Open Source, Open People, Open Arms, an Open World

Posted: 10 September 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Open Source | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Are you part of the Open Source community? Do you favor Open Source products? Do you possibly contribute to Open Source?

You know, you don’t have to give money to contribute to Open Source. You can help by giving your time, your talents, your feedback; you even help by using the Open Source products. If no one used it, what would its purpose be? Wouldn’t it be nice if the whole world could be Open Source?

Mozilla is one of my favorite Open Source projects. Ever heard of them? Sound familiar, huh? Mozilla is the creator of the Firefox web browser, the only browser software to give Internet Explorer a run for its money over the last few years or so. Many of you reading this probably use FF on your own systems; be they powered by MS Windows or Linux. You can even run FF on Mac.

There are many browsers out there in the world. There are also many software projects. Some are closed source, like Adobe Reader or Photoshop. Many, however, are Open Source. Many are also created as “labors of love” by folks expecting no remuneration whatsoever for their labors.

I won’t sit here and harp about using Open Source only. Even I occasionally use a closed source piece of software. It’s not a sin. If you do use some Open Source stuff on your systems,  try to remember to support the creators, hackers, coders, tweakers, and beta testers who made those great apps what they are. If there’s a donate button somewhere, drop a couple bucks in the tip jar. Every little bit is appreciated… and helps these folks to continue working on these fine projects.

Learn more about Mozilla from Mozilla coder Paul Rouget’s excellent blog post and video, Mozilla Openness Facts. They say nothing in this world is free. That may be true, but whatever you pay for free is a price worth paying.

Have a great weekend.

~Eric

Browsers… a Wee Bit Off the Beaten Path

Posted: 5 September 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Tech General | Tags: , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Tired of those mainstream browsers like Firefox and Chrome in Linux? You have other options, folks.

I’m going to briefly talk about a couple of my favorite options here today. Let’s get started, shall we?

Opera Browser

From a Wikipedia article about Opera’s history:

The history of the Opera web browser began in 1994 when it was started as a research project at Telenor, the largest Norwegian telecommunications company. In 1995…

I’ve had Opera on my systems for a dozen years. I used it in Windows 98SE and XP. I’ve used it in Slackware, Debian, Arch, etc. for the past 6 years or so. Granted, it is installed as a secondary browser because Firefox is actually my primary browser. That being said, though, Opera is by no means to be thought of as inferior to Firefox. Opera has always been a high quality application from a dedicated company. The browser has many modern features. Some of its original ideas were “borrowed” for other browsers like IE and FF over the years. Opera has been an innovator in the browser field.

Opera has a lot of features that make browsing the Internet a joy. It’s stable, safe, and very secure. For much more information, check out Opera Browser’s website. Download it. Give it a test drive. You might like it a lot. It never hurts to have it on your system as a backup browser.

Seamonkey

What exactly is a sea monkey? Well, I dunno. However, I do know what a Seamonkey is. It’s my favorite backup browser on any operating system. A few eons ago, there was a browser known as Netscape Navigator. It ruled the Internet. There were no competitors in sight back then. Nothing is king of the hill forever, though. Along came a browser called Internet Explorer from a company called Microsoft, and Netscape’s days were numbered. That’s all ancient Internet history, though. Today, were here to learn a bit about a direct descendent of the Netscape Navigator browser. It’s called Seamonkey.

For someone like me, who uses Mozilla’s Firefox browser as my primary means to navigate the World Wide Web, Seamonkey is like an old and comfortable pair of shoes. FF and Seamonkey are cousins, you might say. Hence, they have a certain resemblance. If you like to customize your browsers like I do, you’ll find that Seamonkey is almost as customizable as Firefox. Many of your favorite FF extensions also work on Seamonkey. It’s also stable and renders webpages very well; using the same Gecko engine that FF uses.

One added feature that I love is Composer. It’s a full-featured WYSIWYG editor and webpage publisher application. Back in my Windoze daze, I used an app called MS Publisher to create custom HTML pages for different purposes. Nowadays, I use Composer. It’s a fabulous app, and comes free right along with the Seamonkey browser. For those of you using Linux who remember or have used KompoZer or Nvu before that, you’ll love Composer. It will look very familiar to you.

Give Seamonkey a try. I bet you’ll keep it on your system just for Composer, if for no other reason. However, even without Composer, it’s a fabulous little browser… fast, stable, easy on resources.

Have fun!

~Eric

Image credits: Opera logo owned by Opera Software. Seamonkey logo owned by Mozilla Foundation.

What’s Dragging On Your Firefox?

Posted: 7 April 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Tech General | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mozilla posted a list of the worst offender addons for its Firefox browser. These are the addons that really slow down that FF start up.

Mozilla actually labels them as “slow performing addons”. You can view the entire list by clicking HERE. See if any of your favorite extensions are on the list; a few of mine were, but they were down toward the bottom (minimal footprint) of the list.

You can’t get something for nothing. That’s just a universal truth. If you want your browser to do a boat load of extra tasks or jump through hoops like a circus animal, then you’re going to have to feed it. Your browser eats RAM and CPU cycles. That’s just the nature of the beast. Some are picky eaters; others are voracious monsters with bottomless pits for stomachs.

If you want your FF to be a lean mean browsing machine, you have to trim the fat a bit. Break the candy-coated addon habit. If you don’t really need it or use it, why have it installed? There are some extensions that, were they not available, would probably deter me from using FF altogether. These are my must haves.

However, I also have some fluff in there. I have a smiley extension that’s pretty cool. I also have one that adds “Go to top” and “Go to bottom” of my R-click context menu. Could I live without those? Sure, but I don’t wanna’, so I keep them. They both have very minimal footprints and seem to use next to nothing in resources within FF, so what the hell?

The beauty of FF for me is its potential for customization. You can truly make FF your own, should you care to put the effort into it. I could never do that with IE back in my Windows daze. I had to use addons for the Trident engine such as Crazy Browser and Avant to get IE to be what I wanted it to be. And even with those tools, there were limitations.

Have I mentioned lately that I LOVE Mozilla! If you have some spare change lying around, they could always use a buck or two to help defray the expenses of running that project. Mozilla creates so much for so many with so little. Help if you can.

Later…

~Eric

Notes: Don’t forget to click on links within my articles, folks. They often lead to informational sites to help you in some way; be they definitions of an uncommon word, or Wikipedia articles about certain items.

Disclaimer: I was at one time involved with the Avant Browser Support Team. I’m now retired from that excellent group. If you decide to give Avant Browser a try, tell ’em Eric sent ya’. 😉