Friday, August 25, 2006

Performancing for Firefox

So, I've decided to try and spend a little more time with my blogs. My peeps deserve that, afterall. They do love me for a reason, so I have to keep giving it up! :)

But, blogging can be a pain in the ass...enter Performancing for Firefox. It's a nifty little extension for Firefox that allows you to blog pretty easily. Just install it, restart FF and you're off. You then setup your accounts and done! It puts a little button on your statusbar and when you click it, your window splits in half and you blog in the bottom. There's even an addon to publish to Myspace blogs. Pretty cool stuff!

Monday, August 14, 2006

Foxyproxy...nice!

Been a while, huh? Wonder if anyone has me in their RSS feeds to see if I update this again. Hehehehe. Well, I'm going to try and be a bit more regular with all of my blogs, let's see how that works out.

Anyway, wanted to stop in and tell you how cool this Firefox extension is...FoxyProxy. I used to use the SwitchProxy Tool because I was using my laptop both at work and home. SPT allowed me to right-click and use the proxy at work, then right-click and use no proxy at home. Made life easier...until Firefox 1.5 came out and the developer stopped working on SPT. Fortunately, at about the same time I got a real desktop at work, and didn't need to switch proxies anymore, so I wasn't concerned...

...until a couple of weeks back when they "upgraded" the proxies at work. Now they're up, they're down, they're left, they're right. Half the time I can't even get out. Fortunately, there's five of them, so if one's down I might be able to get out on another. Back to needing a proxy switching util...FoxyProxy, how wonderful a tool. See, after upgrading the proxies, the rulesets aren't the same on them anymore. So, for example, the primary proxy I use (which is closest to my location and fastest) won't allow me to go to RPGNow to see what's new. However, the default one used by most folks will allow it. What a PITA to have to switch, no matter how easy FP makes it, back and forth between proxies for one or two sites.

Not so! FoxyProxy allows you to set patterns for URLs, so it can use different proxies depending on where you want to go. So, I use my "close" proxy for all URLs, unless it contains "*.rpgnow.com/*". Then, it uses the user-default proxy. All of this happens behind the scenes and I don't have to even think about it. Nice!

If you need a proxy solution, this is so the way to go, folks.