Author Archives: Christopher Finke

Browser Add-ons, Mozilla Firefox, OPML Support, RSS Ticker, ScribeFire, Tech News, URL Fixer

New Mozilla Addons site is was live

Update: URL Fixer was acquired and is now hosted at http://urlfixer.org/

After a series of delays, the new Mozilla Addons site (codenamed Remora) went live late last night. Changes to the site include redesigned visual aspects, localization, and an overhauled discussion/comment system, but probably the biggest change you’ll notice is that new extensions do not undergo a mandatory approval process before being available for download.

As extensions are uploaded, they are relegated to the “Sandbox.” This means that while they won’t appear in search results or under their respective categories, the author can still take advantage of Mozilla’s free add-on hosting by pointing users directly to their add-on’s download page. Sandboxed addons can be nominated for general availability by requesting an editor review, but according to Mozilla, this should be reserved for addons that are of use to the general population and enhance the Web browsing experience, and I fully agree. We don’t need the site cluttered with hundreds of “gam3rHax.com Forum Toolbar” extensions that are only used by their author.

As far as my extensions go, ScribeFire and URL Fixer have been deemed public-worthy, and I’ve nominated OPML Support. I’ll probably leave the others (Slashdotter, GoogleTabs) in the sandbox, as they’re not really what I consider “general use.”

Update: It looks like the site has been rolled back to its previous state; I can’t determine why, but the Mozilla Webdev blog will probably post an update. You can still check out Remora at the Mozilla Addons Preview site.

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Netscape Blog

Netscape 9’s Sidebar Browser

This post originally appeared on the Netscape Blog.

In Netscape 9, we’ve built upon Firefox’s option to load a bookmark in the sidebar by extending sidebar browsing to all links. (Right click on any link and choose “Open Link in Sidebar;” you can also drag and drop a link onto the sidebar if it is already open.)

In order to properly support this feature, we’ve enhanced the sidebar browser by adding a navigation menu, address bar, and link target toggle. The default link target is to have all links clicked in the sidebar launch in the main browser window, which is best suited for a single webpage that has lots of outgoing links (like your My.Netscape page, example shown below). You can also choose to toggle this and just browse in the sidebar as if it was a regular browser window.

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My.Netscape in the sidebar; click to view the full image.

The sidebar browser can be opened with a toolbar button, a hot-key combination, or via the View > Sidebar menu.

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Netscape, Netscape Navigator

Netscape 9 Teasers: Week IX

My latest Netscape 9 feature update is up:

“In Netscape 9, we’ve built upon Firefox’s option to load a bookmark in the sidebar by extending sidebar browsing to all links. In order to properly support this feature, we’ve enhanced the sidebar browser by adding a navigation menu, address bar, and link target toggle.”

Check out the rest of the info on the new sidebar feature at the Netscape blog.

Additional discussion at Netscape.com.

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Digg, Social Media

Is Digg lowering its standards?

Is Digg lowering its standards for how many votes are necessary for a story to hit the front page? Currently, the top two stories at Digg have 19 and 31 votes and were submitted 6 and 25 hours ago, respectively.

Digg's front page

Is it just me, or did stories not too long ago need closer to 50 or 60 diggs to be promoted? I know that I’ve seen several stories get between 40 and 50 votes in less than a day and not hit the homepage. Perhaps this lower standard is an attempt to have a more diverse cross-section of news reach the homepage, in reaction to recent criticism that Digg’s content is becoming irrelevant to a general (read: non-geek) audience.

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Netscape, RSS

RSS Advisory Board

Now that it’s on the website, it must be official: I’ve joined the RSS Advisory Board as a representative of Netscape. Netscape was the original creator of RSS, which came about in order to allow sites to syndicate content to My.Netscape.

Other board members include the lead of Yahoo!’s RSS platform, an executive vice president of Six Apart, the CTO of Feedburner, a Windows Live technical manager, the Google Reader project manager, and the cofounder of the company that created Blogger. As you can imagine, I am quite honored to be a part of this group.

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Netscape Blog

Netscape 9’s Revolutionary Feature

This post originally appeared on the Netscape Blog.

What is the biggest feature lacked by Web browsers today? Security? No. Advanced privacy settings? Not even close. Full-size 24×24 activity indicators? Absolutely.

For Netscape 9, we’ve brought back the big throbber from days of old and stuck it right on the end of the toolbar – Bam! (Throbber 9.0 is not content to hide up at the end of the menubar.) So say goodbye to squinting to see if your page is still loading; this bad boy is 576 pixels of in-your-face load-status animation.

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Browser Add-ons, Flock, Mozilla Firefox, Performancing, ScribeFire, Software

ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox) Updated

ScribeFire logo Version 1.4 of Performancing for Firefox has been released, and in the process, it has been rebranded as ScribeFire. The homepage has moved as well, from Performancing.com to ScribeFire.com.

Besides the name change, this release includes the following changes:

  • Support for Blogger blogs has been improved (now you can even post with ampersands!)
  • We’ve added support for the new WordPress API. What does this mean? If you have a WordPress blog that supports the new API (currently any blog at wordpress.com), you will be able to add, edit, and delete pages directly from ScribeFire, as well as create new categories. (The API will be included in the next major WordPress release, for all non-wordpress.com blogs.)
  • General bug fixes and code optimization.

I’m new to this project, having been asked to pick up where the previous developer left off, so I’m not completely up-to-speed on what the most-requested fixes and features are. So in the spirit of catching me up, feel free to comment below with any feedback until the new ScribeFire.com site is up and running.

You can download ScribeFire from the Mozilla Addons preview site.

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Netscape Blog

Netscape 9 Mystery Menu Revealed

This post originally appeared on the Netscape Blog.

Congratulations to Sebastian Moser, who correctly guessed that the new menu in Netscape 9 is “News.” The News menu (and sidebar) will display stories from the channels at Netscape.com, where the popular articles are decided by the site’s members. You can customize which channels are displayed in the menu, and since voting is built directly into the browser, clicking on any of the news items will bring you directly to the story, not to an intermediate Netscape.com page.

That’s it for browser news today, but make sure to tune in next week for the biggest browser news yet.

Side note: Take a minute to check out the new My.Netscape, which has been redesigned and is being relaunched today.

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