Ruizs Place

Download/Install UseMetaKeys FireFox Extension

In celebration of the release of Firefox 3 yesterday (and since I had forgotten to install my extension previously), I am posting this quick, dirty, and oh so helpful firefox extension.
Firefox has long been my preferred browser, although for the last year or so Safari had been gaining ground. Firefox 2 was just to bloated and slow, especially on OS X, and Safari was much faster. I always had a hard time choosing between the additional functionality Firefox provides, and the simplicity and speed of Safari. With Firefox 3, that’s pretty much over, and it is back in its place as my primary browser.
However, one thing that has always bugged me about firefox on Mac OS X was that you can’t open a URL in a new tab using Command+Enter, it only works with Option(alt)+Enter. I couldn’t find a fix a year or two ago, and with some quick searching today, I still did not find a good way to reassign the key sequence. So, I looked up a couple howto’s, found a sample/donor project, and whipped up a simple extension with a single purpose - remap Command-Enter to open a url in a new tab (i.e. when typing in the address or search bars). As expected, no support is provided, no warranty intended, etc., but if you’re using Firefox on OS X, I highly suggest installing this.

For some reason, I called it “UseMetaKeys”, and now, a year later, I am too lazy to change the name.

I upgraded my home MacBook and work iMac to Leopard right when it came out. When I had Tiger, I installed an extention to Mail.app called “IMAP-IDLE”, which added support for the (logically named) IMAP Idle mode. This basically means that it will open an extra connection to your mail server, and when the mail server receives a new message, it notifies your client almost instantly. At work we have a Microsoft Exchange server, and for personal email I use gmail, and both were lightning fast - when I tested at work, I would see the new email in my inbox within a second of sending.

However, this behavior stopped when I upgraded to Leopard - it includes a built-in option to use IMAP IDLE, but it never seemed to work right - I would receive email only when I hit the “Get Mail” button, or my client checked on its specified interval.

I thought I had figured out how to make it work properly, it seems there are two settings that should impact this, but neither work well. Under Mail.app Preferences, under the Accounts Section, Advanced tab, if you select “Use IDLE command if the server supports it“, and you un-check “Include when automatically checking for new mail“, things work ok for a while.  After making the change, restart Mail.app.  However, if something happens, i.e. you close the lid on your laptop, lose the connection to the server, etc., it no longer works.

Why can’t apple get this working as well as the plugin was before?  No good solution at this point…