It’s just as well. Some other images I hadn’t tagged yet, I mass-renamed them from the command line, and that would have wiped out the tags if they had any.

The reason for going the electronic book reader route is to decrease the amount of Stuff I’m accumulating. I’ve even started looking into getting rid of part of my anime DVD collection (listed on my for sale page, and available to anyone in my area who can buy in person).

Going digital is something I’ve only started recently with music. I’ve bought a handful of music online, but until recently had been buying CDs. It started with some Japanese music, where a one dollar song was a lot cheaper than importing a $25 CD containing two songs and their two karaoke versions. With CDs cheaply available in the US, it’s harder to justify the cost for digital download versus what the CD offers. Digital means instant MP3s. CD means a few days way, but the ability to copy music as FLAC (my preferred format), and a contribution to the Stuff filling my bedroom (which I’m trying to cut back on). If the CD is cheaper, then buying digital means I’m essentially paying for getting music without the Stuff.

Back to books, I’ve wanted an e-reader since around 2003 or 2004 for this same reason. There are many older books (out of copyright) I’d like to read, but reading them on the computer simply isn’t comfortable for me. Computers are fine for short reading sessions, or skimming, but to really get into a story (or non-fiction reading material), the computer screen just doesn’t work out for me. The “e-ink” technology solves this problem, and as a bonus I can store a library of books in only the space taken by the e-reader.

Not all books I would like to read are out of copyright. Unfortunately, most of those that are copyrighted are not available electronically. I’m hoping that this turns around, with more new publications being available electronically. And like with music in its digital infancy, those books that are being published electronically happen to be DRM-encumbered (which I do not expect to ever go away, so here’s hoping I’m wrong). Before making a purchase, I had to make certain (like with the songs I bought from iTunes some years back) that I would be able to strip off that DRM, and read it on my reader (which does not support DRM).

Today I decided to buy my first e-book. I went with Barnes & Noble because I wanted to go with the Epub format, and I found tools for circumventing it. Signing up for an account requires creating a password requiring one to “Use 6-15 letters, numbers, or numeric symbols. CaSe SeNsItIvE. No spaces.” which means I can’t use my normal type of password (often over 30 characters long), which isn’t any fun, especially when my designed password could only be compressed from 34 characters to 16. Luckily it turned out that a period isn’t allowed, so that took it down to 15.

This particular book I planned on buying is listed at about $25.00 (or $20 bought online) for hardcover, $15.00 (or $10.00 bought online) for paperback, and $10.00 for e-book. I am one of those people who feels the e-book version should be cheaper than paperback, and the online price of the paperback makes it feel as if the e-book and paperback are the same price. I am not one of those people who feels every creation that can be copied at no cost should be free. I also feel that, based on reviews of this book on Amazon.com, that $10 is a justifiable price. I also expect that I will finish this book if I own an electronic copy, whereas paperback books I buy I sometimes finish and sometimes do not finish (due to various inconveniences of paperback books for me).

Other than the password issues, creating an account and buying the book was easily enough. The “thank you for purchasing” page has link, “Go to Your eBooks Library”, at the bottom of the page, which would take me to a place to download my purchase. This area included some free books (Dracula; Pride and Prejudice; Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary; Little Women), with my purchase down at the bottom of the list. At first I thought I was looking at a listing of books available to buy, wondering where my book was, but I figured it out.

Left-clicking on a “Download” link left Opera (my web browser of choice) thinking (with the mouse pointer showing the “waiting” icon), and after a minute of this, I resorted to middle-clicking the link instead, to open it in a new tab. The new tab prompted me with a save/open dialog. I don’t know why simply left-clicking wasn’t working out, but I was able to download the book (and the four freebies, just in case I need something to read and don’t have anything else new with me).

Ten dollars down, book downloaded, DRM removed, and onto the reader it goes, and the book is accessible. (The free books were not DRMed, which makes sense as they’re likely all out of copyright.) It feels weird not owning a physical copy of the book, but the digital copy isn’t any worse (I wouldn’t be lending or selling it), so I’m certain I’ll adjust easily.

Amarok 2 seems to have been a more dividing release than KDE 4 was after the stability and expanse of KDE 3. While the KDE Software Compilation 4 has grown into a fairly stable system (with Plasma a strong part of the workspace, and tagging/search improving quickly), Amarok has staggered around a bit.

With a recent release of Amarok, perhaps Amarok 2.2, I noticed two things missing. First was that I could no longer modify the design of the playlist. The icon for it was no longer below the play list. Second, I could no longer set whether to play tracks randomly, or otherwise.

After playing around for a long time, I finally found that a weird icon at the bottom of the playlist, with the tooltip “Track Progression”, had nothing to do with the progression of a single track, but actually was the missing method of setting the playlist to play random tracks or albums, and to repeat a track, album, or playlist. Apparently a good amount of discussion and consulting with usability experts determined that modifying how the playlist progresses from one song to the next should be in the play list area. This makes sense. But why remove it from the menu? I haven’t yet figured out how to access this icon using they keyboard, nor do I see anything for it in the shortcuts setting.

Looking over the Amarok Userbase article (which is overly fanboyish at the time of this writing), I found where the icon for editing the playlist’s appearance went. It’s a menu now. I can only determine that a usability expert pointed out that because this relates to the playlist, it should be removed from the playlist, and placed under a menu item. I’m not complaining, though. I have easy keyboard access to it now.

I’m still looking for options such as “Overwrite a saved playlist file with the current playlist,” and perhaps, “Remember that I loaded this set of tracks from a saved playlist, so when I add and remove tracks, and save the playlist, you can either overwrite the one I loaded it from, or ask me whether I want to save or save as.” Might just require a feature request if they’re not there already.

I’m going to keep an eye on Clementine, and hopefully Clementine and Amarok can even share some common libraries, but maybe Amarok 2 isn’t so bad anymore. Almost. Now if only I knew why setting it to “random tracks” stops playing after every track on the playlist has played once…

I’ve in the past put a lot of time and effort into tagging photos and images only to have my Digikam database die on an upgrade. As long as the data doesn’t stay with the files, I don’t know if I’ll ever trust tagging, even though I really want to use it.

I keep images in ~/Images/, and my desktop wallpapers in ~/Images/Desktop/. I may have an image such as ~/Images/Sailormoon/Ami.jpg and a wallpaper such as ~/Images/Desktop/Sailormoon/Sailormercury.jpg. I would love to see the say where I can remove ~/Images/Desktop/, relocating the images inside to their subfolders in ~/Images/, then use tagging to tag desktop images for easy locating. (Actually, if I could set images with specific heights and width to be auto-tagged with “wallpaper”, that would be most excellent; I wonder if that Dropbox plugin I’ve heard about would have this implemented if submitted as a feature request…)

I decided I’d try tagging some files in Dolphin to play around with it. I went into ~/Images/Petite Princess Yucie/ and tagged everything with “Petite Princess Yucie”. Then I did a Dolphin search for “yucie” and it returned…a bunch of random files. Likewise with “petite princess yucie” (without and with quotes). I followed this with a search for “petiteprincessyucie”, and after quite a lengthy wait … after twenty minutes of waiting for results, I gave up on it. It turns out, the key to searching by tag is to search for “hasTag:’Petite Princess Yucie’”.

Something I would love to see is to give my tags a key/value association, similar to EXIF data. Sure, I can tag an image as “Strawberry Marshmallow” and “BARASUI” and “Matsuri”, but I would like to be able to tag it as “Series:Strawberry Marshmallow” and “Artist:BARASUI” and “Character:Matsuri”. This should allow finding the file when searching for the value, but the key could be used to filter the search, much like filtering “artist:name” in Amarok. (Edit: Apparently this is in the works, or at least planned.)

I’ve actually decided to go with tagging such as “Character:Matsuri”, and I notice that it’s adding blank tags into the tag list that opens when adding/changing tags. That is worrisome, making me think I’m on the path to having so many tag problems that I’ll have to delete the entire database file which stores this information later down the line…

Final thought for now: Don’t try to tag 1,000+ images at once. Dolphin’s been frozen for a while just from my clicking on the text to bring up the “add tag” window.

Update: I killed the Dolphin process. I re-ran Dolphin, went to tag other images, and found that nothing is tagged. Either the hour of tagging I just did was already in vain, or something crashed so that I can’t access those tags. Maybe in SC 4.5…

Giving a minimal, very limited re-try, tagging with “Artist:Barasui” left me with only a blank tag in the tag list. Re-tagging with it left me with the blank tag and the “Artist:Barasui” tag in the tag list. Adding “Series:Strawberry Marshmallow” left me with “Artist:Barasui” and a blank tag in the tag list. Adding “Artist:Barasui” again leaves me with a blank tag, “Artist:Barasui”, and Artist:Barasui in the tag list. I think Nepomuk doesn’t like a colon in a tag.

Further update: Closing Dolphin and re-opening Dolphin has wiped out my tags again.

Update 20100302: I updated KDE from the Kubuntu repositories, and everything is looking good now. I had filed a bug report one using colons in tags, and Sebastian Trüg logged in a bug fix. Others may have fixed unrelated fixes, as well.

I’m going to remain cautious, as I don’t know what other bugs may wipe out all my tags. I’ll keep Digikam using its own tagging system for quite some time yet to come. But things have taken a delightful positive turn, so I’m looking forward to tagging files! (In moderation, to begin with.)

The first thing I found with the Media Center is that DVD playback is slow (video is slow and skips, although audio is fine). The second thing I found is that I couldn’t get subtitles to show. The third was that I couldn’t figure out how to enable full screen.

My next attempt to play the DVD seemed to open it in lone DVD player, without the rest of the media player. This was able to play smoothly and with subtitles, and even full screen. However, playing full screen causes the monitor display to “blink” every four seconds, leaving the screen black for a split second. If the right-click menu is visible, this “blink” closes it.

Trying non-full screen, there’s no blinking of the display, but maximizing the window gives the blinking at three-second intervals.

At least the quality of the video looks better than in Linux, but maybe that’s because I watch DVDs in Linux full screen, and this I’m viewing at not-full screen?

The extra controls seen in the screenshot above disappear after a few seconds of not moving the mouse over the window.

I noticed Office includes “Microsoft OneNote” which I’d never heard of. Reading up on it, it sounds like it could be some good software. I decided to try out the 60-day trial version. It’s interesting, the web site for the trial version is basically a big advertisement to buy it, with a little “No thanks, proceed to trial” text at the bottom. The first time I clicked this text, it still took me to the shopping cart, even. On my second try, after the first five minutes or so before I even found that link to begin with, after having to sign in to live.com, after having to create another account to be able to download the trial, I was well on my way to downloading the 200MB installer for said trial. Definitely a lot more time and effort than I’m used to when it comes to getting a software binary package.

Installation was interesting. One click on the installer would run the installer, and nothing would happen. When I executed the file as administrator, the installer started up. Then it closed. And…nothing. Actually, the “give me the 25 character product key” windows has opened underneath all my other open windows… With that pasted in, next is the license agreement. This tells me there are three sets of license terms, and only one applies to me. They really could use a table of contents with links to each set of license terms, which are for if the software is bought from a retailed, or pre-installed on a computer (OEM), or bought as a download (media-less license kit).

During the installation, I received a reminder that I had four days left to activate Windows 7 if I wanted to continue using all its features. This is because the key failed during Windows 7 installation. I input the key for this, and tried to verify it (with OneNote’s installation finishing in the background). This time I received a useful error message: The key is only for upgrades, not for clean installs. And I’ve already completely wiped out the OEM Vista install to install Windows 7. I guess I’ll be calling tech support sometime, but not at 6:30PM on Thanksgiving day. Onward to OneNote! (May as well, as the Windows 7 activation window suddenly closed.)

Running OneNote brought up a menu where I could either activate the software to unlock its full features, or I could convert to the full version. Um, okay. I went ahead and activated, which meant the software had sixty-five days until it would expire.

Next comes a pop-up with Microsoft Office privacy options. Alrighty. Good to get that kind of thing taken care of now, in case I decide to buy Office 2007.

All right, so I’m looking at OneNote.

It says I can type anywhere, and gives an arrow pointing somewhere for me to type my name, which I’ll then be able to move around. Clicking there and typing…doesn’t actually type anything out. Maybe they don’t allow editing the demo page in the trial version? That seems…not right.

OneNote puts note-taking into a real-world context of notebooks which are separated into sections (like having dividers in a real notebook with colored tabs at the top or the side), and pages.

Like with many note-taking programs, OneNote also saves all data input as it’s added. Data is saved in files within folders, making them easy to navigate in a file manager, such as Explorer. Unfortunately, a binary format is used (rather than, say, XML). We’ve reached a time in computing power where we don’t need to rely on packed-in binary to store file data.

One appeal of software such as OneNote (as well as the KDE3-based software, BasKet) is that it allows inputting notes of different kinds on one “page”. You can put pictures, bulleted item lists, spreadsheets, writing using a tablet, pieces of web pages (including a link to the page where it was copied from), and more. Region screenshots can easily be created and added through the Win+S keyboard shortcut.

Another appeal is the ability to search through all data. I can see this as being a must-have feature, especially when it can even find text in scanned images/photographs, etc.

At this point, I was ready to create a new “notebook” in OneNote and add some sections and pages to see how smooth the interface was for putting down information. And I would have done just that, too, except the trial version it turns out is definitely “read-only”. This means I can see what content in OneNote looks like, but I cannot try out using the software in the trial…

I was planning on adding some screenshots of OneNote in use and going on about what it was like to use, but apparently I won’t be able to from the trial version.

Since Amazon had the $50 upgrade deal, I decided, “Why not?” I like to have Windows around “just in case”, but Vista is so sluggish, and supposedly Windows 7 runs better on low-end hardware than Vista does (due to the netbook rush). Of course, Windows 7 also recommends 1GB of RAM, and I have only half of that. Linux runs just fine with half a gig, but maybe an upgrade to one gig won’t be too bad in the future. We’ll see…

Update: This is the problem I’m having on activating Windows 7. Rather than calling Microsoft, I used the registry/command line hack to get it “activated”.

The Installation Process

So, what’s the installation like? First, I needed to be connected to the Internet to “get important updates for installation”. I was running Vista at the time and was connected to the Internet, but the installer couldn’t see that I was connected to the Internet.

When given the choice between an upgrade or a new install, I chose new install. I figured, that’s the best way to go. A fresh new start. A clean install. And I had just finished copying all my files to my wonderful SeaGate FreeAgent Go 500GB external hard drive. Upgrade or clean install, Microsoft recommends backing up either way, and that’s a good idea regardless of the operating system.

The Windows 7 packaging says 16GB is the minimum hard drive space, and the installer showed my “C: drive” partition as at 15.6GB. (The super-slow installer—or at least the installer running super-slow on the super-slow Windows Vista Home Basic that came pre-installed on Vista, but has had all the junk pre-loaded software long since removed—I might add.) The installer wouldn’t let me install here, which meant it was time for an Ubuntu Linux Live DVD to resize partitions.

Following a four minute shutdown (standard for Windows Vista Home Basic on my laptop, whereas Kubuntu Linux is closer to half a minute), I decided to just wipe out my Windows Vista partitions (fresh, clean start completely) and combine them into one, and then I went back to trying to install Windows 7. Up until this point, I was at fault for not having the partition at the proper size, having resized it smaller in the past so I could install Linux on the laptop.

The next time around, I figured booting from the Windows 7 installation DVD might be the way to go. If Microsoft were smart, it would be running Windows XP underneath the installer, much like my laptop has a Windows XP install to run its Windows Vista recovery mode.

The installation process started with a few clicks, then a promise of needing nothing more for a while and a few pending reboots. At this point, installation looked simple enough: wait through “Copying Windows file”, “Expanding Windows files”, “Installing features”, “Installing updates”, and then “Completing installation”.

The first reboot left the laptop with a blank screen and the DVD drive trying to read the DVD. I think. I’m certain it wasn’t repeatedly reading data. After about five minutes of this (I was reading on my PC while the laptop struggled off to the side), I ejected the DVD, and a “Starting Windows” screen came right up. This brought Windows back to the “Completing installation” step (and Windows finally understood the correct resolution of my laptop’s monitor, but it’s understandable that it wouldn’t have proper drivers loaded from the DVD for the prior stage of installation).

The second reboot came next. This brought it to asking for the product key. I gave the product key marked “Product Key” from inside the Windows 7 Upgrade box, and after a minute checking it online, this was rejected, invalid key. Next step? See if I can read the key on the worn-down sticker underneath the laptop for Windows Vista. Okay, typed that into a text file on my PC whlie the laptop’s upside-down. Turn the laptop over, key in the Vista product code. Instant rejection, invalid key… Since this was an instant invalidation, whereas the other product code took some time to verify online, I checked underneath the laptop again. Aha, a couple of worn-out Bs on the laptop’s sticker are actually 8s. Laptops really need to have better quality stickers for this kind of information…

After keying in product codes four times total by now, the corrected Vista code is registers as…invalid. But it took a lot longer to try validating this time, meaning there weren’t any typos in the product code this time.

All right, time to try the Windows 7 one again, just in case. Invalid. Okay, a magnifying glass to the Vista one underneath the laptop, and check every character carefully, while wondering if Windows Vista Home Basic doesn’t qualify for a Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade. No, no problems there. I’ll try the Vista one just one more time. One-minute wait for online validation. Response. Invalid.

At this point, I’m thinking, “Linux distributions are a lot easier to install than Windows,” and it’s all because of the product key.

I disabled the wireless, figuring Windows will think it can’t get an Internet connection, and will finish the installation while expecting to remind me to activate within 30 days. I click on the “Next” button so it can try to register and find I have no Internet connection. It takes a minute of waiting, then does nothing. There is nothing saying I may be offline. No results of the validation failure. Just…nothing.

I clear out the activation key then click on “Next”, and I am able to continue. Finally! No activation yet, but finally!

Inside Windows 7

I may write more about Windows 7 itself later, or I may not, so I’m writing some initial impressions here.

I like the smooth transition from one desktop wallpaper to another when selecting a desktop wallpaper. It’s also nice to see that Windows finally has a desktop slideshow option, which includes a setting to not switch background images while on battery power. That something I have to disable manually in KDE on Linux if I have it enabled and want to unplug the laptop.

As I looked through the “Personalization” items, the first thing I realized is that Windows isn’t taking forever and ever to acknowledge each mouse button click. This isn’t the super-slow Windows Vista Home Basic with everything disabled that I’m used to. It’s Windows 7 Home Premium, and it’s snappy, with everything Windows Vista Home Basic excludes (namely Aero’s effects). Well, it’s mostly snappy. Some things still have a brief delay, but nothing nearly as bad as Vista, and things aren’t as quick as in KDE on Linux.

While going to download and install Microsoft’s “Security Essentials” software, the screen went black, then came back with everything stretched wide and at about 1000% normal size, then it went black and then restored. As I typed this (safely overe here on my PC), the screen did it against twice more. It left me with an invisible mouse, and no desktop wallpaper. Could it be those eight updates that installed in the background causing problems? Time to log out and then back in again… At least I have a cute sleeping kitten as my user picture to look at on the login screen!

Logged back in, I had my wallpaper back, but still no mouse icon. Changing the mouse theme doesn’t bring it back. Let’s try a reboot. Ah, yes, there we go. Mouse icon is back.

Now back to installing some security. This process went well, although the “validate” step had me worried, since I hadn’t been able to “activate” Windows 7. However, it passed as valid, and I was able to commence the “Security Essentials” installation.

Software

There’s a proper screenshot capture tool. Awesome. No more pasting into Paint to save a screenshot to a file. This pretty much removes the need to check and see if KSnapShot is available on Windows.

The sticky notes feature is probably nice, too. I use sticky notes on my PC and laptop under Linux.

Random Thoughts

I didn’t see an “undo close tab” in Internet Explorer 8, but I didn’t look much for it.

My touchpad can’t scroll, either by the touch pad or by the four-way scroll button. It must require a specific driver to be installed.

The titlebar with a blurred see-though style looks better than I thought it would. It’s probably the same as in Vista, but considering that my laptop “can’t handle” this type of effect and thus it couldn’t be enabled in Vista, I have no prior experience with it.

Logging out and shutting takes less than half a minute.

Overall

Overall meaning after maybe five minutes of playing in Windows 7, that is.

Windows 7 looks like it has a chance to be Microsoft’s best offering to date, something able to outdo even Windows XP. The activation part can be a pain, and I bet I haven’t see the last of that… Hopefully I can get ahold of someone with Windows support if need be…

Rebooting gets me right back to Windows loading. In other words, Windows killed my boot menu where I could choose to boot into Linux. I’d better get this fixed if I want to continue doing my daily activities on my laptop… At least this was an easy fix.

Most Windows users will probably want to wait until Windows 7 is widely adopted, bugs have been found, and then Service Pack 1 has been released. This should be…six months, maybe? But if there are no huge problems for “early adopter” users after three months, it might mean it’s safe for the more cautious to give it a try. I figure since I never use Windows, there’s no hard in trying it out right away.

A Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade will set a person back $120 (in the US). A non-upgrade install is $200. Personally, I find these prices to be very reasonable considering everything you get with a Windows 7 Home Premium install. It’s when you start looking at everything you don’t plan on using that you may find you’re paid more than you’d like.

The Verdict

If you’re considering buying Windows 7, here’s what I would tell you:

If you use Windows 98, Windows ME, or Windows 2000, and your computer can run Windows 7, then go for it. Keep in mind that you’ll have to buy the full version of Windows 7 for $200 for Home Premium, since you cannot upgrade from anything before Windows XP. If your computer cannot run Windows 7, then wait until capable computers are available with Windows 7 pre-installed for $200 for the whole computer tower and everything inside. Maybe the Microsoft stores have something like this, so you can avoid all the junk normally pre-installed by the likes of Dell, etc. Once you have your new computer, you’ll thank me for suggesting it, especially if you were considering spending $200 on Windows 7 alone.

If you use Windows XP, I’d wait a while. The upgrade is $120, but decide if you might want to put $200 toward buying a new PC if it’ll mean getting hardware better than what you currently use, along with Windows 7 pre-installed. As with 98/ME/200 users, this route can lead to better hardware. If you’re not in need of newer hardware, you’ll want to ask yourself one question: Does Windows 7 provide anything missing from Windows XP that I would want?

If you use Vista, and you can spare the cash, at this point, I want to say, “Go for it.” I haven’t used Windows 7 long enough to know what problems there may be, but I’m sure they’re a quick Google search away.

I’m already using GRAMPS for storing data about characters for some stories, and it was a lot of trouble getting GRAMPS to look to a folder of my choosing to store its data. And it can only have one data location. I hoped to find a better solution.

First up? OpenOffice.org’s “Base”, its database software. Stores data in a file. Or, at least, it stores a file. The data doesn’t seem to be stored in the file. That’s a failure for me, as I need to be able to easily back-up this data and share it between my laptop and a PC.

Okay, next up is Kexi. Uses SQLite for saving a file. Good, good. Create a table, and populate it. Looking nice. Let’s add a column to the table. I can add more as I need them. Except…adding a column or removing one deletes everything in the table…

Maybe it’s because I’m using SQLite? I tried to avoid the need to run a database server (this is on a laptop which often is running off of its battery), but I’ll go with MySQL. Re-create the table, re-populate the data, add a column, and…it requires deleting everything in the table.

Let’s just add a column via PHPMyAdmin, which is not a decent interface for modifying a lot of data, but should work for adding a column. Column added. And Kexi won’t see that column at all, no matter what…

All right, back to OO.o Base. Set up a MySQL connection, and…I need to connect either using ODBC or JDBC, and I can contact my system administrator if I’m confused. ODBC looks like it wants me to select a file, but I get an error about an .so file not being installed. JDBC wants the database name and server URL. All right, I know the name, and “localhost” should suffice for the server. Maybe the port number won’t need to be touched. And…the JDBC driver cannot be loaded.

By this time, I’m an hour into just trying to have a way to easily sort data so I can start fiction writing with my characters well organized.

Reading into it more, JDBC has limitations which would require PHPMyAdmin to work around, but ODBC is more work to get set up. ODBC is is, then. I’ve manage to configure ODBC by adding a new System DNS, only to get an error about not being able to construct a property list.

At this point, thoughts turn to wondering how difficult is would be to install the SQLite driver for Base. Thankfully there’s a .deb file for the software that bridges SQLite with ODBC (I use Kubuntu on my laptop). This time, configuring ODBC isn’t an issue, as SQLite drivers already populate the Server DNS information. I simply had to set up a Server DNS using the SQLite ODBC driver, and set the database file to save to.

Using Base, randomly fonts are a little scrunched, and sometimes the cursor icon doesn’t display. I did not have these issues when I tested it earlier… I have to save a file separate from the SQLite database file, which is understandable as Base wants to store extra information somewhere. And…I can’t edit a database table in Base once I’ve added data. Make this is an SQLite limitation?

I can use PHPMyAdmin to painstakingly input data, but that doesn’t help me write up queries for easy access of data. Maybe it’s time to read up more on Qt’s SQLite support…

And it’s only taken me two hours to find no suitable database tool for me to use.

Below is a plugin I wrote that adds a “Mark All Forums Read” link to the header, after the “View New Posts” and “View Today’s Posts” links.

Save this file as “krfr_markallforumsread.php” and place it into the ./inc/plugins/ folder and activate it from the admin panel.

<?php
/**
 * MyBB 1.4
 * Christopher Fritz
 *
 * Website: http://www.kurifuri.com/
 * License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
 * License Details: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
 * Filename: krfr_markallforumsread.php
 */

if(!defined("IN_MYBB"))
{
  die("<p>Viewing this plug-in from the web is not allowed.</p>.");
}

function krfr_markallforumsread_info()
{
  return array(
    "name"          => "Mark All Forums Read",
    "description"   => "Adds a link to \"mark all forums read\" into the header.",
    "website"       => "http://kurifuri.com/2009/08/11/mark-all-forums-read-mybb-plugin",
    "author"        => "Christopher Fritz",
    "authorsite"    => "http://kurifuri.com/",
    "version"       => "1.0",
    "guid"          => "",
    "compatibility" => "*"
  );
}

function krfr_markallforumsread_activate()
{
  global $db;
  include MYBB_ROOT.'/inc/adminfunctions_templates.php';
  find_replace_templatesets("header_welcomeblock_member", "#".preg_quote('{$lang->welcome_todaysposts}</a>')."#i", '{$lang->welcome_todaysposts}</a><!--KURIFURI MARKALLFORUMSREAD BEGIN--> | <a href="misc.php?action=markread">Mark All Forums Read</a><!--KURIFURI MARKALLFORUMSREAD END-->', 0);
}

function krfr_markallforumsread_deactivate()
{
  global $db;
  include MYBB_ROOT."/inc/adminfunctions_templates.php";
  find_replace_templatesets("header_welcomeblock_member", "#".preg_quote('<!--KURIFURI MARKALLFORUMSREAD BEGIN--> | <a href="misc.php?action=markread">Mark All Forums Read</a><!--KURIFURI MARKALLFORUMSREAD END-->')."#i", '', 0);
}
?>

I’ve long held that competition is better than cooperation. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for standards and interoperability. I believe these are necessary for a fully connected society. Working with files in two different formats may as well be working with people who only speak different languages. Cooperation on standard formats to support, and interoperability between programs (such as clicking on a link in Pidgin or Kopete opening a web page in Opera) are my personal requiments of software I use.

What caused Firefox to reach its current fame? Looking before the advertising and push to make it more friendly to newcomers, it started out as a project to be a slim Mozilla web browser, just the browser without all the extras (web page editor, chat client, e-mail client). Once that was accomplished, it went on to start challenging Internet Explorer, giving it extension functionality that lead to Firefox being able to fulfill every need a user may have.

As the popularity of Firefox sank in, the browser became slower to start up, slower to run, using more and more memory. Criticisms of these things could at best lead only to a wall where there’s nothing that can be done without completely rewriting huge parts of Firefox.

Something recent happened which has impacted the web browsing world. I don’t know if it was Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (version 8?) or Google’s Chrome which came out with it first. Per-tab processes.

Right now, in Firefox or Opera (and I’m sure plenty of other browsers), if something in one tab causes a crash, you lose the whole browsers. While Opera (and I imagine Firefox) have ways of recovering from this, there are deficiencies all of the place (such as losing all text typed into a textarea).

With Google’s Chrome, if a plugin causes a crash (that’s the likely culprit for me, and I hardly ever enable plugins!), only a single tab is lost.

Supposedly Firefox has seen interest in per-tab processes for some years now. I’ll believe that. The problem? The structure of Firefox meant it would have been a massive task. Over the past five or so years, no programmer dared step up and face the beast. I know I sure wouldn’t attempt such a thing.

But now we have Google’s Chrome. Even Internet Explorer is doing the whole process-per-tab thing.

And it’s coming to Firefox. (Yeah, this is old news by now!)

Looking at Opera’s Speed Dial, Chome has taken this idea and extended it. (Whether they actually improved upon it I don’t know, having not used Chrome’s implementation, but I imagine there are pros and cons between Opera’s and Chrome’s implementations.)

Without Chrome’s per-tab processes, I wonder if Firefox would have seen this push for per-tab processes. Would Internet Explorer implementing it be enough? If neither implemented this, it’d be hard to convince me that Firefox would still be seeing this improvement.

No, Firefox has stagnated in certain areas where it is simply “too difficult” to improve or innovate. Competition challenges that. Competition forces Firefox to evolve, or to be replaced by Chrome on users’ computers. And Chrome has Google standing behind it more than Firefox does. Google can wipe out Firefox without even trying if they so desired (but this certainly isn’t their goal).

It’s not just the tab processes. Chrome came out exclaiming, “Look at my super-fast Javascript!” The result? Firefox, Opera, and Safari have been playing catch up, shouting, “My Javascript just got a little faster, and it’s still being improved!”

This isn’t cooperation.

This is competition.

But this is also cooperation.

Everything that Google is is invested in the web. Google has every reason to want everyone on the web to use a stable browser with stable processes and fast Javascript. They took ideas such as Opera’s Speed Dial and extended them, and they presented their own ideas for others to implement.

Google’s Chrome is not trying to replace Firefox, Safari, and Opera. (It’s trying to replace IE6 as seen when visiting Google’s main page, but I don’t know if IE7 and IE8 users see the same Chrome advertistment.) Instead, Chome is trying to evolve the browser ecosystem.

Those most adaptable will survive. Those unable to adapt will face the thread of extinction.

This is not cooperation on one web browser. This is friendly competition with aspects of cooperation, such as the freedom to copy ideas and even re-use code.

Certainly this is the best of both worlds.

Firefox is evolving. Opera, where are you on this?