Mint Droid

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I’ve linked to articles giving a similar but different method of getting Firefox to use an external email application. However, Scott Granneman has a short, quick tip to send email from Firefox with KMail at The Open Source Weblog.

Major annoyance: clicking on mailto links in Firefox doesn’t open the email app I want to use, KMail. Another related major annoyance: going to File > Send Link in Firefox doesn’t open the email app I want to use, KMail. The solution?

The big difference? Scott’s advice works! And it should; he did write the book on Firefox, after all! I didn’t test this, however, since I use Jed Brown’s Webmail Compose extension to send email via Gmail.

I am a sucker for text-mode programs. I do a lot of work on my Ubuntu machine remotely, via ssh, so I spend a lot of time using a shell. And once you do that for awhile, you tend to get used to it and want to do everything from the shell. Even when I’m sitting in front of the computer. So Linux.com’s CLI Magic series is my friend. And their lastest article got me to try out mp3blaster.

mp3blaster’s highly customizable UI is designed in ncurses, a programming library that allows developers to create text-based interfaces for command-line programs. The ncurses-based interface makes mp3blaster similar to graphical music players, in that there are play, stop, forward, and other buttons. The screen is divided into well-marked boxes. At the top of the screen is a box that lists all the program’s keybindings. To browse through all the keybindings, press the plus ( ) key to move from page to page.The box on the right lists the buttons to do routine tasks such as pause, forward, rewind, and play previous track. Each button also has a symbol above it that makes it easier to deduce what the button does what. For example, pressing 6 (>|) makes mp3blaster jump to the next track in your playlist, while pressing 3 (>>) fast-forwards the track.

I’m futzing around with mp3blaster right now. It’s not a bad app. But I don’t see it overtaking my fondness for mpg321, my current favorite cli-based mp3 player.

LinuxQuestions.org has released it’s list of Members Choice Award Winners. The list is not surprising, and includes:

A list of winners follows, with the percentage of the votes in parenthesis. Distribution of the Year – Ubuntu (19.49%) Database of the Year – MySQL (62.98%) Office Suite of the Year – OpenOffice.org (84.84%) Browser of the Year – Firefox (71.90%) Mail Client of the Year – Thunderbird (51.74%)

Out of the list, I use quite a few of the top-voted apps, including the top-rated distribution (Ubuntu), MySQL, OpenOffice.org, Firefox, vim, amarok and gaim. There’s a reason why so many others use these apps; they are well-written, and perform their functions very well.