As I was going through and bulk-deleting emails in my Gmail account today, I became annoyed. My process was as follows:

1. Perform a search in the inbox, or hover over an email, click “More” and choose “Recent Conversations”
2. Click the “All” link to select all the emails matching the query
3. Click “Delete”

By default, the “Archive,” “Report Spam,” and “Delete” buttons are set up to flow next the search query. See below:

The point of annoyance is this: the longer the query, the farther to the right the “Delete” button gets pushed. This means that every time I want to delete a set of emails, I have to relocate the Delete button. It slows my process down because there is no standard place where I can always find the delete button:

User-Defined CSS to the Rescue

If you’re using Firefox, you can pretty easily fix this by creating some CSS of your own to override the default behavior. First, you need to find your Firefox Profile folder. On Mac, it is in *username*/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxx.default/chrome/ while on PC it is at C:\Documents and Settings\*username*\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxx.default\chrome. The “xxxx” part is a seemingly random string of letters and numbers.

Next, find the file named “userContent-example.css” and create a duplicate. Name the duplicate “userContent.css” and open it in a text editor. Add the following at the very bottom of the file:

.AQ {
	width: 100% !important;
	padding-bottom: 10px !important;
}
.yV {
	padding: 10px 0px 5px 2px !important;
}

Save the file, quit Firefox, and then restart Firefox and return to gmail. You should now see that the buttons are always below the search results line, effectively anchoring them in place.

How did I come up with .AQ and .yV? Being the web nerd that I am, I used Firebug to inspect the code and figure out what container the buttons lived in – “AQ” in this case. While I was there, I checked to see what container housed the “Select: All, None..” buttons– yV – and gave it some extra padding.

Well, there you have it! In only a few minutes you can customize a website to meet your needs. There is a slim chance that the CSS used here could interfere with another website (if the same container names were used on both), so if something looks funky on a website other than gmail, make sure to try removing the custom styles you created and see if that does the trick.

Firefox for Macintosh

Click the little bar at the very top right of your browser window:

And voila! You instantly get back some precious vertical pixels:

Firefox for Windows

There is a similar function for PC—simply press the F11 key, provided it’s not bound to another action, and you will see something like:

On the PC version, your Firefox window will automatically maximize, which I’m honestly not crazy about. However, it does take minimalism one step further than the Mac version by only showing your tabs when you hover over the very top of the window.

Either way, it’s a handy little tip to have in your arsenal.

We decided that aside from Food Network, there wasn’t a great deal of television content that we tune in to regularly. By and large, we could access most of the programs we enjoy online. With that in mind, Jason began the search for media center software we could run from a PC and connect to our TV. The idea was to have a server for our personal media files and use a program to access them and play them on the television in addition to streaming online video content. He found Boxee, which was designed to do just that. While it shows a lot of promise, it also behaves a little wonky on my Windows XP machine.

The fatal flaw in our plan (and the reason we eventually gave in) relates to how we use television. While we don’t tune in to many shows regularly, we do a lot of passive viewing. Until cable was gone, we didn’t realize how often we found things to watch just by channel surfing. With only the basic local channels, there is a lot less to surf. We also tend to use the television as background noise.

Our passive viewing style was in direct opposition to what a program like Boxee requires. Streaming television over the internet is very purposeful: you actively pick and choose the shows you want to watch. It’s great when you missed last week’s episode of Scrubs. Not so great when you just want to chill out on the couch and watch some random television. You are also at the mercy of your connection speed when your main source of television content is streaming over the internet. And if your internet connection is down, then your television options are limited too.

After one too many choppy streams of The Daily Show and finding nothing on our local channels, we threw in the towel. We didn’t get anything fancy—no HD, DVR, or On Demand. Though it changes our budget, I’m looking forward to once again watching Barefoot Contessa on Saturdays and going to bed with The Daily Show on weekdays. This time, Comcast, you win. This time.

I have recently taken a dive into the world of Flex for a project at work. More specifically, I’ve been using the Flex IDE called Flex Builder 3. While doing lots of research, I found an open-source component that looked really promising so I grabbed the code only to find that it wasn’t working in Flex Builder 3.

I’m pretty sure it was mentioned somewhere in the documentation for the component, but I missed where it said that it required Flex 4. I didn’t really know anything about Flex 4 (also called “Gumbo”) so I researched and found that it was a pretty sizable overhaul (for someone like me who is just starting to learn Flex at version 3) and that the new IDE for it was still in beta, potentially going to be released soon. So I thought what the heck, I’ll get the beta. Then the trouble began.

I fired up the Mac installer. I clicked through all the things you normally click through without paying much attention but I got stopped at a message saying I needed to close all browsers. Ok, no problem, I thought. I quit Firefox and Safari, and even Thunderbird just for good measure.

No dice. The message popped up again immediately. I thought maybe I had gotten a corrupt download, so I tried to get the file again. Mounted it, and still had the problem. I did some searches to see if anyone else was having issues and came up with nothing similar.

“Ok,” I thought, “I’ll just reboot in case leftover processes or anything are causing trouble.” This would have to fix it, right? Wrong. After rebooting and not starting any programs, it STILL wouldn’t install. By this time, I was not a very happy camper, having sunk a sizable chunk of time into getting this program running.

I finally decided to check my startup items in System Preferences > Accounts > Login items. I saw that my Xmarks for Safari plugin was running at startup. Aha! Not wanting to take any chances, I removed it completely instead of just un-checking the box for it. I rebooted one more time and Voila! It FINALLY installed.

So kids, the moral of the story is: check those startup items! Even a seemingly innocuous thing like a browser plugin can prevent you from installing programs.

Defining “Front-End”

When thinking about websites, I usually divide them into two parts: Front-End and Back-End. The Back-End pieces are things we don’t see when visiting websites – where our credit card information is stored at Amazon.com, for example. I consider Back-End technologies to be servers, server-side programming languages such as PHP and ASP, and databases. Very simple websites may not even need to use a programming language or database. Server-side languages do their work before a visitor even knows what happened.

The Front-End, however, is more closely tied to how we experience a website. Images, colors, arrangement of text on a page–that’s what I do. I take a website design and use XHTML and CSS to tell a web browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc) how to make that design into a live site. It takes immense attention to detail to ensure a designer’s vision is accurately portrayed on the web.

Another aspect of the front-end is behavior. Special effects, form submissions, and even some browser limitations (I’m looking at you, IE6) require more than what XHTML and CSS can offer. This is where JavaScript comes in. A very basic definition of JavaScript is a client-side programming language used to make web pages interactive. There is a bit of crossover possible with JavaScript — using AJAX, JavaScript can actually communicate with servers, effectively blurring the line between the front-end and back-end. I am still somewhat new to JavaScript, but have learned a lot over the past year and a half.

The Gray Area

While XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript seem to easily fit the description of front-end technologies, the role of a Front-End Developer isn’t always so clear. While searching for job postings, I have found that a Front-End Developer’s duties can include everything from website design to server-side programming languages. I can understand how design would fit in because it is directly related to the front-end. However, including server-side languages doesn’t make much sense to me. If you’re looking for someone to do front-end and back-end work, Front-End Developer just doesn’t seem to be an appropriate job title (and is probably not an appropriate salary level for that matter).

compatibility and accessibility

XHTML and CSS are really just the beginning when it comes to Front-End development. Though there are web standards, certain web browsers (read: Internet Explorer) don’t adhere to them all the time. I spend a lot of time troubleshooting browser inconsistencies—it is easily the most frustrating part of the job. Testing web sites in Internet Explorer is not for the faint of heart!

A front-end developer must also be aware that some website visitors have special needs. Not everyone has the ability to use a mouse or see a computer screen, so websites need to be made in a way that accommodates the most people possible.

Though it has plenty of challenges, front-end development is an exciting and rewarding career. Because the industry is always changing, you have the opportunity to be continuously learning new things. And when you need help, there’s an awesome community to help you find answers.

Though I wanted to upgrade, my frugal side got the best of me—not a bad thing, more like unfortunate. Thankfully, Jason knows me well and got me Leopard as a birthday present. Sweet. Fast forward another two years. Again I refused to splurge and again Jason came through (it’s kind of nice having a birthday in December given that Apple seems to frequently release things in October).

Since my Mac is pretty old, I figured I’d give my perspective on how the upgrade went for me.

The Install

Not wanting to take any chances, I fired up Time Machine and started a backup. Just in case something exploded, I’d be good to go. A couple hours later, I was ready to install. I honestly don’t know if the install process could have been made any easier than it is for Snow Leopard. It was pretty much set it and forget it. The install took over an hour but I didn’t really have to do anything, though my mother hen instincts were in full effect and I checked on it every 5-10 minutes.

Some Software Quirks

Quicksilver

I don’t use a ton of programs, but there are a couple that I swear by that were initially “broken” after upgrading. The first is Quicksilver. I visited the site and grabbed the beta download, but had no luck getting it to work. After reading a few forums I deleted the program, as well as its Application Support folder, and reinstalled the newest version. Voila! It worked, sort of.

One random thing I still can’t figure out is that launching Calculator from Quicksilver doesn’t work anymore. More accurately, launching works, but the calculator has no buttons. Launching Calculator from the Applications folder works fine, so I’m assuming it’s a kink still getting worked out with Quicksilver.

Mail.app Plugins

While Growl seemed to handle the upgrade completely fine, the GrowlMail plugin broke after the upgrade. Thankfully, I found an article with an interim solution. According to that article, it looks like a new version of GrowlMail has been released separately to fix the 10.6.2 compatibility problems.

Another plugin I can’t live without is the Letterbox Plugin, which converts your mail layout into three columns, making much better use of wide screen displays. I grabbed the latest public beta for Snow Leopard and all is well.

Adobe Creative Suite 3

I was pretty hesitant to upgrade because I had heard that Snow Leopard did not support CS3, but after doing a little more research it seemed like the programs would run okay. In my opinion, they seem a little “unstable,” but they do work. Dragging documents to the CS3 dock icons doesn’t seem to work consistently if the programs aren’t already running. Not a huge deal, but something to get used to.

Time Machine

For sake of this post, I also ran another Time Machine backup after the upgrade. It didn’t seem to go much faster, but perhaps it will get faster the more backups I do? Time will tell.

Overall Impressions

So far, I’m extremely happy with the upgrade. Since my machine doesn’t have the newest hardware, I appreciate the improvements made to speed up Finder, as well as the time it takes to wake up from sleep and shut down. The upgrade also delivers on its promise to free up hard drive space. I’m not sure exactly how much I got back, but I can tell for sure that I have more than before.

As Jason pointed out, it seemed silly when it was announced, but the “Snow Leopard” name is actually quite fitting. It’s a smaller, faster version of Leopard, just as snow leopards are a smaller, faster leopards in the animal kingdom.

Update 02/02/2010: I thought it would be worthwhile to mention that I do not have the original 2GB RAM shipped with my machine—I now have 4GB. I purchased two 2GB sticks of RAM from Crucial.com and installed it using the video instructions on lifehacker.