Miku in my Chrome

(tags browser, customize, Hatsune Miku, Windows XP)

Google Chrome, as far as theming and skinning is concerned, is a big miss. Artist-created themes seem to have been released yesterday. 95 themes but none of the hit. This official Artist-created theme with Hatsune Miku, while somewhat stylish, is not very attractive or functional.

I mean the colors are garish and the contrast between background and text when hovering over links is not strong. Besides, other windows in Google Chrome are not themed!

I gave up and installed the default Classic and/or the Grayscale theme. They match great with XP Royale and Zune skins. Too bad my desktop look the same as it did 3 years ago.

Edit:

I missed the Good Smile Company one, which also has some adorable Miku. There are some games and anime as well, so my interests are well represented.

Firefox is fun again

(tags browser, Firefox)

Well, I don't mean Firefox 3.1 beta. I still use Google Chrome as my main browser nowadays. Actually what I did with Firefox is declare Add-On Bankruptcy.

All these months of Google Chroming without "Tree Style Tab" and "Adblock Plus" haven't been as horrendous as I thought. And I didn't really miss the stuff from "Better Gmail" or "Stylish". I don't even use the "Sqlite Browser" or "Web Developer" stuff, geez. So, I deleted stuff. So instead of 40+ Add-Ons, now I have 20. And now Firefox feels like it can boot up pretty fast like.

Also the Delicious plug-in moved to the Sqlite database implementation in Firefox 3, so perhaps there's a speed gain there.

But still I use Google Chrome. Hopefully Firefox 3.1 will come out soon and I can enjoy "tear-off tabs", Firefox style.

I'm in yer browser, rubying (Furigana Injector)

(tags browser, Japanese, Firefox)

I only bumped into this today, but it seems useful for language learning. There is a Firefox extension that automatically adds the furigana readings (pronounciation) for kanji on a web page. It's called Furigana Injector. Here's a sample from picture-heavy, kanji poor Moeyo Akiba Blog, regarding the "Moekore Plus No. 3 Miku Hatsune" PVC figure sample preview for 2008-08 (my trans. from 「ボークス「モエコレPLUS No.3 初音ミク」PVCサンプルレビュー」).

In this sample, all of the conversions are correct. I did notice some incorrect conversions on some other pages, though.

The conversions are added on the fly, and you can manually add them through right-clicking. You can dial the non-conversion level to your level of competency. I have mine initially set to ignore the "980 most common" kanji. Yeah, manga and figure blogs aren't really good Japanese practice, I know. Perhaps this will help when slogging through Yahoo News or Wikipedia, ugh.

This extension works with the XHTML Ruby Support extension, which I've been using without much practical benefits.

I never did understand why furigana was also called ruby. I better read up on the ruby explanation at Wikipedia Japanese. Oh, the name comes from the 19th century England-created font. Okay.

Count my Firefox 3

(tags browser, Firefox)

Today is Mozilla Firefox 3 Download Day 2008. They want to get a million downloads before the day is over, but the last time I checked, they had over 7 million downloads already. I helped contribute about 5 downloads by reinstalling Firefox on every Windows machine I had. So I gave myself a certificate:

I was running Firefox 3 betas for a long time and RC2 for the last week. I haven't had the need to use FF 2.x, so I decided to just get rid of everything and reinstall FF3 everywhere. What I mean by FF3 is actually two installs, the official one and the Portable Apps version.

By the last count, it seems as though I am dependent on about 50 extensions, which is a rough estimate since some of them are not yet working with FF3. Still, FF3 has some acceptable UI speed even after all that weight.

Java kills my (portable?) firefox and sniping ops

(tags browser, failure)

Um, the little Java applet at my Rubik's Cube revival blog post that doesn't really load is killing my Firefox 3.0 RC2 every time I try to close that window. Ugh? I almost missed an auction sniping maneuver because of this. I didn't even try to enter that auction, by the way. What fool would step in between two dueling giants, up-bidding by units of 10000 yens? Sheesh. I'm just bitter that's another telephone card I missed.

Perhaps its because Java is not properly installed in this Portable Apps version. I am going to try I tried text file surgery on sessionstore.js, which I think has the data of all the active tabs (I had 40+ tabs open). It's an ugly, line-break-less text file that is probably Javascript. And now my browser works again. Hip hop hurray. Just in time to lose another auction, ugh.

Dual Browsers, Duel Browsers: Opera

(tags browser, Firefox, Opera, failure, resolved)

I totally depend on Firefox now. I haven't used Sleipnir in a long time, thanks to Tree Style Tab. However FF 2.x becomes pretty slow when I bog it down with 20+ extensions and 50+ tabs. I wanted another FF to run on my second screen (dual monitor).

I couldn't figure it out, so I tried out Opera. I like how its fast and "g search" works in the address bar just like FF. But it lacks the convenience of FF and plus Alt-Enter in the address bar doesn't work the way I want. It is stable and consistent though.

I saw FF 3.x beta was getting more beta releases out. There was number 4 and now number 5, just a day or two ago. I try them out using the Portable Apps version. I want to run FF 2.x and 3.x beta simultaneously but that was the original problem. I got smart with "Run Multiple Firefoxes? (solved)".

It won't be long now before I give Opera the boot and the uninstall. I hardly knew yeh.

Firefox just got better: Tree Style Tab

(tags browser, Firefox, customize)

For years I have been using Sleipnir just for the hierarchical tabs, but now Firefox has this functionality in multiple different ways. Earlier this month I started using Tab Kit, but it was just a disorganized mess because it was trying to handle both the tree-view and the normal tab list, with nonsensical grouping options and no manual rearranging. But then I found Tree Style Tab (ツリー型タブ), which is pretty much what I want. Hierarchical, manual tab group rearranging, fast. Now I will be opening Sleipnir less and Firefox more. Coupled with the del.icio.usBookmarks extension, the Session Manager extension and FEBE user setting/extension backup extension, I finally will enjoy Firefox more.