Today is Firefox 3 Download Day - go and get it! ...if it's out. At the moment I'm still getting the page for FF2 and RC builds of 3.0... Hmmm.
Oh and in case you're wondering why I've disappeared off the face of the internet, it's because I have none at home at the moment (moving house). So there you go.
I've seen a few of these sort of posts around lately, and because I can't think of anything original to blog about disagree with them all, I am going to list my own top 5 extensions you absolutely must have. Because I said so.
I know, I know. It robs innocent webmasters of their income or whatever but I never, ever click ads. I don't read them, I don't like them, I disagree with them. I don't mind a text link or something but big banners full of "ZOMG CLICK HERE!!1!1" flashing images = big no. I won't block a text ad, but I will and do block images and Flash ads. If you want me to click things, make them unobtrusive instead of blinding me with flashings from all directions.
I am far too lazy to copy and paste URLs that aren't clickable into my address bar, so this handy extension does it for me. There is a better one but as yet I've not tried it and I'm happy with the one I've got, so I don't know if I'll use it.
Because I simply must know whether your site is valid or not. No, really... The most useful thing about this extension is that when you view the source of a page you're working on, it highlights the errors in the source and tells you what's wrong. It'll even tidy the whole thing up for you with one click if you want it to (yes, that's where the extension's library gets its name from - HTML Tidy - because it tidies things up for you. Get it? :P ).
This one is probably not as essential if you don't need to do screenshots or anything like that, but basically it will take a screenshot of the entire page, not just the bit that's currently on your screen. I like it since I can screenshot a full page of content (useful for people like me whose printer doesn't work and who want to save the current page they're on - yes, you can do "save page as" or print it to a file, but I think this method is quicker and easier, so that's why I use it).
Tamper Data stopped working for me when I upgraded to Firefox 2, but it's a great extension meant for detecting vulnerabilities in scripts. It's got SQL injection and XSS stuff built in and ready to go to test your scripts to the limit. Of course, if you don't write or use scripts or anything then this extension is a bit useless to you.
Of course, there are the other extensions everyone recommends, like the Web Developer Toolbar, NoScript, IE Tab, etc., etc., which are very useful and which I have, but like I said, everyone recommends those so I thought I'd mention some of the lesser-known ones.
Regarding the last entry, yes, I had written an entry about how my house seemed to have accumulated some bedbugs. That entry decided to disappear off the face of the earth and I have no idea why. Anyway, upon closer inspection it appeared the bugs weren't bedbugs, but carpet beetles and pest control won't deal with those without charging us some hugely expensive fee so I've just gone mad with insecticide and we'll see how that turns out. Urgh.
That's right, new theme. I couldn't sleep last night so I spent most of my time making this, after fighting another potential design for the best part of a month. This is pretty generic for me, and I wanted to get into fluid layouts without nasty wrapping going on when the font size is increased... But alas, it was not to be. You'd think, since I make these sorts of layouts all the time (see the last 6 themes - they're all pretty much the same), that I would be able to churn them out in about 5 minutes, wouldn't you? Wrong, it took me almost 6 hours just to tweak everything and get it right. That said, the tabs are wonky in Firefox, hacked together in IE and I didn't realise they were overlapping the sidebar, so I had to move it down a little so that would no longer happen (yes, that's why that ugly white gap is there). The tabs and the titling all wrap in a really nasty way if you increase the font size, the layout isn't fluid, blah blah blah. Must get out of uncreative rut.
The photo is my own, from a day trip I went on recently. I'm really rather proud of it :D
My final year of University starts soon. I'm not entirely sure how soon since I haven't been given many details (I've got a form that says "pay your fees on [date] or else" but that's it...), but I sort of can't wait. I am so bored here at home with nothing to do. I'm sure I will hate it the moment it starts (ARGH ONLY 6 MONTHS TO DO THE DISSERTATION! ARGH ARGH ARGH *Panic*) but at the moment I hate being bored so who knows.
