Pep’s Here

After some tests, I can report that the bug I talked on the previous post is solved in 3.0a6. Still, I needed to add a few lines to make Showcase work well in Firefox 3, but it’s working… and really well! I was concerned about that, but next version of Showcase will have full support for Gran Paradiso betas

Also, I’ve been working in a new extension, and is almost finished. You may want to visit this blog on Sunday, since I’ll publish the first version by then. It’s something small, but quite handy!

Uhm… I really should post to this blog more often. In any case, I’ve been quite busy. For instance, I made a website for Speed Dial, and released a new version for it. That version contains some bug fixes, and some new locales!

Today, Firefox 3 Alpha 6 has been released! I spent some time using it, and it “feels” quite a lot faster than Firefox 2. Good job, Mozilla! I tested Firefox Showcase and Speed Dial on it, with mixed results. The current Speed Dial version shows an error message when using the background browser, but after some hacking I managed to fix it, so the next release will be 100% compatible. For Showcase there is a big problem with the thumbnail layout. This is because an issue that I reported in Bugzilla about half a year ago, but now the problem is even worse Oh well… I hope they’ll solve it. One way or another, Showcase will be available for Firefox 3 on release!

I’ve a couple of new extensions in mind… Speed Dial still needs a lot of work, so that will be my main focus, but I can use a change of pace

It was about time! I uploaded the new version on AMO (although it will probably take some days until it’s available), and also uploaded it on Showcase’s website.

Finally today I could spend a few hours on the extension, and managed to implement a couple of important things: dynamic loading of site icon (although it doesn’t work for a few sites, but will work on that later), and drag and drop reordering/creation.

I forgot to implement some kind of import/export functionality, but it will be in the next version for sure. Other things I’ll be working on are configurable number of thumbnails, more configurable options (including some nice ones for the thumbnail aspect), better handling of thumbnail refresh when the connection fails (now it shows an alert), and some kind of alert system when a website in Speed Dial has been updated.

Today Steve Jobs has announced a version of Safari for Windows (Safari is the built-in Mac web browser). That version is currently a beta, but I just installed it and seems to work quite well.
However, in my opinion, it’s no Firefox killer… at least not for my needs. In his speech, Steve claimed it to be a lot faster, but I don’t have any performance issue with Firefox. Indeed, Firefox seemed to download web pages faster.
Things I don’t like (from more important to less important):

• No site icons in tabs!
• Window resize… can only be resized by using the bottom right corner.
• No middle click scrolling.
• It looks (and behaves) so different to the rest of applications I’ve installed.
• No extensions. Not that I use a lot of them in Firefox, but it’s good to have the possibility to use them.
• No search engine icons… Again, not really necessary, but I like them.
• Non-customizable toolbar.
• No status bar by default (no way to see the link where you’re hovering on).

Things I like:

• Progress bar integrated in location bar. Yes, you may get that also in Firefox using an extension, but I think that Safari was the first browser to include this feature.
• Find bar. It’s similar to Firefox (probably they took their inspiration from there?), but I think it’s useful to darken the page in order to highlight the result. Would be handy to have a small slider to decide the ammount.
• File chooser, which looks less 90’s than the competition.
• Text aliasing. I guess it’s a matter of taste… it looks “bolder” than IE or Firefox, but I think that this makes it easier and faster to read.
• Improved JavaScript performance? Well, if Steve says that, we’ll have to take his word!

In conclusion: I’ll keep Firefox as my main browser. However, if I would decide to implement an application for the iPhone, it’s good to keep it. I really hope they’ll release it in Europe soon…

Last night I uploaded a new version of Speed Dial to Showcase’s download page. For now, I decided not to publish it in AMO. The reason is that I feel that this version “feels” a bit half baked to me, mainly because of the lack of dynamic site icon loading. I’ll be adding this, plus some other important features, in version 0.3.5 (hopefully it will take just a few days).

One reason why I wanted to publish it now is to have some feedback: does it work well? Do you feel slowdowns? Extension incompatibility? It seems to work well for me, but if you try it, and see anything weird, please contact me and help me help you
I’m quite proud of the new architecture of the application; I’m quite sure that my “background loading” feature is a first for Firefox!
After that, well, I got quite a lot of feature suggestions, and I’m glad to say that they’ll be quite easy to implement. I’ve quite a lot of ideas that can make this extension really good and useful, and as Showcase users will know, I’m quite persistent when it comes to add new things

Oh well… I won’t have internet at home until June 9th. However, I’m still working in the new release for Speed Dial. I think I’ll be able to make the new release around June 1st, since I’ll go back to my old place. It should include thumbnail refreshing and editing. Quite a lot of people have been suggesting new features, and those will be added… However, I made my top priority to work out the most difficult one, and from there I’ll add more things.

This weekend I’ve been visiting Amsterdam… quite interesting city! I’m staying at “Holiday Inn Amsterdam”, and it’s really good hotel with a good price. There’s network port in the room, but unfortunately I didn’t bring my laptop with me. Oh well, I don’t even know if they offer internet for free… in the main hall there are a couple of computers, but the price is 0.35 euros… per minute!! Other than that, the food is good, the room is clean, and the people are nice.

Yesterday, my Speed Dial extension got an article in Download Squad, and later that was digged. Well… it certainly generated a lot of comments, with quite a lot of people complaining about Firefox copying Opera for the last years, about this extension being worse than the original Opera feature, etc, etc…

First of all, I’m not Firefox, or Mozilla. I’m just a programmer that spends some of his free time developing Firefox extensions, without any reward or interest, so, if you don’t like this extension, please, just ignore it. Constructive feedback is always welcome, but browser flame wars make me sad.

This extension will be improved little by little, like Firefox Showcase, and may become even more useful than the original feature it was inspired from. For me, that’s one of the best things about extensions: it’s development is parallel to Firefox.