Firefox Personas

 

Firefox Personas is a new way of skinning the browser.  This difference between Firefox Personas and normal themes is the fact that you don't have to restart Firefox to see the results. 

To be able to use Firefox Persona, you will have to install the extension from the site Get Personas and restart Firefox afterwards. After restarting you will see a new button (a fox) at the bottom right of the window. Clicking on that button will reveal a menu allowing you to choose an array of categories.

Hovering over one of the theme's name will cause Firefox to apply the theme immediately as preview. Clicking on it will apply the theme permeanently. In case your mood changes, you can just go back to the menu and choose another theme rightaway.

Getting Started with Personas from Mozilla Labs on Vimeo.

Seehua

Thunderbird 3 (beta 1)

The email/messaging/contacts management counterpart to Firefox, Thunderbird had just reached the beta 1 milestone, almost 2 years behind firefox. I guess the spinoff to Mozilla Messaging had really gotten things moving again, after the neglect shown to it.

New features include:

• Tab interface for Mail
• Improvements to IMAP for faster message viewing
• Improved message reader view
• New Add-ons Manager
• Improved Address Book interface
• Improved import of mail from other Mail clients
• Integration with Windows Vista search
• Integration with Mac OS X Address Book

The tab interface will be my favourite feature out of the list. Finally I can open a few mails open in tabs for later viewing while skimming through the various newsletters that I get daily. This is much more convenient for me since i don't have to locate the mails again after I've finished processing the whole inbox...

The integration with Mac OS X  Address Book is also nice since I don't have to keep separate address books for 2 different programs. And hey, since my phone also syncs with the Address Book as well, I can always be sure that the contacts stays identical across my devices.

The Growl integration is a very very nice feature as well... Now I get all notifications coming from just one system wide notification software.

The next thing on my wish list will be integration with Quicksilver... It will be awesome when I can manipulate my mails anytime and anywhere in the system by using a simple keyboard command ;)

I'll be testing this program over the few days, though a bit unwillingly. This is because I've lost my appetite for beta programs while still learning about a completely new platform :P

Before I log off, I would like to complement Mozilla Messaging for that very nice looking page as displayed at the beginning of this post.

cheers people

seehua

Windows Live Mail

For many years i have been replying on online web interfaces to manage my various mail accounts. The two email management programs that I have tried ended up collecting dust in my computer because 1) The looks of Thunderbird sucks and 2) Outlook is THE slowest program that I've ever ran (apart from Photoshop and MS Word itself).

Managing a mailbox with a browser isn't optimal because it slows the whole browser down and I won't be able to access my mails when the browser is turned off (like when I want to prevent myself from chain-read sites that i forget to study but still want to read incoming mails).

Recently, however, I have put the Windows Live Mail 2009 beta that came with the Windows Live suite (Messenger, Mail, photo manager and bla bla bla programs inside) to a test for the sake of testing, and I found that I've came to like it. It's light, simple, intuitive and fast. I guess finally microsoft can produce something decent and light enough for my old computer to use on after all ;)

I haven't thoroughly tested all the features yet though. Will get back to you guys afterwards on this...

seehua
p/s: It's a long time since the last post in this blog, i know. :P 
My computer isn't feeling that healthy at this moment. The graphics card will crash at least once everyday and I get blue screen errors frequently as well. Reinstalling windows didn't remove the problem though, so I suppose it's almost time's up for my com then. You guys have any suggestions on what laptop that I should be getting next? The new Macbooks looked interestingly inviting now :P

One location to conquer them all...

Here's the deal. Due to the many times I've to fix others' computers, and most of the time I won't have my portable hard drive with me, so I always have to go to the related sites to download the things that I need. Hence, I've created a sharing space in 4Shared to store my most used programs. And as a bonus, I've decided to let you guys access the files there as well...

It's still incomplete as of now, but should have most of the programs that I've find useful to maintain my computer as well as introducing lots of convenient functions that doesn't take too much resources (check out the Texter and Launchy, they've saved me lots of time. Intro coming in the following weeks after my exam).

Hope you guys will find a central location to download things useful. You guys may access them here. Now I got to go back and hit my brain and notes again, see ya

seehua

Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn

After going back to stable softwares for a while (somehow almost all of the beta softwares that i had mentioned earlier got released at almost the same time), I am back to the beta testing field. This time, my victim, err, cross that, subject will be the next version of Ubuntu Linux, version 7.04 (Feisty Fawn).

Ever since the very first version of Ubuntu that I had used, i've loved it. It's very user friendly (if you can get yourself used to the idea of using the terminal (for windows users: DOS prompts), and i love the way of configuring and installing softwares.. it's just flawless.

I might write later about installing and configuring linux. So read on, guys ;)

seehua
*let's create a world full of LOVE~