I know that it comes with a warning but I was caught up with interest in the nightly build of Firefox with the Australis look to it.  I’ve been a fan of the theme for a while but when the author indicates that it will be retired because of the current changes with Firefox, that’s got to be worth a download!

The current look for Firefox has been around for a while.  The signature orange Firefox menu and the rectangular tabs.

For me, it’s a matter of looks (notice the green theme – Puny Weakling) and I like to pin tabs that I use all the time.  Notice Hootsuite, Facebook, Gmail, Google Plus, and WordPress.  It gives a compressed view and probably saves a few pixels for use on the screen.

I also like to reduce the need to scroll and so will turn off menu bars and status bars whenever possible.  If I’m really going distraction free, I’ll display things full screen and get rid of everything except for the content.

The same thing with Internet Explorer looks like this…  Pinned tabs means something different to Internet Explorer  so the layout is considerably different.  WordPress is good enough to scale the image so that it views nicely on your screen.  Mental note – I should have exited Firefox before doing the screen capture so that you can’t see it through the transparent title bar!

Or, with Google Chrome.  (I know … again with the green)

So, I was curious about the Nightly build of Firefox and installed it to take a look.

Immediately, I was drawn to it.  Like any release of Firefox, it checks to make sure that my addons are OK and the loads.

The look definitely is rounded and curvier.  I scanned the look just to see what was different and noticed that there was only a “back” button available.  That was pretty strange.  I did some noodle scratching and figured that probably the folks at Mozilla figured that nobody used it anyway and so dropped it.  I reconciled myself by saying that this wasn’t a world ender.

Then it occurred to me.  I had nothing to go “Forward” to!  Sure enough, I went to another website and then back.  Intuitively, the browser gave me that option.

I really like it when software is smarter than me.

The lack of the orange Firefox bar was the next thing of interest.  While I don’t use it all the time, there are times when I might want to turn on a menu bar or open a new private window for browsing.  On the right side, a new icon beckoned my attention, and it’s in fact the options that I have become accustomed to.  Whew!  I don’t have to learn even more keyboard shortcuts!

Now, I know that it’s a nightly build and there are nightly updates to keep the browser current.  It may be that there will come a time that I tire of downloading the new code from over night but for the time being, I’m enjoying the new user interface experience.

Beyond the experience, it’s interesting to see just what’s happening under the hood.  I guess the curious coder in me is just fascinated in watching what the developers are talking about.

In the long run, the web will win as a result.  Firefox will get better and you can bet that the other web developers are keeping an eye, maybe even contributing to the development, so that we all have a better experience and safer web to visit.

Related articles

• Firefox Australis: a Brighter Future for the Original Alternate Browser (mac.appstorm.net)
• Installing Firefox Nightly with Australis on Fedora 19 (sayaksarkar.wordpress.com)
• Firefox ‘Australis’ now available for testing (news.en.softonic.com)
• Firefox makes a Metro move (reviews.cnet.com)
• Hands-on with Firefox’s revamped ‘Australis’ interface (pcworld.com)
• Australis landing plans (msujaws.wordpress.com)
• Firefox 28 Changes UI and Improves Customization (createamixer.com)
• Meet the new Firefox: Australis user interface hits Firefox Nightly (liliputing.com)
• Mozilla ushers in new Firefox UI (techworld.com.au)

Out of the box, most browsers look the same.  Kind of silvery with tabs and it’s only when you start to poke around under the hood that you realize that there’s a big difference.  I’ve always customized my computer – it’s just pleasing rather than having to deal with a boring interface.  Since I spend most of my time in a browser these days, it seems only logical to customize the look of the browser.

There are many themes available for you already created and waiting for you to download and apply them.

• Mozilla Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Opera Next

One of the things that intrigued me about Opera Next was the menu option right in the browser to create your own theme. 

I’ve always been impressed with this image that was part of a Ubuntu release and have maintained it as my desktop on my computer.  With Opera’s built in “build a theme”, I was able to make it part of my desktop of my browser.

But what about the other browsers?

Well, you could poke around the theme repositories and see if you could find one – or you could roll your own.  Here are a couple that I played around with. 

The applications are essentially extensions to the browser.  Just install them and away you go.  There are others so if you don’t like it, try another.  The goal here is customization.

Canvas for Firefox

Theme Creator for Google Chrome

They both function similarly.  You personalize with images that you upload from your computer and you can adjust the colours for the application.

As I was looking around the already created themes, I notice that there are a great deal of options if you’re a soccer fan and want to show your loyalty via a browser customization.  Editorial Note – lots of Brazil!  If you’re in a school setting, how about a custom school theme with school pictures and colours?  Themes can be shared amongst friends or the whole world, if you’re interested.

I’ll confess – I’m no artist.  Despite my efforts, I couldn’t do better than the themes that I’m currently using.

• Mozilla Firefox – Puny Weakling
• Google Chrome – Robot Theme

There’s definitely an element of green there.  It sure beats silver.

I’ve heard many reasons why students aren’t allowed to create movies in class …

• installing the video creation software takes up too much room on the image;
• we don’t have licenses for all students;
• movie making is reserved for this course;
• our computers don’t have enough hard drive space;
• we’ve got to constantly apply updates for bug fixes;
• <fill in your own>

It results in frustration from the need to put together digital resources and to present them as a movie.

If that’s the case, or you want to get an easy to use, fully functional cloud based creation tool, you need to check out Mozilla’s Popcorn Maker.

It’s got most of the functionality that you need to create your content – layers, timeline, transitions, scrubber bar, preview in the environment, the ability to import created content from a wide variety of sources …

To kick the wheels, I decided to make a video promoting Essex County.  Well, sort of…

I figured the four cornerstones would be Windsor, Amherstburg, Leamington, and Belle River.  (Sorry, Stoney Point)

As I looked at the sources available (Popcorn calls them Events), a couple immediately caught my eye…  Google Maps and a Flickr search.

So, I created a separate layer for each municipality’s map using Google Maps.  Double clicking in the window presented lets you zoom in and move around to get things positioned just the way you want them to be.  Images are randomly generated from a search of Flickr for the community.  Of course, you can upload your own but I thought this was an interesting concept and it worked so quickly.

Once a layer has been created, objects can be moved or stretched on the timeline.  As you would expect, the layers themselves can be ordered after the fact.  I had complete freedom to mix and match.  I started with an idea and it kept evolving as I experimented.  There was nothing in Popcorm Maker to slow me down.

Of course, you need a title and a good kiosk program just runs a continuous loop.  Literally, within five minutes, I had created my first movie!

Creating and logging in with a Mozilla Persona unlocks additional features like bringing in YouTube movies for remixing or the ability to permanently save your efforts in the cloud.  This really did generate some wow at my keyboard.

After playing around with Popcorn Maker for a while, I could easily see how it addresses the issues above. 

If your students have a browser and internet access, that’s all that’s needed to start to create productions from their efforts.  This is the real deal.

I know that it comes with a warning but I was caught up with interest in the nightly build of Firefox with the Australis look to it.  I’ve been a fan of the theme for a while but when the author indicates that it will be retired because of the current changes with Firefox, that’s got to be worth a download!

The current look for Firefox has been around for a while.  The signature orange Firefox menu and the rectangular tabs.

For me, it’s a matter of looks (notice the green theme – Puny Weakling) and I like to pin tabs that I use all the time.  Notice Hootsuite, Facebook, Gmail, Google Plus, and WordPress.  It gives a compressed view and probably saves a few pixels for use on the screen.

I also like to reduce the need to scroll and so will turn off menu bars and status bars whenever possible.  If I’m really going distraction free, I’ll display things full screen and get rid of everything except for the content.

The same thing with Internet Explorer looks like this…  Pinned tabs means something different to Internet Explorer  so the layout is considerably different.  WordPress is good enough to scale the image so that it views nicely on your screen.  Mental note – I should have exited Firefox before doing the screen capture so that you can’t see it through the transparent title bar!

Or, with Google Chrome.  (I know … again with the green)

So, I was curious about the Nightly build of Firefox and installed it to take a look.

Immediately, I was drawn to it.  Like any release of Firefox, it checks to make sure that my addons are OK and the loads.

The look definitely is rounded and curvier.  I scanned the look just to see what was different and noticed that there was only a “back” button available.  That was pretty strange.  I did some noodle scratching and figured that probably the folks at Mozilla figured that nobody used it anyway and so dropped it.  I reconciled myself by saying that this wasn’t a world ender.

Then it occurred to me.  I had nothing to go “Forward” to!  Sure enough, I went to another website and then back.  Intuitively, the browser gave me that option.

I really like it when software is smarter than me.

The lack of the orange Firefox bar was the next thing of interest.  While I don’t use it all the time, there are times when I might want to turn on a menu bar or open a new private window for browsing.  On the right side, a new icon beckoned my attention, and it’s in fact the options that I have become accustomed to.  Whew!  I don’t have to learn even more keyboard shortcuts!

Now, I know that it’s a nightly build and there are nightly updates to keep the browser current.  It may be that there will come a time that I tire of downloading the new code from over night but for the time being, I’m enjoying the new user interface experience.

Beyond the experience, it’s interesting to see just what’s happening under the hood.  I guess the curious coder in me is just fascinated in watching what the developers are talking about.

In the long run, the web will win as a result.  Firefox will get better and you can bet that the other web developers are keeping an eye, maybe even contributing to the development, so that we all have a better experience and safer web to visit.

Related articles

• Firefox Australis: a Brighter Future for the Original Alternate Browser (mac.appstorm.net)
• Installing Firefox Nightly with Australis on Fedora 19 (sayaksarkar.wordpress.com)
• Firefox ‘Australis’ now available for testing (news.en.softonic.com)
• Firefox makes a Metro move (reviews.cnet.com)
• Hands-on with Firefox’s revamped ‘Australis’ interface (pcworld.com)
• Australis landing plans (msujaws.wordpress.com)
• Firefox 28 Changes UI and Improves Customization (createamixer.com)
• Meet the new Firefox: Australis user interface hits Firefox Nightly (liliputing.com)
• Mozilla ushers in new Firefox UI (techworld.com.au)

As I was assembling the Flipboard document yesterday, there was a recurring theme from Ron Canuel’s presentation…

This, from @CCareyHerbert via Twitter

The first quote took me back to Sundays as a child.  After church, my brother and I would have to sit down with our parents and play some Euchre or Bridge before we were allowed to roam the streets.  My dad had this great expression that he would use before playing a lone hand “No Guts, No Glory”.  Then he’d proceed to make good on his promise.

At the time of the above slide, the teacher in me said “that’s not how you spell adopter” but I quickly overcame that and listened to his message.  It was so appropriate to those who feel like they need to make change within their organization.  In my context as a consultant for a school district, it made perfect sense.

I was always the guy who arrived at the planning table with all kinds of ideas for innovation and was generally glossed over.  I still remember bringing the message that our district needed to embrace Twitter and other social media to connect with our community.  Just like it happened yesterday, I remember the remark that was given to me with direct eye contact.  “The world doesn’t need to know what we had for breakfast”.  Needless to say, time proved me right and now social media is a mainstay for communications in most circles.  Some just do it better than others.

I also had a wonderful group of elementary and secondary educators that would meet bi-monthly and they would be the recipients of my ideas.  In my own little world, they seemed like great ideas but it was only after being put into their own contexts and community that they became outrageously successful.  In that respect, perhaps I was the early adopter but it was their efforts in taking the ideas and running with them that put them over the top.  From there, the ideas would cascade to their colleagues until it became a board level “plan”.

By the time Ron was done, I was just sitting there having my Eureka moments.  I finally got it.

I also realized that the district could have saved a lot of money – don’t hire me – just go directly to the mid-adopters.  (tongue in cheek)

Over the past while, there have been a couple of interactions with inspiring minds on social media.

• Sue Bruyns had asked “I wonder why they don’t get it”.
• Brandon Grasley had responded in a completely different forum “They might not be ready yet”.

While these were two distinctly different conversations, they could have been asked and answered in the same conversation.

The third part of the conversation would be something like:

• When they do, look out!

Somehow, the successful implementation of any change needs to come from those mid-adopters.  That, I get completely.  They aren’t the single voice in the wilderness; they’re the mass that will ultimately make it happen so that everyone sees the value of the change.  But, it’s that single voice with the crazy ideas that’s ultimately responsible for seeding the masses with the idea.

If I could poll, I’d bet that most readers of this blog see themselves as that single voice.  My advice – keep those ideas coming; scream them loudly and frequently; there are those mid-adopters who are ready and willing to run with them.

You need to have the guts to provide the ideas; they need to implement successful and enjoy the glory.

I am so predictable.

My morning routine involves turning on the coffee maker, then coming back here to turn on my computer to log in, start my browser, then go back to get a cup of morning wakeup, and then come back here to see what my little slice of the online world did overnight.

As I came in to the room, I could see it from the doorway.  What the heck?

My pinned tabs are Hootsuite, Facebook, Gmail, Google Plus, Scribefire, and the Mozilla start page.  Even before taking my first sip, I knew that wasn’t the Firefox logo.  Have I been hijacked?

Using my best internet discovery skills, I hover over the mask to see where I’d go if I was foolish enough to click on it.  The destination appears to be in the mozilla.org domain.  I’m starting to feel a little better.  Maybe it was Mozilla that was hijacked.  Looking back at the screen, I see the small print.  How did I miss it the first time?  Oh, yeah, it was the mask thing.

It turns out that it links to a quick tutorial and information about online privacy.

I click my way through the presentation.  It really is good stuff.  Great advice.

I hadn’t heard of Lightbeam for Firefox before.  A quick check reveals that it’s an extension from Mozilla designed to let you know “who else” is watching you as you visit a page on the web.  Of course, I had to test it.  It’s always a little freaky to see the results from utilities like this.  You really aren’t alone out there!

It came at a great time.  Last night, I had a quick online interaction with a friend who was developing some student resources for online safety.  That really helped with the context of the entire resource.  There’s a complete lesson in there about online privacy as well as a link to some of the Privacy and Security addons that are available to Firefox users.  Looking through them was like seeing some old friends!

The link to get you started appears here.

In the beginning, there was Skype.  It was great for face to face and audio conversations with others anywhere they could be connected.  Problems evolved over time; it wasn’t available on this platform or incompatible with that platform and every time I would use it, there was the inevitable update.

Then, there were the commercial products.  When I was on the OSAPAC Committee, we evaluated a few (having a whack of fun doing so) and eventually licensing Adobe Connect for the province.  This was really upping the ante since you had so many features that you’d find in formal meetings.  The problem with it was that it did require that you have access to someone who had a licensed version of the software if you wanted a conversation or meeting.  I kind of became the laughing stock of our committee when we moved to online meetings.  At the time, it required a great deal of bandwidth in order to work and send video.  With my incredibly slow internet here, the committee was robbed of my image…

For two years of planning the Bring IT, Together Conference with my co-chair Cyndie, we seemed to live on Google Hangouts.  There was so much planning and so many details that we seemed to be meeting at least once a day to go over details.  Hangouts were a great way of handling things.  There came a time with a browser update (I can’t remember which browser now) that the button needed to give permissions to use the camera and microphone were hidden under another menu bar in the browser.  It was bizarre and no matter where I clicked (or how hard I clicked – Doug has issues…), I couldn’t give the appropriate permission and so was effectively locked out of using Hangouts on that browser.  Fortunately, Google Chrome still worked and so I was good.  Recently, Google has broken Hangouts into its own separate application.  It feels a little kludgey at this point but still works nicely.

Then, with an update to Mozilla Firefox comes conversations right in the browser again!

It’s called Hello and it just works so smoothly as shown in this tutorial on the Mozilla website.

It’s a button that sits up there with your other extensions.  Click it to get started.

Then you need get a unique link to the person you’ll communicate with.  You can see that there are a couple of options for doing this in blue.

Send the invite and wait for them to join the conversation.

So, here in the labs, I’m talking to myself again.  I’m in the host window, lower right, and I’m talking to the wall behind me.

The whole process was very slick and easy.  No software to install and, according to Mozilla, it’s not restricted to Firefox – just any browser that supports WebRTC.

The list needs to be updated – it seems to work well with Vivaldi as well.

But not Internet Explorer…

So, why would you be interested in this over the other offerings?  The really nice part is that you don’t need to have a login on a particular service to access the conversation.  Just a working browser and an invitation to a conversation.

Hello!
Join me for a video conversation using Firefox Hello:
You don’t have to download or install anything. Just copy and paste this URL into your browser:
https: //hello.firefox.com/XXXXXXXX
If you want, you can also learn more about Firefox Hello at https://www.firefox.com/hello/
Talk to you soon!

You’ll note that, in the screen capture above, Mozilla has it marked as Beta.  There are some features that others in this class that aren’t there.  Document sharing, back channelling, private conversations come to mind.

For what’s there now, it’s the easiest way to start a conversation without the hoops that other tools have.  This is one to watch.

And, I got some homework for myself.  I spent some time reading and trying to get my head around just what WebRTC is and its potential.  There’s lots on the horizon.

The first thing I do when I install a new web browser is set up the web apps that I use over and over again.  That includes Hootsuite, Gmail, Google +, Facebook, and the Scribefire blog editor.

For some reason, on this computer I also left the Mozilla start page.  It’s not a page that I pay a great deal of attention to; it’s just so handy for the shortcuts to configure things.

Recently, I had the browser loaded and was distracted from what I was going to do and noticed a section under the search box.

Am I bad for not paying attention before?  I’m sure that it’s been there since the recent campaign on Web Neutrality.

It was the #7 principle from Mozilla.  Very interesting; I like so much of what Mozilla does in terms of software development, what they’ve done for education, and I really like the recently updated Web Literacy Map.

So, having completely forgotten what I was about to do, I decided to check out their complete list of principles.  After all, this is #7, there’s got to be at least 6 others.

It turns out that there are 10 of them and you can visit them here.  The entire manifesto is fleshed out there.

Isn’t this what you want your web to be?

I really like things that simply life for me and a recent addition to Firefox has done it for me.  And…maybe it make the browser run just a bit faster in the process.

One of the first things that I add to any browser is an add-on to share the story in the current window. 

With the addition, there’s now one less thing to do.  The magic is behind this little button.

Behind the scenes, it hooks into a number of places where you might want to share the current page…

And, of course, down the list to…

…where I already have a number of things in place with each Twitter message.

Once configured, the use of the sharing button is immediate.  Just visit a web resource to be shared and click the button.

Choose your destination and away it goes.

The clickable link, as opposed to the screen capture above is here:  http://www.wired.com/2015/03/gifs-show-constellations-transforming-150000-years/

It’s a small thing, but if it makes things a little quicker and smoother for me, I’m all in!

Like many people, I seem to live in a web browser these days.  So much information, so much to do.  I have nothing but admiration for the developers behind this genre of software.  They do an amazing job both in terms of functionality and in efforts to keep us safe online.

Oh, and productive too.

I would estimate that 90% of the time, I’m using the Firefox browser and the rest in Opera Next or Google Chrome.  They’re all such great pieces of software and yet they all are missing those certain somethings.  Fortunately, there are equally as terrific programmers creating addons/extensions to increase the functionality of the browser.  As I look at the collection that appear at the top of the screen, it can look like a holiday decoration!

Every time I install or reinstall a browser, there are certain go-to addons/extensions that I make sure are added.

Scribefire – This is my go-to blogging tool.  It has all of the blogging functionality that I’ve decided that I need.  Or, perhaps I’ve modified my needs to the functions that it provides.  Either way, for my current needs, it has it all.  I like that it easily schedules posts to go live at a particular time.  I also build for my “This Week in Ontario Edublogs” posts by storing content there and scheduling it for Friday.

Web of Trust – A good internet mantra is to “trust nobody” and the Web of Trust is one of my partners in making it happen.  With a simple red, yellow, or green icon next to links, coupled with some common sense, I try to avoid those dodgy websites.

AdBlock Plus – I started out using this like I think most people originally do.  It blocks the very annoying advertising that permeates the internet.  Some of the advertising can be more than just a bit annoying.  I’ve stuck with it because we have incredibly slow internet access here.  I’m constantly asked by my kids “how can you live like this?”  Removing the advertising is one way to speed things up.

Shareaholic – There was a time when I had different resources to share to Twitter, Facebook, Instapaper, Evernote, … It’s kind of interesting to sit back at times and think about where you share resources.  Shareaholic amalgamates them all into a single place.  Just right click on the resource to be saved/shared, choose your preferred destination, and you’re done.

LastPass – Their motto is “Simplify Your Life”.  Actually, it could be simpler.  Just use the same password for every service that you use.  That would also be one of the dumbest things to do.  Period.  LastPass not only does the heavy remembering for you – an account is remembered for any browser with this extension – but it will also generate complex passwords that get the nod of approval to those password security evaluation recommendations that you get when you create a password.

How’s that for a list?  I had to do some work to cut it back to just five and I feel badly that I’m looking at some other create addons at the top of the screen.

What are your favourites that make you and your browsing productivity experience so good?

I’ll admit it.  I seem to go through life missing so much.

There’s nothing more embarrassing that going for a drive with my wife and asking her “Was that house always there?”  The look I get in return confirms that she really is a saint.

But, when I do clue in on good things, I’m so happy.

I had one of those moments this week.  I was bored and at my MacBook Pro and so decided to see if I was running the latest version of Firefox.  It turns out that I wasn’t.  I’m on the Beta channel and so there are often more updates than on the other channels.  Normally, I just sit there and get the notification the update had been done in the background and that all I have to do is restart.  Why I elected to check manually now, I have no idea.  It was a 60MB download so I knew that I was in for a fair wait with the slow internet connection that I have.

When I rebooted, life went on as per normal. I’m now running version 38.0.5.

I’m plugging away and I notice this little icon.

Was that always there?

I fire up Firefox on my Ubuntu computer, running version 37 and go to the same webpage.  Nada.

OK, it must be new.  I’d be best to look at the release notes.  I don’t see a reference to it.  There is some discussion that a reader mode would be available in version 39.  Am I looking at a work in process on the Beta channel?

Time for some investigation.  I give it a click on an open Hootsuite window and get this.

It looks like a Reader Mode.  It doesn’t work on all pages and seems to kick in intermittently.  Now, I’ve been a user of Evernote’s Clearly for a long time now.  I like reading in a clean, no-distraction environment.  If this is going to be an integral part of Firefox like it has been in Safari for a while, I’m all for it.

In the classroom, the concept is perfect.  Displaying a web page?  Steal the focus from the extraneous and get right to the content.

I just wish I could find a concrete reference to it.  It would be nice to know why it works on this page but not that.  Is there a configuration option?

More importantly, has it always been there?

Do you ever wonder if, somehow, you could make your computer work faster?  I wonder about that constantly.

Since I seem to do so much on the web, it’s a natural that I start there.  I recognize the limitation of my Internet Service Provider and I’ll gladly sign any petition to allow for cable or fibre optics to be pulled down our road.  In the meantime, I tweak and wonder and head into town to mooch fast internet from my daughter when a major update is needed.

In the meantime, I dance with what I’ve brought to the dance.  That largely means using the Firefox or Opera web browsers.  Every now and again, I’ll go under the hood and see if I’m not shooting myself in the foot.  I do have an addon fetish …

and that’s just what’s available for viewing.  There’s more hanging around that don’t place a one-click icon in the browser.

I read about a new (to me anyway) browser called Citrio.  I did a quick download (and it really was quick) and I was up and running in seconds.  Citrio is based on the Chromium browser so there was just about no learning at all to get started and it wanted access to the Chrome content already on my computer.  Users of Chromium, Chrome, and Opera would have no problem making the move.  I gave myself license to play around with it after reading Alfie Kohn’s post “Five Not-So-Obvious Propositions About Play” which every educator should read and ponder.  I’m basing my freedom to do this under his point #3.

I’m also mindful of a gentleman that I worked with for a summer job on a farm and his advice “Curiosity killed the cattlebeast”.  Everyone should work on a diary farm at least once.

Citro lived up to its billing as really fast to download and start.  There’s nothing as empty looking, however, than a newly installed browser.

Well, OK, I had to install Scribefire in order to write the post!

There was no doubt that Citrio had the clean look of a new browser but I’d have to put it on a testing suite in order to compare actual speeds.  Rendering of pages did feel nicely but the pages were still slow to complete.  You know why?  Advertising.

It’s noticeable because I’ve learned to read content faster than being distracted by flashing graphics that so often accompany advertising.

Thanks to the OLDaily read yesterday, I learned of this student from Simon Fraser University “Adblock Plus Study“.  It’s a good reminder that there are potentially more things alive on the internet than what you’re looking for.  (They also pay the bills for some companies)  It’s a good read.

It’s also a confirmation that a different browser may not make a huge difference in the speed with which a page appears in front of you.  It’s also a function of everything else that comes along with the desired content.  For those who pay dearly in dollars and time for bandwidth, the lesson is data savings from SFU is really worth noting.

So, the bottom line here is that I haven’t found a magic speedup bullet in a new browser but have confirmation that blocking advertising is one of the best things that I’ve done for myself.  There still is a place for a browser without addons installed though.  There are times when a page appears broken and it turns out that what’s being blocked is crucial for success.  For those events, it’s nice to have a Plan B!

You know those popular graphics about keeping calm?

They started as kind of cool and interesting.

Then, the questions become – how do I create my own?

A common answer is to use an editor like Gimp to edit an existing product and make it yours.  Then, we got hit with a flurry of badly edited graphics.

Now, thanks to a relaunch of Mozilla’s Thimble, you can create your own perfect web page or graphic with a little HTML editing knowledge.

Isn’t this much better?

Much better.

And, so much easier than hitting a graphic editor, matching colours, etc.

How to do it?  Using Mozilla’s Thimble editor and a little remixing of the original.

Even if you’ve never coded in HTML before, the example is really intuitive.  Just do a little reading and kudos to Mozilla for including comments inline to help the process.  It’s a wonderful and practical reinforcement for a post from me earlier this summer.  Have You Read a Good Program Lately?

Edit the text in the index.html file and the colours in the style.css.  In addition to a good example of documentation, so is the use of file structure and even indenting.  Of course, I’m sure that there are a million ideas running through your mind now.  Even student creation of their own graphic for their projects is so possible.  p.s. don’t tell them that they’re actually learning to code while doing this!

This poster creation isn’t the only one tailored for teachers at this time.  Check out the others up for remix on the opening page.

For a permanent copy, you’ll need to create an account on Thimble and your results can be published to the web if you wish.

https://d157rqmxrxj6ey.cloudfront.net/dougpete/2488

Always be learning – I think it’s a great motto for survival in this day and age.

So, I’m working through my list of things to learn more about from the recently concluded Bring IT, Together conference.

I thought I knew of all the block programming languages.  After all, I’ve worked my way through Alfred Thompson’s big list.

But I picked up on a new language during Sylvia Martinez’ keynote address.  It’s called BeetleBlocks.  It’s another language that builds on the promise of the original Logo concept.  Among all the things that you can do is drive an object around the screen.  You start, as typical, with a blank screen.

What’s new with this picture?

All of the other tools that I have worked with previously have had an X and Y plane.  Notice in this case, there’s also a Z.  Yep, we’re now talking programming in three dimensions.

If you’ve used Scratch (or similar languages), you already have a valuable set of skills.  Now, just extend them!

I dragged a few blocks out onto the desktop and started poking around.  I was excited now. 

What can people who know what they’re doing do?  Fortunately, the resource comes with plenty of examples and I’m speed learning by going through the examples provided and modifying them to see what happens.

If you’re a Scratch programmer, you’re right at home.

Since the results are in three dimensions, it only makes sense that you can provide different views for the results.  In particular, the wireframe really showed me what was happening.

This project, currently in Alpha stage, and only supported on the Google Chrome platform (although it seemed to work fine in Firefox) is a very worthy addition to your set of tools for programming. 

It seems to be the logical next step for students who are proficient in Scratch programming and are looking for more inspiration. 

I hope that the product continues to mature and, who knows?  We may be talking about this as the Hour of Code approaches.

We all know that we should floss.  It’s a good preventative action for your teeth and gums.  It’s just that it’s good for you and your hygienist/dentist recommends it.  So, if you’re like me, you grudgingly do it.  They’re just looking out for you.

I had another case of someone looking out for me this morning.  It was Mozilla and the Firefox browser.  I opened my browser and got a WARNING, WARNING, WARNING.  (OK, emphasis is mine) 

But the last thing you need in the morning is something to go wrong with your computer when your first coffee hasn’t kicked in.

Add-ons are my best friend.  I can’t imagine a browsing experience without them.  Actually, I can – I’ve used Microsoft’s Edge…

Of all the add-ons, who is the guilty party?  It turns out to be one of the most important to me and my failing memory – LastPass.  It saves my passwords so my mind doesn’t have to.  What would I do?  This could be serious.  Not only does it save passwords, but I use it to generate supposedly tough to crack passwords when I go to a new site and need one generated.

I did what every irrational person would do in this case.  I quit Firefox and reloaded it.  Same results.  What do they say about doing the same thing over again and expecting different results? 

Next step was a little more rational.  Maybe there was something wrong with the add-on.  Into the hamburger menu I go and deleted it and install a new copy from the Firefox add-on collection.  Of course, Firefox wants to restart before I can use it.  I do it, and I’m back in business.  I’m happy.

Now to do what I should have done in the first place – check the LastPass support site to see what’s going on.  There indeed was an issue with Firefox 43 and a quick explanation tells the reader to do what I did.  Not my first step, but the second one!

Now, it’s time to dig a little deeper into this add-on signing and it’s off to the Firefox site for details.

It’s a good read and one that I would suggest be done with students.  There’s lots to chew on with this. 

Does your browser have your back?

Before there was real computer art, there was ASCII art.  If you’re old enough to remember, it was before printers could draw graphics, pixels, lines, etc.  They did a wonderful job of printing letters and numbers.  And, with artistic abilities you could actually create pictures.  Digital impressionism?

When I read about this feature in Facebook and Instagram, I just had to try it and it really did give me a flashback…

Take any image that you have posted publicly and saved as a .jpg file on the service.  Here’s my choice, this handsome fellow on his way to the beach.

Now, the key is to find the URL to the picture.

Here’s what I did.

In the Firefox browser, I clicked the right mouse button to get the context menu to get the location of the image.

The image ended in .jpg so that was great.  I opened a new tab and pasted the image location there.  The URL is really long and involved so just ignore it and have comfort knowing that your browser knows what it’s doing.

For a black and white image, go to the very end of the URL and add .txt and press enter on the keyboard.  Voila!  Check out how the characters create the image.  It’s nothing short of amazing.  Imagine doing that by design and by hand.

My image was actually really big but a few CTRL – keyboard presses later and it had shrunk to give the ASCII art.  I now have a ghost dog!

There is a second option.  Instead of adding .txt to the image, add .html for a full colour version.

Oddly enough, and I can be odd at times, I can already think of a couple of ways that I may use this technique in the future.

Go ahead and try it.

Thoughts?

… you find out it can.

This is something that I think most sophisticated web users do anyway but now it can be done automatically.

It’s a wonderful example about how good things happen when great minds get involved.

Who hasn’t followed a link or a bookmark or a carefully curated website or a great blog only to find that it’s not where your computer thinks it should be and you get the dreaded 404 error message?  Good websites or browsers will often give you a customized message to let you know something is amiss but it’s still unnerving at times when you know that the resource should be there. Or, at least it was at one point.

If the website or resource has indeed gone away, who hasn’t used the Wayback Machine to find a resource from the past, captured as it constantly monitors the web.

Heck, you might even find the presence of a former employer.

If nothing else, it’s a reminder of how we were all learning to create content for the web.

A new project from Mozilla promises to solve this with “No More 404s”.  It’s part of the Firefox Test Pilot project and, if you enter a link that would normally generate a 404 error, Firefox will try to return a successful result by digging into the Wayback Machine for it.

There are other experiments in the Test Pilot program so check them out.  I find the “No More 404s” part most intriguing.

I predict that, if it’s successful, all browsers will eventually incorporate it or something like it.

It’s just a great idea.

Thoughts?

Like many people, I use the zoom in and out feature of the computer I’m using to zoom text in and out.   It can be very handy if you’re doing a presentation and want to show a particular part of a web page to the back of the room.  You just zoom in and move the screen so that what you want to show off is centred and away you go.  

Typically, the command is done with a CTRL/CMD and + or CTRL/CMD and – with a CTRL/CMD and 0 resetting things.  In addition to presentations, it can be handy to use when you hit a web site that uses a very small font.  Rather than squinting, just zoom in on it a bit.  

That’s how I thought that zooming was all about until I played around with the Zoom Extension.

This extension takes the guess work out of resizing your screen.

It installs like any other extension and, when you click the Z, a little slider bar (or a – and +) appears to let you adjust the size on the screen to precisely what you want.

If that was all that the extension did, it would still be worth installing.

However, there’s more.  Right click on the icon to get to the options.

There’s actually two ways that the extension will use to zoom.  It will either use the browser default or will tinker with the web page’s CSS for the effect.  That’s impressive but the singularly most impressive part is that the extension will “remember” the zoom level for a web page.  This, I find, to be extremely helpful for those news sites that don’t present their content in easily human readable size.  Set the new zoom size and forget it.  When you return to the website, things will be exactly to the liking that you left.  

Give the extension a shot and see what you think.  It may well be exactly what you’re looking for.  

One of the truly nice thing about modern computers is that design has given us wider screens than ever.  That's beautiful for watching movies and somewhat better for web browsing.  The screens now seem to be wider than taller. If you look at the top of your screen right now, there's probably a menu bar, [...]

I’ve confessed before and I’ll confess again.  I like to tinker and play around, particularly when there’s something new that catches my attention.

This morning, it was about the updates to Firefox.  Once, my absolute go-to browser, it had been surpassed by other browsers in terms of speed and just the modern look.  Fortunately, we live in an ever changing world where nobody stands still – including Mozilla.

So, when I was reading and poking around, I read about the upcoming releases of Firefox and the changes that will be made for better speed, battery life, modern interface, and memory management.  This all sounded awesome.  Plus, you can play around with the development of the product if you’re so incline.

Inclined I was.

Off I went to kick the tires on the Quantum release.

After a quick download, I was up and running.  I was pleased to see that it remembered my history and settings, etc.  As always, I head off to the preferences to see what tick boxes I could play around with.  Nothing particularly caught my attention although I did reflect on how clean and organized things looked.

Then, I was off and browsing.  It was here that I paused for a second.  The black background was different but the whole layout looked scarily clean.  I couldn’t put my finger on it until I started to go through my morning computing routine.  Then, I got it.

The cleanness was a consequence of most of the add-ons that I regularly use not being there.  There were a couple left though.

Hmmm.

Maybe they just weren’t visible.  Or maybe I just have to redownload them.

Off to the add-ons page I go.  I find the missing add-on and …

Uh oh.  Well, you know what they say about getting into things too quickly.

While I had done some reading and was getting excited, I never even thought that there might be a reality check with add-ons.  After all, they’re one of the reasons people flock to Firefox in the first page.

But a read of this page reveals that the game is changing for add-ons.

In the end, things will even out.  The add-on developers are just a bit behind the development of Firefox.  It’s probably not a bad approach as things change and you want to be 100% go on release day.

So, if you’re excited like I was when you read stories like this, you can learn from my experience and decide whether or not you want to proceed at this time.  At the very least, I’d recommend having both the old and new versions of Firefox around, particularly if it’s a mission critical use.

In the meantime, the new version does seem to deliver and I think it’s ultimately going to raise the bar once again for browser developers.