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Server went down
Ugh the server hosting this site went down for at least 7 hours today with no news or emails from the hosting company. Even their own site was down.
I'm looking at sharing a dedicated server with several online friends, so maybe I'll be rid of these problems and have less downtime.
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Patch UXTheme.dll with Multi-Patcher to use custom themes
I wrote a few months ago about skinning WinXP with custom Visual Styles by patching UXTheme.dll. Since then, Belchfire.net reports that a friendlier patching program called Multi-Patcher does what PatchXP does and more. It supports SP1 and non-SP1 systems, and even SP2 (beta version 2082) and Windows Server 2003. Perhaps more importantly, it allows you to easily reverse the patch by simply running Multi-Patcher again - nice safety net.
If you're looking to skin Windows XP with custom-made themes and Visual Styles available at sites like XPThemes.com and xptheme.info, this is something you should get.
Update: thanks to miahz for pointing out that I forgot to link to the Multi-Patcher article.
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Getting Firefox nightlies? Be careful when using Mozilla Backup
Mozilla Backup is an excellent, excellent tool for making backups of your Mozilla, Firefox and Thunderbird profiles. Something that should be included in those applications in some similar form or incarnation.
That said, I just lost my latest Firefox profile from today's Windows XP clean-up-the-junk-by-reformatting operation, even after I remembered to backup my profile immediately before the reformat. Why? Well, not through any fault of Mozilla Backup. Not because Firefox was acting up. Two hints for you to make some intelligent guesswork, if you're so inclined. One, the Firefox profile folder has been changed in recent nightlies to "Firefox" instead of "Phoenix". Two, I was using Mozilla Backup 1.3a. OK probably a bonus hint is in order: Mozilla Backup 1.3a predates the change in the location of the profile folder. Dead giveaway, and I didn't see that one coming.
Mozilla Backup 1.3a backed up my profile in the "Phoenix" folder, which unfortunately has been untouched since my use of nightlies after 2003-03-12 - it was the dud profile that was left behind after being imported into the current "Firefox" profile folder. An entire month of bookmarks all lost in digital oblivion. Ouch.
At this point, I think it is prudent to state again that this is no fault of Mozilla Backup, more of a(n) (oxymoronic) reasonable folliness on my part. In fact, Pavel Cvrcek (the developer) has been keeping up with that profile folder change, as you'd be able to tell from recent Mozilla Backup nightlies. I love Mozilla Backup and I'll keep using it. Until the time comes, if it does come, that profiles can be imported/exported (or saved/restored) via a native browser UI.
Bugs 22689 and 187564 had previously been filed in 1999 and 2003 respectively requesting for the same functionality. Interesting to see the initial comments that users would be able to backup profiles by saving their profile directories (and subsequently copying back into a new profile when restoring). Not something very nice for non-technical users of course, considering how getting to the profile folder itself could pose some problems. Not pointing any fingers though, because there is a different time and context when some of those comments were made. It is good to see that someone has been assigned to bug 187564. Vote for those bugs if you think this is important to you too! Submit patches if you know how to help.
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New Firefox feature: add smart keywords from form fields.
I haven't been getting nightly builds recently and I just did so when I noticed at The Burning Edge that 2004-04-11 builds include this new "Add keyword for this search" feature. Now that is so useful because the old way of doing this is so non-intuitive and difficult to explain to non-technical users (who really wants to do the "%s" thing other than people like us?).
I went in to Bonsai to check out the CVS checkins to the code and Ben Goodger had this CVS comment:
provide a convenient way for adding smart keywords for web page searches by adding a context menu to form fields with HTTP-GET form actions.
So it works only on GET form fields - I was wondering why it didn't work for just any textbox. This was checked in on 2004-04-09, so I may be a little behind, but it is too good a feature not to talk about. UI improvements are so crucial and so much more important to naive users (naive in the nice sense of the word) because all they ever think of Firefox is the interface. More please, and thank you!
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Speaking in binary
Via weirdbeardmt in this thread: Binary translator converts regular text to binary and vice-versa. Beware - the binary dialect of geek-speak is now easily translatable.
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