Archive for November, 2009
I’ve been using Firefox 3.6b1 for a few days. I was forced to upgrade so that I could get my add-ons ready for Firefox 3.6, which is due to be released later this month (November). Of course, knowing the Mozilla crowd the way I do, we are probably more likely to see the production release of 3.6 sometime next year, but I digress.
While I’ve been using 3.6b1 I noticed that various Facebook fan box widgets, that I have scattered around on various pages, weren’t being displayed. No big deal! Probably a Facebook bug… Right? Wrong!
Today I decided to use IE8 to take a peep at the offending pages. Hmmmmm… Fan box widgets are displayed in IE8, so what now? Must be something wrong with the fan box JavaScript in the various pages… Right?
OK! Let’s grab the JavaScript from the Facebook fan box page again (Just in case something has changed) and re-paste it into the offending pages… Ooooops!
So… Ermmmm… Where is the fan box preview?
I sense a growing dissatisfaction with Firefox. I’ve Googled around to get a feel of what people are saying, and the general feeling seems to be, since Firefox 3.0, more and more people are voicing dissatisfaction. I’ve always said that the Mozilla crowd remind me of a bunch of little boys building a tree-house. Strangely enough, 3.0 saw the introduction of Places. Hmmmmm… I wonder if there is a connection?
Over the weekend I released version 1.0 of SiteSub, but after using it myself for a few days, decided that it needed a bit more work 
So today I made version 1.1 available.
In version 1.1 I have added a category tree to the SiteSub sidebar. There are two reasons for adding the category tree: -
Firstly, I noticed that some of the insidious little worms that run the Link Directories that SiteSub hooks into, have some JavaScript attached to the onclick event of the category drop-down. The JavaScript opens a pop-up window displaying ads as soon as you click the category drop-down. So selecting an appropriate category from the category tree, rather than selecting it from the category drop-down, prevents this from happening. Selecting an appropriate category from the category tree automatically sets the category drop-down on the page, with you having to click on the drop-down.
Secondly, the majority of the Link Directories use a rather ridiculous method of pipes and underscores to represent the hierarchical nature of their categories. Because their list of categories is a list, and not a true hierarchical structure, it can sometimes be very confusing and time consuming to select the correct category. The category tree in the SiteSub sidebar does display the categories in a proper hierarchical tree, making it a lot easier, quicker and much more logical when selecting an appropriate category for your submission.
The other major change in version 1.1 is that it’ll remember the last category that you selected. When a new Link Directory page loads, SiteSub will check the available categories, and if one of the available categories matches your last category selection, SiteSub will automatically select that category. This also makes things quick a bit quicker.
