Relatively Ignorant Blog

It is common in everyday Australian speech to hear our country called ‘Austraya’ (an example of the slurring that is typical of Strine). I have become used to sports broadcasters also using that pronunciation.

I was surprised and disappointed to hear an ABC newsreader repeatedly saying ‘Austraya’ and ‘Austrayan’ in a radio news bulletin last night. In the early days of the ABC its announcers were BBC clones who spoke received pronunciation. Fortunately, most ABC announcers these days sound like Austalians, as they should. But pronouncing the language clearly is a largely different matter to the accent used. There should not be such sloppiness on the ABC.

No ‘Y’ mate!

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After using Firefox for a while I have settled on a set of extensions and other bits I use both at home (Mac) and at work (Windows). I have experimented with others, but I consider these ones essential.

Open link in…

“Adds context menu items for opening links and images in a new background tab (or foreground tab if your tabs normally open in the background), in a new background or foreground window, and in the current tab.” I use this when I want to re-use a tab instead of opening a new window or tab.

Resize Search Box

“Allows you to use a resize thumb to resize the search box. The resize thumb can be enabled by customizing the toolbar.” Great for fitting long search strings into your search box.

Adblock

“Once installed, it’s a snap to filter elements at their source-address. Just right-click: Adblock: done. Filters use either the wildcard character (*) or full Regular Expression syntax. Hit the status-element and see what has or hasn’t been blocked.” I am rather aggressive in weeding out annoying ads. As more people start using Adblock, I wonder how it will affect web advertising revenue.

Bloglines Toolkit

“The Bloglines Mozilla extension adds a notifier and several additional features to Mozilla and Firefox browsers. In addition to embedding a notifier within the lower-right portion of the browser window, the extension adds a number of additional options to the right-click context menu.” If you use Bloglines and Firefox, you need this.

Change the cursor for links that open in new window

“This neat trick will change the mouse pointer when you hover it over links that will open a new window.” This is not an extension, but an addition to my userChrome.css file. It provides a useful warning of impending window duplication. When I see the crosshair cursor (signifying a link that will open in a new window) I head for the Ctrl key (Win) or Command key (Mac) so the link opens in a new tab instead.

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Now I have a real blog. I just need some design and an idea or two…

Sorry me old Bloglines blog, but this is the real thing.

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