richwklein.com

I’ve hit a dilemma on a project I’m working on. I want to create a panel similar to the new bookmark and identity panels. The panel has an iframe in it to display web pages. I want the panel to be movable, resizable and animated (similar to the alert slider). This isn’t very easy to do with the panel element. To get around the difficulties in trying to meet these requirements I decided to use a window that is a dependent window without any titlebar or chrome. This seemed like a good way to implement it and the animation looks really good. However, I’ve now hit a road block that I do not know how to get around. The iframe displays correctly on Mac and Linux, but a bug on Windows causes it not to be displayed.

So now I’m stuck with the question of how to get this implementation done. Do I try and figure out how to get the panel animated and resizable or do I try to work around the Windows bug that is causing the iframe to not be displayed?

These are the kind of issues that sometimes make working with XUL a real pain. Do you have any suggestion on how to get this working? Do you have similar pains that I may be able to help with?

Firefox - Discover all the ways a browser can make the Web better for you. Firefox is the safest and most enjoyable way to surf the Web.

Now that we have been working on the new version of propeller for several months, Tom has started to post some information about it. I especially like our little mascot “Propeller Professor”. You can vote for the story here.

David Cohn interviewed Ryan Budke last night. Both guys are members of the scout team at Propeller. The interview gives you some insight into who the people behind propeller are and what we’ve been up to. I think the video is well worth the watch.

During my day to day work activities I usually listen to a podcast or watch a movie. When I’m actually head down coding as hard as possible I tend to listen to music. I have an eclectic but very specific play list. Do you have a play list when you are working hard? Does it have a specific theme? Here is my play list:

Chris Finke’s newest post 7 ways to be a better developer is a look at 7 things you can do to be a successful Firefox extension developer. I can’t agree more with the points he is making. I might also add to list: “8. Grow a thick skin”. If you extension has a lot of users you will get some positive feedback, but you will probably get a lot more negative feedback.

Firefox - Discover all the ways a browser can make the Web better for you. Firefox is the safest and most enjoyable way to surf the Web.

I’m really trying to become conscious about my health and how to get fit and stay fit. I recently ran across a website for a Treadmill Desk that intrigued me. The thought is you walk at a slow pace as you work, less than 1 mile an hour. By going slow the walking doesn’t interfere with working, yet you are still burning calories. Here is a cheap $49 do it yourself version of the treadmill desk. I think I would like to try this out, but I was wondering if there was anyone that has tried it out? Can you actually type at speed while walking?

Jonathan Coulton’s “Code Monkey” is a niche song about software engineers. It describes the feeling you get from time to time as a developer. I have to admit that I use to get these feelings quite a bit, but since I’ve changed jobs I don’t feel this way nearly as often. Sometimes you still just have to say:

Code Monkey get up get coffee
Code Monkey go to job
have boring meeting with boring manager Rob
Rob say Code Monkey very diligent
but his output stink
his code not functional or elegant
what do Code Monkey think
Code Monkey think maybe manager oughta write goddamn login page himself
Code Monkey not say it out loud
Code Monkey not crazy just proud

Here is the full song

Flock has put up a rather complimentary blog post today about the Netscape Navigator Team.

With the decision to cease ongoing support of the Netscape browser, we are honored to have the support and endorsement of AOL and Netscape, who have introduced Flock to millions of loyal Netscape users as AOL sunsets ongoing support for the Netscape products in the field. Tom Drapeau from Netscape has been instrumental in helping increase awareness of the Flock browser, and by doing so has introduced a global audience of people to the unique experience that only the Flock browser delivers.

I really enjoyed my time working on Netscape Navigator. Hopefully, I’ll be able to spend a little bit of time working on Flock soon.

Flock - the browser for people who like to be connected. When using Flock, people can easily discover, access, create and share videos, photos, blogs, feeds and comments across social communities, media providers, and popular websites.

I usually use Eclipse as my development environment. Recently, I’ve been running out of memory when I use it. I’ve now switched to Komodo Edit because of that Eclipse memory issue. Komodo Edit is a real nice editor, but I would like to find some add-ons to create a more robust IDE experience. Here are the things I’m currently missing out on:

• SVN and CVS integration
• Terminal Window
• Toolbox Packages

If anyone out there can point me at some add-ons for these features, I would be forever indebted.

March 1st was our end of support date for the Netscape client products. This means there will be no more active product support for Navigator 9, or any previous Netscape Navigator browser. This includes Netscape v1-v4.x, Netscape 6, Netscape 7 Suite, Netscape Browser 8, and Netscape Navigator/Messenger 9. The Netscape Archive has been setup as a final resting place for these products.

This means I’m done working on Netscape Navigator and have started to work on Propeller. Hopefully, it will not take me very long to get up to speed and be a great asset to the propeller team.