Firefox3 RC1

I cannot believe its happening to me.

I've updated to RC1 as expected by suggested update. Now the thing crashes on me almost constantly!!! Even in Gmail!

Anyone knows whats going on?

Beta 5 was so solid compared to RC....

Running tests on Windows.

Hi all

I need a free tool for testing a GUI application. Something in lines with Mercury's WinRunner.
Does anyone knows something like that?

Thanks

Olive branch to all Free Operating systems users

Hello my dear readers,

A little statistics part first. WHAT A RUSH!!!! That's my response on what happened after I posted my opinion on Ubuntu and Linux. At the beginning there were few responses from Planet Larry where I'm syndicated, as I mostly use Gentoo. Then I submitted it to digg and Linux Today, and until the end of the day in my time zone, it got 424 diggs and more than 5000 visits, which was about a total on this blog until this day from the start. That feels great. Then it came ~5000 more visits the next day, and about 1500 visits the day after that. It have received ~100 comments on my blog, and about 200 on digg. So its cool.

There are few things that I wanted to share about this. The comments are generally split into 3 categories, and they are:

1. Yea, exactly!!! My favorite distro rules! And its better than Ubuntu!!!! Ubuntu sucks!!!!
2. Yea!!! Ubuntu rules!!! We're here to get you all!!!!
3. Who cares?

And, to my own surprise, I agree with those who are in group 3. Let me explain:

Group 1 says the following (well, almost. I added some cynicism myself): you're right!! I've been feeling this for the long time already, and it makes me angry that my favorite distribution doesn't get enough attention in the press. Those evil Ubuntu people has bought out all the media and independent journalists to write articles about Linux and use "Ubuntu" instead. I hate Ubuntu!!! I will never ever use it!

Group 2 says: well, of course!! Ubuntu is the best distribution evah, and hence all the smartest people in the world are using it. So, no wonder they use it as an example of Linux-de-facto when writing their articles, and demos and reviews. Yes, maybe they misuse some words sometime, but its not a bad thing...

Group 3 says: Who gives a damn? Let Linux (be it Ubuntu or whatever else) to get some market share in computing, worry about the semantics later. Does it matter that my dad would know Ubuntu and not "Linux"? No!!! Its better than not knowing any of them at all.

So, I would like to put things into perspective, because they seem a little out of it.

Group 1: Take it easy folks. No one is trying to overshadow other distributions. Ubuntu is one of the most known distributions, definitely one of the easiest to use and so it is no surprise people using it more and more. Just as most applications in mid-90s were automatically written for Windows 98 and NT4 (and some companies still choose Windows only, and say it's just "for now", but then "other" never comes), most reviews and how-tos are written for the largest audience - and in our case, specifically for Ubuntu Linux. But there's nothing wrong with that. Most of the installation procedures regarding system environments (such as Gnome/KDE, or some application in those) or devices are almost always distribution-agnostic, and aside the installation procedure which varies from distribution to distribution, they are almost the same. I configure Gnome in Gentoo the same way as it is done in the same version of Gnome in Debian, [K|X|Ed]Ubuntu, PCLinux, FreeBSD, Fedora Core, Mandriva, SLES and all the others.

Group 2: Yes, we know your distro is the best. Or sort of. But we didn't chose it to use (well, not yet at least). So what? The time may come when we do, and also you might want to use my favorite distro once. And you know what? I will help you the best I can. And will not patronize on you. I don't understand - why do we have to argue all the time which ones shwartz is larger? Let's just all work to the same goal - make the computer experience easier for everyone (and it means both me and my dad).

Group 3: I'm totally with you. I believe that spreading Ubuntu is an important thing (just as Red Hat, Gentoo, Debian, SLES and others), and it makes all the Linux-based operating systems to conquer the computers around the world. The more the better, and if it is done with Ubuntu - its fine by me.

To all:

1. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. I don't hate Ubuntu. Do I make myself clear enough?
   
2. I actually like Ubuntu. Not yet having used it too much, I like the spirit and the attempt to get where no one else (except maybe Red Hat and SLES) has ever succeeded before. I will probably definitely start using it soon, because any literate IT person should know well enough at least 3-4 top spread distributions.
   
3. I still use Gentoo on all my machines and very happy about it.
   
4. Just consider this (suggested by multitude of comments): if the choice for a new user is to use either Windows Vista or Ubuntu Linux, what would you suggest that user? Now Ubuntu Linux doesn't look that scary anymore, does it?
5. I'm not an Ubuntu fan person.
   

On that happy note, my last words:

1. I like all Linux-based operating systems (and not only Linux).
   
2. Just to further enforce the point, I like all BSD systems (Free-, Net-, Open-) as much as Linux (and even better). And I also like Unix systems (like IRIX and Solaris).
   
3. I like Ubuntu.
   
4. I like Gentoo.
   
5. I like that Linux and other free software is spreading.
6. I like Mac OS X.
   
7. I don't like Windows OS line.
   

:-)

Many thanks to everyone who commented wherever.

Peace out.

Technorati : Gentoo, Linux, Technology, Ubuntu

Zoundry Writer in Linux review

For a few days, I've been testing different blog editors and trying to find which one I would prefer to use. My requirements are simple at the moment. You can go over them in my previous post on the matter - BlogJet editor in Linux Review.

I've written 2 articles, in which I told that Linux Editors sucks (and that was my personal feeling after I tried more than 5 different editors and found all of them either not working or sucking big time on features), and also that I've decided to try running a Windows blog editors (yes!) using WINE and I have written another post on that.

So, I've found couple of editors that I succeeded to run in Linux. Here, I will talk about the second one, Zoundry. First, here's the screenshot of using this editor (click on the image to see in full size):

So, as you can see, I'm writing this post in Zoundry

So here's my good feelings about this editor:

• Setting accounts is very easy and very good.
  
• Writing is very easy. All the regular features work (Italic, Bold and Underscore) work as anticipated.
  
• Fetching my previous blog posts is very good and accurate
  
• Font usage is configurable and the default is very pleasant to my eyes.
• Easy switch between WYSIWYG and HTML modes
  
• Easy setup for pinging services after posting
  
• Easy publishing (with one button)
  
• Posting as draft and defining manually the time and date of the post!
  
• Tags with blogger and Technorati work!!
  
• Linking from the editor is very cool and one of the best features in it!!! It allows me to link to my previous posts by letting me choose from the list of posts. Linking to big list of predefined sites is very convenient:
  
• Inserting a merchant links is easy when you sign-up with Zoundry.

Now, the bad stuff

• Its final HTML code is very unclean. It introduces a lots of <p> tags, and Blogger parses them as white spaces.
  
• Interface is not so slick. I did use the editor in Windows XP as well, and it is still not that pretty, albeit functional.
  

Considering that a full version is a free software and it supports all the features I would like to have (except the GUI), here's the scores:

My rating (with 10 as best score):

• GUI and ease of use: 7
  
• Feature set (for my needs): 10
  
• Convenience (for my needs): 9
  

Total score (in my subjective opinion):

• for my needs (blogger): 9.5

So, would I use it? Absolutely :-)

At the moment, this is my editor of choice!

Any comments? Let me know :-)

Technorati : Gentoo, Linux, Microsoft, Wine, technology, windows

Related posts:

BlogJet in Linux Review
Running Zoundry and BlogJet under Wine
Linux Blogging Sucks

Powered by Zoundry

BlogJet editor in Linux review

For a few days, I've been testing different blog editors and trying to find which one I would prefer to use. My requirements are simple at the moment:

• Being able to publish to a blog platform I use at the moment. That's being Blogger (with a New Blogger [Google] API)
• Being able to publish in draft first. I don't mind to "touch" an entry before publishing, and doing so from Blogger's own web-based editor helps to "preview" the entry how will it really look like.
  
• Adding tags to the post. Labels, categories, tags - I don't care how would you call this, I want it working if my platform supports them (and it does).
  
  • as a subset, pinging to Technorati and/or other services and including their links in the posts is welcome albeit unnecessary requirement.
    
• Convenient linking to other things. For example, suggesting to use what I have at the moment in the clipboard cache is convenient, as it allows me to copy something in the browser, and then directly paste it in the editor. I would also welcome convenient linking to my own posts.
  
• Local storing of the drafts. This is invaluable. I write something, I don't trust the program - I want to save it as either text, html or xml files (or combination of these).
  
• Nice pleasant GUI is very needed. After all, I can use a notepad (gedit, vi, emacs - choose your own), but I don't. I like to work with nice and simple interfaces.
  

I've written 2 articles, in which I told that Linux Editors sucks (and that was my personal feeling after I tried more than 5 different editors and found all of them either not working or sucking big time on features), and also that I've decided to try running a Windows blog editors (yes!) using WINE and I have written another post on that.

So, I've found couple of editors that I succeeded to run in Linux. Here, I will talk about the first one, BlogJet. First, here's the screenshot of using this editor (click on the image to see in full size; I'm using Black Vista theme):

So, as you can see, even that this is not native application in Linux, it looks very slick and nice, simple and gorgeous interface. My Kudos to the Coding Robots team on that! And I'm writing this post in BlogJet.

Writing is very easy. Just start typing - and that's it. All the regular features work (Italic, Bold and Underscore) work as anticipated. The editor setting were very simple - it recognized my blogging platform and correctly fetched my previous blog posts.

Font usage is configurable and the default is very pleasant to my eyes.

More cool features: easy switch between WYSIWYG and HTML modes, easy setup for pinging services after posting, easy publishing (with one button), and word counting (I like this one a lot!!!), and boy its final HTML code is so nice and clean !!!But now to the bad stuff:

1. Tagging (labels, categories, whatever) - it doesn't work with Blogger at the moment. Yes, it is known misfeature, but I find it weird that only one type of platform is supported for the moment (that would be Wordpress if I'm not mistaken).
   
2. Draft posting is not supported with Blogger. Sigh…
3. Although I can get my recent posts list, I don't have convenient option of linking to them. Say, I'd select something, right-click on it and choose "Link to previous post…" and then get a list and select the post I want to link to. That would be great.
   
4. Right-click context menu is weird - it seems like it was not implemented at all and all I see it system-wide menu. Not good.
   

Considering that a full version is a commercial software and it doesn't support many of the features I would like to have, I'd say I would not buy this product at the moment.

My rating (with 10 as best score):

• GUI and ease of use: 10
• Feature set (for my needs): 5
  
• Convenience (for my needs): 7
  

Total score (in my subjective opinion):

• for my needs (blogger): 6.5
  
• for Wordpress users: 8.5
  

So, would I use it? Maybe, I haven't decided yet.

In next post I will review running Zoundry blog editor on Linux.

Comments are welcome.

Technorati : Gentoo, Linux, Microsoft, Wine, technology, windows

Running Zoundry and BlogJet blog editors under Wine

Hi all !

After I've written the Linux Sucks article, I started to think how can I still run any of the "good" (read Windows based) editors on Linux. And to tell you the truth, I've tried to run each and every one of those I found on different lists under WINE but to no avail.

But no more. I've successfully installed and can run in Zoundry Blog Editor, from which I post this entry.

Here's an install procedure (I use Gentoo, so I presume anyone who doesn't can adapt this to his/her own needs):

1. Install IES4Linux on my machine (it installs WINE as well, so I don't have to).
2. Run an Internet Explorer and try to browse. If you do so, then go over to Zoundry and download the Zoundry Blog Writer.
3. In the same Internet Explorer window, go to File->Open and open the file you've downloaded.
   
4. Install should start and install the application.
   
5. Install mfc42.dll - get it from any Windows XP installation or here (legality of this action is beyond this post. Check with your lawer just in case). Copy it to a <ie6 install folder>/drive_c/windows/system and system32. Regsvr32 it:



6. Zoundry should be installed now and run fine.
   

This is what you get when you're done:

Note1: when I installed Zoundry in default WINE folder ~/.wine, I had this when I tried to run it:
That's why I started to lookout for another way.

Note2:

I've tried the following apps using the same technique, but they still don't work:

• Ecto Windows Edition
  
• Zoundry Raven
  
• w.bloggar
  
• Chrysant Webstory
  
• Anconia RocketPost 2
  

And I've tried this and it did work:

• BlogJet (and wow, I like its editor so far even more than Zoundry, with the exception that it's not really free and that it doesn't support Blogger's labels):

This is to show you that I'm really in Linux (for all you non trusting folks):

Please leave me a comment and tell me what you think :-)

Alex.

P.S. Does anyone knows how to force an application under WINE ( a game) to see a folder as it was a CDROM? I set it to do so, but it doesn't work. And I have no wish to burn a CD for that...Thanks

Technorati : Software, Wine

Powered by Zoundry

Linux Blogging Sucks

I want to tell you a story of a blogger who uses Linux as his main (and quite the only) operating system.

I started "blogging" about 2 years ago. I started using a Blogger as my platform, and I wasn't a massive writer - just a couple of articles here and there. But for the last year it happened that I manage more than one blog, and I do keep notes with me all the time and I write much more. Offline blogging became more important to me. As I know that "blogging" is widely used in Open Source community I recently started looking for a blog editor that would allow me to keep my notes offline (meaning without publishing) and post them when I'm ready.

As to my greatest surprise I haven't found even one that would be on par with my expectations (on that - later on).

Next, I realized that I'm not all that comfortable with web-based editors. Yes, they are almost the best editors there are (each one for its corresponding platform), but I would like better the normal editor, that I would write within, post from it and forget about the issue. And then, I listed for myself all the features I want from it:

• Supports New Blogger!!!! (come on, a "new" blogger is really not new for about a year; why is it still called a "new blogger" ??? )
  
• WYSIWYG editor and HTML editor
• Tags adding and synchronizing with my blog (New blogger does supports this)
• Being able to see me previous posts from the editor.
• Being able to link to my previous posts using comfortable interface
• Pinging Technorati and possibly FeedBurner (and others)
  
• Saving drafts
• Using links and pictures to insert into a post just as my blogging engine would (including formatting, etc)
• Lightweight
• Open Source
  

I'd like to thank the following people and resources for providing a list of editors to test:

1. Blogger
2. A-Z Bloglist
3. Every Flavour Beans
4. Bobrik (Ваня :-) ) from kernel panic in userspace (in russian)
   

Thank you all guys, you were my inspiration for writing this post.

From all the lists the are there, I've tried each and every single application to work with my new Blogger blogs. And to no avail. Each and every one of them suck. Most don't even connect to a blogger's blog server (and those apps are from Blogger's own list!!!). I find it weird, sad and very odd. Many blogging platforms were created using Open Source software, but still, there's no single editor in Linux that allows me to blog offline. I'm bitter.

You see, it is not an issue for me about being online or offline, and being able to post. Almost every time my computer is on, its online. It's just a matter of convenience. I like to workout things first, post them later. Besides, up until recently, Blogger didn't even allow to post drafts in order I wanted, only in order of creation. That's not good. I want to be able to decide when to post my entries.

I would think that a huge community of people in open source software would create a normal editor, which would work. Especially those who use Blogger. Please, don't think that I don't appreciate all the work done, I think Blogger is a great platform for its cause. I just want a simple blog editor that works. I tried Google Docs for the same purpose, and while it kinda works (not really convenient for me) - it is still a web application. I don't feel comfortable using it for blogging.

I'm writing this post using ScribeFire. To the date it is the best editor I've found, and even though - I don't trust it enough to post directly. I post as draft first, recheck and retouch with Blogger's web editor and then publish. This sucks.

Now, I have found the best for me editor. It is a Zoundry Writer but unfortunately, it only runs in Windows.

But no, I though. I'm clever. I will try and run a Windows Blog Editor under wine. Great idea, isn't it?

I have tried to run every single Windows editor from those lists using Wine. Nada. Nothing. Each and everyone of them fails.

So, the punchline: I love Linux. I use Linux all the time on 3 computers I have. I can blog from anywhere, using any browser. But I want to do it from an editor and such an editor is not available on Linux.

Unfortunately, Linux blogging sucks.

Powered by ScribeFire.

P.S. I hope that authors of aforementioned site do not mind me linking to them.

Update: I have succeeded to run Zoundry Blog Editor and BlogJet Editor in Linux under Wine. Take a look here:

• Running Zoundry and BlogJet Editors under Wine
  and
• BlogJet Editor in Linux Review
  

Why widgets suck

I've just read a blog post by Leah Calver titled "Widgets suck".

She says:

...It's not only widgets, the entire mashup phenomenon that isn't really working. I'm not usually such a naysayer, but for the sake of fellow developers I think perhaps I could call this one out.

From a business perspective, widgets are leeches..."

So I've decided to share my thoughts here.

My personal take on widgets is this:
It is a nice and cool technology which allows to create a single peace of software which does one specific thing. What cool about it, is that you choose to decide the graphics, the appearance, the functionality - its like writing a short story. If you do it well enough, many others will use it gladly and happily.
But my problem with Widgets is that they force you to put an effort to use them.

I'll explain: these things are supposed to make my life more fun, and easier and more interesting. But they are different application than what I already have on my computer. I have to "manually" see them: on Mac it's pressing the key, on Windows its minimizing all windows. That's a usability problem.

Not to mention, that widgets are huge time burner, of course.

I think though, there's a solution possible to this. As our screens are getting bigger in size, time will come when 30 incher will sit on my desk. After working awhile with such a monster, I know that my field of view doesn't catch full 30" without turning my head over. So, dissecting screen area estate to a "constant" part where widgets would sit and give me useful information, and "dynamic" part which will serve as today's monitors (for applications that is), I'd have a benefit of both Widgets (as available to me at all times) and normal work (not interrupted by operation needed to check a weather on a widget).

A temporal solution may be in form of small (say, 15") additional screen nearside your main one, or Lebedev's Mini Three.

Just my thoughts though.
Feedback is welcome.

-A.

Technorati : techonology, widgets

Ubuntu Validates as Genuine Microsoft Software

An Ubuntu user manages to download Windows Defender and other software using IE4Linux and WINE.

That would just show once more, that all the Genuine Advantage thing is a total crap. That's just another disturbance for a decent people and not even a blinking green on a pirates traffic lights.

Just my thought.

-A

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