Neil's Place

I think I'm beginning to understand the purpose of Phoenix now. Its goal is only to make a browser that is simpler, not to make one that is more usable.

Got a weird popup suddenly the other day wanting me to call somewhere. At least now I know where it came from: http://www.jmu.edu/computing/security/info/winmsg.shtml.

The following trick lets you add shortcut keys to resize textareas. By pressing Alt and the cursor keys, you can resize a textarea to fit the text you want to add. One might use this in Mozillazine forums or a WebMail system. First, add the following lines to userContent.css in your profile's chrome directory:

textarea {
  -moz-binding: url('resource:///res/builtin/myHTMLBindings.xml#textAreas');
}

Now, create a file res/builtin/myHTMLBindings.html in the Mozilla directory (or another file pointed to by the binding above). Add the following to it:

<xml version="1.0"?>
<bindings id="htmlBindings"
   xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/xbl"
   xmlns:xul="http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul">
<binding id="textAreas"
    extends="resource:///res/builtin/platformHTMLBindings.xml#textAreas">
  <handlers>
    <handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_LEFT" modifiers="alt">
      var siz=parseInt(window.getComputedStyle(this,null).
        getPropertyValue("width"));
      if (siz > 36) this.style.width=(siz-8)+"px";
      event.preventDefault();
    </handler>
    <handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_RIGHT" modifiers="alt">
      var siz=parseInt(window.getComputedStyle(this,null).
        getPropertyValue("width"));
      this.style.width=(siz+16)+"px";
      event.preventDefault();
    </handler>
    <handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_UP" modifiers="alt">
      var siz=parseInt(window.getComputedStyle(this,null).
        getPropertyValue("height"));
      if (siz > 36) this.style.height=(siz-8)+"px";
      event.preventDefault();
    </handler>
    <handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_DOWN" modifiers="alt">
      var siz=parseInt(window.getComputedStyle(this,null).
        getPropertyValue("height"));
      this.style.height=(siz+16)+"px";
      event.preventDefault();
    </handler>
  </handlers>
</binding>
</bindings>

You might want to change the keys used. A similar technique can be used for other text fields.

The toolbargrippy element has been removed from Mozilla.

Here is a quiz. Which of the following systems is operating more effectively?

1. A system with 128 MB of memory, running 3 applications using a total of 60 MB of memory.
2. A system with 64 MB of memory, running the same 3 applications using a total of 60 MB of memory.
3. A system with 128 MB of memory, running the same 3 applications using a total of 120 MB of memory.

There's been a lot of talk lately about various products named after mythical beasts (Phoenix, Thunderbird, Chimera). Right now, I have no compelling reason to use them though. Perhaps when the mail/news client is ready, I will. By then, I won't have any compelling reason not to use it either.

I wonder why the preferences in Phoenix are so strangely organized? Or why they used the Orbit theme icons instead of these?

Nightly Mozilla builds now include support for the CSS3 properties background-clip and background-origin, although they are prefixed by '-moz-'.

• -moz-background-clip = border | padding
  Set to whether the background is drawn under the border, or whether it ends at the padding.
• -moz-background-origin = border | padding | content
  Set to indicate where the upper left corner of the background is positioned. This lets one put a background image just behind the content or have it extend into the padding or border as well.

I just fixed some of the XBL examples in the tutorial. And also recently fixed the double-slashes in the resource URLs in the earlier sections.