TOPIC: TYPING
A spot of extension bother with Firefox
8th December 2010One keystroke that I use a lot when typing on a computer is Control + Shift + [an arrow key] but I found myself in the awkward position of it not working in Firefox any more. The nuisance level was enough to set me investigating in the name of resolving the problem. Using the following command to start Firefox saw the keystroke being returned to me, so I needed to find which plug-in, extension or add-on was the cause of the matter.
firefox -safe-mode
Then, it was a matter of disabling one extension at a time and restarting Firefox each time to see when the keystroke functionality was returned to me. The culprit turned out to be Firebug 1.6 and there's a discussion on their bug forum about the issue. Even the good folk in the Firebug project noted how many folk were experiencing the inconvenience based on a quick Google search. Since that didn't turn up the answer for me, I had to do some digging of my own, and I hope that it has saved you some time. Of course, Firebug comes without cost so we cannot grumble too much, but I'll be keeping it disabled as much as possible until a new version makes its appearance.
Update 2011-01-15: This now seems to be fixed in Firebug 1.6.1
Correcting or updating blog posts
29th November 2007Recently, I have grown to notice that certain bloggers are not removing old content from a blog, only striking it through using something like CSS. Though there is a place for this, it does strike me as overkill sometimes and can look untidy. Sometimes, that lack of neatness is a trade-off, since the highlighting of a correction itself conveys a message. While I have been known to tweak posts immediately after publishing without leaving the previous content on view, my changes generally are readability improvements more than anything else. Typos and spelling mistakes also get corrected like this; nobody needs them highlighted for all to see. I am not trying to fool anyone and, if I want to update the content, I either add another post or use another tactic that I have seen others use: updates at the bottom of the post that are denoted as such. It's another transparent approach that preserves the authenticity of the piece.