K-Meleon 0.8 ROCKS!!

[omega]

One thing here, too, I'm thinking about is the whole population of folks
over about age 50 or 60. Not a great many them find it suitable to go over
800x600. Maybe when something like 28" monitors come into default, that will
change, but for now, no.

Scratch off the last line. Its backass-backwards. When I've moved people to
bigger monitors, it's often been followed by request to make the objects on
their screen bigger, and setting it down to 800x600 has been one of the main
steps.

 

[null]

One thing here, too, I'm thinking about is the whole population of folks
over about age 50 or 60. Not a great many them find it suitable to go over
800x600. Maybe when something like 28" monitors come into default, that will
change, but for now, no.

Agreed. My wife always complained when I even set 800X600 instead of
the 640 pixel width back when we had 14 and 15 inch monitors. Now with
a 21 inch she's ok with 800X600 but nothing greater.

Personally, I don't mind the larger screen resolutions (over 800
pixels wide) but I don't think they should be used on web sites. No
need for it. It just annoys many users I think.


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[omega]

Off on a tangent here - that is the one thing that I don't like
about AbiWord - the menu and toolbars take up so much room there
is barely any space for the document you've got open, I really
hope they introduce customisable toolbars into a release soon...

I just now got through installing Abiword v201 (2003.10.31).

- You can turn off all toolbars
- You can drag toolbars to have them all in the same row

- You cannot make those big Abiword buttons smaller (via the interface)
- You cannot choose what buttons per toolbar

For my tastes, I am very glad to see the ability to move Abiword's toolbars
off-screen entirely.

The bad news about this upgrade. It _still_ does that big dufus thing:
Creates a folder all for itself, on the C drive, and there stores the
file for user preferences.

Settings stored in files outside the program's directory is a major
annoyance to me....

I did finally find how to have Kmeleon store my preferences files within
its own directory, together with its cache in the directory that I use
for all my installed browsers who support that path choice.

On the other hand, with Mozilla, there are a couple of .dat files that are
stuck hard in the external "common files\appdata" directory, absoulutely
refusing to budge. Same with Phoenix. Also for the Mozilla Control, there's
a whole bunch of stuff hanging out there, with no way I can see to relocate
it.

The Mozilla Leaky Bowel Syndrome. Kmeleon, he seems to be the only one in
the family that doesn't have it. Being the civilized gent that he is.

 

[Tiger]

Back onto Firebird, it is annoying that there is no way to get to
the missing areas of the screen in Firebirds setup screen.

Yes, I've been annoyed by this as well...in the past. I currently use
FB v.0.6 with the Orbit 4 for Mozilla FB 0.6 theme and have not had the
same problem.

 

[BoB]

SNIP

Actually one thing that does look unpolished about Firebird, is
the options page - it is too big to fit on my screen - Sure I
only have my resolution set to 800 x 600 but it should be able
to handle that. You can resise the window, but you simply lose
what is offscreen.

I'm using 800 x 600 and the options page works normally, no
matter what size I drag it to. Are you resizing by dragging
a corner? Although that screen does not have the usual drag
indicator in the lower right corner, for me it drags from that
point just like any other resizeable screen.

My option screen opens covering about 2/3 of the height and
width, so you appear to have a problem there somewhere. When
I resize it, it does not 'remember' the new size, but I normally
use it in the original size anyway.

OgO

BoB
For the duration of Swen, my address is inoperative.

 

[OgO]

In alt.comp.freeware, on 09 Nov 2003, omega announced:

Scratch off the last line. Its backass-backwards. When I've
moved people to bigger monitors, it's often been followed
by request to make the objects on their screen bigger, and
setting it down to 800x600 has been one of the main steps.

Actually that's the other thing - I'm running on a 21" monitor

Regards

OgO

 

[OgO]

In alt.comp.freeware, on 10 Nov 2003, omega announced:

I just now got through installing Abiword v201
(2003.10.31).

- You can turn off all toolbars
- You can drag toolbars to have them all in the same row

- You cannot make those big Abiword buttons smaller (via
the interface) - You cannot choose what buttons per
toolbar

For my tastes, I am very glad to see the ability to move
Abiword's toolbars off-screen entirely.

True, I didn't mention that, although personally I like to have
*some* of the buttons from each toolbar onscreen, but not others
- If I could customise it, I would have one row of buttons with
the ones I want, as it is I need three rows so I can have the
ones I want, which is annoying.

Settings stored in files outside the program's directory is
a major annoyance to me....

It is annoying, but no more than that. It's a pet hate of mine
too, but at least doesn't affect anything much for the most part.

One problem I do have with Abiword, and it might be that I
installed over an old version, is with the dictionaries... The
old version just had the default US dictionary. When I
downloaded the new version I noticed the UK dictionary and
installed that instead. Now when I load a document I wrote in
the old version, Abiword complains that it can't find the other
dictionaries (When I installed it I noticed the Australian choice
and selected that before realising that I hadn't downloaded a
dictionary to match that). It also takes forever to do anything
on the document and I notice that is becuase in the bottom right
hand corner of the status bar, it is continually flicking between
en-US, en-AU and en-UK. I tried setting the language in the
options to en-UK, but it whinges that it can't find the other two
dictionaries. It seems to be better if I turn of the 'check
spelling as you type' option, although I like having that on.
Should I completely uninstall and install from scratch?

Regards

OgO

 

[Hubert Figuiere]

Settings stored in files outside the program's directory is a major
annoyance to me....

For AbiWord, this is a feature. AbiWord is designed to properly run on
system where you can have several users. That means that the
application should not store anything in its own directory but rather
in the users directory. Note: this could have been worse as we could
have stored everything into the Registry Database....


Hub

 

[omega]

For AbiWord, this is a feature. AbiWord is designed to properly run on
system where you can have several users.

Other programs contain themselves, and still support multiple users.
Profiles subdirectories. Shortcuts according to different inis. Single
ini where the user determines on startup which user. There's a great
wealth of successes.

Or even when not fully self-contained, and using the typical HKEY\users,
that would be a thousand times preferred to me than this hard-coding of
a folder on the C drive littering that AbiWord does.

That means that the
application should not store anything in its own directory but rather
in the users directory. Note: this could have been worse as we could
have stored everything into the Registry Database....

I regularly switch around which C partition I boot from. My programs,
my user settings, as well as even an extra system path for a few things
such as shared Delphi libraries, those are all on my shared D.

I admire most a self-contained program. But for the two standard external
settings storage spots, I have adapted to automating working with that.
For switch around Cs, or running from a fresh C, everything works fine.
When I want user prefs from one to another, not a problem. I am used to
running an import & export on settings stored in HKEY\Users. I can deal
with the inis that stored on C, en masse; they all have the same path and
extension. While I don't like inis stored in the windir of C, at least
they can be deal with as a group.

I have spent some time wielding my C partitions into shape, since Windows
by default dumps a huge amount of stuff there. I've moved everything
that's movable, keeping only the windir, system dir, plus those remaining
handful of directories that Windows won't negotiate moving.

Yet then there is Abiword. It has a folder there. All for itself. Which
cannot be moved. It is not a feature. It is an annoyance.

The only good thing about this is Abiword is nearly the only program that
exhibits this self-centered behavior. If it were typical for each program
to create its own hard-coded settings folder off of C\windir\*, that would
amount to a disastrous mess, and something I'd dread to even picture.

 

[omega]

For AbiWord, this is a feature. AbiWord is designed to properly run on
system where you can have several users. That means that the
application should not store anything in its own directory but rather
in the users directory. Note: this could have been worse as we could
have stored everything into the Registry Database....

I am looking at the "we," in your paragraph. Recognize my message was
concerning one specific aspect of Abiword's design, a matter about
which I have definite feelings, expressed without inhibition. I ask
that you try to forgive that I don't take time out here to also go over
those features which I do like about Abiword, or other appreciations.

 

[Hubert Figuiere]

I am looking at the "we," in your paragraph.

We = the AbiWord development team. I'm the maintainer of the 2.0.x
branch (even though I don't work on the Windows part)

Just to be clear.

Off course any opinion expressed here is only my own. I'm not speaking
for others.

Hub

 

[omega]

We = the AbiWord development team. I'm the maintainer of the 2.0.x
branch (even though I don't work on the Windows part)

Ah, not the Windows part. I read a brief discussion on why Mozilla keeps
some external files (over off in "common files\application data\*"). In
answer to the complaints, there was some reply about its essential design
being Linux-oriented, where the Linux system has settings files stored in
location XX (I'd have to look it up). Not being a Linux user, I didn't
really grasp the explanation. Either case, I would wish that such cross-
platform programs consider those of us who use Windows, independently, and
find a way to adapt their programs to fit the way we map our directories.