Code Society

Mozilla’s Firefox, the world’s favorite alternative browser, has surpassed the 1 billion download mark. That’s over 1,000,000,000 times! To commemorate this achievements, Mozilla is launching a new web site called One Billion Plus You.

The download count is a cumulative total for all versions of Firefox since the beginning of time. The official download counter page writes:

We passed the 1,000,000,000 download mark for Firefox just in the past couple hours.  This number is cumulative across all of time and it includes actual user-initiated downloads (i.e., not automatic updates).

I wonder how many IE, Chrome, and Opera downloads there have been.

WP Super Cache and Wordpress.com Stats are two very useful WordPress plugins. WP Super Cache provides static and dynamic cache functionality to reduce the load on your blog’s server, allowing larger amounts of traffic to visit without slowing the site down. Wordpress.com Stats tracks visitors and gives valuable information on how users utilize your blog. If you plan to use both of them together, you should be careful though.

The Problem

The problem arises due to Wordpress.com Stats’ behavior of not recording statistics for logged-in users. This is usually desirable, since these users are most likely yourself and other blog authors. This means that when logged in, a visit to your blog does not invoke the necessary JavaScript code to update statistics.

What happens when you have WP Super Cache enabled? If you visit a page that is not cached, a cache will be generated. If you are logged in at that time, the cached page will not have the stat updating code. This page will then be served to future users, whether they are logged in or not, resulting in lost statistics. This is a problem for all statistics tracking that relies on checking if users are guests or not.

The Solution

The solution is to check the option in WP Super Cache called “Don’t cache pages for logged in users.” This will cause cached pages to always be for guests only, and thus contain the stat updating code. Be sure to clear the existing cache after enabling this option to make sure the wrongly cached pages are gone.

Of course, this is not ideal if the blog has a large user community. In such a case, a different stats package should be used anyway. Google Analytics, for example, should work just fine on cached pages as long as the JavaScript is always present.

Firefox 3.5 introduced a change in the way closing the last tab of a browser window is handled. Instead of turning into a blank tab, the window closes as well, much like it does in Google Chrome.

To return to the previous behavior of turning the last closed tab into a blank tab, follow these steps:

1. Type about:config into the address bar.
2. Accept the warning if it appears by clicking “I’ll be careful, I promise!”
3. Find the setting for browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab. You can do this quickly by beginning to type any part of the term into the filter bar.
4. Double-click on the browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab preference to change it from true to false.
5. Enjoy not closing the window when you close the last tab! (If it doesn’t work immediately, try restarting Firefox.)

When building a computer, one often has to compromise on one of the three conflicting factors of power, noise, and price. Powerful machines are usually noisy due to the high heat output, and therefore required cooling. Advanced cooling solutions with low noise can be had, albeit at high price points. A cheaper computer tends to lack power and/or silence. These 3 tradeoffs are inherent in any computer build and is more of a problem today than ever as newer components produce more heat along with the increased power they bring.

I recently had the need to build a new computer from scratch as my main desktop PC. Finding the noise of most computers unbearable to use in a quite environment, I went through a thorough research process to select the most efficient components to balance the needs for power and silence at an affordable price point. As part of the efficiency, I also wanted to minimize the amount of physical space the computer would take up.

This guide shows you the computer parts I picked, along with alternatives I considered, with explanations on every component. Hopefully this will help you make your own choices for a silent computer to suit your needs.

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Zip Folders (or Compressed Folders) is a feature in Windows Explorer that makes ZIP archives act like folders for easy retrieval of contents. However, this behavior is rather annoying for many, including me, so one of the first things I do upon a fresh install of Windows is to disable the zip folders functionality.

Let’s take a look at how to disable and also re-enable zip folders in Windows 7, Vista, and XP. In XP, all it takes is a quick command line statement. Vista and 7 require editing the registry, although additional protections make it more of a hassle in Windows 7.

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OS X has many great design wins, but the mouse acceleration curve is not one of them. Using a mouse under OS X feels very unnatural if you’ve ever used another operating system. The pointer moves too slowly when you move the mouse a little and too quickly when you try to speed it up. This is because the default acceleration curve is S-shaped and far too steep.

Unfortunately, OS X (as of 10.5 Leopard anyway) provides no built-in mechanism to allow users to easily change the acceleration amount or even to turn it off. Luckily, there are some 3rd-party solutions that can correct the problem, though not all of them are free. Let’s take a look at 4 of them below.

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Mozilla’s Firefox web browser has gained amazing traction to become the browser of choice for the more technically inclined. More recently, Google, everyone’s favorite search company, released Chrome, their own take on the web browser that emphasizes speed and simplicity.

I’ve been switching between the two for a long time and would really like to adopt Chrome as my main browser. Chrome is faster, more responsive, and looks better (in my opinion). However, it is missing several features that are needed before it can serve as a replacement for Firefox. Let’s take a closer look at them below.

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