16 Thursday Nov 2017
Posted in JURN tips and tricks
Even if you are avoiding the new Firefox 57, beware of updating the new Adblock Plus browser add-on to 3.0. According to the developer, the vital Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus 1.4 is…
“discontinued due to the new Firefox extensions system.”
You can get back to 2.9.1 (June 2017) on Firefox 55 or 56 here, which has a 2.9.1 version that still works with the latest Element Hiding Helper.
Update: I gave up on Firefox and moved to Opera.
16 Thursday Nov 2017
Posted in JURN tips and tricks
A change at the DuckDuckGo search engine has broken multi-column add-on support. Possibly this is to accommodate the new engine in Firefox 57, but that’s just my guess.
Anyway, it’s broken and this is true of both DuckDuckGo – Multi-Columns v.9 | Userstyles.org and its fork DuckDuckGo – Multi-Columns Custom – FreeStyler.WS, therefore the fault must lie with a change in the code at the DuckDuckGo results page. Both Firefox and Pale Moon show the same behaviour.
Turning on autoscroll in DuckDuckGo’s internal settings doesn’t seem to fix it. Presumably the script will be fixed in the next week or so.
Update: DuckDuckGo Multi-columns is now fixed: DuckDuckGo – Multi-Columns v.10 at Userstyles.org.
If you need to tweak the colours, either backup your existing tweaked script before updating and then port back snippets of code, or use my colour-tweaking guide to the code.
Note that, to access script editing, you no longer go to User Scripts, but rather to: the Firefox Extensions panel at Tools / Addons | Stylish | Click on the Stylish “Options” button | DuckDuckGo – Multi-Columns v.10 | Edit | Save.
16 Thursday Nov 2017
Posted in JURN tips and tricks, Spotted in the news
Did the dreaded Firefox 57 automatic update put the kibosh on all your vital browser add-ons? If you’re not ready to make the switch to the unfamiliar UI of Opera as your main browser, or the interesting new Brave, then the Pale Moon browser is now perhaps the best option. Based on Firefox but…
Unlike Firefox, Pale Moon will continue to offer full support for XUL and XPCOM binary-component extensions and there is no plan to discard the current extension system in lieu of Chrome-like alternatives (WebExtensions).
gHacks: How to move Firefox legacy extensions to another browser.
And while you’re at it beware of updating to the latest AdBlockPlus 3.0, if you also use the vital Element Hiding Helper.
15 Wednesday Nov 2017
Posted in Spotted in the news
Mobile Industry Review weighs Pocket vs. Instapaper. Given that Instapaper’s “Download to Kindle .mobi” button has now been broken for the last four days, Pocket is looking more and more appealing to me. Why did Pinterest buy Instapaper, if they’re not going to maintain the service? Perhaps it was just a ‘kill a potential competitor’ purchase?
Update: after ten days (25th Nov) this feature is still broken.
Update: after eleven days (26th Nov) this feature is still broken.
Update: after two weeks (29th Nov), this feature is only intermittently working. Usually broken, sometimes not.
Update: end of July 2018. Instapaper is now effectively dead in the UK and Europe, killed off by its new owners. It can no longer be reached due to ‘data protection’ barriers, even when using multiple different VPNs. The access problem hasn’t been fixed in three months. It will be interesting to see what the EU may have to say about this in future legal moves, in terms of anti-competitive practices from the owners Pinterest.
12 Sunday Nov 2017
Posted in New titles added to JURN
Magic Lantern Gazette (Magic Lantern Society of the United States and Canada)
Hudson River Valley Review (Hudson River Valley Institute)
08 Wednesday Nov 2017
Posted in My general observations
Why would anyone have a Facebook Page rather than a Group? On a Page, Facebook just holds many of your posts to ransom. It limits your audience reach, unless you pay up hard cash to “boost” the post. I don’t run any FB Pages, but I do some admin on one Page, and it’s very annoying when this happens repeatedly on non-commercial posts telling people about things like local art exhibitions…
The “you’ll show it to more people” translates as “we’ll show it to more people”. It’s a protection racket for user-generated content, in effect.
07 Tuesday Nov 2017
Posted in JURN metrics, New titles added to JURN
JURN’s GRAFT repository search tool updated today, with a freshly added additional list of new repository URLs. The total now stands at 4,520 repositories made searchable.
Unlike JURN, GRAFT searches across records and full-text alike. Which means… It’s Big. So it’s not much use just tapping in a few keywords and hoping for the best. It’s ideally used with relatively sophisticated search modifiers and a few seconds of pre-planning.
By the way, if you’re wondering: “why call it GRAFT”? Global Repository Access Full-Text = GRAFT.
06 Monday Nov 2017
Posted in Spotted in the news
Poly from Google. A WebGL-enabled search-engine for (very) low-poly 3D models for your AR/VR games, all seemingly under CC-BY. The downloads I tried were .OBJ, and some also had .FBX versions (which may perhaps indicate rigged skeletons under the surface polys, enabling animation). A Google Search site: search suggests there are around 1,200 models at present.
Looks like Google has cleaned out most of the fan-art from the launch content, but videogame makers are still going to have to check anything that looks especially ‘Disney quality’. Disney is not likely to be happy if you use their Moana boat and islands in your Google Play game…
Alternative: Yobi3D.
06 Monday Nov 2017
Posted in JURN tips and tricks
The wonderful FiveFilters RSS extractor has added a new feature. Their free service extracts RSS feeds of headlines and article links, from those annoying news sites that can’t or won’t offer RSS. You can now PayPal FiveFilters a modest £9 now £42(!) (UK) a year, and get a paste-in key-code that bumps any FiveFilters RSS feed from five to ten “most recently posted” items.
04 Saturday Nov 2017
Posted in Spotted in the news
Everyone’s favourite freeware audio tool Audacity has just gone to version 2.2. The most useful new features appear to be autosave/recover when you’re recording and there’s a crash, and new UI themes. The themes are found at: Edit | Preferences | Interface and they give Audacity a much-needed visual makeover. Such as this one…
Update: Now sold to a Cyprus based company and then on to some Russians who appear to be set on making it effectively ‘spyware’. Avoid 3.0 and later. FOSShub has 2.4 and earlier.