Paul Holbrook's Radio Weblog : Worth $40 a year? You decide ..
Updated: 4/8/2003; 8:55:50 PM.

 

Subscribe to "Paul Holbrook's Radio Weblog" in Radio UserLand.

Click to see the XML version of this web page.

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.

 
 

Monday, June 10, 2002
Mozilla textboxes are slooooow ...

I've been playing around with the ActiveWords application recently, and just wrote up my impressions.  I came across something I initially thought was a bug in ActiveWords, but I've since concluded is a big performance problem in both Mozilla 1.0 and Netscape 6.2: textboxes are very slow.

This came up when I was testing the ActiveWords text substiution feature.  ActiveWords lets you define any word to stand in for any amount of text.  For example, I've set the word 'homeaddress' to stand in for my basic contact info.  That works out to be about 5 short lines of text, about 120 characters.  On the PII/266 laptop I've been using, if I type 'homeaddress' into a text box in Mozilla or NS6.2, it takes about 8 seconds to backspace over the word 'homeaddress' and type in the 5 lines of text.  (The experience was very reminsiscent of using a teletype; ActiveWords was doing about 15 characters per second.)

My first reaction was that something was screwy between Mozilla and ActiveWords, but then I turned off ActiveWords and tried typing very rapidly into a text box, I discovered that Mozilla just can't keep up. 

The problem is probably masked on most modern systems, but a PII/266 isn't that bad at most things.  (At least that's true after I got 128mb into it.  I first got this laptop with 64mb.  Win2k is very unhappy running in only 64mb.)

Follow-up:Nope, it's still slow on somewhat newer systems. My PIII/500 also had a notable lag typing into a Mozilla textbox.


1:26:28 PM      comment []
Playing with ActiveWords - first impressions

My Radio news aggregator recently spit out a mention of the ActiveWords tool.  ActiveWords is a tool that watches as you type; when you type something it recognizes, it does something: launches a program, fires up a web page, substitutes some text. I was intrigued enough to follow up and install it; I've been playing with it since Friday.  The best tips and descriptions about ActiveWords come from the Ernie the Attorney blog.  A few first impressions:

  • If you come from a 'type and remember' background, ActiveWords feels like coming home.  ActiveWords can be recognized anyplace, not just when you're typing into a text field. 
  • One of Ernie's first tips was to set ActiveWords to trigger when you hit a double-space.  This is a great idea; it turbo-charges how the program feels.
  • Using ActiveWords to launch a program or open a folder is particularly useful.  So is launching to a particular URL.  (I've set 'baseball' to take me to the current baseball scores page at CNNSI.com.)
  • ActiveWords normally runs with a "MonitorBar" at the top of the screen.  The 'Ernie' article suggests moving this to the bottom.  I turned it off; I found it distracting, in part because the MonitorBar echos every word you type, including passwords. I don't like that.
  • ActiveWords is a memory pig.  I've got an older laptop with 128mb of memory.  Right now ActiveWords has five processes running, using a total of 28mb of memory (!) 128mb is the practical minimum you want on a Win2k system, so 28mb is a lot.
  • ActiveWords shows up a performance issue in Mozilla and Netscape 6.2  (More about that in another post.)

Despite some of the downsides, so far I think it's a useful tool.  I've got another 57 days on my trial, so I should have a better idea in a month or so whether ActiveWords is worth the $30/year and the system resources.


1:10:17 PM      comment []
Breadcrumbs of cyberspace
At the suggestion of an interesting article from the Shifted Librarian, I've added a couple of META tags to my home page to note the location of my blog in physical space (or at least where my computer is).  The post that Jenny was was taken from the Syndic8 service; I don't know of any generalized service that will show you who's blogging near you.  But a lot of this effort is about leaving breadcrumbs and see who might follow them in the future.
12:10:27 PM      comment []

© Copyright 2003 Paul Holbrook.



Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website.

 


June 2002
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30            
May   Jul


 4/7/03
 1/29/03
 1/26/03
 1/23/03
 1/23/03
 1/23/03
 1/21/03
 1/21/03
 1/16/03
 1/16/03
 1/15/03
 1/14/03
 1/14/03
 1/14/03
 1/5/03
 1/5/03
 1/3/03
 1/2/03
 1/2/03
 1/1/03
 12/30/02
 12/28/02
 12/26/02
 12/24/02
 10/8/02
 10/8/02

Home Page