Well, it has happened. Blogger is pulling its FTP support. This means that this is my last post of this kind. I will be updating my blog portion of my site with a different technology unless blogger creates something new.

If this portion is down, it is because blogger removed its service that I used.

Sorry for any issues.

Tonight I have assembled a list of 8 Firefox Plug-ins that either make my development life easier or simply add a little flair to my web surfing.  Each plug-in is my own choice and is not a paid endorsement.  These are all free.

IE TAB
Emulates the Internet Explorer rendering engine
Website

InterClue
Preview links before clicking on them
Website

Colorful Tabs
Colors tabs to make each unique
Website

ColorZilla
Advanced eyedropper that allows you to select colors from web pages
Website

Cooliris
3D wall for searching and viewing archives
Website

Download Helper
Allows you to download your favorite media including YouTube videos
Website

FireBug
Web Development Tool
Website

FireShot
Screen shot of the current page. Allows user to add annotations easily.
Website

The easiest way without JavaScript to center a DIV tag is to use a style tag or css that resembles the following.




Sample Image

There has been a rash of discussions about "a" Andrew Pallant who is the creator the of WhozaDog.com website.  I am not that same person.  While we share the same name, we do not share the same outlook on life.  Please be aware that there is more than one person with the same name.  I am going on record to say I am not in anyway associated to the Andrew Pallant who created the WhozDog.com site or associated to the site is self which is Australian based.

People from all over the world have used software to steal or copy websites.  If you are using statcounter.com you may see in the browser column "Ripper" or "Rippers 0" or something in a similar naming convention.  To prevent some of this activity you can try the following javascript code that I have found on the statcounter.com forums.

It appears to work for me.

Tonight I am giving you some of my favorite software that can be downloaded from the Internet for free.   While you may have heard of some, others are so obscure, your friends have never heard of them.  I like free.  I like quality.  I also like supporting the little guys out there.  If they have a donation link on their site and you like it, support them.  I am seeing more and more great quality software available to us little guys.  I can no longer afford the big Microsoft and Adobe type software packages.  If I can find a free one to do the job; I will save my buck.  Don't get me wrong, sometimes you have to buy a software package from a big guy, but if you don't have to - why bother.

Here is just a few software packages I recommend.

Graphics - www.getpaint.net
Paint.Net is a free ( donation only software ) that is very similar to Adobe CS2 type software.  I use it for all of my photo editing, background creations, icon creations and other types of graphical work.

Compression - www.7-zip.org
Z-zip is a free compression software with an API of sorts.  I use it for opening and creating all of my zip and winrar type files.  It supports many compression types. - check it out.

Web Browsers
This is where I am stuck.  I use OPERA and FireFox.  Both have their purposes.  When I need development tools and testing of websites I use FireFox.  FireFox has multitude of plug-ins; but my favorite is the IE tab that I can switch my testing to the IE engine.  

With Opera, I like the graphical tabs and the ability to store passwords safely.  The graphical tabs allow me to see a thumb nail image of the website that the tab is currently pointed two.

This is really a split and I challenge everyone to try both.  I think you will switch from IE.

www.opera.com and www.getfirefox.net

Databases - www.mysql.com
As rumors are always swirling around about MySQL's future, I am still using it.  It is free, robust and multi platform compatible.  I have never had an issue with this database not working and it has been able to grow with my projects.  Until this database dies, I will continue to use it.

Music - www.FooBar2000.org
While this software is fairly unknown, I was turned on to it by my wife's uncle.  I have fallen in love with the search abilities that allow you to search by Genre, Author, Album and Year.  It has many options for creating play-lists and plug-ins to customize the audio library with.

Today I smelled the sweet smell of popcorn and thought gee, I would like to partake in some.  So, I opened my desk drawer and pulled out some of the my favorite buttery popcorn to pop.  While walking back from the microwave a few people asked if they could have some and of course I said yes.  While passing another desk, a small voice asked me if I had checked before making the popcorn; I said "why the heck would I ask, the microwave is free for use".  A little later an e-mail was sent out to the entire office about smelly food.  I kind of mocked the e-mail.

On the way home I was thinking about the events.  When I got home I Google'd the the Popcorn in the Office question that I had.  Apparently I was wrong.

It turns out that popcorn in the office is bad etiquette as the smell often bothers people.  While the smell may be enticing for some of us; for others it can be very unpleasant.    The smell of popcorn can linger for up to an hour depending on ventilation and that can be very unpleasant. Everyone is entitled to a clean work environment which includes smells ( not just popcorn ).

My advice to everyone, think about the smells and other offensive things you may bring into the office.  It may be not so nice for the people around you.

In short - I offer my apologies to all the people in all of the offices that I had ever worked.  I did not know that the smell of popcorn was possibly offensive as well as poor etiquette.