Into this…

And all it took was the Stylish extension and this little bit of CSS:
@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("animeiowa.com") {
html {
color: #0F0F0F !important;
}
body {
color: #0F0F0F !important;
background-color: #FFF !important;
}
a:link {color: #D57100 !important;
text-decoration:none !important;
}
a:visited {color: #459045 !important;
text-decoration:none !important;
border-bottom:none !important;
}
a:hover, a:active {
color:#6F2314 !important;
text-decoration:underline !important;
}
table tr td {
background-color: #F1EFFF !important;
color: #0F0F0F !important;
}
font {
color: #000 !important;
}
font .quote {
background-color: #FEFFBF !important;
}
font .catbg {
background-color: #F1EFFF !important;
}
}

Don’t believe this makes that much difference? Then try it out yourself, your bleeding eyes will thank you.

AnimeIowa Forums be Stylish © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox. They can add anything from a toolbar button to a completely new feature. They allow the application to be customized to fit the personal needs of each user if they need additional features, while keeping Firefox small to download.

I’m going to discuss my favorite extensions here with you. I’ll be starting with the extensions I feel nobody browsing the web today should be without and then move onto some extensions that are a bit more specialized in their application.

Advertisements

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I get very tired of looking at all the various advertisements plastered over the internet. Fortunately, there are extensions for Firefox which help to clean up the web. To block advertisements, I start off with Adblock Plus. This extension lets you setup filters to block just the ads you want to block. The “Plus” version of Adblock also allows you to setup whitelists so you can view ads on the sites you want to support. The only downside, to Adblock Plus, is the time it takes to setup all the filters you want. This is where Adblock Filterset.G Updater comes in. The FiltersetG.Updater grabs a set of preconstructed filters designed to eliminate the majority of Internet advertisements for you. Using these filters alone kills 85–90% of the advertisements out there. But even those two combined don’t catch everything, so I’ve also added in NoScript to the mix.

Actually, I added in NoScript originally because so many sites were using crappy javascripts to add “features” to their pages. Features I did not need or want. But since installing NoScript, I’ve noticed it helps to block a lot of advertisements that are inserted into webpages via javascript. Bonus! :) Also in NoScript’s options, there is a checkbox to have NoScript block Macromedia Flash and other plugins for untrusted sites. I recommend turning these options on as it will catch & block even more advertisements.

Annoyances

Especially if you don’t use NoScript to block a site’s javascript, you should consider installing Allow Right-Click. A number of websites with cool images will use some lousy javascript to prevent you from right-clicking on the image to save it. This is ridiculous as the image has already been downloaded to your browsers cache and is on your computer already. Plus with some of the other extensions I have installed, I like to right-click on webpages to get more info or whatever and to have a site try to block me is a great annoyance. Allow Right-Click specifically blocks scripts that try to prevent right-clicks.

Another annoying thing some websites do is to link to file you want to download but setup the link in such a way that clicking on it will spawn a new browser window. *grrr* This is something that really pisses me off. Fortunately, there’s the Disable Targets For Downloads extension for Firefox to take care of that problem.

Then there are sites that will write out a URL but not make it a clickable link. Linkification fixes that annoyance for you. It can also color code those links it fixes to let you know when a site is being naughty.

And let’s not forget the annoyance of PDF Files. For whatever reason, some sites will put up content as a PDF file and then your browser will¹ load the Acrobat plugin to view the PDF in the browser. ARRRRGGGGHHHH! When I want to view a PDF file, I’ll use a proper PDF viewer and not this plugin crap. PDF Download changes Firefox’s behavior so it asks you what you want to do with a PDF fileL Download, View as PDF, View as HTML or Cancel. The View as HTML feature hasn’t worked for me in a long time, but it’s nice to force Firefox to download the file while still having the option to go insane and want to view it as a PDF file in my browser.

The last of my annoyances with the internet are sites requiring you to register to view their content. I run across this the most when trying to view news articles linked to by Google News. Fortunately, there is BugMeNot to take care of that for me. BugMeNot is both an extension and a service. They maintain lists of usercodes/passwords for various registration only websites to allow people to view the content without filling out yet another registration form and giving out their email yet again. It’s very convenient though I’m sure the sites requiring registration hate it.

Web Development

In my spare time², I like to do small amounts of webdevelopment and for that there’s one Firefox extension which is an absolute MUST HAVE, Web Developer. This extension has tons of features to aid you in your webdev work. The features I use the most are: Live CSS editing (let’s you see your changes as you make them), W3C Validation (submits your HTML/CSS to W3C to see if your code is valid) and Resize (resizes Firefox so you have an idea of what people see of your site at various screen resolutions). While those 3 functions don’t even begin to scratch the surface of what this extension can do; they do give you an idea of how useful this extension is in webdevelopment.

Next up is ColorZilla. This extension is great for helping me decide on color schemes. It let’s me visit a website or look at a photo and find the hexcode I need to use in my CSS to have that color. Current versions also have some other functionality (e.g. full page zoom) but I’ve not really looked into those.

When you’re working on a new design and times are not lining up correctly, it can be handy to see how wide something is. MeasureIt helps you get that info.

If the design you are developing is based off some ideas you got from another site, it can be handy to look at a copy of that site’s source code. But sometimes their source code is very confusing and it is difficult to figure out how they accomplished specific effects. The X-Ray extension shows you the HTML tags of a webpage while you’re still viewing the page.

And of course, if you’re working on a website, you are going to be concerned with how well your site is showing up on the various search engines. SEOpen lets you track your site’s ranking (amoung other things).

Foreign Langauge Tools

I only read English and speak a small smattering of other tongues. But I do have a variety of interests including some that tend to get reported online more by non-English speakers. So it’s handy to have the ability to translate the other langauges back to English. Moji is an integrated Japanese dictionary (including kanji). I’m sure when I get ready to start studying to read kanji, this extension will prove very helpful. In the meantime, there’s Translate Page for all my foreign langauge needs.

Cool Tools

These extensions either improve on the basic functionality in Firefox and/or add something new to Firefox that trips my trigger. They’re cool, but I’m getting tired of coming up with something to say about all of the extensions I use, so here’s just a list of the remaining ones:

• Ext2Abc
• Header Monitor
• ListZilla
• mozcc
• Nearby
• Nightly Tester Tools
• Popup ALT Attribute
• Reveal
• Tabbrowser Preferences
• del.icio.us
• Google Pagerank Status

Themes

I find the default theme for Firefox a bit dull. Fortunately, there’s a wide number of different themes available out there. I generally use the Mostly Crystal theme for Firefox. However there are some other interesting themes out there and below is a short list of ones I like:

• Mostly Crystal
• iPox

¹ If you have Adobe Acrobat installed.
² Which is to say very rarely these days.

Firefox Extensions Every Body Should Have © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Have you been using Firefox for several months? And during that time noticed that it’s taking longer & longer for the Save File dialog box to come up? Then likely, you’ve got the same problem that I’ve had. Fortunately, there’s an easy (but slow) fix for this.

Instructions:

1. Open Firefox.
2. Go into Tools -> Options (or Edit -> Preferences).
3. Click on the Privacy icon in the left-hand pane.
4. In the right-hand pane, click on Download Manager History.
5. Click the Clear button. At this point, Firefox may appear to have crashed but in reality it should be going through and clearing out all of the items from your download history. On my home machine, this took several minutes to complete but I’ve been running Firefox since v0.9 and have never cleared the download history before.
6. Optionally, you may wish to change the “Remove files from the Download Manager:” from “Manually” to “When Firefox exits”. To help prevent this slow down from happening again.

This fix works on both the Linux & Windows versions of Firefox. I would presume it also works for the OS X version, but I (sadly enough) do not have a Mac to try it out on.

Firefox Tip © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

First, I made sure I had the current version of mozcc installed and that I’d freshly restarted Firefox so I knew I had the lastest version running. When that didn’t work, I checked the source code of my pages and realized that I’d completely forgotten to add in the license info when I did the upgrade. Whoops! I’ve since rectified the problem and now you can see that this site is covered by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. The missing license info has been added in by using the WP-CC Plugin developed by Firas. So many kudos to him for this nifty plugin!

Whoops! © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

• Copy the whole list into your blog.
• Bold the things that are true about you.
• Add something that is true about you.
• Optional: Add a comment after answer in italics

Survey Meme

1. I miss somebody right now.
2. I don’t watch much TV these days.
3. I love olives
4. I own lots of books.
5. I wear glasses or contact lenses.
6. I love to play video games.
7. I’ve tried marijuana.
8. I’ve watched porn movies.
9. I have been in a threesome.
10. I have been the psycho-ex in a past relationship.
11. I believe honesty is usually the best policy.
12. I curse sometimes.
13. I have changed a lot mentally over the last year.
14. I have a hobby.
15. I carry my knife/razor everywhere with me.
16. I’m TOTALLY smart.
17. I’ve never broken someone’s bones. Just my own
18. I have a secret that I am ashamed to reveal.
19. I hate the rain.
20. I’m paranoid at times. It’s not paranoia if they’re really after you. Alas, for me it REALLY is just paranoia!
21. I would get plastic surgery if it were 100% safe, free of cost, and scar-free.
22. I need money right now.
23. I love sushi.
24. I talk really, really fast.
25. I have fresh breath in the morning.
26. I have long hair.
27. I have lost money in Las Vegas.
28. I have at least one brother and/or one sister. 3 older brothers.
29. I was born in a country outside of the U.S.
30. I shave my legs (females) or face (males) on a regular basis.
31. I have a twin (or a triplet, or somesuch).
32. I have worn fake hair/fingernails/eyelashes in the past.
33. I couldn’t survive without Caller I.D.
34. I like the way that I look.
35. I have lied to a good friend in the last 6 months.
36. I know how to cornrow.
37. I am usually pessimistic.
38. I have a lot of mood swings.
39. I think prostitution should be legalized.
40. I think Britney Spears is pretty.
41. Slept with a Suitemate.
42. I have a hidden talent.
43. I’m always hyper no matter how much sugar I have.
44. I have a lot of friends.
45. I am currently single.
46. I have pecked someone of the same sex. (given that pecked means kissed…)
47. I enjoy talking on the phone. I wish I knew someway to reverse bold this answer; as I HATE talking on the phone.
48. I practically live in sweatpants or PJ pants.
49. I love to shop.
50. I would rather shop than eat.
51. I would classify myself as ghetto.
52. I’m bourgie and have worn a sweater tied around my shoulders.
53. I’m obsessed with my Xanga or Livejournal. Nope, but I do like updating my blog an awful lot…
54. I don’t hate anyone. I dislike them. To hate somebody requires you to know them on a much more personal level than I get with people I don’t like.
55. I’m a pretty good dancer
56. I don’t think Mike Tyson raped Desiree Washington.
57. I’m completely embarrassed to be seen with my mother.
58. I have a cell phone.
59. I believe in God. Though not necessarily your God or in the same way that you do.
60. I watch MTV on a daily basis.
61. I have passed out drunk in the past 6 months.
62. I love drama. (Somebody else’s, not my own) In books and movies only.
63. I have never been in a real relationship before.
64. I’ve rejected someone before.
65. I currently have a crush/like someone.
66. I have no idea what I want to do for the rest of my life.
67. I want to have children in the future.
68. I have changed a diaper before.
69. I’ve called the cops on a friend before.
70. I bite my nails.
71. I am a member of the Tom Green fan club.
72. I’m not allergic to anything. At least, I’m not aware of having any allergies and somedays I really wonder if I might have some.
73. I have a lot to learn. I ain’t dead yet, so this has to be true.
74. I have been with someone at least 10 years older or younger.
75. I plan on seeing Ice Cube’s newest “Friday” movie.
76. I am shy around the opposite sex. Still true, though I’m not nearly so bad as I was back in my high school days. I got over most of this by making friends among the opposite sex and learning they’re actually people too! :)
77. I’m online 24/7, even as an away message.
78. I have at least 5 away messages saved.
79. I have tried alcohol or drugs before. If you live in an industrialized nation (particularly in the U.S.A.), then you almost have to have this marked. The majority of our food is loaded with chemicals and if you’ve ever been sick; you’ve probably taken cold medicine which is a drug!
80. I have made a move on a friend’s significant other or crush in the past.
81. I own the “South Park” movie. *shudder* NO!
82. I have avoided assignments at work school to be on Xanga or Livejournal.
83. When I was a kid I played “the birds and the bees” with a neighbor or chum.
84. I enjoy some country music.
85. I would die for my best friends. I’m answering this yes, but I cannot say with 100% confidence it’s true. If I saw them in immediate mortal danger; I’d like to believe I’d leap to help them without thinking about myself.
86. I think that Pizza Hut has the best pizza. None of the big chain pizza joints are any good and many of the little places around town suck, but Pizza House is great!
87. I watch soap operas whenever I can.
88. I’m obsessive, anal retentive, and often a perfectionist.
89. I have used my sexuality to advance my career.
90. I love Michael Jackson, scandals and all.
91. I know all the words to Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story”.
92. Halloween is awesome because you get free candy.
93. I watch Spongebob Squarepants and I like it.
94. I have dated a close friend’s ex. Nope, but there was one back in high school that I really wanted to.
95. I like surveys/memes.
96. I am happy at this moment.
97. I’m obsessed with guys.
98. I am bisexual.
99. Democrat.
100. Conservative Republican.
101. I am punk rockish.
102. I am preppy.
103. I go for older guys/girls, not younger.
104. I study for tests most of the time.
105. I tie my shoelaces differently from anyone I’ve ever met.
106. I can work on a car. I can change: tires, batteries, oil and possibly spark plugs.
107. I love my job. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! No.
108. I am comfortable with who I am right now. More so than I have in any previous part of my life.
109. I have more than just my ears pierced.
110. I walk barefoot wherever I can.
111. I have jumped off a bridge.
112. I love sea turtles.
113. I spend ridiculous amounts of money on makeup.
114. I believe in prophetic dreams.
115. I plan on achieving a major goal/dream. Someday I’ll buy a house.
116. I am proficient on a musical instrument. Nope, but I’d like to be
117. I worked at McDonald’s restaurant. Does 3 months at a Hardee’s count?
118. I hate office jobs.
119. I love sci-fi movies.
120. I’ve never been in love.
121. I think water rules.
122. I am going to college out of state.
123. I am adopted.
124. I like sausage.
125. I am a pyro.
126. I love the Red Sox.
127. I have thrown up from crying too much.
128. I have been intentionally hurt by people that I loved.
129. I love kisses.
130. I fall for the worst people and have been hurt every time.
131. I adore bright colors.
132. I love Dear Abby.
133. I can’t live without black eyeliner.
134. I think school is awesome.
135. I think pigtails serve a purpose.
136. I don’t know why the hell I just did this stupid thing.
137. I usually like covers better than originals.
138. I don’t like multi-textured ice cream
139. I think John Cusack is adorable.
140. I f**king hate chain theme restaurants like Applebees and TGIFridays.
141. I watch Food Network way too much.
142. I love coaching youth sports.
143. I can pick up things with my toes.
144. I can’t whistle. I say I can, but my wife doesn’t agree with me.
145. I can move my tounge in waves, much like a snakes’ slither.
146. I have ridden/owned a horse.
147. I still have every journal I’ve ever written in.
148. I can’t stick to a diet. I’ve never really tried to diet before. A while back I got a physical and the doctor recommended I try losing some weight, but so far I’ve not had much luck at doing so.
149. I talk in my sleep.
150. I’ve often thought that I was born in the wrong century. But I’ve never been able to settle on what century I should have been born into.

Survey Meme © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Kudos out there to somebody for the link, sorry but I lost your name when Firefox crashed on me.

Tired of GWB? © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Ok, maybe this is only cool to geeks like me who enjoy web design but wouldn’t it be nice if every site offered you the ability to change your style sheet at will? And didn’t require some crappy Javascript to pull it off?

Or maybe I’m just the last guy to know about it, but I still think it’s cool and I’m making a note here on how Adam coded his style sheets so I can do something like this when I redo my site at some point. Basically, I think is a great way to maintain the older themes of a site so people can see what it used to look like while still defaulting to the latest/greatest.

It looks like all you need to do is create the various style sheets and then link them into your HTML like so:
<link rel="alternate stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://idly.org/style.css" title="Default Style" />
<link rel="alternate stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://idly.org/green.css" title="Green (Old Default)" />
<link rel="alternate stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://idly.org/blue.css" title="Blue" />
Code appears courtesy of Idly.org

Another reason why Firefox rules © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).

The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet (Permalink: http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2004/08/a_sonar_ping_of.html) —- results and commentary will appear there in the future.

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate — the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst (this GUID enables anyone to easily search Google (or Technorati) for all blogs that participate in this experiment). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above). (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.)
INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below, please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).

REQUIRED FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

(1) I found this experiment at URL:

http://www.differentsky.com/

(2) I did not found it via a Newsreader Software (name of Newsreader Software)
(3) I posted this experiment at URL: http://www.coffeebear.net/index.php?p=109
(4) I posted this on date (day, month, year): 08/08/04
(5) I posted this at time (24 hour time): 21:56:49 (GMT:-06:00, USA/Central)
(6) My posting location is (city, state, country): Coralville, Iowa, United States of America

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):
(7) My blog is hosted by: WordPress
(8) My age is: 28
(9) My gender is: Male
(10) My occupation is: Software Tester
(11) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: Sage Extension for FireFox
(12) I use the following software to post to my blog: WordPress
(13) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 11/03/04
(14) My web browser is: Firefox
(15) My operating system is: SuSE Linux Pro 9.0

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog! © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.