The Rationalist Manifesto

Excellent article about technological superstition by Jeff Raskin.

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While I understand the need for adding the left-right arrows on the tab-strip when there are many tabs open, I reckon Firefox 2.0 switches to this solution too quickly which bugged me to bits.

Luckily, there’s a fix for that:

1. Go to the Firefox’s ‘behind-the-scenes’ configuration screen by typing ‘about:config’ in the URL bar.
2. Search for the property ‘browser.tabs.tabMinWidth’
3. Change its value from the default to 80 (you can experiment with this value and see what fits your comfort).
4. Restart Firefox
5. You should now have tab-strip that will fit in more tabs before reverting to the left-right arrow trick
6. If you want to revert to the default value, simply right-click on the property and click on the ‘reset’ option.

On my 1280×1024 screen the visible tab count increased from twelve tabs to fifteen, yet enough of the title of the page is visible. A lower ‘browser.tabs.tabMinWidth’ value means more tabs visible but less of the title for you to see.

If you want to read more about this property, this mozillaZine knowledge-base article will tell you all you need to know.

Technorati tags: mozilla, firefox, usability

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I have been using it since this morning and overall, Firefox 2.0 preview seems to be an excellent upgrade so far. It feels much faster and very responsive.

The session restore feature was hard to find because I was looking for the phrase ‘Session Restore’ in the preferences. However, in FF 2.0 you simply have to set the “When Firefox Starts” combo-box to “Show my windows and tabs from last time”.

Small suggestion: Upon first install pop-up the usual ‘You’re about to close all tabs’ dialog box when the user exits, with a check box that says: ‘Restore my tabs next time I launch Firefox’.

Also, I like the per-tab close buttons that are similar to having the Tab Mix Plus extension installed on top of Firefox 1.5.x, however I miss the ‘Close Current Tab’ button at the fixed position on the right hand side as it made it very easy to ‘muscle-memorize’ the location. Now I have to think (god forbid) to close the current tab, especially to make sure I don’t accidentally close another tab. Additionally, I miss the close-tab button on the tabs that are not in focus.

Technorati tags: mozilla, firefox, usability

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I’ve written the Google Lab’s spreadsheet team (through their feedback mechanism) with this suggestion but would like to share my idea here as well.

Basically, I think there’s only one feature missing that would make Google Spreadsheets the complete Excel killer.

What would make it truly an Excel killer is to allow one to reference data in other public spreadsheets just as one currently references data in another sheet in the same spread.
Right now you can enter a formulae containing a reference to another sheet so: =ABS(sheet2!C7)

What I suggest is something like:
=ABS(http://mydomain/public/spread1#sheet2!C7).

To make it even more interesting, I suggest that a ‘public spreadsheet’ is any URL which returns a XML spreadsheet. So you can essentially reference any appropriate web-service.

Suppose you want your spreadsheet results in up-to-date Euro, simply reference the current Euro conversion rate, for example:
=SUM(C2:C18) * http://xe.com/reference/convert?from=USD&to=EUR!A1

Note: This is a hypothetical URL of course.

This could also allow a manager to build a spreadsheet that utilizes his subordinates’ spreadsheets, recursively creating a hierarchical tree that represent an entire organization and updated dynamically. Naturally this would require some sort of security policy etc., maybe Google can sell its application suite to corporations as an appliance?… But only once they get the managers hooked on Google Spreadsheet for other things first… ;)

I believe this suggestion could really leverage the online-ness of the Google Spreadsheet application. I would appreciate any feedback!

Technorati tags: Google, Excel.

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Let me jump right into the water and say: Microsoft’s new Office 2007 is a very different product from its predecessors and as such represents a very weak spot in the usually hardened Microsoft armor. This version of Office may start a huge switch-over to OpenOffice and alternatives.

This is the case not because Office 2007 is especially buggy or resource-heavy but because it is an almost complete rewrite. The user-interface and user-experience are completely different from previous versions.

For computer savvy individuals this may be a boon, as it can be fun to learn a new product — however — for IT managers that will have to bear the budgetary burden of retraining entire corps of minimum and medium wage office grunts to use the new version, this is a definite bust.

This, along with the fact that it takes only one copy of Office 2007 and a Visual Basic macro to convert all the Word documents stored in the corporate database into an open (or more open, at least) XML-based format, voids any justification that previously existed to prevent switching an organization to OpenOffice or other alternatives.

To put it simply: “If we have to re-train the entire organization anyway, why not re-train to something that costs us less? Let’s switch to OpenOffice!”

The retraining costs pull the rug from under the last argument a Pro-Microsoft IT manager may use to justify his budget request. The largest part of Total-Cost-of-Ownership for office productivity suites is the training of personnel. If before, one could standardize on Microsoft Office because that is the suite that people came with prior experience for, this is no longer the case — it is a different product, as different from Office 2003 as OpenOffice is, and even more so!

Microsoft’s sales-force are obviously aware of this chink in their armor as I’ve had reports that they are offering free re-training for Israeli government IT departments in exchange for joining as Office 2007 beta-sites. While Microsoft is trying to create a critical mass for Office 2007 not only for this reason but also to bootstrap the usual must-upgrade-to-open-Word-documents cycle, the fact they are doing this during the beta period is indicative that they are aware of their weakness. Usually they wait for the official product release to do this, so to allow those who can’t open a later-version document the chance to buy the product immediately…

The bottom-line is that open-alternative advocates who want to make use of this temporary weakness of Microsoft’s must collaborate now to raise awareness of the alternatives and inspire appreciation of the hidden training costs of upgrading to Office 2007.

Microsoft does not let its guard down very often, it is time for the tides to turn.

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