Teknovis

I recently tried to avail of a Kellogg’s promotion. The promotion involved collecting 3 unique numbers from 3 different cereal boxes, entering these number online, and then printing a voucher for the free box of cereal.

It all sounded wonderfully simple, but it turned out to be a disaster! In fairness, it is not all Kellogg’s fault, because it chose two other companies to fulfil the promotion. Coinks was responsible for redeeming the collected numbers, and converting them into rewards. Couponstar was responsible for providing the printable vouchers. It is really this company that I am faulting!

In theory this should be a very simple process. Simply generate a PDF file that the user can download and print. However, Couponstar take a very different approach to this simple task. Its motivation is that it prevents users from printing the same coupon multiple times. It appears that this company has never heard of a photocopier!

Therefore, the complex process that I had to follow was:

1. I tried to avail of the offer from my house, but I was unsuccessful because Firefox and Ubuntu are not supported :(
2. I used another computer, and then discovered that virtual printers are not supported (I was trying to print to a PDF file).
3. I went back to my Ubuntu computer and started a virtual machine in VMware. Virtual machines are not supported either :(
4. I then tried to avail of the offer from a Windows computer in work. The application downloaded and installed. It then displayed a message saying that my vouchers would be printed shortly. The only problem was that it did not specify on which of the company printers (in separate parts of the building) my vouchers would be printed!
5. Ultimately, it did not print on any of them. Perhaps this is because the software could not communicate with the server, because it never asked me to specify my proxy settings!

At this stage I gave up!

I have written a letter of complaint to Kellogg’s :o Unfortunately, I had to send it using a form on its Contact Us web page. I wish that the email address was listed there so that I could use my favourite email client instead of having to use a small text area :(

I will update this blog if I get a response from Kellogg’s.

Tags: Firefox, Ubuntu, VMware

I have recently been trying to use the Home and End buttons regularly when I am viewing large documents within Windows. However, it has been a bit frustrating, because their behaviour seems to vary depending on the application that I am using them within :(

For example, they pan to the beginning or end of a document within Firefox.  Whereas in Notepad++ they move the cursor to the beginning or end of the current line.

:(

Tags: Firefox, Notepad++

The other issue (besides Removing Windows Media Player Icons) that I spent a lot of time trying to resolve over the weekend was setting Firefox as my default browser!

I have several Windows 2000 Workstation computers that are setup identically, and I use roaming profiles so that I only need to maintain a single profile. Firefox is configured as my default browser, and the option to Always check to see if Firefox is the default browser on startup is enabled (see Default browser).

Everything worked perfectly, except on one computer! This troublesome computer would always ask me if I wanted to make Firefox my default browser the first time that I ran it in a single login session! This made me think that the problem must be somewhere in the Registry under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. However, I could not understand why I was only prompted the first time I ran Firefox.

I eventually found a very explanatory article called How Does Your Browser Know that It’s Not The Default? that describes how Firefox associates itself with protocols and file types. I could see the values of the relevant keys in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT changing when I ran Firefox. I was surprised that these values could be changed using a normal user account!

The thing that I did not know until I read the article was that HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT is actually created dynamically when the user logs in by merging the computer’s settings in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes and the user’s settings in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes. This is described in more detail in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT Key.  So Firefox was not configured as the default browser in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes.

Ultimately, the solution was very easy :o I used the Add/Remove Programs setting in the Control Panel of the Administrator account as described in Setting default browser manually.

Tags: Firefox, Windows 2000

I noticed recently that any time I tried to create a PDF file from Firefox using my Adobe Acrobat PDF Writer the resulting PDF file was unreadable because the fonts were illegible :(

I had some time this evening to look into this problem, it it seems that it is a known issue with older versions of Adobe PDF Writer: Font glyphs incorrectly displayed with certain printer drivers.

Maybe I should look into an alternative PDF Printer, because I hate the way that Acrobat embeds itself so much into my operating system!

Tags: Adobe, Firefox

I just discovered two great new ways of using the mouse wheel in Firefox besides scrolling!

• Clicking the mouse wheel while the cursor is over a link opens the link in a new tab! That is great, because I normally right click on links, and then select Open Link in New Tab.
• Clicking the mouse wheel while the cursor is over a tab will close that tab! This is very useful for me, because I changed the location of the close tab button as described in Browser.tabs.closeButtons.

For more Firefox mouse tips see Mouse tips!

Tags: Firefox

I discovered some really great new ways to use new tabs and windows in Firefox this week!

I normally like to use a separate window for each web site or topic that I am viewing, and multiple tabs within each window. For example I might use one window for my web mail containing a tab for each web mail account, another window for my favourite news web site containing a tab for each story that I want to read, and another window for something that I am researching containing a tab for each relevant article.

However, sometimes I open tabs in the wrong window and I need to move them to another window. There are two ways of doing this depending on what is required:

• To copy an existing tab to a new window simply drag the tab to the New Window icon in the toolbar
• To copy an existing tab to an existing window drag the tab to the window’s Taskbar Button (without releasing the mouse), wait for the existing window to gain focus, and then drag the tab to the New Tab icon in the toolbar (or to the address bar to replace an existing tab)

I also came across a Firefox add-on called Tab To Window that allows users to move existing tabs to new windows. I think that the advantage of using the add-on is that the tab history is also transferred to the new window.

Tags: Firefox

I remember that when I first read that Firefox was going to introduce a spell check option I thought that it was a bad idea because it was just unnecessary bloat. Now I use the spell check feature all the time, and I think that it was one of the best enhancements ever!

I have installed several dictionaries from Dictionaries & Language Packs, and I normally use English (British) as my default language.

However, recently I have noticed that the spell check is not always catching all of my mistakes :( Sometimes, if I change language to another, and then revert back to English (British) it correctly identifies the misspelt words. However, this does not always work :(

I do not know why this is happening, but it has caused me to edit a number of my posts to correct the spellings :o It is really annoying!

Since I am writing about the spell check in Firefox I will also highlight a really useful tip! Firefox does not by default spell check text in text fields (single line text boxes). However, this can easily be changed as described in either Quick Tip: Spell Check Firefox Text Input Fields or How to Enable Spell Check in Text Fields in Firefox.

Tags: Firefox

The latest versions of Ubuntu and Kubuntu will be released tomorrow. These will be version 9.04, and they are known as Jaunty Jackalope.

I have never used Linux as my main desktop operating system before, but I have had limited experience of using it on servers. My main reason for wanting to try it is that I am getting tired of all the bugs, security weaknesses, and limited functionality of Windows. My reasons for choosing Ubuntu or Kubuntu are that they both come ready for use, and I know that they are configured securely! So I think that now is a great time to try them!

My initial plan is to install both operating systems on my computer using VMware. I will then start using them as my main operating systems until I can decide which I prefer. At that stage I might format my hard disk, and reinstall ;) The main applications that I will need are:

• Thunderbird
• Firefox
• Word Processor (OpenOffice)
• Spreadsheets (OpenOffice)
• Presentations (OpenOffice)
• PDF Viewer (No preference)
• Skype
• Java (JRE and JDK)
• Eclipse
• Text editor (No preference)
• ZIP compressor/decompresser (No preference)

My understanding is that the main difference between Ubuntu and Kubuntu is the window managers that they use (GNOME versus KDE). However, reading the documentation they both seem to come with different application sets. This is confusing me slightly. I am also not clear why they both need to reinvent the browser!

Hopefully, all will become clear over the following weeks ;) I will keep writing about my progress here!

Tags: Eclipse, Firefox, GNOME, Java, KDE, Kubuntu, OpenOffice, Skype, Thunderbird, Ubuntu, VMware

News about the latest security issue in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has made it into mainstream media, such as Security alert over Internet Explorer and Serious security flaw found in IE. More details about the security issue can be read in MS issues brown alert over unpatched IE 7 flaw and Microsoft issues emergency patch warning for IE.

I think it is great that users are being encouraged to switch to other browsers! Internet Explorer has been far too dominant for too long. I think that this caused browser innovation to be stifled.

It is times like this that make me feel happy to use Firefox :) Of course, I am not naive enough to believe that it never suffers from security issues!

Tags: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Microsoft

Google published the Zeitgeist 2008 earlier this week. This shows the most popular searches on Google during 2008.

The results are broken down into separate results for each country, which is probably more useful than the overall results. One of the interesting things that I noticed is that the term Google is in the top 10 in many countries! I do not know why people search for this using Google, but my guess is that these people are not searching directly on the Google webpage. For example, I have Firefox configured so that I can type my Google search terms directly into the address bar.

It is also very interesting to see that certain terms that are directly related to well known websites, such as YouTube, appear in all of the EU results. Yet nearly all of the EU results have terms that are specific to the country or language. I do not recognise a lot of these ones!

The most popular search terms in Ireland were:

1. Bebo
2. Youtube
3. Hotmail
4. Yahoo
5. Google
6. Games
7. You tube
8. News
9. Map
10. gmail

Unfortunately, none of these search terms relate to Irish websites :(

The fastest rising search terms in Ireland were:

1. Facebook
2. utube
3. google maps
4. Youtube
5. Nasza klasa
6. Wiki
7. RTE
8. Maps
9. Irish Times
10. Yahoo! mail

Perhaps the most interesting search term on this list is for the Polish social networking website Nasza-Klasa. (This is the most popular search term in Poland.)

There is also an interesting observation about the list of most popular politicians in Ireland in Politician Declan Ganley more popular than Bertie says Google.

More details about the popular search terms in Ireland can be read in “Sarah Palin” the most searched query on Google. Unfortunately, Ireland is not included in the Google Zeitgeist page, and I am unable to find the official source!

The results presented by Google have been filtered to remove terms related to adult searches. I recall hearing that pornography related searches are by far the most popular. However, it seems that Google did not get the filtering totally right this time for the UK results. The original list (see Palin beats Obama in Google’s ‘zeitgeist’ rankings or 2008 Year-End Zeitgeist Around the World until the mistake is noticed) contained the term cam4 under the Fastest Rising category. Let me say that cam4 is certainly not suitable for viewing in work :o For more about this see Ooops, Google Zeitgeist lists a porn site.

Tags: Austria, Belgium, cam4, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Firefox, France, Germany, Google, Ireland, Italy, Nasza-Klasa, Netherlands, Poland, Pornography, Spain, Sweden, UK, YouTube