Making the Most of a Chromebook

About a month ago, I described how surprised I was by the Chromebook I had purchased a month or so earlier, making sure that I bought it from a store where I could return it within 15 days if it didn't work out. I still had it then and I continue to find it to be more useful than expected. Then I found a book that explains everything. Now we'll hear from the author.

Michael Miller is the author of My Google Chromebook, now out in second edition. With a Chromebook computer, nearly everything resides on a server. The modern term is "in the cloud". But this reminds me a lot of the 1970s and early 1980s when people used what we called "dumb terminals" to connect to mainframe computers or minicomputers. Then came the emphasis on desktop computers. Now we seem to be returning to a variant of what we had in the 1970s. A Chromebook is by no means a dumb terminal, but there are similarities, and a Chromebook isn't a good choice for someone who needs a high-powered computer for photo or video editing. How would you describe the ideal user for a Chromebook?

15 minutes 34 seconds
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If you have a Chromebook or you're considering one, Miller's My Google Chromebook will be an excellent investment. The book is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, most other book sellers, and directly from Que, the publisher in both paper and electronic formats.

Firefox — Love It or Hate It, You Can't Ignore It

If there's any consistency about my opinion of Firefox, it's the total lack of consistency. I've given up on Firefox more times than I'd like to admit only to reinstate it as my primary browser after a few weeks. The browser's flexibility and the huge number of add-ons are what bring me back. The crashes and other performance issues are what drive me away. Maybe there's a middle ground.

Chrome is a good browser. Opera is a good browser. Maxthon is a good browser. These days, even Internet Explorer is a workable browser if you can ignore Microsoft's heavy hand. Chrome, Opera, and Maxthon all work well for me as secondary browsers; IE is fine when the site I want to view has been written to work only with IE. Repeatedly, though, I've found that Firefox needs to be my primary browser.

Keeping Firefox up to date is important, just as it is with operating systems and other applications. Mozilla moved to an accelerated release schedule in 2011 and, as a result, updates occur frequently. Setting Firefox to update itself is a good idea, regardless of which release channel you're on. I've used the beta channel for the past several years because it has the latest features and seems no more crash prone than the standard channel.

Pick the channel you prefer and then select the auto-update option. Or, if you prefer not to have updates installed automatically, at least remember to check for updates regularly by selecting About from the Help menu.

Creating a Well-Adjusted Firefox

The key to adjusting Firefox isn't found in the Options panel or within the remarkable Add-Ons panel. Instead, you'll need to visit the Configuration page and you won't find that on any menu. To get there, type "about:config" in the address line (without the quotation marks, of course) and press Enter.

You'll be warned that this will void your warranty. In fact, it won't because there is no warranty. This is Mozilla's way of warning you that changes made here can have adverse effects on the browser. Click "I'll be careful" to proceed.

The first thing you'll see is a dishearteningly long list of items with names like accessibility.blockautorefresh, extensions.blocklist.enabled, and zoom.minPercent. Some of the names will be reasonably clear; others won't. And some of the settings that you'll want to change aren't even there. That's right. As long as this list is, it's not everything.

By way of example, let's take a look at "config.trim_on_minimize". One of the primary complaints about Firefox concerns the amount of memory the program uses. By creating this Boolean (yes/no) variable and turning it on, you'll cause Firefox to relinquish memory when it's minimized.

This might seem like a good idea, but the flip side of making the change is that Firefox will take slightly longer to minimize and maximize. In my case, the change was less than 60MB of RAM. On a system with 32GB of RAM, this is inconsequential, but it could be helpful on systems that have minimal amounts of RAM. After testing this option, I set the variable to False.

The browser.tabs.closeButtons setting is supposed to control the appearance of the close buttons (X) on tabs. Setting this to 0 should display the close button on the active tab (my preference); 1 (the default) shows an X on all open tabs; 2 should show no close buttons; and 3 is supposed to display a single close button at the end of the tab bar. This setting takes effect only after you have closed the browser and reopened it and then, annoyingly, it doesn't stick. All of the close buttons return no matter what the setting is.

As it turns out, an update that was released this week broke the feature, however, you can install the Stylish add-on and then add the following rule to turn off the close icons:

@namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);
.tab-close-button{
    display:none !important;  
}

Sometimes the folks at Mozilla make something that should be easy a lot harder than you might expect.

When you hover the mouse cursor over tabs and links on the Favorites tool bar, Firefox displays pop-up text. Some people detest these. If you're one of them, search for browser.chrome.toolbar_tips and set it to False.

By default Ctrl-Tab cycles through the tabs you have open in Firefox. If you're like me and you have a dozen or so tabs open, cycling through to the one you want could take a while. If you set browser.ctrlTab.previews to True, Ctrl-Tab will display previews of all the tabs and you can then use the right or left arrow to navigate to the one you want.

In version 32 of Firefox, I noticed a problem with downloaded files. The download completed, but the download indicator showed 1 second remaining and Firefox attempted to resume the download when I re-opened the browser. My first attempt to fix the problem involved creating a command file that deleted "downloads.json", but then I created an integer variable called browser.download.manager.quitBehavior and set it to 2. The default value is 0, which causes Firefox to resume downloads automatically; 1 pauses the download, but doesn't attempt to restart it; 2 cancels a download when the browser is closed. About the same time, Firefox released version 33 of the browser, so I'm not sure whether the update or the new setting fixed the problem.

No matter how many precautions you take to avoid pop-ups, some will always slip through and the slimiest operators create pop-ups that don't display a close button (X) in the upper right corner. Fight back by setting dom.disable_window_open_feature.close to True. Although the logic seems backwards, setting this variable to True forces pop-up windows to display a close button even if the creator of the pop-up has tried to remove it.

Firefox has a full-screen mode (press F11 to toggle it on and off). By default, full screen mode hides all tabs and the Menu after about a second. To say that this freaks some people out is probably an understatement. If you'd prefer to keep tabs and the menu in full screen mode, change browser.fullscreen.autohide from True to False.

If you really want to tinker with Firefox's innards, check out Koroush Ghazi's TweakGuides site. He keeps the Firefox section up to date and also provides recommendations for tweaking operating systems and various other applications.

Short Circuits

If Not for Bad Luck ...

You know how that story goes. The once high-flying Sony that for many years seemed unable to invent a product that didn't sell now seems to have trouble coming up with anything that interests anybody. As a result, the company will lose even more money this year than it had predicted -- more than $2 billion.

Sony expects a loss of 230 billion yen for the fiscal year and that's nearly 6 times the loss it had expected. Sony will not pay a dividend this year and the company says that it plans to drop several of its less expensive mobile phones and concentrate on the line's high-end devices.

Sony will also make certain undisclosed strategic changes.

A year ago, Sony's mobile phone division led the company in profitability, but this year is a far different story. Facing competition from low-cost manufacturers in China as well as from premium phone manufacturers Apple and Samsung, Sony is in an unsustainable position.

Sony no longer manufacturers computers or televisions. Both of those units were spun off as separate corporations. Sony Pictures and Sony Music remain and the company makes a decent showing in digital cameras and video games.

SpaceX or Boeing Will Return the United States to Space

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has picked SpaceX and Boeing to compete for the right to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The first launch is scheduled for 2017 and will reduce the nation's reliance on the Russian space program that began following the end of Shuttle program.

Russians have been providing transport services for NASA since 2011 at a cost of $71 million per ride. In the past 2 years, commercial flights have delivered supplies to the space station. After NASA hands over transportation efforts to private companies, the agency will begin looking at deeper space missions to Mars and possibly to asteroids.

The founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, says that he's pleased with the contract because the company wasn't founded simply to deliver supplies to the space station. Boeing and SpaceX are essentially finalists in the program to carry astronauts to the space station and return them to earth.

Both SpaceX and Boeing plan to use an Atlas V rocket to carry their delivery capsules into space.

Norwegian Company Creates a Photo Sharing Program for Children

Ole Hestas says that his 6-year-old son wanted an Instagram account because his older sisters had accounts, but Hestas felt that his son was too young for such a service. He couldn't find any service that seemed appropriate for someone as young as his son so he as created Kuddle (with a K). It's available for Android and Apple devices.

Instagram's service agreement requires that users say they are at least 13 years old. Kuddle's approach is different in that it requires parental approval when children sign up and parents receive an e-mail when their child adds a friend or posts a picture. To avoid bullying, Kuddle doesn't allow comments.

Although Kuddle's target market is younger children, Hestas says that some older people -- including parents and entire families -- have signed up for the service. Kuddle is still monetized by advertising, but the company has plans to examine other revenue streams.