Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

Being a huge fan of Flickr, I am always trying to bring more people to the service.  Because more people = more images and more comments, which, of course, means more fun and inspiration.

One of the most frequent reasons NOT to use Flickr that I’ve heard coming mostly from amateur and professional photographers was that Flickr is only available with white background and only with up to medium-sized images.  That is true.  While Flick is constantly improving their service, some features are still not there.  And maybe they are not coming any time soon.  But.  That doesn’t mean that there is no work around.  After all, the world of technology is blessed with plenty of excellent open source software these days.  So, here is how you can solve the problem of size and color, if you are one of those people who prefers it the other way around.

1. Get yourself a copy of an real web browser - Firefox.
2. Install Greasemonkey extension for Firefox.
3. Install Flickr On Black user script for Greasemonkey.

Once you’ve done the above steps, go to Flickr and find a picture that you want to enjoy on black or in a different color.  On the image page, scroll down to the part where you can see “Additional information” on the right side.  Among them, you’ll see a few new links.  “View on black: Regular, Large” will be among them.

Click, and you are done.  The link will take you to another page, which will look something like this.  You can switch between Regular and Large size, as well as between black and white backgrounds right on that page.

P.S.: While you are getting Flickr on Black user script for Greasemonkey, look around.  There are thousands of other scripts to customize anything and everthing from Google search results and GMail to IMDB movie information and Twitter messeging.

P.P.S.: Alternatively, you can take a look at Flickr “Lights Out” or “Flickr in mostly black and orange” user scripts for Greasemonkey.

P.P.P.S: Many Greasemonkey scripts work perfectly in browsers other than Firefox - Opera, Safari, etc.  But I’d still recommend to use Firefox.

For the last few days, the biggest thing in the technical news is Google Chrome browser (check the comics book, introducing the browser, download beta).  Sure, we had our share of browser wars, and we still do, but this is something completely different.  Most of today’s browsers started back in the days when the Web was totally different.  Since then, some browsers changed more than others.  Some new ones appeared.  But there was no a big break through.  It was mostly an evolutionary approach.

I’m glad to see these big news from Google, that they decided to create a new browser from scratch.  They built it with solutions to many of the today’s problems.  They’ve put some flexbility for the future.  And it seems like they’ve thought a lot about it.

I absolutely support their choice of open source in this matter.  Nobody, not even Google can build a browser that will satisfy everyone and everything, and then keep developing and maintaining it.  That’s not possible with the current state of the Web affairs.  The only way to pull it off is to open source it, so that the Web itself could help them with this mega task.  Also, it’s nice to see that they don’t want to reinvent the wheel either - taking both WebKit (open source web rendering engine) and V8 (open source JavaScript implementation) is smart decision.

It’s nice to see some real competition in the browser world.  Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has changed a lot in the last few years, and the biggest reason for those changes was Mozilla’s Firefox.  Firefox changed a lot too, but it sure could use a push from another open source product.  Google’s Chrome could be exactly that product.

Also, for once it would be nice to see a browser built by someone who knows the Web, and not how to build software.  Yes, browser is a software, but it’s not on its own.  You need to know more and have access to a lot more data to build a good browser.  In particular, what, who, and how uses the Web.  Neither Microsoft, nor Mozilla, nor Opera Software have these information.  Or at least not on the scale that Google has.

And, of course, there always will be downsides to any good initiative.  In the case with Google Chrome, my biggest concern is the situation with themes and extensions.  Firefox has an excellent community in this regard.  This community has built all possible and impossible thems and extensions for practically anyone anywhere.  And it still continues to do so.  Google Chrome starts from scratch, so there won’t be anything for some time.  And since the whole browser thing is new, it’ll need to start with a new set of developers, testers, users, and so on.  And so it will take them some time build that all up.

As with anything, there are a billion of other ways to look at Google Chrome, the way the Web is going, the way Google is going, the way software development in general and IT as a whole is going.  But I’ll leave that up to you.  Here are, however, a few links to get you started.

• Slashdot : Google Chrome, the Google Browser
• Slashdot : Mozilla’s Thoughts on Google’s Chrome
• Linux Weekly News : The Google Chrome comic book
• PCWorld : Official Google Chrome Screenshots
• Google Blogs Search results for “Google Chrome“

Yesterday was a somewhat slow day, so I spent some time on the housekeeping of my Firefox browser.  Somehow I managed to accumulate a lot of extensions, themes, plugins, bookmarks, bookmarklets, and what not.  It felt like a good time to clean the mess up a bit.

I spent about two hours going through the list of all installed pieces, upgrading outdated versions, changing old solutions to the modern alternatives, getting new tools, and so on.   I have to say that after that effort my Firefox works faster, and it suits me better now.  One of the biggest changes from my previous setup became the use of Tab Kit extension.  Among its many features, it has the one that I’ve been passively looking for for a long time now - tab bar on the right side, instead of top, but not as a part of the sidebar, and with a tree view.  Combined with Aging Tabs extension, the result is exactly the way I wanted it.

(it is better in real life than it is on the screenshot)

Now when I open links from the site in the new tabs, these new tabs are organized in a tree like structure.  Tabs that I haven’t yet visited are highlighted in green.  Current tab is highlighted in blue, as usual.  And the rest of the tabs are coloured in different shades of grey, depending on how long ago I last viewed them.  Also, because the tab bar is separate from the sidebar, I can get an additional panel on demand, with an application that I need the most at the moment, without sacrificing my precious tabs.

And just in case you are wondering which other extensions I am using, continue reading for the list of all extensions, which was generated by one of the extensions on that list.

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People all over the web are saying good bye to Netscape.  Since Mozilla and Firefox started to get better, Netscape sort of faded away.  Now it faded away so far that AOL decided to end the support for the browser. This is the time when thousands of people all around the world, including yours truly, suddenly felt very old and broke out into uncontrollable nostalgia…

If you want to read more about the sentiment, here are some links for you:

• Slashdot:  AOL to Shut Down Netscape Support/Development
• Boing Boing:   RIP: Netscape Navigator (1994-2008)
• Web Worker Daily: End of a Browser Era

Via this post at Web Worker Daily, I learned about Morning Coffee extension for Firefox.

Keeps track of daily routine websites and opens them in tabs.
This extension lets you organize websites by day and open them up simultaneously as part of your daily routine. This is really handy if you read sites that update on a regular schedule (like webcomics, weekly columns, etc.).

I haven’t tried it yet, but it sure sounds promising.  I don’t close my browser very often these days, but I know a lot of people who do.  Many of those people also don’t use any RSS readers to keep updated.  Instead they revisit their favourite web sites once in a while.  Morning Coffee seems to be the perfect extension for them.

If you are still not interested, check the link above for excellent screenshots, which show exactly how this thing works.