Shortwave Search.

Monday 07 July, 2008

A command-based Firefox search plugin for Shaun Inman’s Shortwave.

After spending a little time getting up to speed in creating Firefox Search Plugins, I’ve crafted a Mozilla search plugin to drive Shaun Inman’s Shortwave, a command based online search tool.

“Shortwave is an extensible quick-search and shortcut system like Firefox’s Smart Keywords or Safari Stand’s Quick Search..”

The bookmarklet is great concept and is highly portable. However developers have spent time successively removing bookmark keyboard commands from each new Firefox version. Shortwave Search integrates functionality back it into the built-in Firefox search function.

Quick, Robin, to the Install.

You can install the default version, which uses the Shortwave hosted default search from here (fixed!):

›› Install Shortwave.

I’ve added the search to the un-official official search engines at Mozilla HQ:

›› Shortwave search addon at mozilla.org.

Alternatively (or if the above links do not automatically add the search) save the following XML file to the appropriate searchplugins folder, as listed here, then restart your browser.

Making it BIGGER.

If you have created your own custom waves.txt and would prefer to use that by defualt, then edit the above linked shortwaveapp.xml and append the following after {searchterms}:

&s=http://yourdomainname.com/path/to/waves.txt

Note — I have included an example (commented) for a self-hosted waves.txt in the manual download verson above, for further reference.

Which button, Jim?

You can prefix any search terms with the desired action, entering help will present the currently defined commands — for example prefixing a search with g will trigger a google search. Conversely prefixing the same search with a would ask the same question to Amazon.

Using the built-in Control + K keyboard combo (Cmd + K if you’re in Mac land) makes that search even faster.

To make Shortwave the default browser search engine, browse to about:config (you may be asked to confirm ok) and set the following Firefox pref to Shortwave:

Finally and in conclusion.

This is a reasonably simple implementation — it should work in Firefox and most other Mozilla based browsers that support the OpenSearch standard.

Special thanks also go to Mr Inman for developing this brilliant tool and for the permission to share the search plugin.

Recovery Position.

Wednesday 02 July, 2008

Apple has built in disk duplication and Time Machine. Microsoft has msbackup and absolutely no built in disk duplication.

In Apple’s world, you can use the original OS disc and Time Machine to fully restore a broken situation. Apple have gone to the extreme of producing a one-touch backup solution. Set that bad-boy up, once, then you’re good to go. In Microsoft’s world, you’re on your own skippy. It’s a dog-eat-cat world world out there.. to hell with ensuring the OS can be restored.

At this point you may well be thinking “what about System Restore? fucking noob”. System Restore is a wonderful drain on disk space (with the ever logical usage level set to 10% by default) — it even works, sometimes. It’s also a haven for net-nasties of nearly every flavour.

And it’s always a case of Russian Roulette as to whether it will heal an install. Or deep-six it. That’s assuming you can actually boot into your system to begin with. Logically one has to assume that’s just not possible if the install actually implodes.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I have backups. Mountains of data and cruft and bloat. And stuff that I might actually need at some point too. But the problem frequently comes down to a central location. And what, exactly, do I actually need to make sure I have? Microsoft have taught us that the average user shouldn’t see large portions of the drive and yet will somehow be armed with a keen knowledge of the right things to store in a safe place.

That’s a plan that will always work, right?

Now, having bled in Microsoft’s world for nearly as long as Windows has existed (at all) I’ve got the art of finding hidden-shit-I-really-need down pat. But the average user? Now you know why an entire Microsoft-centric industry of highly-trained individuals exists, to do just one thing. Recover your stuff.

And yet Microsoft, to this very day, still don’t understand they are responsible for enabling us. We can push the fucking button if needs be.. sure, but after decades of building operating systems, you’d think they would — being the pants wearer in the relationship — have got a fucking grip and built an OS that can be successfully recovered from reliable backups.

No. No they have not. Instead, one must frequently erase a system that had a working install — ensuring the pre-requisite multiple-hour forensics mission was successful — re-install the operating system. Find drivers for core hardware — like network cards — potentially without internet connectivity. Then re-install at least one service pack. Then all the security updates. Then the applications.

Only then, once Microsoft feel that the operating system is somehow magically complete again — and one is as certain as one can be that all the applications are back — can one even consider locating the aforementioned forensic data and then return it from whence it came.

In the same period of time it takes me to get back to a running OS, an Apple Mac user has already gotten their life back on track, as though nothing. ever. happened. Who was the ass-hat at Microsoft that allowed this to continue? Windows 7 is around the corner and, yet again, there is absolutely nothing slated to revolutionise data retention.

Do you know what is most damming about the whole situation? It’s such a common issue in the Microsoft world that it doesn’t sound at all odd that folks will re-install their operating system every few months for what appears to be absolutely no functional reason whatsoever. And that should be an entirely ridiculous notion, not the norm.

I’ve spent 2 days attempting to breathe life into the rapidly-decaying corpse that was once my operating system. In the end I have had to — like a great many frustrated users before me — accept defeat, destroy the operating system volume and start all over again.

And again I am reminded of how inadequate and boneheaded the entire situation really is. Nearly every other popular operating system has this nailed down. It’s (very) early on a Thursday morning, do you know where your data is?

7 Repeats Sins of Past.

Tuesday 27 May, 2008

At first it seemed as though Windows 7 would be a radical departure from the current bloat that is rife within Redmond, with a pint-sized kernel promising minuscule size, modularity and the performance gains inherent in such a design. Sadly, that isn’t to be.

And it all started out so well, with such great promise.

October 2007

“While Taut stressed that MinWin was an internal-only project which “you won’t see us productising, but you could imagine this being used as the basis for products in the future.” He later elaborated that “we’ll be using (MinWin) internally to build all the products based on Windows. It’s not just the OS that’s running on many laptops in this room, it’s also the OS used for media centres, for servers, for small embedded devices.” #

Bloat is out, minimal is in, check out our bespoke new kernel.

December 2007

“We do know that the next generation of Windows will be built around a stripped-back ‘microkernel’ codenamed MinWin. As previously reported, MinWin has been described as “the Windows 7 source-code base”.” #

Minimal is still in, we think, not sure about the bloat factor — we’ll get back to you.

May 2008

“Another question we often get asked is whether Windows 7 is a major release. The answer is “yes” — it’s hard to describe any product that is used by millions of people and worked on by thousands of engineers as anything else. That said, the long-term architectural investments we introduced in Windows Vista and then refined for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 will carry forward in Windows 7.” #

Minimal? We meant “modular”.. and bloat will be available in more versions than you can possibly imagine.

Interestingly (hindsight is a powerful history filter) we’re told that previous comments were actually based on a false premise, which it seems where assumption based on comments that “we’re definitely going to be using this internally” doesn’t actually mean it’ll be used at all because they “don’t have any productization plans for it”.

This, despite reasonably clear comments back in 2007 that MinWin was in vogue and that it would be used practically everywhere. As is often the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Despite the initial excitement Redmond has had for MinWin, as expressed above, it’s back to business as usual from the software giant:

“Contrary to some speculation, Microsoft is not creating a new kernel for Windows 7.” — Chris Flores.

MinWin is, then, an experiment in simplicity. A “what if” and perhaps, a direction that Microsoft would like to head off in, if it did not have to be concerned with the 500 pound gorilla that is the legacy NT architecture strapped to it’s back. Changing the kernel radically means that software vendors may have to start from scratch and that’s a risk that Microsoft are clearly not yet ready to commit to. Vista’s development costs cannot be ignored either and that ensures we’ll have yet more life squeezed from the NT base.

At least Apple new when to stop flogging a dead horse and migrate to a platform with a future, despite the obvious hurdles such a radical shift presented — it was a ballsy move that many pundits suggested could even mark the end of Apple. Their continued growth has virtually silenced any such claims that the end was at hand.

So, despite partial admittance that Vista, XP and 2000 before it are all bloated to a greater or lesser extend and that perhaps a clean break really is due, Windows 7 will ultimately be what Vista might have (some might say should have) been. It is a re-affirmation that unlike Apple, Redmond just isn’t ready to let the old NT based architecture — first launched in 1993 with NT 3.1 — go, at least, not without a fight.

It’s also clear that ‘7’ will be targeted squarely at the Enterprise, where Vista adoption has been far slower than retail — further, with potentially hundreds of different modular options available, the Enterprise market could order an Operating System entirely to spec — further entrenching Microsoft’s position.

And it’s also the market sector that resists change most. They are the people Microsoft want to woo, because Vista just isn’t opening doors — it’s just not business friendly. Every other week there is yet another report of how the corporate space is waiting for the successor to Vista as corporations eye up the eventual extinction of XP support.

7 is Microsoft’s response.

Ultimately then, Microsoft intends to modularise a spruced up, stabilised Vista, re-brand it as whatever ‘Windows 7’ launches as, and sell it piecemeal — the 9 different flavours of Vista currently available are but a first taste of what is to come, namely newer covers for an old and very familiar nag.