Maybe it's obvious by looking at my blog layout, but I'm a minimalist.  I have used minimalist visual styles in XP but I finally just settled on the windows classic look.  I always thought that the XP Luna themes looked childish.  So when I saw that the chromium team finally made theming available, I had to create my own to try to fit in with the windows classic look.  It's one of the few things about Chrome that does annoy me, the window doesn't use native OS controls window controls.  I know it looks fine in Vista and Windows 7 with Aero Glass, but it look pretty out of place in XP especially with windows classic.  The most I could do is just use gray in places that were blue by default, but I think the result is much closer than what I had before.  I hope someone finds this useful.

classic_windows_theme.crx (34.45 kb)

adsweep.crx (20.53 kb)

flashblock.crx (11.45 kb)

I've been using Chrome as my main browser for a month or so.  I just got tired of FireFox being such a dog.  Slow to start up, slow to navigate, really slow playing flash.  Chrome is much better in these aspects.  What it did lack was extensibility.  Shortly after I started using it, the Chromium Dev Team released preliminary support for extensions.  They have gotten better over time and are quite usable now, yet still missing some features and stability.

The AdSweep and FlashBlock scripts popped up recently as User Scripts (another way to extend Chrome).  My problem is that there was no easy way to toggle the user scripts, because sometimes the site just didn't work right with either one.  I figured the solution was to convert them to extensions and create a UI  So I made a simple UI that interfaced with the script and allows you to turn it on or off.  The only real bug I have found is that when you set the cookie with javascript to save the on/off state, it takes a minute or so for it to save.  So if you toggle it and immediately shut the browser down, it will not be seen.  I'm guessing this is a javascript issue, as I've noticed it before in normal webpages.  I think Chrome's future "Local Storage" solution would be a better way to save the setting, so I'm waiting for that. I want to make it clear that I did not create the back end functionality for AdSweep or FlashBlock, I just added the toolstrip function

Also you'll notice a fancier gmail notifier.  I'm not going to make that one available as it's just some basic css/javascript that flashes the image, and I modified it to work for my hosted domain and https.  If anyone asks I might put it up, but I don't see much point as the changes were pretty minimal.  I started work on making a "Load in IE" button, but I'm not sure it's possible as there doesn't seem to be any way yet to run a system command. I'm going to try to make some more, but as the extensions support is still experimental, I know I might not get too far.

So I've updated the BlogEnginge.net software to 1.5.x..  Everything seems to be running fine, I did have to move a few things around during the upgrade.  I haven't actually seen any new features yet, but I bet they are here somewhere.  I need to consult the change log.  The good news is that the Picasa Gallery extension I made is working fine.  I'll continue to test for a few days and see how it goes.

So I've had it about a week now, and I actually like it.  I have went from the XP Home preinstalled to Ubuntu Netbook Remix to Windows 7 beta.  I was really surprised how well the Ubuntu Netbook Remix was.  It's basically just Ubuntu (which I already run on another machine) but has a really nice "shell" that runs under Gnome which is great for the smaller shorter screens on netbooks.  All my hardware worked out of the box, some of it even better than on XP.  Other than the fancy launcher though, it was nothing new so I moved on to Windows 7 beta.  This is another thing I was pleasantly surprised about.  After reading things online, I didn't expect Aero to work on the mini, but it does work and works well.  The new windows 7 task bar works well docked to the side so that helps with the vertical height issue.  All in all I'm happy with Windows 7 and can't wait until it's released.  I think I will continue to use it on the Mini until it expires or some other reason causes me to revert.  It's actually very fast.  Even though everyone complains about vista, I never found it that bad after SP1 is applied.  Windows 7 seems just like a more streamlined Vista to me.

Here are my only real complaints:

1. A non standard keyboard.  I always hit entery when I'm trying to hit ' and a few other problems.  I fully expect the keys to be smaller, but they are freaking tiny or requre Fn + combos to use them.  I probably would have been better off with an HP Mini in this aspect as it's keyboard looks awesome.
2. I still hate trackpads.  No netbook comes with a trackpoint except for the Sony P thing, but it's so expensive it's not even technically classified as a netbook.
3. The max resolution doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would, but it's still a negative I guess.  I can live with this.

A guy from IBM is working in the office this week, I wonder if he would be offended if I asked him why Lotus Notes and Sametime clients are such piles of crap?  I'm sure it would offend someone, if not him.  I can't help it, they are bloated junk and I can't help but to share my feelings about them with the world.