For some reason, feedhouse.mozillazine.org dredges up old posts from my blog and posts them as if they are new. According to someone in a forum, my blog entry modification dates are getting bumped. However, I’m not actually modifying anything. If anyone knows what is going on and is willing to enlighten me, that would be great.

Huzzah.

And for your enjoyment here is Ann Coulter making an ass of herself.

I’m writing this blog entry from my college’s Library computer lab, where it appears that Firefox has been made the official default browser on all machines. There aren’t any IE icons on the desktop or in the start menu. Smart move Macalester IT.

Its been a long time since I made a progress report, and I’ve got lots to say. January was a great month! I’m going to do this in a more summarized way than I normally do since there is more for me to write than I have time for.

Preferences reorganization – A lot of work has gone into reorganizing, cleaning up, and fleshing out Camino’s preferences. There is more to be done, but they are looking much better! Instead of having a “Show all” setup, the default is not the “General” pane, which used to be called “Navigation.” Lots of the unweidly tabs setups in preference panes have been broken up, resulting in some all-new preferences panes. In general, preferences are more convenient and they look better. Also, there were some nasty crasher bugs in the prefs that have been fixed.

History rewrite – Simon Fraser landed a major rewrite of our history code. Not only is it faster, but it includes live searching, a nice update to the bookmark manager UI, bookmark and history sorting, and a bunch of other great stuff.

Address Book integration – we now have much better contextual menus for mailto: links, including an option to copy the email address and an option to add it to the address book. If the address is already in the address book, we offer to open the record.

Bookmark bar fixes – some aesthetic and drawing problems with the bookmark bar were fixed.

.webloc and .url file support – Lots of fixes for handling .webloc and .url files were made. Opening such files via drag-n-drop no longer opens a blank window. It is now possible to open such files with the “Open” menu command.

Code cleanup – lots of old, unused code was cleaned out. This includes the inactive code for our old bookmark drawer, broken bookmark detection, and some Carbon-build specific code.

Bug 166694 – local file names are now decoded before they are suggested in the save panel.

Bug 272389 – we now allow JavaScript popups if they are bookmarks. This was a regression from some changes to Mozilla’s popup blocking code.

Bug 279844 – make sure that background tabs are sized correctly on creation and URL load, so that a later resize on show doesn’t mess with the scroll position.

Bug 277928 – fixed a crash on quit when there is an active download.

Miscellaneous fixes – Lots of smaller fixes have gone in since my last progress report. There are way too many for me to get into here.

Since Christmas I’ve had the chance to read quite a bit. My college has a one month break over January, which I should be using to write senior papers, but that pursuit has been delayed by my reading list.

A Widow for One Year, by John Irving

This novel is really long, but worth every bit of time it requires. Its plot is exciting and endearing, with highly developed central characters and a great balance between situations that are foreign, odd, and exciting, and situations that hit powerfully close to home. There is a lot of sex, but its existence in the novel is tasteful and very important in the end – go John Irving! Themes include parent/child relationships, storytelling, writing fiction (all three main characters are fiction writers in one way or another), dealing with the past, sex, marriage, and of course (here comes the most vague word in existence) – love. Those themes probably cover most of life in general, but like I said, its a long book.

The Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby

This book is a collection of about a year’s worth of Nick Hornby’s contributions to The Believer. I got The Polysyllabic Spree as a gift with the first issue of my subscription to The Believer. Each month he writes about the books he bought and the books he actually read. He diverges from the subject pretty often to discuss subjects like his autistic son and his favorite football (soccer) team, but the divergences were fun and usually tied back to books in interesting ways. For those of you who don’t know of Nick Hornby, he wrote some highly entertaining novels including High Fidelity and How to be Good.

I enjoyed the book quite a bit, though I’m glad it ended when it did. It was the perfect length for a book of its kind, and didn’t drag on until it started to get redundant and/or boring. I liked hearing his take on the books he read, and added a few to my reading list. His philosophy on choosing books to read in the little time adults usually have for such things was both informative and at times comdedic in a post-modern way.

Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen

This book is OK, but probably only worth reading if you consider yourself a Jane Austen fan. Its plot is somewhat bare, its hilights often too quaint, and its lessons not unique or in need of much foregrounding. Odd that it came out only four years after Pride and Prejudice (perhaps the best book I have ever read), since Austen’s mind seems to have aged 30 years between the two novels. Pride and Prejudice contains fascinating characters and a lively, captivating plot, but Northanger Abbey lacks all such recommendations. Still, the prose is pleasant and the thoughts it inspired were often enough to make me smile.