Paul McNally’s Blog

Pages render quickly, javascript functionality is lightening speed, 9.3 times faster than Internet Explorer 7, according to Kate Bevan of the Guardian, and the overall user experience of using FireFox is quite pleasant. Security has been improved and there have been quite a few other marked improvements such as the bookmarks library.

It’s when you close FireFox that my problem occurs. Mozilla claim the many of the memory leaks that plagued FF2 have been plugged in FF3, but what about the daemon still running after closing the browser?

Sometimes after closing my browser, I will come back to my computer later and attempt to open Firefox. Instead of opening happily, instead I will get a message that says that Firefox is already running on my computer and that I need to close firefox to open a new window? what? I have no browser windows open!

So, if I then open Task Manager and look under Processes, there it is, Firefox.exe at the top of the list, munching away at my memory. After ending the process I can then open FF as normal.

If this were solved, which I’m sure it will be soon , then I will be content to say that Firefox is (still) the top browser available and I’m especially fond of the new Bookmarks/History library.

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Firefox 3 has an “improved” URL address bar which will show your bookmarks when you type into it. That by its self is’nt too bad, except that it also shows query URL’s instead of just TLD’s which I find quite annoying.

Anyway, if you want to change this functionality back to how it worked in FF2 then follow these instructions:

1. Open a new tab and type in the URL address bar: about:config
2. Heed the “dragons” warning and type browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped into the filter box at the top.
3. Find the setting browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped in the filtered settings which should bw set to False by default.
4. Right-click the setting and select Toggle. This should change the setting to Boolean True.
5. Restart Firefox

That’s it. You now have a normal URL address bar again that will only show the URL’s that you typed in.

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It’s Firefox 3 download day today (17th June) and with all the fuss about creating a world record, and the fact that I love FireFox I thought I’d download it and check it out.

Yeah right.

The website that Mozilla set up for this, spreadfirefox.com is down and I cant get onto mozilla.com either so how am I suppose to download it?

I know that they were expecting a lot of people to attempt to download FF3 today so you would have thought that they would have prepared more thoroughly for such a high server load.

Oh well. It was a nice idea!

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I passed the CMDEV DEV-I exam last month after about a month of studying from the MySQL Certification Study Guide and the manual.

The CMDEV certification is made up of two exams, so I still have one exam to go.

It wasn’t quite as difficult as I expected, not that I’m saying that I got 100% or anything, but I did clearly pass

I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement about the questions on the exam, so wont be saying too much about them, but I think it is safe to say that the study guide takes you through everything that you will need to know.

I’d better get studying for part 2!

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Not being a professional graphic designer, I have always struggled with the graphical aspect of making web sites/applications.

I have heard others say before, “There are two types of web developers, graphic designers and programmers”, those that are good at the graphical stuff, and those that are good at programming. Two very different sides of the same proverbial coin.

In reality, in order to get by, especially if you do freelance work, you will have to do both. Unless you outsource the other, which sometimes isn’t realistic. So, what graphic design tools are available that will allow someone to easily create professional looking graphics?

1) Adobe Photoshop

This tool is very, very good. However it is more complex than the theory of General Relativity with more bells and whistles than a morris dancer. Vector graphics and complex picture altering capabilities make this program extremely powerful. If you have a large amount of free time to learn how to use this application and are willing to read books thicker than a brick and still only know the basics, then this is the program for you.

2) Fireworks

I love adobe Fireworks. This program is much easier to use than Photoshop and is specially designed for Web Development - personally I haven’t used a version of Fireworks later than Macromedia Fireworks 8, but I would highly recommend this program for the non-professional. Beware of using the transparency feature with this (and some other programs) as transparency is not supported in Internet Explorer 6. It is in later versions, but Internet Explorer 6 still holds approximately 33% of the browser market share (unfortunately!)

3) GIMP

The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program that is usually included with Linux distributions. I have been told by people in the know that GIMP is an able tool for graphic design but I have not used it much myself as it seemed quite alien to me when using Linux, and I’ve always had Fireworks available.

4) Flash

The famous adobe Flash. Used on many websites across the internet is a very powerful, but complicated tool. If you can master this application, along with actionScript then you will be able to produce some great, graphic rich and interactive web applications (although this may be detrimental to web standards compliance).

5) Quark

Quark is an application that is predominantly used in journalism and has become an excellent resource for traditional journalists and web journalists. According to a Masters Media student at the University of Salford, UK Jonathan Plant, Quark has proven to a an easy to use tool that has allowed him, as a non-professional graphic designer to quite simply produce professional looking graphics. He says that the tool is also very capable of more complicated tasks for experienced users.

So, which tool would I recommend? I think I would have to go with Fireworks for the most part, and occasionally using Photoshop when I can’t achieve my task with Fireworks.

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