Tag: Software

I discovered just how useful FFmpeg really is today. I had always thought it was just a library that other programs use, but I can use it for command line editing too!

Firefox is my browser of choice. The only other choice on FreeBSD is Chromium, and I don’t like its GUI and lack of customization ability, nor do I like how it handles ignoring website colors. Being legally blind, I prefer white text on a black background. It’s just easier to read that way. I’ve been doing that since I was a kid, using a CCTV in school, where I learned that the negative contrast is just easier on my eyes.

I had stumbled onto a website today Winamp Skin Museum. This site brought back lots and lots of memories.. Back in the late 90s I had upgraded my computer from a 486 that couldn’t quite play mp3s to on that had some sort of AMD processor in it. I want to think it was an AMD K6. The thing that relates to this post is it could process mp3s. The computer also had a larger hard drive.

I have decided that I want to look into alternatives to Kwrite as an editor for my website stuff. There’s nothing wrong with Kwrite at all. It just does more than I need it to do for these purposes and I thought I’d just try something new because that’s always fun. The only prerequisite that it has to have for me to use it is handle markdown well. That shouldn’t be too hard of a task to do since the markdown is basically just text.

Firefox 4 beta 9 was released and I had to try it. It’s not in FreeBSD ports yet so I tried it under wine.. I tried it and it seems to be much, much faster than 3.6.x The speed improvement is very nice and long over due.. but the GUI? Why in the world would they get rid of the status bar? I depend on that to see where a link may be leading me to.

I had read about Google chrome and just had to try it out. I would’ve tried it sooner but I kept forgetting to boot into windows. I always like to try different things. I first tried to use it under wine but that didn’t work out for me. I’ll try again another time. I was disappointed right from the beginning. No menus? No title bar? That really takes away from the usability for me and just isn’t how I prefer things to be.

I’ve been using Firefox 3 since the beta versions and have been really pleased with it. It seems to be much much faster than Firefox 2 was with sites loading pretty much instantly. It seems to be a little easier on memory and a lot easier on the CPU for me on FreeBSD. I really haven’t experienced Firefox slowing down to a crawl after opening a bunch of tabs like I did in previous versions.

Recently I have been seeing Adblock plus brought up pretty often. Adblock plus is an extension for Firefox that blocks web ads. I have the right to block ads and I do that but I think the site owner has the right to block me from using their site. I’d just go somewhere else. I find it interesting that they would want to limit their exposure just because someone is blocking ads.

Alt-Text for Links - Displays the URL of the link in a popup. I find this handy because I know ahead of time where the link is taking me. Download Status bar - This extension keeps track of downloads and shows the information in the status bar. Enhanced History Manager - This basically is an advanced history manager for Firefox. Forcastfox - Shows weather information in the status bar of your browser.