Don't Back Down

It's been a monstrous fifteen months since I last updated the Bloglines Toolkit. Frankly, there just isn't that much of a reason to do so. Unfortunately, the Bloglines Notifier API just hasn't changed that much. Ever. And since it hasn't, there just isn't that much to be done with the toolkit. I did have a branch of the tookit at one time that offered an unread count in the status bar, but since there was so much trouble getting the icon to look right in the first place, I eventually decided against releasing it, and figured I'd just stick with things the way they are.

So why is there an update now? For several reasons. First and foremost, to get some updated languages out there. Some of you may be interested to know that the extension is now available in 13 languages, thanks to the fine folks at BabelZilla. This release includes Danish (da-DK), Italian (it-IT), Korean (ko-KR) and Polish (pl-PL). Second, I wanted to see if things would work in Firefox version 3 (it does), so I updated the MaxVersion string, and made a couple of other tweaks as well. Finally, I updated the copyright dates and web site links.

Read "Bloglines Toolkit 1.7.0" »

Ever since installing Firefox version 2, I've noticed a steady deterioration in my computer's performance, but I haven't been able to put my finger on it. Since installing the 2.0.0.1 update, it's been even worse. For some reason, I decided to try and figure it out yesterday, and I think I've managed to stumble on the reason. Please note that isn't to say that I've fixed the problem - only that I know the cause.

I typically keep 10-12 tabs open in Firefox. Perhaps I shouldn't, but I do. It's just the way that I use it. I almost constantly keep Firefox running. I just have little reason to close it, and with 1GB of memory, it's usually not a problem. Even when Firefox gets up to a couple hundred MB of memory, it's rarely an issue. If it is, I simply close the window and restart it with the tabs intact. I maybe do this every week or so and life goes on. But still, the performance was getting worse.

Read "Firefox CPU Usage and Google Reader" »

I have updated the Bloglines Toolkit to version 1.6.8 and posted an updated archive. There are no new features available in this version, but there are some localization announcements to be made. This version includes a brand new localization for Catalan (ca-AD), and updated localizations for French (fr-FR) and Chinese (Simplified) (zh-CN). Those of you who use the automatic updating feature of your browser may have already seen an update announcement. This is for the same version.

Read "Bloglines Toolkit 1.6.8" »

I'm announcing one more update for the Bloglines Toolkit. This one should be the last for a while, and is mostly cosmetic, having to do largely with copyrights, licensing, other dates and such. Still, there is also some clean-up work in the code as well.

Read "Bloglines Toolkit 1.6.7" »

Though this has probably been the busiest week for releases that the Toolkit has seen in quite a while, I'm going to release another new version. This one does not contain any new functionality - none whatsoever. It does, however, include a new pointer to the automatic updater. If you'd like to know more, read on.

Read "Bloglines Toolkit 1.6.6" »

Well, that was one of the shortest version cycles in history. For those of you who have been using the Bloglines Toolkit for a while, probably not the fastest, but still, it was pretty quick.

Read "Bloglines Toolkit 1.6.5" »

While Firefox 2 was actually released yesterday, it's still pretty decent news, because a lot of folks have been waiting for a while, and the improvements are decent. Thus far I'm not certain that I would say that it deserved a jump all the way to version 2 (it seems more like a move to 1.6 was in order), but it's an improvement, from what I can tell.

Read "Firefox 2 Released" »

With the (final) release of the new 2.0 version of the Firefox browser, I've updated the Bloglines Toolkit to a new version. If you're using the auto-update feature, you should be prompted when you install, or when you check if you've already installed.

Read "Bloglines Toolkit 1.6.4" »

I typically bumble about looking for something to test my regular expressions, and today I stumbled across the regular expression tester for Firefox. It's likely not perfect, but it seems to work pretty well.

This morning I released a new version of the Bloglines Toolkit (version 1.6.2, for those playing at home).

Read "Bloglines Toolkit 1.6.2" »

While I'm sure everyone else in the world knows this, apparently in Firefox (at least version 1.5, unders Windows XP), you can switch between tabs with your arrow keys. Holy Robin Hood, Batman!

You see, I've been trying to decide if I could do without the LastTab extension since I installed version 1.5 and it was automatically deactivated, and as of now, the answer is "yes!", because I stumbled on this feature by accident (and I haven't seen it documented anywhere).

Read "Firefox Tab Navigation via Keyboard" »

According to at least one source (via), the Windows Genuine Advantage program now supports Mozilla browsers (including Firefox) through the use of a downloadable plugin. Sweet!