My Choices of Applications Lately

I frequently find it useful to read about the applications other people use for various functions because it inevitably prompts my natural curiosity. I almost always end up thinking, well, I haven’t tried that program… I should install it and see how it is. It’s good to expand one’s horizons.

Because of that, it’s something I like to write about from time to time here. Most people have good reasons why they use the apps they use, so here are a few of mine. I have included links to things wherever appropriate, and they are set to open in a new tab, for the convenience of the reader.

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A quick way to change default browser in LMDE

Just a quick note here, in part for myself (because inevitably I’ll end up needing to do this again, and that was some of the reason I started this blog to begin with), but also for the benefit of anyone else who finds this handy.

I’ve been using the beta version of Google Chrome on my Linux Mint Debian Edition machines lately. It works well, but I had trouble getting it set as my default browser utilizing the graphical options in the settings in Cinnamon.

So, I explored some command line options. This is what I got to work, after some experimentation.

xdg-mime default google-chrome-beta.desktop x-scheme-handler/http
xdg-mime default google-chrome-beta.desktop x-scheme-handler/https

Didn’t even have to sudo it or anything!

Anyway, hope that helps someone else out as well!

– Trent

My Chromium Extensions

Since I’ve been cycling continuously between the three browsers that annoy me the least lately (Opera, Firefox 3.6, and Chromium), I’ve been utilizing each browser’s extensibility to make it a bit more usable.

In a previous post, I discussed the various things I do to recent releases of Firefox to make it behave itself. In this post, I’ll be discussing the process I go through with the Chromium browser, namely with respect to extensions (since there really isn’t much one can configure in Chromium natively).

How to downgrade Firefox to the last sane version (3.6)

So I keep ranting about Firefox here, and for good reason: the Mozilla team is going above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to driving users to other browsers.

However, try as I might, I simply encounter too many dealbreakers in Chromium.

When I think about it, the last version of Firefox that didn’t drive me crazy with crashing, incompatible add-ons, and stupid UI changes and features removed, it would have to be Firefox 3.6.

I keep forgetting how to do this, so I’m posting this here as much for my own reference as for anyone else’s. This is how to downgrade newer versions of Firefox to 3.6 and keep it that way, at least until things settle down a little, or until another browser comes along that can actually be a viable replacement for it — unlike newer versions of Firefox, sadly. This works with Mint 11, which means it will also work with Ubuntu 11.04.

Chromium extension suggestions?

Okay, since I’m starting to realize that it’s time to bail on Firefox as my primary browser, the next one down my list in order of browsers which annoy me the least these days is Chromium.

However, it’s still pretty annoying and still lacks a lot of functionality and flexibility. Since The Linux Critic is the best way I know to reach out to the community, I’m counting on you guys to give me some extension suggestions, because on my own so far I’m really not finding anything I need, no matter how hard I look.

More Firefox feature assassination coming up

So in keeping with the direction the devs at Mozilla have been steering the Firefox browser, plans include more feature assassination (of course), this time in the form of obfuscating useful information — arguably the most important information for users of a web browser — in the address bar.

My Firefox 4 setup process

For the last year and some change, I’ve gone from using Opera as my primary browser to using Mozilla Firefox. I have a variety of reasons for this switch, and it was a somewhat gradual one, but as I detailed in a recent post, despite it being my browser of choice, I still feel that it has a lot of shortcomings, and as such, it needs a lot of tweaking out-of-the-box before I find it usable.

So this is a writeup of the things I do to Firefox — in this particular case Firefox 4 — immediately after I install it. It used to be a much shorter list, but these days it’s getting more and more involved, so this writeup is as much for my own purposes, as a checklist of sorts, as it is to share my thoughts with others on how to tweak Firefox 4.

The 5 Browsers That Annoy Me The Least

Let’s face it. Browsers suck. In my ongoing search for a browser that meets all my needs, I’ve frequently found myself compromising in one way or another, and while I have good things to say about almost any browser, I can’t say that I “love” any of them.

So this is less of a list of “my favorite browsers”… I don’t have one of those. Instead, I present you with my list of The 5 Browsers That Annoy Me The Least.

No 64-bit version of Firefox 4.0?

I got up this morning and saw this, which led me to a pretty serious WTF moment, all before having my morning coffee.

From the article:

Mozilla’s Director of Firefox, Mike Beltzner confirmed the fact that an x64 flavor of Firefox won’t be added to the existing x86 version, per the 32-bit/64-bit Internet Explorer 8 model.

Firefox users should not despair though. Fact is that Mozilla hasn’t given up on delivering a 64-bit version of Firefox, just not with Firefox 4.0.

This implies that maybe there will be a 64-bit release for Firefox 4.1? Maybe? 4.2? 5.0? Will there be one at all? Ever?

I think that they should probably be a little more open about when there will be, and why there’s a delay.

Midori 0.2.6: Simple, lightweight, but still needs work

In my ongoing search for something with which to tinker, I’ve occasionally run across the Midori browser, a fully GTK+2 integrated, WebKit-based browser with a focus on being lightweight and simple.

It had been a while since I gave Midori a try, so I thought that since they had released a few updated versions since my last look, I’d install it and give it a new look, because it seemed to have some promise the last time.

I did most of my testing on my 64-bit Mint 9 laptop, and I installed Midori 0.2.6, which was the version in the repositories. I used it for a week as my primary browser, only resorting to Firefox when I had to do something that I couldn’t get to work in Midori, which is my usual approach to evaluating browsers.