Foxy versus Shiny.

I've been using Mozilla Firefox for about six years. It's a very good browser, but it occasionally annoys me by acting like a Giant Panda i.e. it becomes very sluggish. It's possible to speed-up Firefox by going to about:memory and clicking on the "Minimise memory usage" button, but occasionally, I have to shut down Firefox, wait (sometimes for quite a long time) for it to disappear from memory, then restart.
I therefore decided to have an affair with Google Chrome.

First impressions were good. Chrome installed quickly and it imported all of my Firefox bookmarks correctly, although it didn't import any website user-names & passwords (probably because they are protected).

Chrome has an extensive range of add-ons available. I was able to install Adblock Element Hiding Helper (which had all of the functionality of Adblock Plus, plus some extra features), Script No and Flag. With all of these installed, Chrome loaded pages very quickly.

Then cracks started to appear in the relationship.

Chrome has a grey bar at the top of the page which obscures things on the page. Double-clicking on it makes it disappear. Reloading the page makes it reappear. Using Adblock Element Hiding Helper, I could hide the grey bar (Alt+B, click on grey bar, Enter) on any particular site, but it occasionally reappears, requiring re-hiding.

Right-clicking on a link and selecting "Open link in new tab" opens a new tab but doesn't display it, requiring the user to click on the new tab. Firefox used to do this, but has worked correctly for a long time.

Watching videos on ITVPlayer, I noticed that the resolution appeared much lower than when played on Firefox. On Firefox, there's pixel interpolation which produces a much higher apparent resolution.

And the killer blow:-

When I created a new blog post, I couldn't set hyperlink text colour and the Html editor revealed a large number of spurious div & span tags.

That's it, Google Chrome. You're dumped!

EDIT: P.S. Firefox has been running faster.

Odds and sods.

Christmas is nearly here, so here's a quick post before I go off and do Christmassy things.

1) The weather: We Brits love to moan about the weather. As we don't get much snow here for most of the year, when we do there's chaos on the roads and railways. Here's what it was like last Monday morning, shortly before I set off to visit mum.



2) NoScript: As I want my ancient lap-top to browse as quickly as possible, stopping unnecessary scripts from running is a good idea, so I added the NoScript add-on. Every new site that I visit has to have scripts marked as either approved for that site, or untrusted for that site. Approved scripts can run. Untrusted ones can't. I like it and it's definitely speeded-up surfing.

3) Vacuum Places Improved: Something that slows down auto-completion of web addresses and Firefox start-up is fragmentation of the Places database, so I added the Vacuum Places Improved add-on. This defragments the Places database and can be run by either clicking on an icon or set to auto-run.

4) Flagfox: The Flagfox add-on displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website's server and provides a multitude of tools such as site safety checks, whois, translation, similar sites, validation, URL shortening, and more...

5) Adblock Plus: I've been using the AdBlock Plus add-on together with its companion Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus for quite a while and I'm still impressed with it.

The dirty, robbing bastards!

...said the characters Janice and Ray, on the Catherine Tate Show. Having whinged about Channel Five in the past, I will now whinge about the BBC.

I watched episode 1 of "The Day of the Triffids" on BBC iPlayer and very good it was, too. So far, so good. I then tried to watch episode 2. It was available in High Definition format only. I bought my lap-top in May 2003 and it isn't up to displaying High Definition programmes on Flash Player 10. I could listen to the programme for a while, but Firefox has a memory leak, which accelerates when trying to play High Definition programmes on Flash Player.

Once all of the memory has been used up, Firefox displays a dialog box, locks-up or just terminates. I disabled Virtual Memory on my lap-top as Hard Disk is ~500,000 times slower than RAM. I have 1GB of memory and that's it. My lap-top won't take more than 1GB of RAM.

So, Aunty Beeb. Why can't I watch programmes in either Low Definition or High Definition formats?

P.S. The BBC message-boards recently changed to the BBC iD system. I tried to migrate Nigeepoo (I've been using that username there since March 2003) to the BBC iD system to be informed "Your username appears to contain a profanity". You couldn't make this stuff up! They will be sorting it out at some point...

I'm temporarily posting there with the username Nigeep00.

P.P.S. I was so busy whingeing, that I completely forgot to wish all my readers a Happy New Year. So......

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The Firefox a.k.a. Red Panda.

My browser is named after this little fella (or girl, I can't tell!).



I left Red Pandas out of my previous Blog post as they are not Bears (Ursidae), but are in a family of their own (Ailuridae).

Like Giant Pandas, Red Pandas have a false thumb which helps them to grip bamboo shoots & leaves. They also spend most of their lives eating, pooing (as they also can't digest cellulose) and sleeping!



That's how I used to spend a lot of my life when I ate a high-carb diet. Since I've been eating more salmon, I've been more active than usual. It's not yet 8am and I'm on-line, typing this.

I do NOT believe they wanted to be doing that!

As Harry Enfield's "It's only meee!" character used to say. I'm talking about Demand Five, Channel 5 TV's on-line "watch television on demand" service.

Up until last Friday, I was watching Neighbours using Firefox 3. Yes, I know that's really sad! On Monday, I went to watch Neighbours and was greeted by a new Media Player window displaying:
"Your flash plug-in is out of date
Please download the latest version here"
No problemo, thought I. I updated my flash plug-in and went back to watch Neighbours, to be greeted by the new Media Player window displaying:
"Your flash plug-in is out of date
Please download the latest version here"
Uh-oh! I contacted the Demand Five Support Team informing them of my problem. I got the following reply:

"Greetings,
Thank you for contacting the Demand Five Support Team.
Please try to access with Internet Explorer..."

I stopped reading at that point as I don't use Internet Explorer. I e-mailed the Support Team informing them of that fact. I got the following reply:

"Greetings,
We apologize for the inconvenience, since our contents are related with DRM therefore our service is only compatible with Internet Explorer. All other browsers (e.g., Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc...) are not compatible at this time..."

They left out Google Chrome! So basically, Demand Five just alienated a large number of their users by making their site incompatible with every browser except Internet Explorer. Thanks a bunch! (That's an ironic thank you, for the benefit of foreign readers).
As I really wanted to watch Neighbours, I ran Internet Explorer, updated my flash plug-in and off I went. Monday's episode played O.K. but Tuesday's episode stopped after the 15 second Weight-Watcher's intro'. I e-mailed the Support Team informing them of that fact. I got the following reply:

"Greetings,
Please upgrade your DRM security at the following site:
http://go.microsoft.com/FWLink?LinkID=34506

The Demand Five Support Team
downloadsupport@five.tv
AM"

I clicked the link and pressed the Upgrade button. It didn't work. I e-mailed the Support Team informing them of that fact. I got the following reply:

"Greetings,
Thank you for contacting the Demand Five Support Team.
Please follow the instructions given below:

Please open Windows Media Player (WMP)
In the menu area at the top of the WMP window, click "Tools"
If "Tools" is not visible, Right-click on the upper bar area on WMP and a Menu-list will appear
In the list that appears, choose "Options"
In the window that opens, the "Player" tab will be the first tab displayed
Please ensure that both "Download codecs automatically" and "Connect to the Internet" are selected
Please select the "File Types" tab
Click "Select All", located below and to the right of the list
Click "Apply", located at the bottom of the "Options" window
Please select the "Network" tab
In the "Protocols for MMS URLs" section, un-check "RTSP/UDP" and "RTSP/TCP"
Now, re-check "RTSP/UDP" and "RTSP/TCP"
All three protocols should now be selected
Click "OK" at the bottom of the "Options" Window
Please close Windows Media Player."

It worked. I e-mailed the Support Team informing them of that fact and also asked them why Demand Five couldn't be as easy to use as BBC iPlayer. I didn't get a reply. I have posted the above information so that you too can watch Neighbours....everybody needs good Neighbours....

UPDATE: The Demand Five media player now works with Firefox 3 and Safari. This may mean that it now also works with Opera & Chrome.
According to the support page, it's still not compatible with Firefox 3, so don't tell Demand Five in case they mess it up again!