Category Archives: technology

Firefox is back in my life. Not like it ever really went away. It never left my Applications folder. I just stopped using it as my browser of choice. As I mentioned in a past post, I really liked using Firefox but there were too many Mac OS X specific things (Services support for instance) that Firefox lacked that I used on a regular enough basis to send me back to Safari.

Then, just the other day, Firefox 1.5 was released and I just had to give it a spin. Boy what a nice browser. It is unbelievably fast, especially when going backwards and forwards on visited pages. I have no idea what they did on the back end but it is by far the fastest browser I have ever used. Other new features such as drag and drop reordering of tabs has already been very useful. Then of course there are the nearly endless ways to customize it using third party themes and extensions (SessionSaver is a gift from the gods). It is this and so many more things that have made me realize how much I really missed Firefox. After all, I would easily qualify as a power user and this is a power users browser if there ever was one.

This leaves me with a tough choice because all of those things that I left it for in the first place are still missing. I use the services especially for spelling, text formatting and intra-application information routing that is key to my Journal postings you see here. But the speed and features and extensions and themes and…. Did I mention the speed? All of it is pulling me so strongly that I feel I owe it to myself to at least switch back for a little while and see if they outweigh the loss.

Well, this was the one feature that I prayed that Backpack would have one day and the gods at 37 Signals have finally answered. I already use Backpack quite a bit but this will improve my org-fu significantly…

You asked for it and we delivered (finally). You can now add multiple lists on a single page. When you add multiple lists to a page you are prompted to name the lists so you can keep them organized. If you only have one list you won’t be asked to name it. If you email list items to a page they will be added to the top list. And, as a bonus, you can even drag items between adjacent lists. If you have multiple lists on a page, clicking the “reorder” link on one list will also reveal the drag handles for the list above and below it as well.

Backpack: NEW FEATURE: Multiple lists on a page and more

Flock, the new Web 2.0 flavored browser, is slowly improving. They have released an updated developer preview that makes improvements to the built in blogging as well as many other areas. I really do like the ideas being put forth here and am excited to see it released in final form. Not sure if it will tear me away from Safari but I might give it a full time go for a while once it is officially released. Some may remember my switch to Firefox, which lasted for a while until there were things about Safari that were crucial to my blogging that I missed. Flock just might be the one to change that as I really like the extendibility and customization of Firefox. Only time will tell.