Safari on a Mac gets the job done. Maybe because it can rely on Preview.
I can't argue with this. Safari/Mac's PDF support is literally the best out there, and I agree that native Mac PDF support is pretty rockin'. Preview isn't really a bad application in that:
It does what it's supposed to
It does it without a lot of bullshit
These are generally my sole criteria for determining if a program is not complete shit.
The reason that Mac PDF is so great is because Macs are nothing but PDF. The entire gui is essentialy a pdf. That's part of why they are able to have such great font rendering (of compatible fonts) and such excellent icon scaling and such.
I can now assure everyone that Songbird is not usable. I have spent a day messing around with it and it was almost acceptable but a few major cock ups and some complete failures in the "thinking out the user experience" area have placed it squarely in the "do not try" category.
Next I am trying Banshee, maybe I'll do a write-up for the Geekfans blog. My hopes are not high.
Next I am trying Banshee, maybe I'll do a write-up for the Geekfans blog. My hopes are not high.
I used banshee back in the day. It is poop. I mean, it played mp3s, and the interface was similar to iTunes. However, it could not handle more than a few items in the library before becoming unstable and crashing.
Amarok, on the other hand, can handle a huge library better than anything, including iTunes. This is because it uses a real database on the backend, like sqlite or MySQL. It also has every feature you could ever want, competing very closely with iTunes. If you have a non-iPod player, it's probably better to use Amarok than iTunes. However, Amarok has the typical cluttered to all hell KDE user interface. A million widgets and do-dads and checkboxes all over the place. If that's not your style, stay far away
At a point in the future, I may have to pretend I never said this:
Banshee is actually pretty good.. It does the simple features people actually want and does them well. It's currently handling my 2600 song collection without fuss and takes less than two seconds to load it all into a list. It also has an ok podcast client integrated..
iPod isn't showing up but that may be due to what Songbird did to it. Initial setup hammered my CPU for a few minutes but it was still usable.
I use foobar2000. It plays my mp3s just fine, displays album art just fine, has great global hotkeys/keyboard shortcuts, and doesn't use up much memory.
If I had an ipod, I'd probably use iTunes to sync my shit, but then still use foobar to play stuff on the computer.
I have an iPod, but iTunes is shit for my library management (60 GB) and RAM usage. I want to use Amarok for Windows, but that could be shit as well.
Question time! What would you like to see in the interface rather than the iTunes default list? Some kind of tiered structure, where you drill down by genre, etc?
I have an iPod, but iTunes is shit for my library management (60 GB) and RAM usage. I want to use Amarok for Windows, but that could be shit as well.
Question time! What would you like to see in the interface rather than the iTunes default list? Some kind of tiered structure, where you drill down by genre, etc?
View -> Show Browser, optionally ctrl-B.
What iTunes really should implement is a better search of the store. The genius feature is pretty crappy but something in that direction with a social aspect would be interesting. Most of new music I get interested in are recommendations from friends in real life. Surfing the iTunes store do find new stuff sucks whale balls.
Privoxy is an unacceptable solution. Filtering all of my HTTP traffic through a proxy is the wrong way to block ads. It could, and probably will, have other unintended side-effects that may affect things in bad ways.
With privoxy, Chrome attempts to make an HTTP request for an advertisement. What does privoxy do? Return a 404? a forbidden? A 1 pixel blank jpeg? With Adblock plus, the browser doesn't even make the HTTP request. It's the difference between fixing something with screws or fixing it with duct tape. The tape might work mostly the same, but it is so ghetto.
Yeah, it's not as good as AdBlock Plus, but for people who want to use chrome without seeing Ads this is one way. Another way would be to use AdSweep, which is another poor mans ABP.
It just seems that a lot of people would love to use Chrome over Firefox for a number of reasons, but just can't surf without ABP. This is a couple of ways of doing it if they aren't fussy about HOW ads are blocked.
It just seems that a lot of people would love to use Chrome over Firefox for a number of reasons, but just can't surf without ABP. This is a couple of ways of doing it if they aren't fussy about HOW ads are blocked.
That's just it though. Not caring about things like that is a huge problem.
Let's say you took your car to a mechanic. When he gave it back to you, it was working perfectly, as far as you could tell. Later you find out that all he did was tie a sock around a leaky hose. It worked perfectly. It fixed the leaky hose, and your car runs perfectly, as far as you can tell. But wouldn't you be pissed? Unless your car was a jalopy, wouldn't you want a replacement hose instead of a sock?
People seem to be perfectly happy using duct tape and old rags in their computers. This is why so many people complain about their computers getting slow, things crashing, etc. not even counting malware and viruses. My computers always work perfectly, and never slow down. Why? Because I do everything the right way, and I never install piece of shit software.
Comments
- It does what it's supposed to
- It does it without a lot of bullshit
These are generally my sole criteria for determining if a program is not complete shit.Next I am trying Banshee, maybe I'll do a write-up for the Geekfans blog. My hopes are not high.
Amarok, on the other hand, can handle a huge library better than anything, including iTunes. This is because it uses a real database on the backend, like sqlite or MySQL. It also has every feature you could ever want, competing very closely with iTunes. If you have a non-iPod player, it's probably better to use Amarok than iTunes. However, Amarok has the typical cluttered to all hell KDE user interface. A million widgets and do-dads and checkboxes all over the place. If that's not your style, stay far away
Banshee is actually pretty good..
It does the simple features people actually want and does them well.
It's currently handling my 2600 song collection without fuss and takes less than two seconds to load it all into a list.
It also has an ok podcast client integrated..
iPod isn't showing up but that may be due to what Songbird did to it.
Initial setup hammered my CPU for a few minutes but it was still usable.
If I had an ipod, I'd probably use iTunes to sync my shit, but then still use foobar to play stuff on the computer.
What iTunes really should implement is a better search of the store. The genius feature is pretty crappy but something in that direction with a social aspect would be interesting. Most of new music I get interested in are recommendations from friends in real life. Surfing the iTunes store do find new stuff sucks whale balls.
- Download and install Privoxy.
- Click on the Wrench icon in Chrome in the upper right corner.
- Choose options>Under The Hood>Change proxy settings.
- In the Internet Properties dialog's Connections tab, click on the LAN settings button.
- Check off "Proxy settings" and in the address setting add 127.0.0.1 and in the port 8118.
- If you have the option, you can also check off "Bypass proxy for local settings".
- Click "OK," close Chrome and restart it.
You can even get a few nifty bookmarklet's for added functionality over here. GreaseMonkey is available in the latest versions (more info).With privoxy, Chrome attempts to make an HTTP request for an advertisement. What does privoxy do? Return a 404? a forbidden? A 1 pixel blank jpeg? With Adblock plus, the browser doesn't even make the HTTP request. It's the difference between fixing something with screws or fixing it with duct tape. The tape might work mostly the same, but it is so ghetto.
It just seems that a lot of people would love to use Chrome over Firefox for a number of reasons, but just can't surf without ABP. This is a couple of ways of doing it if they aren't fussy about HOW ads are blocked.
Let's say you took your car to a mechanic. When he gave it back to you, it was working perfectly, as far as you could tell. Later you find out that all he did was tie a sock around a leaky hose. It worked perfectly. It fixed the leaky hose, and your car runs perfectly, as far as you can tell. But wouldn't you be pissed? Unless your car was a jalopy, wouldn't you want a replacement hose instead of a sock?
People seem to be perfectly happy using duct tape and old rags in their computers. This is why so many people complain about their computers getting slow, things crashing, etc. not even counting malware and viruses. My computers always work perfectly, and never slow down. Why? Because I do everything the right way, and I never install piece of shit software.
The Chrome people are, in fact, working on an extensions platform, which should be here within a month or two.