Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude. (c) Ruffin Bailey 2001-2021

I admit it. I use SeaMonkey Composer, a tool whose look and feel is straight from the late 90s, to create specific kinds of webpages. Now look, it's almost always webpages where I'm keeping notes for myself to read later, not webpages to publish anywhere (though I guess I did use it to create the skeleton for my syllabi when I was teaching during grad school). And I use html because I know, better than any other file format, how to make it do what I want without much hassle. That is, it's easier for me to format a web page than it is to do the same thing in, say, Word. Given my work experience, not only does that make sense, you've kinda got to hope html familiarity would be the case.

Anyhow, what I've always liked about Composer most is that it gives you nice, clean, unoffensive html -- for the most part[1] -- and does so a bit better than Blue Griffon, which grew out of its codebase. (NVu wasn't bad, but it and Kompozer didn't last long at all.) You can easily take the "frame" html Composer gives you and give it a little custom markup to have a clear, well-formatted page. And it's not destructive when you type something into the source itself, which is wonderful. You can do that on the source pane or, even better, highlight a WYSIWYG chunk, hit alt-I-H, and knock yourself out.

But recently (?), I've noticed that it really, really dislikes understanding code as monolithicly (sp?) formatted blocks, and wants to apply tags in a much too atomic fashion. Here's an example where I Ctrl-T'd a block of text that I wanted to display in a monospace font:

<tt>The following example can be used to assign the “MyTag” tag to all virtual machines whose name contains</tt><tt><br></tt><tt>the “myvm” wildcard pattern.</tt><tt><br></tt>

Really, Composer? You have separate <tt> tags not only for each line of text, but for each line break? Are you crazy insane? Really wish it'd be a bit smarter about blocking text. Too bad it's not written in C#; I'm not sure I'm ready to learn C and this codebase just to patch a SeaMonkey Composer bug. ;^)

[1] Clean html except for that stupid line insertion bug (first reported in 2001? Can that be right?), but that's another story for another day.

Labels: seamonkey

Seamonkey 2.0, the real successor to Netscape, is out.

The good:
* Doesn't seem slower.
* Has the Firefox 3.5.4 engine.
* Icons are much better (see pic) -- I can tell the difference between Composer and Mail windows now just by looking. ;^)
* Apparently supports more Firefox add-ons

The bad:
* ProFontWindows is no longer displayed correctly in editable text boxes or for email composing; lots of pixel bleed.
* Rendering speed a mixed bag.
* Having some issues with pulling the contents of IMAP message from Gmail. I don't store anything locally with SeaMonkey. I wouldn't be surprised if that config wasn't tested so well, esp. since they're supposed to have changed IMAP in this version.

I use the Monk b/c it's easier on my P3 600 MHz Toughbook -- less overhead when your browser and mail handler are using the same space. I also use it to test websites. I'll keep the site in Monkey and Google code/docs in Firefox, making reloading and testing an easy alt-tab affair rather than a ctrl-` fiasco. Overall, it's been a good browser for me.

Admittedly, I'm still waiting for a search bar displayed by default. Can't have it all.

Labels: browsers, seamonkey

title: Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude.	descrip: One feller's views on the state of everyday computer science & its application (and now, OTHER STUFF) who isn't rich enough to shell out for www.myfreakinfirst-andlast-name.com Using 89% of the same design the blog had in 2001.
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Thursday, November 13, 2014
Really, SeaMonkey Composer? It's a block, man. I admit it. I use SeaMonkey Composer, a tool whose look and feel is straight from the late 90s, to create specific kinds of webpages. Now look, it's almost always webpages where I'm keeping notes for myself to read later, not webpages to publish anywhere (though I guess I did use it to create the skeleton for my syllabi when I was teaching during grad school). And I use html because I know, better than any other file format, how to make it do what I want without much hassle. That is, it's easier for me to format a web page than it is to do the same thing in, say, Word. Given my work experience, not only does that make sense, you've kinda got to hope html familiarity would be the case. Anyhow, what I've always liked about Composer most is that it gives you nice, clean, unoffensive html -- for the most part[1] -- and does so a bit better than Blue Griffon, which grew out of its codebase. (NVu wasn't bad, but it and Kompozer didn't last long at all.) You can easily take the "frame" html Composer gives you and give it a little custom markup to have a clear, well-formatted page. And it's not destructive when you type something into the source itself, which is wonderful. You can do that on the source pane or, even better, highlight a WYSIWYG chunk, hit alt-I-H, and knock yourself out. But recently (?), I've noticed that it really, really dislikes understanding code as monolithicly (sp?) formatted blocks, and wants to apply tags in a much too atomic fashion. Here's an example where I Ctrl-T'd a block of text that I wanted to display in a monospace font: <tt>The following example can be used to assign the “MyTag” tag to all virtual machines whose name contains</tt><tt><br></tt><tt>the “myvm” wildcard pattern.</tt><tt><br></tt> Really, Composer? You have separate <tt> tags not only for each line of text, but for each line break? Are you crazy insane? Really wish it'd be a bit smarter about blocking text. Too bad it's not written in C#; I'm not sure I'm ready to learn C and this codebase just to patch a SeaMonkey Composer bug. ;^) [1] Clean html except for that stupid line insertion bug (first reported in 2001? Can that be right?), but that's another story for another day. Labels: seamonkey posted by ruffin at 11/13/2014 09:38:00 AM

Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Seamonkey 2.0 released Seamonkey 2.0, the real successor to Netscape, is out. The good: * Doesn't seem slower. * Has the Firefox 3.5.4 engine. * Icons are much better (see pic) -- I can tell the difference between Composer and Mail windows now just by looking. ;^) * Apparently supports more Firefox add-ons The bad: * ProFontWindows is no longer displayed correctly in editable text boxes or for email composing; lots of pixel bleed. * Rendering speed a mixed bag. * Having some issues with pulling the contents of IMAP message from Gmail. I don't store anything locally with SeaMonkey. I wouldn't be surprised if that config wasn't tested so well, esp. since they're supposed to have changed IMAP in this version. I use the Monk b/c it's easier on my P3 600 MHz Toughbook -- less overhead when your browser and mail handler are using the same space. I also use it to test websites. I'll keep the site in Monkey and Google code/docs in Firefox, making reloading and testing an easy alt-tab affair rather than a ctrl-` fiasco. Overall, it's been a good browser for me. Admittedly, I'm still waiting for a search bar displayed by default. Can't have it all. Labels: browsers, seamonkey posted by ruffin at 10/28/2009 10:04:00 AM

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