To fix this you have to get adventurous and make edits to the registry. I found a solution to the slow process that is normally a standard part of finding and editing these entries. The program is called Registry Replace by Absolute Impulse. It allows you to do search and destroy string replacements similar to those you can perform with a standard text editor.

trueSpace may be daunting for those who are not familiar with it’s user interface, but once you get used to how tools and tool bars are arranged, it becomes much more intuitive than you may originally think. Since I haven’t used a new version since trueSpace 5.5, looks like I’ve got some catching up to do. They’ve added tabbed interfaces for views so that you can switch between workspaces and multi-angled model views and a panel with library browser and settings tabs. One of the reasons I’ve stuck with version 5.5 for so long has been that it can import stl, igs and other industrial modeling files. I use these at work to render products that are in concept phases of production or that we can’t get samples of in time for photos we may need. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be supported under the new version. Guess I’ll have to keep digging to see if I can find out anything more about this.

Step 1
Navigate to the Prism installation directory, in Windows this is:
C:\Program Files\Prism\

Open up the extensions folder, then the DOM inspector extension folder:
C:\Program Files\Prism\extensions\inspector@mozilla.org

Now open the “install.rdf” file and find this section of code which can be used (usually) as-is in most extensions pasted in the right place (just use the extension’s preconfigured targets as your guide on where to place it):

<em:targetApplication>
<!– Prism –>
<Description>
<em:id>prism@developer.mozilla.org</em:id>
<em:minVersion>0.4</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>1.0.0.*</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>

Step 2
Open up your extension’s xpi file using 7zip or your favorite archiving tool and extract the install.rdf file.

Open that install.rdf file with a text editor (other than notepad which doesn’t understand the line breaks used by other editors) and find the area where it lists the installation targets and insert your copied text into that or modify one of the install targets with the appropriate information from the DOM inspector extension install.rdf file.

Step 3
Install the extension. This will get tricky due to the way Prism’s developers have modified the profiles and what not. Well, I say that, but it really only gets that tricky if you’re manually installing the extension. Prism developers have seen fit to include the Addons menu item from the Prism menu in the lower right of Prism’s window to help things go more smoothly.

One of the ways to use this new install feature for an extension is globally, which means all webapps will be able to use the extension. This is the least preferred manner due to the fact that you won’t want all extensions available for all webapps in most cases. An example would be having the Better Gmail extension available for Bloglines – don’t think that’s real necessary, do you? So plan accordingly.

Using the second, and more preferred method, you just open your webapp. Open your webapp’s Addons panel, then install by either dragging and dropping the extension onto it, or by clicking the “Install…” button and navigating to the extension and selecting it for installation.

Conclusion
That should be about it. My next Prism post will be about how to make one of two stand alone Firefox/Prism exention webapps – POW local server or Scribefire standalone webapp. Stay tuned, we get to play with chrome!!

Links:

Prism

I had read this morning that there was a new Ubuntu release and, as I was having problems with Debian and was about to reinstall Ubuntu 7.10, so I decided to give it a try. Well, it’s a Beta, but I’m not going to hold that against it! Compiz is installted by default (but just subtley enough you don’t know it till you’re seeing the tell tail fades and such), Firefox 3 Beta 4, wireless support includes WPA (which it has had built-in since the 7.10 release), improved dual screen support for laptops, hell – I didn’t even have to install 915resolution to setup my Intel display to 1440×900! I still had to install Amorok and vlc manually, but that’s cake compared to recompiling a kernel.

1. So far so good, performance is a bit sluggish (especially with the extra visual enhancements enabled), but I’m thoroughly tickled pink by the feature set and compatibility! THANK YOU UBUNTU COMMUNITY!!

Link:

Ubuntu Test Releases

Maybe too incredible, many concerns over the design (especially the hull which is said to be unstable during high seas) have made this class of Naval vessel controversial to say the least. With the USS Iowa (BB-61) being stricken from the Naval Register in 2006, no more battle ships exist in the US fleet, which means there are no ships with the capacity for truly frightening naval surface fire support. That’s one of the roles the Zumwalt class should address, but even that is role is in doubt.

Still, have a look at the specs, pretty impressive…

Images courtesy of Wikipedia, the US Navy and the Public Domain (link, link)

Go to:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell\

Add a new key called “cmd” and set it’s default value at”Command Prompt Here”. Then to “cmd” add a new key called “command” and change it’s default value to “cmd.exe /k pushd %L”. Do the same for:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell

In other words add the “cmd” and set it’s default value, then add “command” to that and set it’s default value as above. Or you can download this reg file (CAUTION! Event though I use this myself, editing your registry may be really bad. Like no more using your computer bad. DON’T ADD THIS UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING!!):

MyCommandPromptHere reg file

In order to remove these entries, you can manually delete these keys, or you can right a reg file that looks like this:

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell\cmd]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell\cmd]

Neat eh? To remove registry keys, just create a plain text file, paste in the registry entry you want to remove, add a minus sign in front of the key and inside the bracket, and save the plan text file with a “.reg” extension. Run the file and presto, no more entry. Almost scary how easy that is…

I’ve included the above code already in the 7z file with the MyCommandPromptHere.reg as well, and you can find out a little more about modifying registry entries here. Enjoy!!

Project Background

Anyway, the back story for this project is; about 3 years ago, my daughter (around 6 at the time) accidentally spilled a cup of coffee (no she wasn’t drinking it!) onto a brand new Seagate 5GB USB 2.0 Pocket Hard Drive. I had set a cup of coffee down next to the new drive on the coffee table, and needed to go back into the kitchen for something. I specifically warned her to be careful not to bump the coffee or the table because I didn’t want my coffee spilled. Well, that must have triggered some inborn child-instinct that says “be extremely reckless when told to be careful.”

At any rate, the coffee got spilled and I got a chance to get a look at the internals of my new drive while I was drying it out. While doing this, I got to thinking about how small the microdrive was and how it could fit into a lot of different casings. Of course, I was also thinking of how to better protect it from liquid damage and how I had so many – now less useful, smaller capacity – thumb drives laying around.

I thought that if I could get a small enough USB hub that I could fit that inside a piece of PVC or other sealable container and plug the thumb drives into it. With my new drive back together, dry and ready to go, that’s just what I did! After all I had to figure something out to do with all those old thumb drives!

Materials and Build

I got a USB hub and some other pieces and started to work. Of course, all these parts took quite some time to gather. I managed to get a few left over parts from work (sealable caps from network connectors) and ordered a USB-B jack for plugging in a USB-A to USB-B cable into. I could have easily gotten a smaller, mini-USB connector and cable assembly, but my soldering skills are not that hot.

I ordered a 4-port USB hub (to give you some idea of how old this project is, I bought the hub on ThinkGeek and they no longer carry the hub I bought) which had two stacked 2-port USB-A jacks. I also needed some plastic resin to seal the USB jack. I used a 2″ PVC compression coupling as a housing and a couple of 2″ long PVC pipe sections as end pieces.

I removed most of the housing and USB cable from the hub and replaced the USB plug on the cable with the jack I’d gotten. Then I sealed the jack inside the PVC pipe with the plastic resin. Before I did that however, I needed to close the back of the USB jack with a glue stick gun to keep the resin from filling the jack and making it useless. I still ended up getting some inside, but it wasn’t much as I can still insert the USB plug into it.

In order to get all the thumb drives into the tube, I had to strip the housings from them. I used a thin piece of plastic to separate the drives and keep them from performing their own circuit bending operations on any of my data. I had to scrape some tracks into the inside of the compression fitting in order to get the hub’s circuit board in all the way. The other end of the tube was going to hold another USB-A jack, to be used as a kind of feed through USB port, but as it turns out, I didn’t fill the back of that connector correctly and the resin filled the jack. In any event I don’t think the cable connecting the 4th USB port to that jack would have allowed the hub to fit in far enough to fit along with all the drives. So it’s probably better that I just used it for a 4th thumb drive anyway.

The Cable

I also used a piece of conduit as a cable keeper, so that my USB cable doesn’t get tangled with other cables when in transit. I use this trick, albeit with a shorter section of larger diameter conduit, with my laptop cords too. I slit the conduit or take a ¼” strip longitudinally out of the center (depending on rigidity), neatly bundle the cables (folding in half 3 – 4 times), insert into conduit, and viola – instant portable cable minder.

Software

Well all this is well and good, but there’s a problem I didn’t foresee. That would be what a pain in the but this is to unmount all these devices on Windows. With a GNU/Linux system, you simply right a script to unmount the drives all at once (and presumably put that on one of the USB drives), Windows on the other hand, sucks for this kind of functionality. But there is a half-assed solution to the half-assed situation I’ve put myself in. The command:

mountvol X: /d

Where “X” = your thumb drives’ drive letter, works to safely unmount the volume under Windows (thanks and attribution to Joel on Software), but doesn’t solve disconnecting Windows from the device (you still have the little “Safely Remove Hardware” icon on your system tray). So you need the DevCon tool available here. Now you can use the mountvol command and:

devcon remove @usb\*

Conclusion

Hot, no? Actually yes, this set up does get pretty hot after a while. I guess that’s a drawback of having this in a sealed container. Another drawback, I’ll never be able to take this on an airplane… :(

If you’re looking for something to do with all those old USB drives that are getting exponentially smaller with every passing day, then this might be a solution for what to do with your old drives. But I think the next time I do this, I’ll use the left over clear resin and do something a little more slick, like Russell Jones, and encase the whole shebang in a clear plastic block.

• a file archiver – my favorite is 7-zip, but you can just as easily use any archiving program that is compatible with zip files
• a text plain text editor

For more advanced webapps, a more advanced context highlighting text editor can be helpful for coding custom style sheets or adding javascript customizations. And don’t forget icons! I use a combination of Paint.Net and @icon sushi (which covers everything but MacOS, which is because I can’t seem to find software for Linux or Windows to accommodate icons for it – recommendations anyone?).

The No “.webapp” WebApp

There are several ways to open webpages with Prism or WebRunner. The first and easiest is to install Prism, then create a link to it on your desktop. Then change that link adding the option “-uri” and the url of the page you want to open. Here are two examples:

Windows:
c:\your\path\to_prism\prism.exe -uri http://web_url_of_site c:\your\path\to_prism\prism.exe -uri c:\location\of\local_file

GNU/Linux:
/your/path/to_prism/prism -uri http://web_url_of_site /your/path/to_prism/prism -uri /location/of/local_file

This method does not require a webapp file, it just launches the website or file you specify. This means, no icons are required, but you also don’t get to add any custom themes or js files. This would be a really good method to use with applications like Wiki on a Stick (woas).

WebApp Bundles

The second method is also pretty straight forward (until you make it complex by adding more functionality). For the most basic webApp bundle you only need to create one file; the webapp.ini. Here’s the content from the example webapp.ini on the Prism wiki:

[Parameters] id=unique-app-id@unique-author-id.whatever uri=http://[the-url-what-you-want-to-connect-to]/ status=yes location=no sidebar=no navigation=no

The “id” parameter is required to be unique. I’ve been using my website’s url (as most others have done as well) preceded by the name of the site, but any unique identifier will work. The “uri” parameter is required and will accept both url of the target website as well as local file paths. Everything after that appears to be optional and the values show are the defaults. These remaining parameters are options to tell Prism whether or not to show certain GUI elements (“status” = status bar;”location” = address bar;”sidebar” = sidebar;”navigation” = well, quite frankly, I have no idea – maybe navigation buttons that haven’t been implemented yet?).

The next step after saving your changes to this document, is to use your archiving program to zip up this file creating, as an example, “your_webapp.zip”. Replace the “zip” extension with “webapp” and you’re ready to roll! Now either double click the webapp file or you can launch the webapp from the command line thusly:

Windows:
c:\your\path\to_prism\prism.exe -webapp your_webapp_bundle

GNU/Linux:
/your/path/to_prism/prism -webapp your_webapp_bundle

For more advanced webapps you can add icons, scripting and style sheet support (see the Prism page for more details).

Happy coding!

Prism
Prism/WebApp Bundle
Prism/Scripting
Prism/Styling
7-Zip
Paint.Net
@icon sushi
Wiki on a Stick

Update!!
Had to add a comment to the replacement code below in order for this to work.

080404 Update!!
Yet again, code changes for new versions and what not.

Looks like Mozilla has added WebRunner to it’s Mozilla Labs line up and changed the name to Prism. From what they say, it’s going to be a cross between an open version of Adobe Air and Microsoft Silverlight and a localized lancher for web applications. Which, by my definition, is what utility computing is supposed to be like. Prism is currently for Windows only (they’d better hurry up with a Linux version), but it runs the same webapp files and also has added style sheet support – among other things – so you can style your webapps your way.

Anyway, I’ve been kind of discouraged by the lack of extension availability for WebRunner (and XulRunner for that matter). You’ll find in another of my posts a webapp for accessing the WebRunner extensions panel. Using this webapp, you can add new extensions (by installing or dropping them onto the panel), but at this point, adding extensions will fail because the version checking mechanism for WebRunner/XulRunner. To get around that, you need to change the extension’s compatibility information. These instructions will not work for every extension and your results will vary…

I recommend you find a smaller extension, download it and make the following changes:

1. Open the extension package (you can open it with 7-zip, ALzip, Winzip or any other archive program that works with zip files.
2. Extract and open the install.rdf with a text editor, I’d recommend Wordpad if your using windows.
3. Locate and change the following or something that looks like the following (this will vary by extension, but look for the Firefox description section – and you may find that you have to remove all references to all other Mozilla programs that the extension is compatible with for this to work):

<!--Firefox-->
<RDF:Description RDF:about="rdf:#$djS7s"
  em:id="{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}"
  em:minVersion="0.8"
  em:maxVersion="2.0.0.*" />

To:

<!--Webrunner-->
  <RDF:Description RDF:about="webrunner"
    em:id="webrunner@webapps.org"
    em:minVersion="0.1"
    em:maxVersion="10.0" />

or (again it will depend on which way the developer implemented the Firefox description):

<em:targetApplication>
  <!--Webrunner-->
  <Description>
    <em:id>webrunner@webapps.org</em:id>
    <em:minVersion>0.1</em:minVersion>
    <em:maxVersion>10.0</em:maxVersion>
  </Description>
</em:targetApplication>

If you’re using Prism, change to the following:

<RDF:Description RDF:about="prism"
  em:id="prism@developer.mozilla.org"
  em:minVersion="0.1"
  em:maxVersion="10.0" />

or

<em:targetApplication>
  <Description>
    <!--Prism-->
    <em:id>prism@developer.mozilla.org</em:id>
    <em:minVersion>0.1</em:minVersion>
    <em:maxVersion>10.0</em:maxVersion>
  </Description>
</em:targetApplication>

4. Then save the rdf file and add it back into the xpi archive.
5. You should be ready to install the extension using the Extensions.webapp

I found this parts of this bit of magic on Alex Sirota’s website along with the tip to check in the applicaiton.ini file for any XulRunner application’s ID. If you run into errors, then something is probably malformed in the rdf file so check that first. I won’t be much help in trouble shooting, and I’m not about to offer support for other peoples extensions on an unsupported application, but if you have problems, post a comment and I’ll give editing the rdf a go myself.

I’m no real programmer, I mean, I know enough to be dangerous. I’ve got a good handle on html, css, javascript, asp etc. In the past I’ve played with the source code for Portable Firefox from PortableApps.com trying to get XulRunner portable. I didn’t have much luck. Ran into too many code errors to resolve myself. What I needed was a way to make the program portable without programming anything new.

X-Launcher

What I was able to find was X-Launcher. X-Launcher is a nifty little app that allows you to launch just about any application portably – that is, without leaving much of a trace on the host computer. I’ve been able to use X-Launcher without too much effort (hey, just my style :).

You can get X-Launcher from winPenPack.com (downloads section) along with a host of other open source software all made portable using X-Launcher or other means. WinPenPack is an Italian website, but you can get English on most pages by choosing it from the language menu. Nice site and a lot of good software!
X-Launcher itself is an easy to use program, you simply configure the X-launcher.ini file for it and you’re ready to use it. One of the things that really sets X-Launcher apart is the fact that you can have multiple launchers in the same directory. Just rename the X-launcher.ini file and the X-launcher.exe to any name you wish (just as long as both have the same file name) and you can put a second set of exe/ini files with a different set of names in the same directory together. Why would you do this? Well, for one, this allows you to run multiple versions of a program with wildly different configurations. Another thing this buys you (and more relevant to this discussion) is the ability to launch different WebRunner apps portably.

Normally if you launch a program you can pass it options through command line switches. If you’re using another program to launch the application you want to run, then you don’t usually have the option of passing switches to the second program from the first. With X-Launcher, these switches are built into the configuration file.

The default configuration file that comes with X-Launcher is loaded with information on feature settings, but it’s also a bit overwhelming. Fortunately, if you run X-launcher.exe with no like-named ini file, it will create it’s own, scaled down X-launcher.ini. This configuration file is a heck of a lot easier to read!

There are several application variables that can be defined, the most important one being the application name. This will eventually point to folder names and the application itself. Here’s the contents of a X-launcher.ini for a webapp with included explanations for most settings:

wikipedia.ini

[Setup]
AppName=WebRunner
;Application name, this will also be used below as the
;name of some of the folders.

[FileToRun]
PathToExe=$AppName$\$AppName$.exe
;This is the name and path to the file you're trying to
;launch.
WorkingDir=%HOME%
;This is the name of the directory which will be used
;by the program as it's working directory.
Parameters= -webapp wikipedia@luckydisasters.com
;List of any parameters to pass to the application, in
;this case we're telling WebRunner to load the webapp
;"wikipedia@luckydisasters.com"

[Environment]
HOME=$HOME$\$AppName$
;This folder will be used to save any user specific file
;information - like the Mozilla profiles folder.
USERPROFILE=%HOME%
;As you can see I've used the same folders for all the
;programs files, this will make it a lot easier later if we
;want to see what the program is doing or make
;changes.
PATH=%PATH%;@ScriptDir@
;This adds the @ScriptDir@ variable to the system
;path used by the application

[Functions]
DirCreate=%HOME%
;if this folder doesn't exist when you start the
;program, it will created. You can place other
;functions here as well if you need them.

[Options]
;These settings are other X-launcher application
;options, such as showing a splash screen and
;what not, feel free to make changes, but these
;should be fine as is
DeleteTemp=true
MultipleIstances=true
FixAppData=false
RunWait=true
ShowSplash=true
WriteLog=false

[SplashScreen]
;This section allows you to add a custom splash
;screen and sets the length of time the splash
;screen is shown. Leave the Image and Title blank
;for X-launcher defaults. The image path (as well
;as all paths in this ini file) are relative to the
;current location of the ini/exe files for the
;X-launcher app.
Image=
Title=
TimeOut=1500

Download the Wikipiedia X-launcher files here:
Wikipedia X-launcher

7-Steps

What I’ve done to use the above webapp portably is as follows (assume that the USB drive/portable device is drive letter “X”):

1. Make sure you have WebRunner and the Wikipedia.webapp installed.
2. Create a folder under “X:\PortableApps\” (or where ever you store your portable applicaitons) called “X-WebRunner” (“X:\PortableApps\X-WebRunner”)
3. Copy the “C:\Program Files\WebRunner” folder to “X:\PortableApps\X-WebRunner” (“X:\PortableApps\X-WebRunner\WebRunner”)
4. Copy the wikipedia.exe and the wikipedia.ini files into “X:\PortableApps\X-Webrunner”
5. Run the Webrunner.exe, this will create the user profile you’ll need to copy your webapp into
6. Now copy your webapp folder from your profile folder on your hard drive usually located about here:
   “C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Application Data\WebRunner\Profiles\RANDOMSTRING.default\webapps\WEBAPPNAME”
   to your new profile folder on your portable device:
   “X:\PortableApps\Application Data\WebRunner\Profiles\NEWRANDOMSTRING.default\webapps\WEBAPPNAME“
7. Last step, start the wikipedia.exe file again, this will start the webapp that you’ve copied.

My “X-WebRunner” install:

Now you can start moving your webapps over and making X-launcher.exe and X-launcher.ini files for each one, the only line in the ini file that needs to be changed for each is “Parameters“, which gets changed to the webapp folder name for each webapp. So basically all you have to do is copy the original wikipedia.ini file, rename it and change the Parameters setting.

Next I’ll have to configure Plain Old Webserver USB (POWUSB) to run with X-launcher. Then I can carry around a nice little XUL Webserver!

Links:

winPenPack
X-Launcher download
My Wikipedia X-launcher configuration
My Wikipedia.webapp Bundle

While I’m at it, here are a couple of other webapps I’ve cobbled together, I’ll appologize in advance for the low quality of the icons on all of these…
Google Page Creator Webapp
Google Webmaster Tools Webapp

At this point I should probably include a warning, so – keep in mind while running these webapps with WebRunner, that WebRunner itself is still a in pre-release/beta stages. Which means that the webapps found on this site, while working to view sites and what not, are not intended to be a replacement for your standard browser. The websites you’ll be viewing were not designed to be used with WebRunner, and therefore not all features on these sites may be compatible with it. I claim no responsibility for any malfunctions related to WebRunner. I’m providing files that allow you to access some websites, nothing more. Feel free to use the webapp files found on this site, but keep in mind you’re using them at your own risk – and without warranty!

About:Config.Webapp

This webapp is for displaying the chrome about:config URI. This makes it a hell of a lot easier to modify the configuration (especially when adding a proxy for those of us trying to use this stuck behind a proxy).

Use this webapp to edit important settings such as:

• Cookies Rules
• Proxy Settings
• Pipelining Rules
• Password Rules

For more information on directly editing the about:config click here. For more on individual settings (for instance, figuring out which settings to add back in – like the afore mentioned proxy settings), click here.

Extensions.Webapp

This is the second webapp which gives access to WebRunner’s extensions panel. The thing about either one of these webapps (and WebRunner in general) is that you access each one separately – that is to say each gets launched as it’s own application – but any changes in either one affects any other webapp you might be running with WebRunner.

Now the only thing we need is for extensions to be modified and made available for WebRunner (like Lifehacker’s Better Gmail). There are ways to hack extensions to allow them to run in WebRunner, but that’s for another post.

Links:

Webapps:

• About:Config.Webapp
• Extensions.Webapp

Offsite References:

• Firefox Help: Editing Configuration Files
• mozillaZine: About:config entries

Other:

• Lifehacker
• Better Gmail

Disclaimer

Keep in mind while running these webapps with WebRunner, that WebRunner itself is still a in pre-release/beta stages. Which means that the webapps found on this site, while working to view sites and what not, are not intended to be a replacement for your standard browser. The websites you’ll be viewing were not designed to be used with WebRunner, and therefore not all features on these sites may be compatible with it. I claim no responsibility for any malfunctions related to WebRunner. I’m providing files that allow you to access some websites, nothing more. Feel free to use the webapp files found on this site, but keep in mind you’re using them at your own risk – and without warranty!

copy access\*.* access.log

This copies all the files in the access directory into the file “access.log”.

link

Quick First Impressions:

System requirements are quite hefty (compared to Firefox):

For instance, while it automatically imports your Favorites and Bookmarks, you can’t automatically get to them without going into a kind of bookmarks manager (again, comparing to Firefox) page, clicking on a link here will take you to a new website, but I have to right click and choose “Open in new tab” to get a fresh tab view of the link as opposed to using the middle click or scroll wheel click open a new tab. Just small stuff like that really…

I like the RSS icon (see screen shot) in the address bar and the ability to view the feed directly in the browser.

It automatically loaded the network settings (maybe pulled in from IE? or is using windows settings?), which is useful if you’re on a corporate network or behind a proxy service.

Quick Conclusions

All in all, just another browser for Windows. It doesn’t cover any new ground, and I really doubt it’ll set the web on fire any time soon, but nice to play with something new every once in a while…

Plain Old Webserver (POW)

POW is either a really cool Firefox extension that turns Firefox into a web server or a lightweight xulRunner web server. Either way it serves up web pages using server side javascripting. Sweat! I still have to play with this a bit to get a feel for it because I’ve never used javascript on a server before, but considering this is portable to any system that xulRunner or Firefox will run on, it makes it a very versatile package right out of the box. While the fact that it doesn’t have a php module means I can’t do local development of my website on it (yet), POW does offer sqllite as a database. You can also download some extras for it like a Firefox database management or directory file listing.

You can also use the xulRunner “portably”. I quoted that because, while the POWUSB package includes both Windows and MAC xulrunner versions (no Linux yet either!), it isn’t exactly portable in the way that say, FirefoxPoratable is. In other words, if you run the included xulRunner on Windows, it will still leave files on your local file system. To make this truly portable, you’d need to refrain from leaving footprints on the system you’re using, therefore this really doesn’t qualify as a portableapp quite yet…

What can I say, other than – freakin’ sweat! Contained in just 14 files is a (partial) javascript based blog, file management (will kind of, read on), and a *nix-like terminal (again, kind of). The reason for all those caveats is this; pretty much the fact that is is a work in progress AND, the fact that nearly the entirety of the system is contained in the one file: miniweb.html. Any new blog posts, files (which can be text or I think some form of executable – through some javascript magic), etc. are all stored in the miniweb.html file.

As I mentioned, it’s a work in progress, so nothing is complete, the terminal, the blog, pretty much everything but file viewing and management is incomplete. At this point I’m still just toying with it, so it pretty much takes on the Arthur C. Clark idiom of being so far beyond my understanding that it appears to be magic. To wield some of this magic Dean appears to use a home grown javascript compressor. Just… wow…

To check out MiniWeb click here. To download it and play with it on your own, click here. When you open up the file or depending on what you click on in what ever browser you’re using, you’ll probably have to get passed some of your browser’s security to fully use the software. In IE I think you need to allow the software to function on the bar that appears at the top of the browser window, in Firefox, depending on what you’re trying to do you may have to allow the script to complete some actions (don’t forget that “remember this decision” checkbox). Too much fun to pass up…

First create a new profile

This is actually really simple, you just need to do one of two things:

Select Case

Case 1

From a command prompt or Start menu > Run type:

“[path_to_firefox]\firefox.exe” -CreateProfile [profile_name]

For most of us running Windows this will look like:

“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” -CreateProfile test

(“test” would be the profile name in this case)

Case 2

You can create a copy your Mozilla Firefox shortcut on your desktop, right click and select properties, then add the -CreateProfile [profile_name] in the “Target” field on the “Shortcut” tab of the properties dialog. Then click OK and double click the shortcut.

End Select

In either case, Firefox will create the new profile and not open any windows.

Now that you have a new profile you need to be able to open your new browser with the new profile (I’m assuming that you’ve downloaded a new browser and have extracted or installed it to your liking).

Create a new shortcut to you’re new browser

You can either copy your shortcut (if you’ve installed it) or create a new shortcut to the new version of firefox.exe, then (just like in Case 2 above) right click on the shortcut and in the “Target” text box, add -P test (or whatever you’ve used as your new profile’s name) to the end of the quoted firefox.exe path. The click OK.

Now, if you simply double click this icon you’ll open a new instance of your new browser build and you can start to play.

Just in case you want to use both your old browser and your new browser side-by-side

So, you say you’re curious if that website looks the same in your old browser as it does in your new browser, and you need them both open to tell? Well that’s no problem either. Open up the shortcut properties to your new browser just like you did above and after the “-P test” add in “-no-remote”. Now you can open multiple profiles, which should allow you to open your old browser and new browser side-by-side.

Have fun!

Reference Links from mozillaZine knowledge base:
Profile Manager
Command line arguments

Plenty of GNU/Linux resources from people all over the world on the internet. And that’s where this post comes in! IBM is dedicated to GNU/Linux, and not just by pouring millions into development and patenting! They have this huge database of how-tos, articles, download links and so forth available from their Linux developerWorks website. Like this nice little walk-through on how to use linux scripts to build your own wireless ISP. Now, you’d expect IBM to promote IBM Linux products (do they have those?), well, they don’t. This site’s instructions, recommendations and walk-throughs are all based around software that can be downloaded freely from other sources on the internet (checkout their downloads page if you don’t believe me!).

Links:
IBM developerWorks – Linux
IBM developerWorks – New to Linux
IBM developerWorks – Technical Library (be sure to checkout their LPI certification prep series!)

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