David Herrold

Firefox 3 “find” UI blunder?

Posted by Dave | Filed under Browsers, Software, Usability

I was searching for words within a page today using the new Firefox 3 on a Mac when I ran into what looks like a bizarre user interface blunder.  The “Next” and “Previous” buttons to find your search term on the page appear to be switched from the standard left=back and right=forward configuration.

I think it would be OK in the Japanese version of the browser (because Japanese is read right to left).  However, on all English versions of the browser the buttons should be swapped.

(Now that I think about it, the same goes for Spanish, French, German, etc…)

Am I crazy or is this really odd?

Tags: browser, Design, firefox3, mozilla, Software, UI, user interface

FireFox 3 upgrade for Mac

Posted by Dave | Filed under Browsers, Software, Usability

I just finished upgrading to FireFox 3.0 and so far the good outweighs the bad. Some things I noticed immediately are the bookmarks in my toolbar are completely rearranged and outdated.

Several of my bookmark folders were simply replaced by two folders called “Most Visited” and “Places.” It’s almost as if the installation grabbed an old copy of my bookmarks as it upgraded.

That is forcing me to scramble to find some old back-up copies of my bookmarks. And that is a pain. About half my add-ons are working correctly. I consider the following add-ons to be essential for any installation of FireFox: Web Developer toolbar, FireBug, TabMix Plus. TabMix Plus isn’t compatible with FireFox 3.0 yet; nor is Mr. UpTime, TinyURL creator and view source chart. But I can live without those for a while (until the developers update them…hint, hint).

The good news.

The speed is fantastic. The startup and shutdown times for FireFox 3.0 seems at least 3 times faster than FireFox 2.0. Even faster than I expected.

FireFox 3.0 appears to be using less memory (RAM) than FireFox 2.0 used on a regular basis. This frees up more memory for other apps to be open at the same time.

The navigation bar has been slightly redesigned, making the back button (pictured above) larger than the forward button (and also graying out the forward button when it is not needed). This is an excellent example of Fitt’s Law (the time to acquire a target is directly related to the size and distance of the target) in action. Mozilla’s interaction designer probably noted that most people use the back button far more than they use the forward button and adjusted the size to reflect that. Pretty sharp.

Overall, I’d say the upgrade was pretty positive with a few hiccups.

Take my advice and back up your entire machine (on an external source) before upgrading. That way you can simply copy over anything you may be missing (or back out of the upgrade gracefully if something goes awry).

Speaking of Firefox add-ons…what are some of your favorites?

Tags: browser, FireFox, firefox3, mozilla

Mr. Uptime great FireFox add-on

Posted by Dave | Filed under Browsers, Productivity, Software

I’ve been using the Mr Uptime FireFox add-on for several months now and it just dawned on me that I use it fairly often. Mr. Uptime saves me time and hassles in one fell swoop. Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you are reading your favorite RSS feed or visiting your favorite news aggregator (digg, slashdot, whatever…). You click on a link that is referenced on the site and …blam…404 file not found. For whatever reason, the site is currently down or experiencing database problems, DNS issues, they didn’t pay their electric bill…whatever.

That is where Mr. Uptime steps in. It notices that you couldn’t reach the site and offers to monitor the page in question until it becomes available. As soon as it’s available, it will offer to open that page in a new tab, window or simply alert you that it’s available now. I have mine set to alert me and open a new tab in the background, so it doesn’t disturb whatever I’m reading at the moment.

There is also a nifty menu option that allows you to highlight some text on a page (such as an SQL error) and set a rule to watch for that SQL error to go away. It then notifies you when that SQL error goes away (see image below).

That about covers it. You can download the Mr. Uptime FireFox add-on here. It’s free and pretty cool.

No go forth and surf; and don’t worry about site getting Dugg or Slash Dotted. Mr. Uptime can keep an eye on them for you.

Tags: 404, add-ons, browser, FireFox, Mr Uptime