The Lair

Strange, Firefox 2 released last week and I updated my primary workstation. I explicitly performed the upgrades from release candidate onwards and experimented with things. I liked it, overall. My notebook, on the other hand, was kept for an automatic upgrade notification. Only, it never happened.

I checked for updates via the Firefox menu item, infact I check on a daily basis. My notebook Firefox install is still a piddling 1.5.0.7 Only, I am informed that there are no available updates for Firefox. Ugh. So, I downloaded it myself and installed it over the old version. You’re not supposed to do that. But never mind, I did it anyway.

Discovered a few interesting extensions (mostly oldies but goodies) recently. Regular readers to the blog probably know of my ken for Greasemonkey; a means of transforming web pages using JavaScript. I had held off installing Greasemonkey because I wanted to take it slow with new extensions… Greasemonkey has been known to leak memory from time to time and I didn’t want the shiny new Firefox 2.0 to become a bloated memory hungry balloon too soon. So, in the hunt for potential alternatives, I discovered Stylish, yet another transformation extension which has been getting a lot of decent press recently.

Stylish is not exactly the same as Greasemonkey, of course. Their own comparison notes the differences - it’s more complementary than replacement. However it can actually modify the actual Firefox application look and feel - something that the JavaScript based GM can’t do. I can see uses for fiddling with user look and feel, if only to smooth over some minor Firefox UI niggles. Beats hacking around with ChromEdit anyday. Installed it and I like it thus far. I miss the power of a real programming language (yes, JavaScript is a very nice programming language. Bite me) and using styles don’t really compensate… This will, however, do nicely in a pinch.

Speaking of Greasemonkey, I’m wondering if I need to update a script I did some time ago to account for the new changes to theme and so on. I rarely use the GM script these days because I rarely visit the site; but prod me into revamping it if you feel the need.

A couple of interesting Firefox extensions that I’m contemplating using as well - a fresh look at Performancing and an alternative, Deepest Sender. Still; easy does it. I need to figure out the bad extensions and make sure the memory leaks don’t recur. Seem to have Firefox 2.0 down to leaking about 10 megs a day or so; which is acceptable considering it would leak 10 times that in a day in the 1.5 era.

Also got me a mess of RATM and Primal Scream from elric. Woo.