Well, Firefox 2.0 is finally out to the masses. I’ve been using various betas and nightlies for quite some time now to follow the progress, and since RC2 i’ve fallen in love all over again with this browser.

For me, RC2 through the Final Release which I am composing this entry on right now have been just absolutely rock-solid. We’re talking zero problems. That alone is an outstanding achievement, considering that for 12-14 hours per day I am heavily using the browser with numerous tabs, and throwing every sort of javascript error and html oddity at it you could imagine.

On top of that, it’s easier on the eyes thanks to the refined default theme, and many things I previously used extensions for are now standard with the browser. All in all, once I got about:config setup the way I wanted it, I couldn’t be more pleased with 2.0. It is really a great piece of software.

As if that weren’t enough, today while casually perusing my Google Homepage, I saw an entry on Tech Crunch about some sort of top-ten list for Firefox add-ons. I always read these types of articles and end up installing one or two new and nifty extensions, only to end up never using them and uninstalling them a few weeks later. Today, however, is destined to be different.

Among the gems listed are a couple I’ve used for a long time:

Download Statusbar is perhaps a model for the “perfect” extension. I never even think about it when it’s there, but when it isn’t, it’s an intolerable gap in functionality for me. Trust me when I tell you, you’ll love it.

ChatZilla is a really great IRC client, conveniently located in a tab within Firefox. I don’t IRC as much as I used to, but when I do, this is all I use.

Greasemonkey is just art. For the profoundly picky, there is no greater tool. The level of customization of individual websites it allows is practically boundless, and for folks less hackerly, there are a huge number of pre-built scripts available on the web.

AdBlock Plus speaks for itself. Many people prefer to never see an ad, and this will help them achieve that goal. Personally, I prefer to get rid of only the obnoxious ads, because I do occasionally click ads and even buy product from clicked ads on sites I value and enjoy supporting. It allows me that freedom as well.

Web Developer Toolbar has been a long-time stalwart in my extension warchest as well. Troubleshooting webpage code has never been easier, when you combine this handy little tool with Notepad++, the world’s greatest text editor.

In addition to these fantastic Add-Ons, a couple were listed that I hadn’t messed with before. Two are now permanent members of my add-on stable:

FireFTP is a no-brainer. I had heard of this before, but never downloaded it. Who knows why. It’s perfect, and I guarantee i’ll be using it constantly.

Firebug is a logical progression of Firefox’s own error console. It allows you to step through JavaScript code, line by line, for troubleshooting purposes, just like every real development environment has since God only knows when. I anticipate it saving me a lot of time during complex projects.

Another really great extension I use all the time that didn’t make the cut for the Top Ten list is ColorZilla. It allows you to instantly retrieve the hex code for any color on any webpage, just by mousing over it. I can hear web designers out there madly rushing to download it now.

The other night my PC died. It had been trying to go for a long time, but I wouldn’t let it. This time it refused my strenuous attempts to bring it back. I bought it in February of 2001, and it has served me very well since. For a PC that was almost 5 years old, it was quite the performer. Very snappy and responsive, and took everything I threw at it with grace, including 200 MB PSD files.

I sort of wanted to upgrade and I sort of didn’t. My old machine worked fine… (until it died), and I didn’t see any good reason to drop hundreds of dollars on a new one. All I really use it for is web surfing, email and web design. The most torturous thing my PC’s go through is Photoshop by a long shot. I’m not much of a gamer, and on the occasions I want to play one, I usually head for the PS2 instead of the PC.

With that being said, Civilization 4 is out, and i *really* love that series of games. My old PC didn’t meet the minimum specs for the new version, so I haven’t bought it yet, but it was bugging me in the back of my mind. I broke down the other day and ordered all the parts for a new machine from Newegg. With next day shipping it came to around $809, which I think is a pretty fair deal for what I got. Athlon64 3000+, Asus A8N-E (S939), a gig of Corsair XMS, a WD 120GB SATA2.0 drive, a really nice Antec TruePower2 430 watt PSU, a DVD burner, and a beautiful CoolerMaster Cavalier 3 case. I skimped on the video card, since I’m not really into PC games, and got a Radeon X300SE 256MB. I actually considered buying something pre-built (for the first time ever), and called Dell. Not only was the customer service person I talked to Hispanic and very seriously lacking in the mastery of the english language department, but they quoted something like 600 bucks for a very low-end P4 system with zero bells and whistles and a proprietary case/psu. I’ll pass. I prefer AMD chips anyway.

The new PC is shockingly fast, and was the easiest build I’ve ever done. I put it all together and booted it, and everything worked perfectly. That’s a first for me. There’s always SOMETHING that’s borked at first, be it a dead component or a conflict or what have you. Not this time though, it was a very smooth and simple process. Here I am 4 hours later and XP is fully updated and patched, and I’ve got most of my basic stuff installed and configured. Still need to get the stuff off my old HD though. Maybe tomorrow. I’m quite happy with the purchase so far, and I hope it has the same staying power as my old one did.

A couple of posts back, I talked about upgrading to Movable Type 3.2. I semi-promised to update when I had a better idea of how the new spam gizmos worked.

I now have this better idea. For a week now, since the upgrade, I’ve thought that Murphy’s Law was taking hold of the site and sending spammers elsewhere to prevent me from properly testing the new installation. Turns out I was wrong! While tooling around on the Comment screen of my MT control panel just now, I noticed a new tab that said “Junk Comments”. I clicked it, and lo and behold, HUNDREDS of spam comments that Movable Type 3.2 just quietly disposed of, never wasting my time alerting me of their presence. Needless to say, I’m thrilled. Now, not only is my site effectively battling evil spam, but it’s doing it 100% without any input or interaction with me at all. Not so much as an email! This is wonderful. It took me months to get MT Blacklist’s exception list full enough to have that effect, and now MT 3.2 has done it right out of the box. What a fantastic improvement to what was already really great software. Thanks Six Apart!

I just uh…”stumbled across” a copy of the Flock developer preview, and having messed around with it a little bit I can say for sure: it’s pretty cool.

Click the screen shot above for a bigger view. I really like the blogging features, and I can’t wait until they all work properly so I can test them more thoroughly, but this is very promising! It definitely makes the whole process very easy and intuitive, and it works just fine with Movable Type 3.2 for me, even though the site said it wouldn’t.

Most of my bookmarks aren’t things that anyone else would find interesting, or they’re work-related and thus not eligible for sharing, so the favorites-sharing features don’t really interest me, and I haven’t tried them.

I can vouch for the rest though. They took Firefox and prettied it up while adding some advanced functionality that isn’t really available via extensions or plugins at the moment, and thus is extremely valuable to those who have a blog or desire some of the community-oriented features that are present here. I’ll put some more screen shots up later on for anyone who is interested.

While adding a few new entries to my spam blacklist yesterday, I noticed that a new version of Movable Type had been released. 3.2, to be specific. I had been running 3.11 without issue for almost a year, so I didn’t really see any reason to go through the hassle of upgrading until I came across the new features list. 3.2 has some pretty hefty built-in spam fighting measures, so I couldn’t resist.

Even though MT-Blacklist has served me beautifully, and I have waxed amorously about its effectiveness more than once on here, I love messing with new gizmos. 3.2 has new spam gizmos, so I installed it. In keeping with Murphy’s Law, my site is experiencing a respite from spam since the new software was installed, so unfortunately I can’t yet know how good these new gizmos are. I will update as warranted, or far less than warranted, as usual.

P.S. - a few entries back, I mentioned that I had switched from Firefox to Maxthon, and pledged to explain why at a later date. I was reminded yesterday that I failed to do that, so here is the latest on my browsing equipment: I switched back to Firefox again. Originally, I quit using Firefox because of a memory leak in 0.6 or whatever version was current back then, which caused it to eventually eat my entire gig of ram. Maxthon served me well during that period, and I still use it today when I need IE6 for something. However, Firefox had its memory leak fixed, so I switched back. I also quit using the Moog builds, finding that I preferred to be bleeding-edge than a hair quicker. Currently, I’m using the Firefox 1.5 beta 2 build, and I like it quite a bit. Maybe soon I’ll do a post about my extremely tailored configuration, but that time is not now.