Blue buttons in firefox

Turns out I got a bit more than I bargained for when I ran firefox in XP compatibility mode. Loading local HTML files is difficult, and mouse button (back & forward) navigation no longer works, along with a slew of other small nitpicky problems. I guess I'll have to find another way of making firefox not look like ass in Windows 7.

Edited: Solution: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xp-on-vista/

No more blue buttons in firefox

I recently started using windows 7. When I did, I noticed that the look of firefox had changed. In windows XP I was used to the back and forward buttons being green, the stop being red, etc. In windows 7, everything is the same godawful blue color. "How do I change firefox in windows 7 so that it looks like it did in windows xp?", I asked myself (and googled for). Well, it turns out that the answer is quite simple. You run it in the windows xp compatibility mode. By setting the compatibility mode to windows xp, service pack 3, the nice familiar look came back. I don't yet know if it'll have any adverse effects, but I'm assuming I'll find out later. Problem solved, and the internet at large was absolutely no help at all. A friend of mine on IRC figured it was worth a try and he was right. Thanks, friend!

As an aside, I can't write for shit these days. It should like someone else is blogging for me. It's like I only have something to say, and I type it up. No sense of style of cadence or anything. It's terrible. In this case, I wanted to share my new-found knowledge with the internet (since a google search gave me nothing). Normally, though, ... Well, like I said, I've got nothing... Maybe next year...

Drive-by downloads

I consider myself a fairly computer savvy user. I block ads via my hosts-file, I don't click on untrusted links, i don't run flash except by whitelist, I don't click on punch the monkey. I've never had any viruses, never been infected with any trojans. Until today. Today, I got the "AntiVirus 2010" virus. It's a variation of the other similar viruses that circulated in 2009 and 2008. It basically shows fake virus alerts, prompting you to buy the full version to clean all the fake viruses off your system. Obviously, the only virus, is "AntiVirus 2010".

I was very surprised to get this virus, as I'm a firefox user. I always keep both my windows installation and my firefox installation up to date. I thought I was immune to this crap. I was wrong. I got it by means of a drive-by download. I was visiting fairly innocuous sites, looking at some pictures, and them BAM, out of nowhere, this thing is already downloaded and installed on my machine. There are .exe files everywhere, and it lives in my system tray. I never saw a dialog box or anything.

Perhaps it's my own fault, for not running any anti-virus, but quite frankly, most anti-virus solutions are total fucking resource hogs, and since they are only actually useful in extremely rare cases, they are a total waste of money and cpu cycles (hey, run-on sentence, what the hell, man?).

So I ask you now, what can I do to prevent this shit? Obviously the bad guys are getting smarter and the good guys have their hands full. Clearly being up-to-date is not sufficient anymore. I've installed no-script, but last time I did, I got so frustrated with how bad the internet worked, that I simply disabled it. I guess we'll see how long it lasts this time.

Firefox 3 revisited

I'm back to Firefox 2 again. Firefox 3 had such different behavior and look compared to Firefox 2, none of which was customizable, that I just couldn't stand it. Also, the fact that Firefox 3 was a HUGE memory hog didn't go over particularly well with me either. It's not unheard of to see FF3 use 2-3 times as much memory as FF2 for the same set of tabs. They also added their own custom widgets, because there were some behavior problems with Mac, that this is where the slippery slope to hell begins. it is VERY rare that you have to make your own widgets. The scrollbars and buttons that come with the OS are excellent, work great, and in the vast majority of cases do exactly what you want them to do. Apparently that wasn't good enough for the FF3 team, so decided to roll their own, to the detriment of all their users. While I did find a plug-in that would let me use Windows native scroll-bars, it just wasn't the same. It felt like they were fucking me over, simply because they could. FF2 is crisp, clear, fast, and doesn't cause my mouse to freeze up when I play wow. FF3 is none of these things.

All in all, FF3 is an absolute horror and a mess, and I really hope I see a 4.0 soon that takes care of all the fucking garbage they put in to FF3. I'd stick with FF2, but they stop support in mid-december 2008, which is mere months away. Most companies continue supporting their old products for a lot more than 6 months (Windows XP will be supported with security patches to 2014, if I'm not mistaken), but apparently not the Firefox team. What with the 8 million downloads on release day, maybe they don't give two shits about people still running older version. Then again, I did run Netscape 7.2 for ages until I finally switched. I think I can do the same thing with FF2.

Firefox 3.0 Tamed

My recent gripes about firefox 3 was that it looked like hammered shit sprayed with glitter. The graphical design was an absolute abomination (except for the back and forward buttons, they were nice). What I've now found, however, is an extension called "Classic Compact Options", which will let me return to the beautiful look of firefox2.

Dialog boxes are still ugly, but they're not as bad anymore. I think I'll move to FF3 at home too, now that I know that most problems can be remedied.

Firefox 3.0

Firefox 3.0 has hideously ugly widgets, and is slow as hell.
I thought installing it in a different directory would let me keep two version around, but no...
Firefox 3.0 clobbered my settings, raped my add-ons, and dropped all my carefully collected cookies. Was a backwards compatible version that hard to do? Did you have to change to much that you couldn't possible coexist with the previous version?

I'm sticking with 2.0 until ff3 starts behaving. It's bad enough that I had to drop Netscape for this, now they're fucking their own customers over...

I'm a Switcher

Those of you who are somewhat tech savvy might have heard that expression before in connection to something else. You can rest assured, I'm not switching to Apple (although I had two delicious granny smith apples yesterday, with only a mild allergic reaction).
What I'm switching is my internet platform. As I have mentioned before, I have always been a staunch supported of Netscape. It was my first browser (there might have been some mosaic before, I don't remember), and for the rest of my life it has been my only browser. I have sometimes been forced to use Internet Explorer, and I have tried on my own accord to use Opera, but the conclusion has always been that Netscape is the king of the hill.
Unfortunately, Netscape hasn't come out with a good browser since Netscape 7.2, which was several of years ago. That, coupled with the fact that Netscape has now kicked the bucket has left me little choice. While I could keep the Netscape I know and love, I have run across Thunderbird here at work, and I've also gone over to using Firefox here, and I must say that my previous reservations about Firefox have all but disappeared. Thunderbird is even, dare I say it, a better email client than the one built-in to Netscape 7.2.
As a result, I have decided to switch my internet platform at home to a combination of Firefox for browsing and Thunderbird for email. It is with a heavy heart that I lay the legacy of Netscape to rest. We have had some good times. We've shared laughter, we've shared sorrow. Netscape has been my companion as I have explored the internet from its relative infancy in the early 90ies all the way up to today.

So good bye Netscape! You have served me well. You will always have a special place in my heart, and I will never forget you.