Talkings of a Tyrant

There have been several implementations of the new features that Firefox 1.5 brings.

Some notable new features are canvas support and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) support. I’m only going to discuss two implementations, but keep in mind that there are several more.

Canvascape

One such site is Canvascape.

Canvascape is a clever implementation of the canvas tag and javascript to make a game that runs completely in Firefox. No Java, Shockwave, or Flash. Just CSS and javascript.

It doesn’t do anything, yet. They’re currently working on porting the original Doom to this form. It is a tech demo, yes, but it is very promising.

Canvascape

Moon Orbiter

The second example uses SVG and javascript.

This site allow you to interactively test the three theories for the creation of the moon/how the moon got into its orbit. It is nicely done, and give credence to all three theories.

How Did The Moon Get Into Orbit?

These sites are another sign that Firefox is stepping up as a major contender against Microsoft. They are starting to be the powerhouse. The ones that are the ones that push the web standards into acceptance.

Slightly wishful thinking, but hey! Let a fanboy dream!

Greasemonkey is one of the top Mozilla Firefox extensions for the web. It is the ultimate in customization.

Greasemonkey allows users to customize websites (yes, other people’s websites) to your likings. Don’t like the ads? Get rid of them. Hate the colors? Change them. Redirects wasting your time? Remove them. Simply install a userscript and Greasemonkey gets to work.

However, it isn’t quite that simple. If you’re not a skill javascript programmer (which I’m not), you and I have to rely on other people’s userscripts. Luckily, there is a large directory of user scripts over at, guess what, http://www.userscripts.org/.

Let’s take one example

If you use Gmail (Google Mail for UK users) and you don’t have a mail client on your computer (such as Thunderbird), then you probably get annoyed every time you see a mailto: link that opens up crappy Microsoft Outlook/doesn’t do anything.

However, there is a userscript that will automatically rewrite mailto: links into Gmail links.

First, go to Mailto Compose In GMail’s Userscript.org site.

Then you need to click in the box at the upper right, and click “Install this Script”.

The link should bring you to the direct code. Greasemonkey 0.6.4 is kind enough to pop up with a nice bar at the top instructing to simply click “Install”.

Then you go to any site with a mailto: link. One of my favorite sites is Lifehacker, so we’ll go there.

In the sidebar there should be this contact information.

Where before, “Email” under Gina Trapani’s name led you to “mailto:tips@lifehacker.com”, now with the magic of Greasemonkey, the URL is “https://mail.google.com/mail?view=cm&tf=0&to=tips@lifehacker.com” Now your browser is truly set for the web!

Analysis

This is but one example of what Greasemonkey can do. It is a very powerful extension, and can give the right users almost complete control over what they view in their browser.

Greasemonkey is one of the ultimate extensions when it comes to customizability power. Seeing as I’m a control freak when it comes to web surfing, this is an excellent extension!

Download Greasemonkey
Greasemonkey Website
Dive Into Greasemonkey, a guide for beginning Greasemonkey programmers.
Download Firefox 1.5

If you don’t know what Reddit is, then check out my review of Reddit. It is an awesome site that allows you to submit and rank links.

Now, they’ve added comments!

However, presumably to curb the vile and flame infested comment system of digg (seriously, don’t read the comments there when you’re in a happy mood, especially about a site you like), they’ve added a reddit-like voting system.

Comments people like and are thoughtful are rated higher, whereas spam, and random hate comments seem to be in the crud levels of ratings.

Regardless of what a surprising number of people say, I think they did the Reddit comments very well. It is functional, yet easy to use.

This is an example of an excellent comment by “afabian.” You can see the rating arrows (I liked it, so I gave it a point), the number of points, etc.

It is indeed remarkably like the normal Reddit system, except you’re judged by what you write, not what you link to. And, yes, the ratings on your comments affect your karma, so don’t write crap.

As you can see here, there are three different modes of commenting, and they are very similar to their normal Reddit counterparts.

“Hot” comments are ones people really seem to like right now, “New” comments are just that, and “Top” comments are the comments of that topic that are ranked the highest.

Within each of these, you can easily switch between “Nested” and “Flat” by clicking in the top-right corner.

“Nested” comments are more-or-less chronological, with the first near the top, and the latest near the bottom. Exceptions are made for when a reply to a specific comment is made, but otherwise…

“Flat” ordered comments are shown regardless of context (by which I mean, you can’t tell what someone is replying to) and sorted from highest rank to lowest.

Conclusions

I’ve wanted reddit to have comments for quite a while, and now it is here. While it isn’t perfect, this is an excellent step for reddit. Reddit has now been opened for debate, with the karma and rating system to keep it from getting out of hand.

Good job reddit. You’ve just found yet another way to keep sucking up my free time on your site!

The one downside with the internet is also its greatest strength: too much information.

I ignore my Bloglines account for 2 days (that’s it!) and I’ve got 950+ new things to read!

The main culprits? Joystiq and Kotaku. Each account for about 200 new posts.

However, 60% of each are about topics I don’t care about. My solution? Subscribe to the individual categories. I’ll try that for a few days and see how it turns out.

WTF?

Oh well.

I’ve got so much news and reading to catch up on… (600+ news items in Bloglines, reddit, digg, etc)

uugh