Listology Your Way
Submitted by jim on Fri, 10/01/2004 - 05:09
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Yes, it is in fact my secret mission to turn all Listology readers into Firefox users. Surfers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your crappy Microsoft browser. Click through to read how Firefox allows you to make Listology look pretty much however you want (some disclaimers apply).
Hmm. You think you could show me any screenshots of the changes you made, Listology in all the nifty colors and different formatting? If I like it, then maaaaybe you can convince me to switch to Firefox, and cut Bill Gates's income about .0000000001%.
The changes aren't really that major. In one alternate stylesheet the dark yellow in the left margin boxes is replaced with a pale yellow, and in the other the indentation of discussions is *greatly* reduced, so you can see all the comments on deeply-nested discussions (like RosieCotton's famous list) without needing to use the horizontal scrollbar. But it's the little things in life.
But even without Listology frippery, there are so many reasons to switch.
Okay, I downloaded it and I'm still iffy. Each one has its positives and negatives, I think. First of all, my U Penn webmail is run by some Outlook-esque client that IE makes cool but Firefox screws up. Also, scrolling goes so slowly in Firefox! I prefer the fast scrolling of IE. These tabs are neat, but I really don't mind just having tabs at the bottom of the screen in IE. And IE recently installed a pop-up blocking feature too (not only that, but neither IE or Firefox allow you to do what I really wanna do with pop-up blocking, which is one of the things that I liked about AOL - you can't see the single pop-up that was blocked without allowing ALL pop-ups from the site).
But Firefox does seem slightly faster, and what might push Firefox over the edge is that really nifty Google search at the top right of the screen. That's pretty awesome.
If I'm complaining about something that is easily tweaked in Firefox options and I was just too dumb to figure out yet, lemme know.
P.S. Because I'm a dork, I decided to race scrolling in Firefox and IE. I held the down arrow key on the Listology Recent Activity page in each and timed how long it took to get from top to bottom. Firefox: 28 seconds. IE: 5 seconds.
I'm no Firefox expert, but most everything that you've listed against Firefox is really just something that needs to be tweaked to work exactly the way you want it to.
I can't say anything about that Outlook-esque client, though, because I don't know anything about it.
Firefox also has an extension called 'AdBlock' which can use a filter (downloaded from any number of locations) to filter out ads from millions of sites. That really speeds up your browsing, because it doesn't just cover them up, it actually doesn't load them in the first place.
I've heard of an extension that allows you to view a popup that has been blocked, but I'm not quite sure if this is what you're saying. It might be an old extension that hasn't been updated for Firefox 1.0 PR, too.
There's definitely a way to tweak the scrolling speed. It's probably under about:config, but I'm not sure. Anyone else know? If not, you/I/we can ask about it on the Mozillazine forums.
There are several Firefox extensions I would recommend: "IE View," so you have a quick link to open something in IE if it's one of those fairly rare pages that only works in IE. "OpenBook" - pretty essential upgrade to the 'add bookmark' dialogue. I have no idea why they havne't made this a default feature. "Single Window Mode" helps with tabbed browsing. "Googlebar" is like the Google Toolbar but 100x more powerful (and, you can remove and add different searches from visibility). It also has a 'directory up' button on it that I like. "Close Tab on Double Click" - a habit I picked up when using Avant Browser and I like to do it in Firefox as well. "Linkification" turns all plain-text URLs on a page to hyperlinks for those to lazy to copy and paste them into the address bar.
And there are tons more that will probably make you happier, but I wouldn't necessarily use.
Sigh. Jim, you move as fast as a little red Corvette , and I crawl trying to keep up. First, you convince me to switch to Opera, and before I even got all the mouse gestures down, you're off to some hot new thing.
You tramp.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
I know, I'm a floozie. And a sheepish one at that.
Opera is still a fine, fine browser. I switched to Firefox quite awhile ago now, though (this isn't the first you've seen me drop the name, right? (it was formerly known as Firebird, and before that Phoenix)). Basically, Firefox does just about everything Opera does (although I think you might need to install an extension to do the mouse gestures; I never got into those), and it's free with no ads. I think the interface is nicer, and I recall the installation/transition being painless.
Not that you should let me lead you astray yet again...
Oh, and as long as you aren't using IE, I'm a happy little tramp. It is almost certainly possible to do many of the things I describe for Firefox in Opera, I just don't know the specifics (I really don't know why the stylesheet switcher that I implemented a couple days ago didn't work for Opera, but it should have!).
Interesting. I probably use the mouse gestures more than any other feature unique to the alternative browsers. I sit down to a library or work computer using IE, and I catch myself clicking both buttons trying to go back and pressing a button while going up and down to reload. I get quite frustrated.
I'm a very hyper browser. In fact, I believe I will make that my superhero name.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
PS - Even before Opera, I used Netscape. IE is not a browser that makes me smile...
Cool. Here's some info on Opera User Stylesheets that should get the above working for you. And here are Firefox mouse gestures. I love the non-IE world!
(although I do keep IE installed for those snivelling sites that only work under it.)
There are several very powerful and configurable Mouse Guestures extensions for Firefox. The only major thing that Opera has over Firefox is that Opera does full page zooming. That's all I can think of, anyway. And, Opera's single-page mode (Firefox, via an extension) actually works.
Okay, this is somewhat technical, but I'm sure you can keep up. Listology's appearance is partially determined by a CSS stylesheet. Here it is. Even if you don't understand CSS, you can probably still grasp the rudiments of what this file is doing (for example, scroll down to the rule "left_box1" which defines how the "Search" and "Recent Updates" boxes look).
The instructions in the stylesheet are CSS "rules". Firefox allows you to override CSS rules, either for the entire web, or for specific sites (if those site's are coded correctly, and I think Listology is). The first thing you have to do is find Firefox's Profile Folder. Inside that folder is a folder called "chrome". Inside "chrome", create a file called "userContent.css" (if it doesn't exist already). Now do the following:
font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 10px;
width: 171px;
border: 1px solid #708090;
background: #ffcc33;
padding: 5px;
}
font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif ! important;
font-size: 10px ! important;
width: 171px ! important;
border: 1px dashed #708090 ! important;
background: #fff ! important;
padding: 5px ! important;
}All those "! important" modifiers tell Firefox to use your version of the style instead of mine when they conflict.
You can change many things: the indentation of the discussion, various colors on the site (including the highlighting color), etc. You could have changed many more things (including graphics) if we'd gone with more of a wholly CSS-driven design, but nooooo... :-)
Now all you have to do is learn CSS!
beautiful thanks.. i actually like the white/dashed look so I'll keep that for now :)
Well heck, if I knew you were actually going to use my sample code I'da been more careful with it! Try this instead:
#listology .left_box1 {
border-top: 0 ! important;
border-right: 1px dashed #708090 ! important;
border-bottom: 1px dashed #708090 ! important;
border-left: 1px dashed #708090 ! important;
background: #fff ! important;
}
#listology .left_box2 {
border: 1px solid #708090 !important;
}This doesn't include the redundant rules that you don't want to override, and it eliminates the top dashed border, which caused little jaggies. And it styles the "Highlights" box too.
Suddenly egg yoke yellow doesn't look that bad. ~;^) Bacon anyone?
Ha! "Egg yolk yellow" ... I've never quite looked at it that way, and might never look at it the same way again. With the green on the site I've almost made it a reverse Green Eggs and Ham motif.
With all the talk about yellow it just came to me at that moment. Perhaps with the lighter shade and all the options for real browsers we could refer to it as scrambled eggs. Perhaps a little runny for the right side of the page. Jeez! Just kidding! I promise this is my last edit. ~;^)
:-) I've enjoyed all the versions of the post above.