AwesomeBar and Me - Why I've left Firefox.

I upgraded to Firefox 3 back when it was in beta. Then, I uninstalled and went back to Firefox 2. I tried it again a few weeks later. Then, I uninstalled and went back to Firefox 2.

This was quite a while ago, but I will explain how I felt at the time:

Something was lacking in Firefox 3 that made me uncomfortable, and unable to be productive. Namely, the address bar, which had been replaced with something called the AwesomeBar. My main beef with the AwesomeBar actually isn't its ugly look, or the fact that it retrieves bookmark results, but rather, the fact that it requires visual interaction to be used effectively. The address bar was reliable. I knew what it would do when I typed. Its algorithm was something that could be fully comprehended in my head. I knew if I had cleared my history before starting, and had gone to calendar.google.com once, then visited ubuntu.com and apple.com and microsoft.com that I could simply press Alt+D "c" down enter to go back to calendar.google.com. Furthermore, it was the same knowledge I used to operate the old Start->Run dialog back in Windows, and the same knowledge I use to operate every autocomplete field in every website and every dialog box in both Windows and Linux.

With the AwesomeBar, my absolute and complete knowledge of the data being searched was taken away. Sure, I know which types of things it searches, but I don't know what data was present (in page Titles, for example) The extra steps are that I would have to press Alt+D, type, then look at the results and determine if there was an error, if so, I would have to arrow to the desired result before pressing enter. The developers of Firefox knew this, that's why they redesigned the widget visually to try to create enough visual distinction so that it could be scanned quickly. The problem is, I don't want to visually scan it at all. That isn't something I have ever been accustomed to doing and it slows me down and takes my focus away from the page I was browsing.

Since that time, I have continued to use "good old" Firefox 2. However, for whatever reason, my Firefox 2 installation began to become unstable. It would freeze up requiring restarts quite often, usually when I click on a javascript-based link. I finally got irritated, and decided that maybe it would be time to update or switch.

First, I tried Crossover Chromium. It is goofy because of its dependence on wine. I will give it another chance when it has been ported natively to Linux.

I searched through the Firefox add-ons/extensions to see what has been created, and found both "oldbar" and "Old Location Bar" - I had tried oldbar before, so I decided to go with "Old Location Bar," bit the bullet, upgraded to Firefox 3, and installed the extension. I didn't read carefully enough, and I presumed Old Location Bar would do what I wanted, as people were praising it for being better than oldbar. I was disappointed with Old Location Bar. It still didn't solve my problem at all.

Firefox 2 is freezing up. Firefox 3 is not efficient. I decided to go "old school" and switch to Opera.

I installed Opera 9.27 from the Hardy repository. Just a little ugly feeling in the menus, but the toolbars are not too bad. I can live with this. Alt+D doesn't work! Dang. So, I did this:

Tools -> Preferences -> Shortcuts -> Keyboard setup - Opera Standard -> Edit.

The one under "Browser Window" that says "Focus address field | Focus message list" I clicked, and changed to "d alt", clicked OK, and clicked OK again. Alt+D ... works!

Now I did some experiments with the address bar. It works!

I realize I'm not using the latest release of Opera. I may try upgrading and see if it still works. But, as long as it does what I need, maybe this older release is fine.

As I save this post, regrettably, I will change my default browser to Opera and uninstall Firefox 3. It isn't because I wanted to. It's because I was forced out. If I knew how to fork the Firefox code and reinstall the genuine old Address Bar, I would rather do that.

WAMP to LAMP

I'm starting a series to document my progress on converting a very specialized WAMP server over to a LAMP server.

WAMP = Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP
LAMP = Linux, etc.

I am going to name this box Pericles (Mostly for the sake of giving it a tag in the blog so that you can read all about its life by clicking Pericles here or on the sidebar.)

To begin with, I want to explain why I was using a WAMP server to begin with. Most people either go all Microsoft or all Open Source. This server was born to fulfill one pressing need: A friend of mine had a website already written in ASP that he needed a new hosting provider for, and neither of us had time to deal with anything as serious as a rewrite at that time. So, we found a neat plug-in for Apache on windows that allowed it to execute ASP code. This worked, and our small Web-hosting business was born.

Fast-forward two years.

We now host around twenty websites on this box, and the need for ASP is gone because the original site has been rewritten in PHP. Furthermore, the specs on that box were outdated when we started, and it is time for a faster CPU. We bought a new system at the Day After Thanksgiving sale and we are now ready to go Open Source.

We've installed Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) from the Server disc, and then added the ubuntu-desktop package manually to get a GUI desktop. We need the GUI desktop for a couple of reasons: 1) We're new at administering Linux and it helps us feel a little more confident. 2)
I've developed a few tools over the past two years that handle frequent back-end tasks as Windows applications. I don't have time to port them all at once, so I am going to have to do it piece by piece, thus I will run the unported tools by using Wine in the meantime.

Once I got Edgy booting smoothly and configured for our graphics card (it required a resolution tweak using dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg to get it looking correct on our LCD) this is our official starting point.

To follow our ongoing drama, click on the Pericles category/label in the sidebar.