifications. Thank you.

BTW, Flock remembers passwords for registered accounts, but it doesn’t plug them into the pages for normal functionality. I have to keep entering my YouTube and WordPress passwords.

Aah! Flock keeps slowing down every ten minutes! Must… finish… update. Shift+Command+F does not summon or desummon the Favorites sidebar.

I would prefer not to be harassed by wizards. They spook the noobs, and the leet can go about setting up Flock the usual ways. It’s less code… elbow elbow. Knee, if necesarry.

Thanks for the updates, Evan.

Tags: flock, browser

I love the choices of browsers. In Windows, Ghostzilla can hide in other applications. Camino combines the Gecko engine with Mac features like the Keychain. Opera works on many mobile devices. Somehow, my love of personal freedom, choice, and software anarchy collides with my hacker obsession with customization.

The types of services that Flock offers, like bookmark synchronization, photo uploading, RSS subscriptions, and Yahoo! search suggestions, are none too soon. However, I personally would rather each of them be an add on, which is why I think Firefox and Flock have different philosophies. Firefox extends, Flock incorporates.

I prefer blogging at WordPress itself, flitting photos to Zooomr with JUploadr, Yubnub instead of multiple search engines, Google Reader for my RSS. I’ve Reddit, not Dugg it. The average computer user doesn’t even know about how dangerous and stupid Internet Explorer is, let alone how to wrangle the awesome power of Web 2.0-ness. Firefox 3 is probably going to showcase things that are super obvious to me. Here’s an imaginary list, without even looking at the project status: RSS, OpenID, online bookmarking, more of those (to me) obnoxious Fark! Blogmarks! Stumble I like it! (or don’t). I like the variety at the digital food court, just not having menus shoved in my face.

Flock beat Firefox to the punch for displaying a feed as a page. By the time it caught up, I was already grokking GReader. Opera does BitTorrent, and the Fox will have a working extension eventually (Flock could use it too wink wink), but I prefer Transmission, in case my browser craps out. That’s why I’m not a Flockstar. If the services came as addable/deletable modules, I’d be more likely to try each of them out. Currently, I just think “I’d rather use x than y; why bother with this bundle of content and meta handlers.”

Flock has the potential for gaining a lot more popularity, especially if the individual Add-on makers decided to Flock’d their stuff. I see an apocalyptic world, after the fall of Firefox. The great open source project is left to rot, as metabrowsers form the API Alliance. All bow to web standards.

Songbird merges with iTunes. RoR and whatever the fart Python framework duel endlessly. Acrobat Reader is dead (and every copy securely erased from memory). LaTeX flourishes. And while we’re here in La La Land, where everyone can read, code, and fight, no one gets offended easily, go ahead and imagine that the whole computer experience is wonderful. No lags. All typo’s are comically intentional. No ad-ware, spy-ware, or any grandpa-backstabbing-ware. The five to one ratio of illegal to legal downloads inverts, as open software surpasses expensive knock-offs. And my editor automagically creates these dang links!

Parents understand that pornography will exist in every form, up to the latest technology created. Educational institutions are fortresses of electronic sanctuary. Every man, woman, and child knows which ports to allow, which ports to block, and which ports to use when the fortresses of electronic sanctuary block Meebo. Indie music is king, so there’s no crappy pop music to steal. Movies are cheap and close to your house.

The only bias in the media is the author’s. Academia finally caves in to Wikipedia, realizing that just because some people draw bunnies in their textbooks doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write one. Ad agencies already grasp the concept of viral videos. It’s just a couple steps from computerization to collaboration. Even you, simple user, are developing Web 2.0.

I have a suggestion for Flock and Firefox: add a proxy toggler for use in the navigation and status toolbars, though I’ll just use the status bar one. I got a shell account that lets me proxy, and now I love enabling my Local SSH mode. When I want ultimate anonymity, I go to Tor mode. You could include a bunch of default modes/settings: Direct, Tor, Local SSH Tunnel, CGI Proxy. Heck, Flock, you could come with Vidalia pre-installed! Just don’t harass the user when he’s a frightened mouse trying out the product to configure privoxy! I don’t want to hear the specials. I’ll have the chicken.