spugbrap’s blog

This has been going on for way too long. It definitely started after Google released the new interface for gmail, but it didn’t happen immediately. Now, I’m not blaming Firefox, and I’m not blaming Google. I’m 95% certain that it’s the result of conflicts between one or more of my extensions. I’m always changing up my extensive (hehe) lineup of extensions, and many of those extensions dramatically impact the way the browser works. I love web development extensions, debugging tools, power toys, etc.

Thankfully, I recently read an entry on Mishoo’s blog, which started out describing some [presumably completely unrelated] Firefox performance issues, and ended with a short, positive review of Safari. I decided to give it a try, for curiosity’s sake. I tried Safari when the Windows version was first released, and I remember not being impressed, to say the least. I don’t remember what I didn’t like, but I do remember uninstalling it immediately, so it must have been pretty bad. I don’t use Opera every day, but I do respect it enough to keep it installed and reasonably up-to-date.

Anyways, I tried the newest version of Safari, version 3.0.4, and was pretty impressed. The interface was attractive, simple, and fairly intuitive. Just what one might expect from Apple, I guess. I’m not a big Apple fan; I do not own an iPod or an iPhone, I don’t use iTunes, and have never owned a Mac. But even I know that Apple has a reputation for attractive, simple, and intuitive products.

Using Safari hardly felt different from using Firefox, to me. Almost all I do miss my Firefox extensions, though, and Safari’s Bookmarks menu leaves a lot to be desired. But it is fast, and I almost all the websites I’ve been to have looked and acted just fine. Best of all, it doesn’t crash when I close gmail!

So, where I had been using Firefox for 99% of my personal browsing and Internet Explorer for 1%, I now find myself splitting that 99% pretty equally between Safari and Firefox (and IE for 1%, since some sites just demand it).

One of these days I’ll probably try running Firefox in Safe Mode, and if closing gmail doesn’t crash it, I’ll start disabling one extension after another, until I find the culprit. For now, though, I’m content using Safari part of the time.

I’m a die-hard keyboard user, and always like to know when there’s a keyboard shortcut to accomplish something that might otherwise take a few strategic mouse clicks. The Windows key, while a bane to gamers’ existence, actually provides us with some useful functions.

I’ve known about several Windows key shortcuts for years, but there are a couple that I learned about more recently (sometime in 2007, I think), which I now use on a daily basis. The title of this post refers to these as ‘lesser-known’, but I base that purely on the fact that *I* did not know about them, not on any sort of user experience testing or published statistics.

Windows-D: Show Desktop

Hides all open windows, bringing the Windows desktop to the front. This duplicates the functionality of the ‘Show Desktop’ icon that exists in the Quick Launch toolbar by default, and the ‘Show the Desktop’ option in the context menu that appears when you right-click the taskbar. It does not actually minimize the other windows, and those windows can be re-focused via Alt-Tab or by clicking their taskbar entries.

Windows-L: Lock Computer

This duplicates the functionality of the ‘Lock Computer’ button in the Ctrl-Alt-Delete Windows Security dialog. On Windows XP systems that use Fast User Switching, it takes you back to the screen that lists user accounts.

I make it a habit of hitting Windows-L whenever I’m done using my PC at home, so that when my wife sits down to use it, she can just click her name and login (or resume her existing session). At work, it’s always a good idea to lock your computer, so I hit Windows-L whenever I get up to leave my desk.

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Now, here are a few more well-known (i.e. I’ve known about them for a long time) ones:Windows-M: Minimize AllThis minimizes all open windows. Programs that hide out in the system tray when you minimize them will be sent to the system tray. Everything else will be minimized to the taskbar. This has the same effect of clicking the ‘Minimize’ icon in the top-right corner of all of your open windows.Windows-F: Search for Files and Folders

This pops up the Windows file search feature. This duplicates the functionality of clicking the Start Menu, clicking the ‘Search’ menu option, and clicking the ‘For Files or Folders…’ sub-menu option.

Windows key (by itself): Open the Start Menu

This pops up the Start Menu, just like what happens when you press Ctrl-Esc or click the start menu. I use this all the time.

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Please note that I’ve still never used Windows Vista, so I am unfamiliar with any Windows-key shortcuts which may have been introduced with it. The shortcuts I’ve described, above, are valid in Windows XP Professional (and most of them were usable in previous versions of Windows as well). I did read about a change to the way the Start Menu works, in Vista, with the introduction of a smart search box.

If you know of any useful Windows-key shortcuts that I may have missed, for ANY version of Windows, please leave a reply and let me (and other readers) know!

I got tired of sometimes wondering whether I could use a particular JavaScript value effectively in a conditional statement…
For instance, if I’m in the middle of a block of JS code, and am not 100% sure what the value of a variable will be, is it safe to say:

if (foo)

or do I need to explicitly look at the value of foo, like:

if ((typeof foo != 'undefined') &&
(foo != null) &&
(foo != ''))

So, I took a little time one day, recently, and checked how various values are evaluated in JavaScript. I believe I gathered this info using IE6. Hopefully that fact is not important. Might be worth checking in Firefox one of these days, just to be sure.

false	false
0	false
0.0	false
null	false
”	false
undefined	false
NaN	false
true	true
Infinity	true
‘ ‘	true
1	true
-1	true
2	true
-2	true
0.1	true
‘0′	true
‘1′	true
‘-1′	true
‘null’	true
‘true’	true
‘false’	true
‘TRUE’	true
‘FALSE’	true

My household is in the process of switching over from DirecTV to Comcast cable for our TV*. Right now, I’m trying to deal with setting up all of our existing DirecTV DVR (Tivo) Season Passes on the Comcast DVR.

To do this, I spent about 1-2 hours clicking through all of our Season Passes and noting all of the details into a text file. Since I’ve got all this data at my fingertips, now, I thought I’d post it here, for anyone who cares to see what shows we watch and stuff.

Our favorites are listed below, ordered by decreasing priority:

1. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
2. CSI: Miami
3. CSI: NY
4. 24
5. House
6. Prison Break
7. Lost
8. Grey’s Anatomy
9. Manual: The Simpsons
10. Monk
11. Bones
12. Cold Case
13. Without a Trace
14. South Park
15. Project Runway
16. American Idol
17. Dancing With the Stars
18. Vanished
19. Family Guy
20. American Dad
21. Drawn Together
22. Mind of Mencia
23. Miami Ink
24. Manual: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
25. MythBusters
26. Brainiac
27. So You Think You Can Dance
28. Star Trek: The Next Generation
29. Star Trek: The Next Generation
30. Star Trek
31. Knitty Gritty

[Click here to see the complete details of our Season Passes]

* This switch is based solely on saving money… We’ve been pretty happy with our DirecTV service (especially the Tivo) for the past 1.5 years or so, and am pessimistic about Comcast in general, based on how they handled some problems I had with my cable modem service earlier this year. But we’re going to save about $50/month by doing this switch.

This is a short list of various people I’d like to make contact with for one reason or another. These include former co-workers, people I went to school with, etc. I haven’t talked to any of these people in at least 4 years, and some it’s been as long as ~23 years. This is just a wild stab in the dark, in case one of these people happens to Google their name some day, and stumbles across this blog post. Highly unlikely, but it would sure be cool if it happened.

If your name is on this list, please consider that I’ve always lived in Northern Virginia, so if you’ve never lived or worked in that area, it’s not you that I’m looking for. If you think it might be you that I’m looking for, please email me!

Stephen O’Brien
Geoffrey Plumbley
Keith Landsdowne
Ba-Huy Duong
Lance Deffenbaugh
Eric Schmitt
Greg Highsmith
Jeremy Turner