October 31, 2003
From Phoenix to Firebird
I upgraded my mom's computer from Phoenix 0.5 to Mozilla Firebird 0.7 today, using the great installer by Sébastien Delahaye. I doubt she'll notice any difference though.
By the way (this is for you Seb), the installer adds a program group to the start menu, with two shortcuts: Mozilla Firebird and Uninstall. This is not the "correct" way to do it on Windows XP. The correct way is to not include an Uninstall shortcut in the start menu and leave that for the Add or Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel. Since there is just one shortcut left in the program group, the shortcut should be moved out to the top level programs shortcut of the start menu.
Update: Alex Bishop pointed out the page where I got the information about Windows XP conformance but too lazy to lookup: Designed for Windows XP Application Specification.
October 30, 2003
Extensions by category
As some of you might have noticed already, the extensions page at Firebird Help now sorts the extensions by category. I would like to thank Pebbz for writing the PHP backend! Thanks also to priior (Pebbz's husband) for introducing me to her. :)
The PHP implementation is far from done yet, though. We need to make it so that it fetches the xml database from database.mozdev.org daily and we also need to make it work for Thunderbird Help, and hopefully for themes too.
Another cool thing for the future would be to allow sorting by date added, modified, name and category, but we're not there yet...
October 29, 2003
tenser.net
I just used my credit card on the web for the first time! I've bought the tenser.net domain at cheap-domainregistration.com. What I really wanted was djst.com, but that is already taken by some small telemarketing company in the UK. As an alternative, I wanted djst.net, but someone has parked that domain and will probably buy it soon. djst.org is actually available, but I don't really like the .org ending. I'm certainly not an organization! :)
Very well then, I though, and searched for tenser.com. That domain was also taken already... So basically I chose between davidtenser.com and tenser.net, and I decided to use tenser.net. The main reason was that I could have a cool email address: david at tenser dot net (not yet setup).
Currently, the domain just points to this weblog, but I plan on making a special site for it in the future.
MS kicks employee because of blog post
I just found out via Robert Accettura's weblog that Michael Hanscom, a Microsoft employee, has been fired because of a humorous and innocent post about Microsoft buying some Mac computers.
What on earth is wrong with Microsoft? If they find that ironic post offensive, why don't they just ask the employer to remove it? Why they would care in the first place in beyond me; the picture only shows a truck unloading a bunch of G5 computers and Mr. Hanscom only mentions where he took the picture.
It is my sincere hope that this will only hurt Microsoft in the end.
October 15, 2003
One-Year Anniversary
Once upon a time on a dreary October day in 2002, Phoenix Help was born, having little sections such as a baby FAQ, a small Tips & Tricks section, and a wee Keyboard Shortcut list. Phoenix Help grew amazing fast, however, and soon because popular all over the web community and linked to from many other sites. Today, the site is the biggest, baddest end-user resource for support, FAQs, themes, and extensions for the Mozilla Firebird browser.
Today we celebrate the very first anniversary with a new look and an option to switch between the two style sheets at the bottom of the page.
This past year has seen many changes, including being renamed several times, from Phoenix Help
to Phallus Help
, to Firebird™ Help
, to Mozilla Firebird Help
, and finally to simply Mozilla Firebird
. Most users still affectionately refer to the pages as Firebird Help
, however, keeping its history alive. Other major changes can be found in the Anniversary History Timeline section.
I would like to thank the Mozilla community for the ideas, tips, comments, suggestions, help, and support in the making of this website. It wouldn't have been possible without you. Thank you!
October 9, 2003
Happy Birthday
Today is my mom's birthday! Tomorrow is my girlfriend's mom's birthday. :)
October 4, 2003
Style style style
I've spent some serious amount of time lately on the *bird sites, tweaking the stylesheets and doing some heavy lifting. Both sites are now sharing lots of resources, such as image and stylesheets. This will in the end lead to easier maintainance and faster loading of the sites.
Coming up soon: 1 year anniversary for Phoenix Help!