Month: July 2002

With the fix for bug 62495, Mozilla now has the best URL bar editing behavior of any browser. Single-click still selects the entire URL bar (unless you turn it off). Even better, selection works as expected. I find it hard to believe that Mozilla 1.0 shipped with very broken right-click context menu behavior (bug 96446) but that’s fixed now too. I’m glad to see these basic usability problems getting fixed. It’s about time. The URL bar has had broken behavior since 2000 or earlier.

It appears that the Chase Cringely project website that I mentioned earlier is finally up. It’s just a shame that nobody paid any attention to content or usable design. Because they’re using TWiki to run the site, it looks like they are more interested in a Buck Rogers character than in saving others like Chase. Why is it that most open source projects seem to be hostile to outside help even though that’s what they are trying to get?

I’m interested in the MonitorPad suggestion, particularly the idea that it could be combined with a regular baby monitor. As we have been thinking about getting a baby monitor, I can say that we’d definitely consider something like the MonitorPad.

I just noticed that the Daniel Boone Rails to Trails group has a website. It looks like they are in the beginning stages and don’t have much content available yet. I’m looking forward to seeing a map soon. It’s nice to see more rails-to-trails groups springing up in Kentucky.

Mozilla apparently took this saying to heart and decided to prevent it by never expiring history entries. Did you wonder where your disk space was going or why Mozilla seemed to load slower and slower? Now you know. Hopefully this will be fixed in 1.0.1.

People seem to find it mildly interesting that a balloonist has managed a solo flight around the world. Perhaps the fact that this is the balloonist’s sixth attempt makes it a bit less impressive.

The recent news about ballooning reminds me of a wonderful book called The Twenty-One Balloons. I first read this whimsical and inspiring tale as a child and it is still one of my all time favorites. The book, written and illustrated by William Pene du Bois, won the 1948 Newbery Medal. The story recounts an imaginative balloon adventure and describes many fanciful inventions which are beautifully illustrated in almost blueprint detail. The illustrations emphasize and expand the story, immersing you more deeply in it. When I think of a creative effort reaching perfection, I think of this book.

In a remarkable show of good sense, Mozilla added the “almost-standards mode” to support XHTML 1.0 Transitional, HTML 4.01 Transitional, and a bothersome IBM system doctype. (See bug 153032, the revised doctype sniffing documentation, and the evolt.org article about this.) For the first time, some of the IBM pages I use daily look perfect. And there was much rejoicing! Too bad this didn’t make 1.0, but 1.0.1 may be good enough.

When is a JavaScript console no longer a JavaScript console? When it becomes the “Error” console. David Baron finally “fixed” Bug 154942 and added a CSS warning message to the console. Having a warning message is helpful. At least now developers will have a clue about what’s wrong. It still feels broken to have quirks mode happily handle “incorrect” MIME types and simply adding a valid doctype will break the page. For the sake of compatibility, I’d think Mozilla should handle some commonly broken, but reasonable, MIME types, such as text/plain. There’s more discussion about this confusing issue in Bug 113399.

I’m gonna miss the JavaScript console if it gets renamed. It has been a good helper for many years. I think I’d rather see a page compliance console like in iCab and keep the JavaScript separate.