Resizing Firefox

In my last post, I talked a bit about my migration to Firefox 4 and some of the extensions that generally follow along with me. Today, I want to discuss some of the tweaks I do to the interface to make it more usable.

On of the changes to the technology field over the last couple of years has been the migration of computer monitors to widescreen format. While not ideally suited to use in this manner, there's a very simple reason we're forced to have them: HDTV. As the television and film industries move to widescreen, manufacturing of monitors has had to follow as a matter of course. Or, cost, really. The same companies that make TV screens also make computer monitors and it costs money to build LCD/LED/Plasma screens in a variety of formats. The fewer formats manufacturers have to deal with, the lower costs end up being.

The fact that they're not really what consumers want really doesn't come into play. If they're the only option available, then you'll buy them. And, so, we're stuck trying to scroll around the screen to read the entirety of a webpage or Word document that's formatted for a taller screen. Such is life, this is where we are, so let's make the most of it.

A lot of sites have been sizing up the latest offerings from the browser producers and judging their screen real estate usage and evaluating them primarily on their vertical usage of space. If I recall correctly, in the latest offerings, Firefox 4 is the current winner. It apparently undercuts Google Chrome, the former champ, by some 3 or 4 pixels! Whew! I can almost read the top half of one extra sentence with that!

While it's nice to see that Google, Mozilla and Microsoft are all taking into account screen ratios now, it's always been kind of a moot point for me. After all, I've been taking it into account since I got my first widescreen a few years ago and came up with my own solutions by tweaking Firefox. The solutions below are not possible with Chrome or IE because their layout is pre-determined. Firefox is the only browser that gives me the flexibility I need to size things properly.

This is what my browser looks like:



The Basics

For some reason, there are folks out there who love Firefox, but don't want to add extensions to it. I can grok wanting the absolute fastest browsing experience you can try to muster, but I just think you're missing out on so much! Oh, well, this section can be for them.

The first thing you'll notice in my screenshot above is I've reduced the number of toolbars on screen to just one. This is easy enough to do, simply right-click on one of the buttons on your toolbar (such as the big Back one) and choose Customize. You can drag bits of the interface around, as well as remove some. The first thing I do is get rid of the Search box and Back/Forward buttons.

Losing the Search box isn't a big deal if you use Smart Keywords to search from the address bar. I've got a few of these setup so, for example, if I want to do a Google search, I type "g" in the address bar and follow it with my query. Similarly, I have one setup for Google Image search, Bing, Dictionary.com, Wikipedia and a few others. I also have one for Google Maps to get directions easier. With these, I really have no reason at all to have a Search box taking up space.

Not having Back/Forward buttons might seem a chore...unless you read about FF Rocker in my last post. :) The goal is to get rid of items on screen that can be actioned using some other method..

Once I've subtracted, simply move the Address Bar up into the menu Toolbar followed by the widget named Bookmarks Toolbar Items. Things might be a bit cramped at this point, so you might need to make some additional changes. By default, the Address Bar is a bit wide for this setup. So, we need to find your Firefox profile. This is the directory that contains all of your personal settings for Firefox. This article describes nicely how to locate it. Once you've found it, you're going to want to go into the chrome directory (create it if it doesn't exist) and modify userChrome.css (again, create it if it doesn't exist. userChrome.css is a configuration file for aspects of the interface. I haven't done much twiddling, but two changes I do make:

#urlbar, #urlbar-container {min-width: 500px !important; max-width: 500px !important;}
#star-button {display:none !important;}

The first one sets the minimum and maximum widths for the Address Bar to 500 pixels. For the most part, the only bit of a URL I generally care about is the domain, and that generally fits within those 500 pixels. There is an issue with the new "encrypted page" indicator in later versions of Firefox. This takes up a wide part of the Address Bar to show you the domain the certificate is for. Sometimes, if the domain name is long enough, it'll take up most of the Address Bar, but I've never encountered a time where I thought "damn, my Address Bar just isn't wide enough" at 500 pixels.

The second entry removes the star button from the Address Bar. This button is used to bookmark a page, but I keep my bookmarks in Google Bookmarks, so hardly ever use it. Better to use Ctrl-D to bring up the bookmark tool than waste some space.

Speaking of bookmarks, you'll notice my Bookmarks Toolbar is fairly sparse with just favicons
representing most sites. To get a slim and trim Bookmarks Toolbar, simply go to the properties for each of the bookmarks and remove the Name. Very few sites these days don't use favicons, so you can always identify them without their name next to them.

You might also notice the folders on the Bookmarks Toolbar. I do have a number of sites I hit on a daily basis that don't have RSS feeds. My morning routine consists of hitting the "M" folder (for morning), going to the bottom and hitting the "Open all in tabs" link. This does as it says and all of my morning news is available for me to peruse in just a few moments. In the afternoon, there are some sites I hit that are specific to that timeslot. Hit the "A" folder (guess what that stands for) and do the same. The remainder are either work related or something I like to keep handy, but don't want to waste an icon on the toolbar.

Extending It Further

While the above can go a long way to trimming Firefox down vertically, there are still some cool things you can do with extensions to really bring it down to size. The one item that's taking up the most space at this point is the Tab Bar. Really, why do we need it along the top? Because that's the way we've always done it? This is where Vertical Tabs comes into play. There are a few options in the add-ons mart, but this is the only one that works with FF4. That's okay, though, because I've tried a few of the others and they add a lot more features than I really needed. I wanted my tabs on the side, that's it. With the tabs off to the side, it actually feels a bit more natural. After all, look at Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer). Are the panes divided up top and bottom? No, they're next to each other. When you go to a site, navigation menus are typically on the side, and so on. It really doesn't take much getting used to once you install it.

Since you've squinched as much as possible into your menu bar, it's probably looking a bit crowded, right? Well, why not trim out some of the things you don't use as often? When's the last time you hit the Help menu? The Edit menu? Okay, some folks might still like that one, but I know how to hit Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, so very rarely use it. :) Since the only bookmarks I store locally are on the toolbar and I'm using Ctrl-D to bookmark new ones, do I really need the Bookmarks menu item? Nope, so off they go thanks to Menu Editor. Trim your menus down how you like, but I've gotten rid of everything except File, View and Tools. It may seem a radical surgery, but the patient and I have been doing fine for ages now. :)

About the only change left at this point has already been done for you in Firefox 4: getting rid of the Status Bar at the bottom. Most folks seemed to like that change, some didn't. There's an extension called Status-4-Evar to get it back if you really like it. I haven't had much complaint working without it so far.

So, that's it, my slim, trim Firefox 4 setup. On a widescreen monitor, I get as much space devoted to browsing as I possibly can, and didn't lose any functionality. In fact, usage is generally improved some. Got any tweaks you know I might've missed?

A new day, a new Firefox

Firefox 4 was released to much fanfare the other day, and I decided to give it a shot. Since I only use the Portable versions of Firefox (more on that later), it's an easy enough thing to give new versions a try and if I don't like them I can wait until they get better. So, I hit the Portable Apps site and sure enough there was the release version of FF4.

On first launch, performance seemed to be noticeably faster than 3.6.13, the previous version I was using. Opening Gmail was near-instantaneous and other sites just popped into view as soon as I finished typing the URL. It only took a few minutes before I decided this was worth checking out further, so on to the next most important step: are my extensions available?

One of the main reasons I use Firefox is the customization through extensions. If the extension author hasn't updated it, that usually restricts if I'm going to move to a new version of the browser or not. This isn't true of all of them, but I do have a suite of "core" extensions I require at all times:

The "Musts"

Adblock Plus

I'm an American. I want everything, and I want it for free, dammit! :) I get it, sites use ads to generate revenue. Some generate a lot of revenue from them, but those sites typically have so many ads on them their content is almost unusable. Adblock Plus does a great job of preventing any ads getting through to my eyeballs. I believe it also helps a bit with security, as it blocks those popups that people click on that install malware...

CommentBlocker

A recent addition. The Internet has often been described as a morass of lies and misinformation. Personally, I think that's a bit overboard. It's not the whole Internet, it's just the comments on most sites. The comments sections of science sites are overrun by anti-science right-wingers hell bent on setting fire to the planet. Those on IT sites are full of ignoramuses who delight in their ignorance of "off" and "on". I always TRIED to not get pulled in to the comment madness that exists at the bottom of every article. But like looking through some kind of Lovecraftian portal, just glimpsing them sucks any sanity right out of my head.

CommentBlocker is your defense against the babbling of the Old One's minions. It literally eliminates the comments section from practically every site I've been on since I started using it. The Internet is a quieter, saner place because of this fantastic extension. If there's a site where you want to see comments, though, it allows you to whitelist them (you can also temporarily whitelist a site while you're looking at it by hitting a button in the address bar). Interestingly, if you run a Wordpress site, it'll actually block the comments administration pages on the back end, something that left me scratching my head for a few minutes when I first encountered it.

FF Rocker

A lifetime ago, I was a fierce Internet Explorer user. In fact, it wasn't until deep into the Firefox 2.x life cycle that I finally switched away (because of the extensions). I didn't use IE by default, though. I used a "skin" called AvantBrowser that added many useful features to my then-beloved browser. Most notably was tabs. Opera Browser was the first to fully implement them, but I found their initial offering clunky and annoying. Avant's implementation seemed to work a lot smoother and wasn't a huge deviation from my current browsing habits.

But, one of the features Avant had that still influences my choice of browser to this day: rocker gestures. In fact, I would say that if I couldn't add this feature to a browser, it would be a showstopper above all others. Once you use it, and get used to it, you just can't live without it. This feature allow you to do away with the Forward and Back buttons. Normally, if you want to go back, you have to move the mouse up to the top of the screen and hit the back button. A minor gesture, yes, but they add up. With rocker gestures, if you want to go back, hold down the right-button on your mouse and hit the left one. If you want to move forward, hold down the left button and hit the right. The mouse is the primary browsing interface and being able to navigate without extra effort just makes things easier.

Trust me, I know how silly it sounds, but if you've got FF, install FF Rocker and try it. After a month, see if you can use a browser without it. :)

The "Shoulds"

Those are the big three. Without them, there's no point in my moving to a new version or browser. They're so ingrained into my browsing habits that without them the web is an annoying, slow to navigate, flashy place with no purpose. This next set represents those that I COULD live without, but would prefer not to. They make browsing more pleasant and safer.

Greasemonkey

The techie's favorite extension. Greasemonkey exists on the premise that regardless of how a web jockey wants to present information to you, how it's ultimately viewed should be up to you. Using small scripts, a trove of which can be found at Userscripts, Greasemonkey will modify how a particular page will act or display in your browser. For example, a lot of people hate the new layout used by Gawker sites like Lifehacker and io9. There exist Greasemonkey scripts that will modify how those sites look to conform more to what is the norm on the web. Nothing changes at Gawker's end, they still think you're seeing their site as they intended. Everything happens at your end.

Beyond visual tweaks, Greasemonkey scripts can add new features or make some sites more usable. For example, there are scripts that can automate the playing of games on Facebook or allow you to download videos from Youtube. One of my faves blocks Flash animations on sites from auto-starting until I tell them to. Another converts any URLs found on a page that haven't been made links by the site's author into clickable links. No cutting and pasting these anomalies. If you like everything "just so", Greasemonkey might be one for you.

IE Tab 2

My workplace pretty much supports IE only. Our internal intranet is fairly biased toward that browser, and no amount of fiddling will get some of them to work at all in Firefox. I could launch IE every time I need to go into one, but I usually have a browser open, so why bother? IE Tab embeds an IE instance in a Firefox tab when you need it. You can setup rules so that any time you go to a particular site or domain, it'll automatically load that page in an IE tab rather than a Firefox one. It's a great little hack to work around those who don't grok the web is supposed to be cross-platform.

Note: there are a number of variations of IE Tab in the extension database. I've found IE Tab 2 to be the only one that consistently works well. Others I've found will lock up the browser on certain sites, others just won't load at all.

HTTPS-Everywhere

A recent addition, and one that will probably move up to the "Musts" category eventually, this extension is from the Electronic Freedom Foundation. There are a number of sites, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, etc, that contain a large portion of our personal information, yet all of that information is sent back and forth from site to browser over the Internet in clear text. Anyone can intercept your communications and snoop on what you're doing. Some sites have started forcing encrypted communications in recent years (like Gmail), but others have not. A recent exploit, Firesheep, would allow a hacker to sit in his local Starbucks and capture the logins of the other patrons quickly and easily.

Ironically, most of these sites already have the ability to encrypt all communications, but it's not turned on by default. What HTTPS-Everywhere does is force the browser to only use encrypted communications with the sites it knows supports it. The hope is that all sites will someday encrypt every bit of communication. Until that time, this extension will protect you on quite a number of sites.

LastPass

Another recent addtion. I have to confess, that even as an IT pro I'm terrible when it comes to password management. I have a suite of 5 or 6 different passwords I use for different things, and then end up using them everywhere. I've tried this tool and that software, but nothing was ubiquitous, cross-platform and seamless enough for me.

LastPass is a univeral password manager. It integrates into your browser, and on Firefox even replaces the built-in password management system. There are apps for every portable and desktop platform, or you can simply go to the website if you need to get a password when away from your own equipment.

After reading so many articles about LastPass on Lifehacker, I finally decided to weigh the odds...after all, in order to use LastPass, you have to hand over all of your usernames and passwords to someone else to secure for you. That's a huge risk! But, I weighed that against the infinitely less secure method of failing to maintain good password management myself and decided it's the lesser of two evils.

So far, I've been very happy with the service and how it works. It even has a password generator, so when I sign up for a new service I generate a completely new password for it. LastPass stores it and I never know what it is. Easy-peasy!

The next category I'm going to cover are some minor additions I like to have, but also the significant tweaks I make to the appearance and configuration of Firefox itself to meet my needs. But, I'm sure you're as tired reading this as I am writing it. :) Hopefully I'll be better about the follow-up than I have been with others!

It's time to build a word: I-R-O-N-Y

I'm a parent, and as such I have a genetic obligation to my daughter to be as biased in her favor I can possibly be. That being said, when I tell you that she's the smartest kid that's ever walked the planet you can take that as fact and not just opinion. Everyone says so, you can ask them!

My wife and I can claim some credit for that. We both spend a lot of time with her, exposing her to as many new things as possible and reading to her every night before bed (and afternoon before naps!) We don't push her like some parents do, we strive to make learning fun and to capitalize on her innate curiosity.

We also made the decision before she was born to eliminate cable from our household. Partially it was a financial thing. My wife & I each watch about 3-4 hours/week of TV regularly, but then had it on babbling in the background as we did other things. We certainly weren't getting $100+/month worth of value out of it! With Hulu, Netflix and other online services streaming programming into our house via the Internet, we decided to just cut the cable cold turkey and have not regretted it one bit.

Okay, I'll be honest. I desperately miss the Science & History Channels, but that's about it. The rest of it...meh.

Without cable, it's been really easy for us to manage what our daughter watches on TV and to eliminate all of the "adver-programming" that's normally directed at young pre-consumers...sorry, I meant kids. Sure, she got mass market stuff for a while. "Yo Gabba Gabba" remains a staple on our list, and we have actually spoiled her by booking a 5-day weekend trip to Toronto where she got to attend a YGG concert AND get to go back stage to meet them all. (Which was followed up by a second concert here in Rochester where she got to do the same. We're suckers, what can I say?)

But, while there might be a lot of mass marketing associated with YGG, we're convinced it's still a reasonably good educational show. They do teach a lot of value lessons and basic skills, but they really get the kids excited about music, not to mention getting them up and dancing.

She's also a huge fan of "Kipper" and "Charlie & Lola" which is why she often speaks with a British accent ("But, Dahddy...I cahn't!"). These two don't provide much in the way of edutainment, sure, but they also don't typically go out of their way to insult her intelligence either. Probably has to do with not being from Hollywood or something...

As she (quickly) approaches three, her tastes have expanded some and so we've also expanded what she gets to watch. We found "Sid the Science Kid" first. How many two and a half year old do you know that can talk to you about "reversible change"? It's a great little show that covers the basics of scientific inquiry in a way that's really accessible even to someone as young as her.

But, her new favorite: "Word World". A great little show in which all of the characters and most physical objects are made up of the words that represent them. So, Duck is actually made up of the words D-U-C-K. Meant for kids 3-5, it introduces the concepts of letter-sound connections in a fun way that she's hooked on.



Which brings us, finally, to the point of the article as it was this Saturday, February 19th, 2011 that we realized she was starting to "get it". When I asked her "What sound does an 'A' make?" she responded appropriately. As I quizzed her on 8-10 other letters, she got all of them correct! She's not even three yet! Yes, I know, being able to read at a young age isn't a guarantee of future success, but it don't hurt none, either!

And the irony? That was the same day the "fiscal conservatives" decided to slash funding for PBS. Did I mention "Sid the Science Kid" and "Word World" are products of PBS? Did I really need to?

Sigh...I get it, I really do; spending is out of control. I'd love to ignore the fact it's these same "fiscal conservatives" that do most of the spending. I'd love to ignore they're the ones behind all of the debt they seem to be so angry about. I'd also really love to ignore that they've reduced the tax revenue by making sure the very rich and corporations no longer have to pay their fair share of taxes.

I'd love to ignore all of these things, but that's the right's job: downplaying their failures and shenanigans or blaming them on others. Because, that's what this is all about. It's not about reducing spending, it's about eliminating those broadcasters that really DO provide a "fair and balanced" view of the news. The problem with reporting news in that way, though; it makes the right look bad.

Actually, I should clarify...the right does a great job on their own of looking bad, the "liberal media" just reports it.

My daughter will suffer if this budget is allowed to pass. Not just because of PBS, but due to the cuts in science, research and education that have gone along with it. It's all part of the right's 30-year plan to "starve the beast" of socialism. The socialism, that is, that benefits only those filthy, stinking poor people. They not only left the military's budget alone, the increased it by a billion dollars! (The cuts to PBS were about $420 million.) It now amounts to over 50% of the Federal budget, but not one member of the right will even discuss the possibility of slashing that bit o' socialism at all.

It's not just my daughter, though. For some of the more remote and rural areas, PBS is the closest thing to an early education a lot of kids will get. My heart aches that there are parents who won't get to experience the joy of their three year old reciting her phonics. It sickens me that the one media outlet that doesn't exist solely to generate revenue for shareholders is the one that's slashed. Where are kids supposed to get programming that isn't designed as, well...programming? Because that's all kids programs on the commercial networks are: advertising vehicles for merchandising.

It needs to stop. And, if you think the solution is the spineless cowards in the Democrat party, you're out of your mind. There is no easy solution, but to quote Einstein "you cannot solve a problem using the same thinking that created it in the first place." We cannot get this sinking ship we call a country afloat by voting in the same yahoos over and over again. It's time for a real change, and quickly.

For now, there's not much we can do. The budget moves on to the Senate where the Dems do hold the majority, so it should stop there. But, we can't just assume it will. The Dems had control of the House and Senate for two years and failed to deliver on a single thing they promised. We can no longer assume those on either side are on OUR side.

You can head to 170MillionAmericans.org and get info on contacting your Senators and reminding them of their duty to the American people, not the American corporations. I recommend printing out the suggested letter to your Senator and mailing it in (dropping it off in person would go a long way to making sure they know you mean business, too!) At the very least, get an e-mail to their office. The more responses they get, in theory, the more likely they are to lean in favor of what the people want.

Yeah, I know...but we have to try. Right?

Too much automation? Ain't no such thing!

As I blogged previously, I have fallen in love with the app Tasker on my Android phone. One day I'll get around to cleaning up my profiles, exporting them and posting them here for the benefit of others, but for now I want to talk about an interesting comment a coworker said to me the other day.

I've been playing around with Tasker's Orientation context. Basically, it's Tasker's interface to the accelerometer. You can trigger events to occur based on what position the phone finds itself in. When I told him about some of the things I'd been playing around with, he responded, "Just so we're clear, there IS such a thing as TOO MUCH automation, you know!"

Sorry, Kevin, I've never seen it.

The experiment started, ironically, as a way to minimize the annoyance of those I work with. Last week I got a text while sitting at my desk. My phone was on the desk next to me, and the volume was set to max. I'm getting old, I keep the volume up most of the time so I can hear it. My coworkers would always comment because the notification tone for SMS on my phone sounds like it should be followed by some ancient wisdom from Mr. Miyagi (for my Android brethren and sistren, it's "Chiff"). I took it onto myself to try to always turn down the volume when at my desk so I didn't disturb the others, but then I thought "why am I doing this all myself!?"

So, I started looking at how I use my Evo and how I could further tailor it to my immediate needs. Solving the problem at the office was easy...I setup a task that says "If the phone is face down, turn all of the volumes (Ringer, Notification and Media) down to '3'." Since getting my first smart phone, I've gotten into the habit of always putting it down face down to protect the screen. The habit's already in place, and now the phone responds to it!

This wasn't a perfect solution off the bat, and did need a little bit of tweaking. For example, if I put my phone down at home, it's usually in the living room. I don't want the volume all the way down in that case so I can actually hear the thing! So, I put in the condition "If you're connected to the home wifi, ignore this task". Done! Now, when I'm at the office and put the phone down, it's quiet, but audible. At home, it's fully up.

Great, but now when I pick up my phone and put it into my pocket, it's quiet again...easily solved. Similar to my habit of putting the phone face down, I always put it into my pocket upside down with the screen against my leg. Again, this protects the screen, but makes it easy for me to hit the power button if I need to (I've found that when the phone's right side up, the power button's a little difficult for me to maneuver my fat fingers into place properly.) Since I have this other habit, I just needed to tap into that. Again, a simple task: "If the phone's upside down, set all volumes to max".

Now, I'm also a dork, so I couldn't leave them to be THAT simple, could I? Tasker also has the ability to use the speech synthesis capabilities built into Android. So, when I put my phone down, it lowers the volumes and then says "Face Down Mode" to confirm that action's happened. Similarly, dropping into the pocket prompts it to say "Walking Mode".

Sorry, ladies, I'm married.

Yes, I consider myself to be VERY lucky my wife married me before she found out what she was in for.

There is one little gotcha, though: Tasker will only check the orientation of the phone if the screen is on. I can't just take my phone out of my pocket and plop it on the table, I do need to hit the power button. But, I used to have to hit the power button, slide, unlock and reset volumes every time I got back to my desk. Fair trade off, I'll take it.

I know, it sounds silly. I also know it sounds "lazy", but if you haven't used something like this you really have no idea how annoying little things like this can be. You deal with them now, but once they're gone and the phone's doing the work, you really start to appreciate how much easier these kinds of little things make your day.

Tasker: bye-bye iPhone, hello Android!

It's a bit rude, but I have a saying: "show me a person consistently working more than than 40 hours a week in IT, and I'll show you a person who's probably chosen the wrong career field".

While I understand that there are occurrences where people are working for companies that are understaffed, and there might be other reasons behind the hours, that doesn't change the fact that in the last 20ish years in the IT field the majority of people I've known who worked like that were just not very good at their jobs. Even more consistently I've found that they didn't understand automation, which is odd considering that's their job!

I'll give you an example: in my old position the environment I managed was made up of a group of Citrix Xenapp servers. Critical as this environment was to our bottom line, every server had a backup so we could fail over quickly. Here's the thing: previously, "quickly" was about 3-4 hours. Now, it's bad enough that in a critical situation it took 3-4 hours to cut over to the backup server. But, upgrades required a cutover and cutback! Upgrading 30 servers and their backups would take WEEKS. I got in there, tweaked the process a bit, wrote some scripts to do some of the work and got the whole thing down to 15 minutes.

Actually, in all honesty, I could've scripted the whole thing to run in 15 SECONDS, but I needed to justify my pay somewhat.

The whole point of IT is to make a company more efficient, to allow it to do more with less staff. In some cases, a single server could replace thousands of employees. Sure, there are downsides to that, but those aren't part of this discussion. If you can't automate some of the repetitive tasks you do on a daily basis, or even an infrequent basis, how do you justify working in a field whose purpose is to automate out repetitive tasks for others?

Two plus years ago, I got myself an iPhone. I've talked about my leaving that platform, and I'd like to share one of the reasons why. I'd been hearing about this interesting little hack available for Android called Tasker on Lifehacker for some time and was enthralled. I'll be honest, Tasker was about 90% of the reason I moved to Android. And, why? It automates your phone!

The iPhone gets a lot of static for being just a fanboi platform, but Apple deserves a lot of credit for putting out a paradigm changer. It's not a PDA, it's not a phone...it's a portable computer that allows you to make calls and have ubiquitous Internet access.

But, you're locked in with it. I'm not just talking about the Apple Store or iTunes, but simple day-to-day tasks. Take something as simple as your browser. You can get plenty of replacement browser apps in the Store, but none can be made your default. If you click a link in your e-mail, it launches Safari. If you click a link in another app, it opens Safari. No matter what you do, you're stuck with Safari. The only time your browser of choice opens is when you tap the icon for it.

The kind of limited thinking that produces such a half-assed solution just isn't what went into Android and as a result we get something like Tasker. It's a tool that allows you to automate your phone to do things you never thought possible. I play around with it a little every day and I still manage to find some new use for it.

Using it couldn't be easier. You start with a context under which you'd like Tasker to respond. This could be location (using GPS), phone state (plugged in, headset plugged in) or date/time, etc. Once you've defined the conditions you'd like it to respond to, you can then define the task it will then take. So much of the basic phone is available to automate, and authors of other software can produce plugins or links to allow you to automate their stuff, too. This all might sound confusing at first, and that's because despite its simplicity, Tasker brings a LOT of power to the table. Examples work best, I think. Let's start with a typical 24 hour period. I'll start with my getting home from work at around 10:30pm (I work the late shift):

- As I get within 1km of my house, Tasker turns on my phone's wifi. As soon as I connect to wifi, either at my house or any place else, it turns off the mobile network radio to conserve battery. I've got wifi, why leave them on? I also have it setup to turn on wifi when close to other folk's houses where I use their wifi, and the same happens there.

- At 11:00pm, Tasker automatically silences my phone. It mutes all of the volumes, however it's setup so that if my wife calls or texts, I will get an audible notification.

- Typically I go to bed a little after 11 and plug the phone into the charger before doing so. Tasker responds by first seeing I'm plugged in. It also checks to see if I'm connected to my home wifi. With these two conditions being met, it starts backing up my phone. It launches SMS Backup+ which backs up all of my SMS conversations and call logs to my gMail account. Each entry shows up as an e-mail within a label with can then be accessed however I would normally access gMail. Mount Manager is a utility that allows my to mount CIFS shares to my phone. I haven't purchased the full version yet, but that comes with a Tasker plugin so I could have it then mount my desktop PC's drive and backup my entire phone in one shot while I sleep.

- At 8:00am, Tasker reenables the audible notifications.

- When I leave the house, and disconnect from my wifi, Tasker turns the mobile networks back on. When I've gone more than 1km away, it turns off the wifi to conserve battery and prevent me being annoyed by the constant "I found a wifi network! I found a wifi network!" notifications.

- Now, I like anime. As a result, I might have some kind of an anime-themed wallpaper on my phone. As those who are familiar with the genre can tell you, oftentimes in anime, women are a bit...scantily clad and their body features are absurdly pronounced. Let's just say the wallpapers, while not porn, would definitely be considered NSFW. So, as soon as I get within 1km of my work place, Tasker will load a random wallpaper from a folder entitled "SFW". Phew! That was close! As I finish the work day and leave that radius, it'll put up a random wallpaper from my entire collection.

And, the process repeats. Now, I might come off as lazy by telling you about the above. But, again, isn't automation what computing's all about? Why should I manually do all of those things? I can have a phone that, depending on where I am and what I'm doing, morphs itself into whatever I need at that moment. When I plug in my headphones, it pops up a menu of all of the applications I might want to use them with. Others have setup "where's my phone" type tasks that allow them to send a text to the phone and it responds with regular GPS coordinates of its location.

Did I mention that I have it setup to tie into my Homeseer-based X-10 so that when I connect to my wifi, if it's late and past the time when my outside lights are on, the lights will come on as I hit the driveway. How cool is that?

All of this and I still have only scratched the surface of what it can do. Seriously, if you've got an Android phone, it's the best $6 you'll spend on an app (buy it from the author's site listed above, though. He gets a bigger cut if you do it that way). If you're still on an iPhone...sorry, you'll never be able to do anything this cool. ;-)

Has it really been that long?

Geez, December 1st is the last time I posted something to this? Tsk, tsk...

There are many drawbacks to doing TEDxRochester in November. First and foremost is right afterward you run face first into the holiday season with all of the fun and excitement that brings. You spend an entire year building up for that one, single day and then it happens and you let out a deep sigh that doesn't stop for two weeks. Then next thing you know, you're cooking a turkey, rushing out for those last minute gifts, rushing out of town for the holidays...oh, my!

"But", you say, "the holidays have been over for weeks?" Sure, but I work for a payroll company and it's year end. We've got W-2s that need to go out by the end of this month, which means we're pushing our already stressed systems passed their limits and stuff's in need of the kind of situational leadership my group brings to the table. Top all of that with a heavy dose of snow causing 14 of our branch locations to close and...well, I've been a busy puppy!

I've got quite a few articles started, but just haven't had time to finish them up. This article's primary purpose is to get those writing juices flowing again as I have some serious catching up to do on other projects as well. Coming up: more Ubuntu Linux stuff and a whole lot of stuff on my new love: Android!

The end of an iEra

About four years ago, my company did something stupid: they opened up access to company-provided smartphones to everyone. A number of folks noticed this and it wasn't long before it seemed like every single person in IT was sporting a shiny, new Palm Treo. Unfortunately, I only found out about the open availability AFTER the company had closed the option. Apparently, it wasn't very long before someone in Finance noticed how much data plans were for the now thousands of Treos running around.

Grand.

So, I missed my opportunity and ended up being the only person in my group to not have a smartphone. To add insult to injury, when it came time to renew my phone, they gave me this crappy LG that was a PHONE...nothing else. I didn't even have the crappy 8-bit like games that used to keep me occupied in the men's room anymore. Sigh...but, I persevered and kept pushing my boss to get me one.

After two years of this, I eventually came to the realization that all of the promises of "oh, yeah, I'll look into that" were as empty as my phone. So, I decided it was time for me to get my own. My wife & I had recently had a child, so it was a bit of a stretch, but when we compared the cost of our one cell phone and digital home service, there really wasn't that much of a difference between that and getting two iPhone 3Gs (lower-case "s" indicating plural, not upper case "S" indicating 3GS). So, we killed both of those and transferred their numbers to our new hotness.

Oh, my iPhone that first year or so. How I loved it! I added app after app, played with it constantly...I even got a gig writing reviews for iPhoneTunes.net (still one of the best iPhone sites out there, IMHO). A couple of months after I got it, I started to read about some of the cool features available if you jailbroke your device and I mustered enough courage to give it a try. In those "early days" there wasn't much out there, but what was there was cool: xGPS, the FIRST turn-by-turn navigation app for the iPhone. Did I mention it was free? iRealSMS, a paid addition that really made SMS usable on the iPhone and CategoriesSB which added the much-needed, but stupidly overlooked by Apple for four versions of the OS, folders for applications!

With these modifications in place, I was happy with my iPhone. Until it crashed. Never really figured out what caused it to start acting loopy, but it was so bad I had to restore. What a chore, especially since I was jailbroken and wanted to get back to where I was before it went South. A day and a half later I was working, but also feeling fairly disenchanted with my little tech love. The functionality I added wasn't all that much. In fact, it was functionality that should've been included with the damn phone to begin with, but Apple's only good at the initial paradigm shift. Once they've captured the market's attention, they never follow through with anything better. Don't believe me? What's the big differences between a first-gen iPhone and an iPhone 4? Slightly bigger screen? Faster with more memory? More storage?

Snooze. Wake me when you get to the upgrades that are comparable to upgrading to an iPhone 3G from an LG LX3000. What's worse, Apple's made it clear since day one that THEY get to decide what apps can go on YOUR phone...not you. At first, it's not a big deal. It's a phone, you want it to work. But, you also want to be able to install whatever you want, even if it will make it stop working. That's MY choice, not Apple's. Yeah, I get it, it's their "brand" at stake. So sick of hearing how concerned everyone is about their brand. As far as I'm concerned, the worst thing happening to Apple's brand is Apple.

But, I'm going to avoid the rant for now...where was I? Oh, yes, I was going to discuss iTunes....

Which I can't do without ranting. Since the instant my credit card was charged for those phones, iTunes was always one of the top reasons I knew I would move away from the platform. Granted, in the early days I never thought I would, but I had a feeling it would involve iTunes in some way. Lousy, slow, ugly pig. Ugh, more ranting. Must change subject.

As the end of my contract with AT&T was looming near*, I started looking at the Android offerings. Now, I'm not a huge Google fan, either. Yeah, I use gMail, primarily because I've run my own mail server and it was a PITA that I was glad to get rid of. That being said, the lineup of Android phones was pretty impressive. Not only that, they were generally innovative, too! It was the Samsung Halo with its built-in pico projector that really captured my imagination. But, in the end, it was an application that was the final nail in the coffin for the iPhone: Tasker. I'm a tech guy who loves to automate stuff, and from the first time I read about it on Lifehacker I knew I would have an Android.

Fast forward to last Friday, Black Friday. My wife and I had fully decided that we were going to move to new phones and away from the iPhone forever. Radio Shack had a great online offering of the HTC EVO 4G for half price and I jumped on it. They arrived yesterday and activated this morning. We did get to play around with them before they activated using the Wifi and I gotta tell you: it was love at first sight all over again. Fast, beautiful, easy to use...I can already see how much better than an iPhone this thing really is!

But, I'm going to reserve a full review until after I've had a chance to use it, test out the coverage of Sprint (as we head out of town to visit the folks for the holidays, it'll get a great torture test) and really put it through its paces. My feeling for it might just be the newness, I'll admit that. However, after just a few hours, I already feel at home with it and enjoy some of the subtle differences so much better.


* Let me just say this about AT&T: I honestly never had a problem with them. I can count on two fingers the number of times I had calls drop on me, and both times I was standing in my old cube at the office which was a reception black hole. Their pricing was a bit high, but I could deal with it.