My Geekdom

Quick Update

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:26:29 -0500

Just wanted to apologize to all (I mean both) of my readers. I've been through a series of personal issues that have taken up all of my time. Things are looking better but I don't think I'm going to have time to add to this blog for awhile. I will mention that I have started another site, OneStopAppSecurity.com. It is my professional site (ie: the one I'm hoping to earn an income from being I no longer have a job - did I mention some personal issues ;-). I still am planning on adding part 2 to my Firefox screen real-estate saver. Part of the delay is that I've moved from PC to Mac (oh the joy) and I've had to make some adjustments and get used to things. Mostly this has involved me forgetting bad habits that I had to learn to overcome Windows deficiencies. For example, I think this computer has been running for about 2 weeks without a reboot. I can also leave it unplugged for over 12 hours and have it wake at the touch of the keyboard and still have battery juice left. Sorry Bill. Back in a bit, Neil PS: Don't forget to checkout the latest and greatest Firefox 3.0. Just released. Just take care if use lots of plugi-ins. More than half of mine are incompatible (although I suspect it will be fixed quickly).

Previous Google Blog Republished in Web 2.0

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:43:41 -0500

My previous blog entry discussing problems with Google alerts got republished in Web 2.0's online magazine.

As if to emphasize the points I made in the entry, I got a Google alert on the publication. Here is its content:

Google News Alert for: smithline

Intalio Announces Their Open Source BPM Suite as Service - Intalio ...
SYS-CON Media - Montvale,NJ,USA
The realities of exe By Neil Smithline Is Google growing too fast to continue to produce innovative software while maintaining the quality that has become ...
See all stories on this topic

At least it got my name correct but otherwise it is a mess. It mangled what was on the Web 2.0 site such that the quote it emailed me is not even remotely correct (or even remotedly English).

Hopefully Google will figure out how to get their quality back up to where it was while continuing to innovate.

Update: Thursday April 17, 2008 Apparently I'm not the only one who is wondering about Google's dramatic growth. This excerpt is from Sys-Con's SEO/SEM magazine, a search engine-focused magazine.

Google Broken + Unresponsive = Unhappy Neil

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:50:23 -0500

In general I would have to say I'm a fan of Google. I think that they have reached their current status through hard work and clever thinking from the top executives, to the coding monkeys, to the system administrators. Despite having had some problems with them, my most recent posting regarding them was commenting on their ingenuity.

But I've had some problems with their alerts and sent in comments and, excluding the automated email replies, have received no response nor has the problem been corrected. Let me des

Being that I have a relative uncommon last name, I actually have an alert for "smithline". When a match is found it is almost always me or one of my family members. Probably not a very useful trick for someone named "John Smith" but it is helpful for me. When it Google finds a new web page match, it sends me an email that looks very similar to a search results page but it just contains the new matches. For example:

Google Web Alert for: smithline

The Mathematics Genealogy Project - Lawren Smithline
Lawren Michael Smithline. Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley 2000 UnitedStates. Dissertation: Slopes of p-Adic Modular Forms ...

Notice that the title tells you what is being searched for (“smithline”), the title of the page that had a match, and an excerpt of the page with the matched string (“smithline”) highlighted. If you are at all familiar to the results of a Google search, (if not what cave have you been in) then this should all seem familiar.

But for the past 6-8 weeks there have been some problems. I contacted Google the 2nd time the the problem occurred. Here is one example of it:

Google News Alert for: smithline

What's behind the sudden poll shift?
Spectator.co.uk (subscription) - UK
Even more deluded was the Smith line that the polls actually reflected his and Labour's popularity. We pointed out that this was nonsense - the polls were ...
See all stories on this topic

You'll notice that “smithline” does not actually appear in the selection (or in the rest of the article if you search). It is some political article referring to the stance taken by a Mr. Smith and is referring to it as the "Smith line". Even wo rse, I received this:

Google News Alert for: smithline

Two hurt in two-car crash on Selwyn Road
Peterborough Examiner - Peterborough,Ontario,Canada
Two people were taken to hospital Thursday after a collision north of the city at Selwyn Road and the 11th Line of Smith, between Bridgenorth and Lakefield. ...
See all stories on this topic

This has both the words “smith” and “line” but they are not next to each other and not even in order. At least they are close to each other in “Line of Smith”. Also, notice that nothing is highlighted. Even the highlighting engine of Google could not figure out what substring the search engine had matched on. But, saving the worst for last,

Google News Alert for: smithline

Family of former coach files suit
Pittsburg Morning Sun - Pittsburg,KS,USA
By Matthew Clark | THE MORNING SUN GIRARD — The family of former Girard High School head football coach Craig Crespino has levied a negligence lawsuit ...
See all stories on this topic

Notice that this excerpt has neither a “smith” nor "“line”. If you go to the article, it does have those words in them but they are not even close to each other as they were in the “Line of Smith”.

Besides these problems, I'm having a terrible problem with another search. One of my children has a chronic condition (minor but annoying - details withheld for privacy reasons). So I have a search for the word “adolescent” and the name of the chronic condition. This search is wholly useless. I've included two of the nine hits I received - the rest were basically the same. I have modified the search results for privacy, removed URLs to the sites to prevent this being an advertisement for them, and removed obscenities for my more genteel readers..

Google Groups Alert for: "redacted for privacy" adolescent

Union obscenity deleted
... serpientes sexo gratis spokane washington gay scene nutritional facts for smoked
turkey breast adolescent sexuality arti amish sex vid tenacious d, sex tnt obscenity deleted pet hardcore sex bible books job and sexual molestation federal uniform manifest system escorts gay male.louisiana dog has sex ...
removed to avoid advertisement - Mar 21, 2008 by - 0 message - 0 author
Registry Sex Offender
... slaves n the us racquet club hilton head lady gemini dream transition from
adolescent to adult china rape fantasy free sian resort hollywood florida job
...redacted for privacy ...
removed to avoid advertisement - Mar 21, 2008 by - 0 message - 0 author

Hard to imagine how this is useful...

I'm beginning to wonder if Google is growing too fast to continue to produce innovative software while maintaining the quality that has become expected of them.

Some Cool Freeware Utilities

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:33:24 -0500

I want to begin with an apology about the delay in publishing part II of Making the Most of Screen Real Estate in Firefox, Part 1. We're having a family function this weekend and it is all consuming. That being said, I just found out about NirSoft. It has about 2-dozen freeware utilities. Including useful tools such as MS Outlook Password Reclaimer. Very useful, for example, if you got a new computer, want to move MS Office but forgot your passwords. The tools have a great range in complexity. On the complex end, it has tools to watch network traffic while, on the simpler end, it has a tool to control your computer's volume with your mouse wheel. I believe all of the tools are Windows only but they seem to fill some unique gaps. I just want to give credit to Gizmo Richards' Tech Support Alert which alerted me to the NirSoft site.

Windows Problem Solver Search Engine

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 11:03:19 -0500

Enter Search Terms Here

This is a Google Custom Search Engine that I have programmed to cover a multitude of Windows questions and problems. I've tried to use a variety of site types to maximize the value of the search. In order to help facilitate your search, you can further limit the results by:

Windows Processes
Windows File Extensions
Windows Error Messages
Windows How-To's

Making the Most of Screen Real Estate in Firefox, Part 1

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:44:28 -0500

I really like my screen real estate. Especially in my browser where I spend so much of my time. I never seem to have enough screen real estate in my browser. Furthermore, to complicate my life, I like to have only one browser window open and I *hate* full-screen windows. These are just my personal tastes and not a reflection on Firefox's design or quality, but they do seem to present a bit of a problem. The strategy I've used is to utilize the extensive customization features built into Firefox which allows modifications to the presentation and functionality of the browser. I have spent and continue to spend considerable time on developing and improving this strategy (no, I don't have anything better to do). Before I talk about my changes, let me show you what Firefox looks like when you boot it immediately after a download. (*Note:* It is recommended that if you have images disabled that you enable them for this entry.) ## A Default Firefox Window of 838 by 742 Pixels Click on image to view a larger version Before diving in let me mention that the orange-brown coloring is from my Windows theme (I made it myself and, while never having asked for an opinion, my family have all said it is appalling). Using the default Windows theme produces coloring that is more typical of Windows. ## Objections I Have With the Default Appearance of Firefox - There is a lot of empty screen space. The menubar spans less than half of the space available to it. This is in a relatively small window that is only 838 pixels wide. My laptop is 1440 pixels wide so the browser window is only using ~60% of the screen's width. - The standard buttons are large and have lots of space between them. Great if you are 85 and have lost your glasses or have a hand with tremors. Otherwise I don't much see the point. - There is a search box on the line next to the URL location. The search box allows you to do quick searches. But, Firefox has a mechanism for searching from the location box. Why both are needed, I don't know. I have read that a target="_blank" href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0b3/releasenotes/">http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0b3/releasenotes/, which has not yet been released, will be combining these two boxes so obviously I'm not the only one who questions this. - To the right of the location box and search box are what's called "Go" buttons. This is the green arrow and the magnifying glass. The usage of the location and search boxes is that you type or paste the text and then can hit the Go button to activate it. You can also type the enter key to activate it, unless you are a total mouse-devotee and never wish to use the keyboard, the "Go" buttons are just a waste of space. - The bookmark toolbar initially begins with only two bookmarks but, it is intended to be customized so it can be filled to take the entire line. Still, you have both the web site's icon and the page's title. This means you can only have a few bookmarks before they get added to a dynamically created drop-down menu. You can squeeze more bookmarks in by renaming the page's title in the bookmark to a shorter name or an abbreviation. But, once you've done this, if you forget what your abbreviation means, it gets complicated to see the original name. You can either open the page to see if you have the correct bookmark or right-click on the bookmark and view the URL in its properties window. Quite the hassle. - The tabbar will resize the tabs smaller and eventually introduce horizontally scrolling if you get too many tabs. This is really not a bad setup but, unfortunately most new computers are "wide screen". In my opinion they should be called "short screen". For example, I used to have a Dell D610 which got replaced under warranty to a Dell D630 as the D610 is discontinued. There are several resolutions on the D610 and they all have a height of 75% of the width. The D630 also has screens with several resolutions but their height is only 62.5% of their width. There is no option to get the old 75% ratio. So, spending so many vertical pixels on the tabbar seems wasteful to me. - The scrollbars, while standard size for Windows XP, are, IMO, fatter than they need to be. - The statusbar wastes a lot of space. It is divided into two sections, a small visual display graphing the percentage of the page that has been loaded and a larger text display that tells you what the browser is currently doing and provides some feedback when you mouse over certain page elements. But, unless there are incredibly large status messages this small window has a lot of extra space. In part 2 of this posting I'll discuss the strategies I used to alter Firefox's default appearance to better suit my needs. But, as a sneak peek, here is my (highly) customized browser displaying the same page as the default browser is displaying above. ## My Customized Firefox Window of 838 by 742 Pixels Click on image to view a larger version

Off Topic but Too Funny to Pass Up

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:35:30 -0500

My wife is a big fan of Staples the morning after Thanksgiving. They run some great sales which they make even better with wonderful rebates. So, as usual, she opened the doors at 6 AM (thanks for my 4GB Cruzer Thumbdrive for just $9.99 after rebates!). I handled the rebate forms which is pretty easy with Staples online rebate system. This, of course, got me onto a mailing list. I went to unsubscribe from the list and this was the form they gave me. Check out the 3^rditem. Sometimes one just has to wonder....

Webcam

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:10:15 -0500

I do not keep my webcam on all the time so lack of a live picture is not necessarily the sign of a problem. But if you feel there should be a picture but isn't, are having trouble viewing the picture, or wish to contact me for any other reason, the email address of “webcam ”in the domain of “smithline.net”.

"Kudos" to Google

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:42:21 -0500

I happen to be spending a week at my parents' house. Very nice, but I hate their pillows. At home I have some pillows my wife bought me from IKEA that I like very much. I decided to buy some for my folks but couldn't remember the name "IKEA". All I could come up with was that it was some Swedish store (it was late and I don't really do names very well). So I typed "swedish store" into Google and got this response (you can enlarge the picture by clicking on it):

If you notice, halfway down the page Google says "See results for IKEA" and inserts three results for IKEA into the middle of the search. At first glance this might seem like a simple thing to implement but I don't quite think so. I bet if I was in Sweden it would not single out IKEA. Obviously the Google search engine has information about what Swedish stores are common in America or at least commonly searched for and knew that I wasn't in Sweden (there is more on this at the end of this entry). Maybe this was a sponsored link (i.e.: an advertisement) although, last I read, Google kept sponsored links to the top of the page and the right and clearly labeled them as sponsored. Even if it was a sponsored link, it was exactly what I needed, where I needed it, and when I needed it. It was simply wonderful.

Thinking it was so great, I went and did the same for Yahoo! and, while it's search page did include IKEA as a result, (the store's name), it did it with so much less finesse (you can enlarge the picture by clicking on it):

I wondered how this was done as I was pretty certain that searching for "swedish store" in Google in Sweden would produce different results. I was actually pretty certain that Google was backtracking my location via my IP address (unless you are using an anonymizer it is pretty easy to track a web request back to the ISP and the general vicinity (e.g.: town/city or perhaps county) which the user is in). I mentioned this to my friend Chris Shabsin¹ and he said that he suspected it had more to do with the fact that I was using Google.com (the US version) and not Google.se, the Swedish entry point for Google. When I verified that this was correct I tried accessing Google.com from remote countries. I used a couple of different anonymizers that were running in different countries and saw that Google.com always produced the same results, no matter what country I entered from. This made me happy as, while I know that Google tracks lots of information about me, I was uncomfortable with the thought that they were customizing searches based on IP addresses. I'm glad their not.

1. Chris has recently joined Google but the information in our discussion about how Google worked was not based on any information he has learned since joining it. It was strictly supposition. That was why I had to test it to confirm. I am greatly obliged to Chris for suggesting that I investigate further before posting.

The Ultimate Program Option

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:09:35 -0500

I use a Firefox plug-in called "It's All Text". It is a very simple plug-in that simply adds a small "Edit" button on text boxes. Once configured, you can click this edit button from any web page and edit the text box in your favorite editor. Here is a sample of how it looks. Besides choosing the editor, it has some minor settings such as where you want the "Edit" button to be placed, how long it should remain once you've left the text box (it is only visible when the cursor is in the text box or the mouse is over the tetx box), etc... But, it also has the ultimate program option. Check out the last option on its option panel. Alas, the program seems to behave the same whether or not I change that setting.

Lineage of Patents

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 17:12:38 -0500

My family has a long and, when you include my great-grandfather I must add, impressive lineage of patents on my paternal side.

My patents:

US Patent application pending # 20,070,266,442, System and Method for Protecting APIs from Untrusted or Less Trusted Applications and US Patent application pending 20,070,265,835, Method and System for Securing Execution of Untrusted Applications: Two extensions to J2EE (a.k.a: JEE) security for protecting allowing trusted and untrusted code within the same virtual environment.
US Patent application pending #20,050,268,108, “Servlet Authentication Filters”: An extension of J2EE (a.k.a: JEE) that provides an integrated and pluggable model for authentication for Servlets. JSR-196 has extended and standardized the concepts introduced in this patent.
US Patent application pending #20,060,031,855, “System and Method for Runtime Interface Versioning”, approx. December 2005 : A strategy for providing an SPI with evolving versions, in Java, while maximizing backwards compatibility.
"US Patent #7,051,069, “System for managing logical process flow in an online environment”, May, 2006 : An invention regarding the use of deterministic finite automata as a means of controlling navigation within a web site.
US Patent #5,787,447, "Memory allocation maintaining ordering across multiple heaps", July 1998 : A memory allocation algorithm that provided extremely fast and near-optimal memory allocation for an incremental linker.

My paternal uncle, Stewart Smithline's patents:

US Patent #5734336, "Collision Avoidance System"

My father, Edward Smithline, Edward Smithline's patents:

My paternal³ great-grandfather, Dr. Jacob Smithline has basically invented the modern stethoscope with these two patents. Perhaps more impressively, he did this without making any serious money on them:

US Patent #2,271,467: Describes how to get two different types of stethoscope heads onto a single stethoscope. This is rarely if ever used. More importantly, although considered secondary in the patent, the basic tubing of the stethoscope used to be "V" shaped and went to a "Y" shape. Virtually every modern sthethoscope uses the "Y" shaped tubing.
US Patent #2719594: Describes how putting a small hole in the back of the stethoscope allows hearing different frequencies. While you probably have never noticed, there are hardly any stethescopes that do not have this hole. Look next time you are at the doctor's office.

Google Maps Blog Entry Picked up by Google Developer

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 03:40:03 -0500

My previous posting on broken Google maps has been republished byGoogle Developer's Journal. You can read it "here". At least for awhile, it was listed as a "Google Developer's Top Story" and presented on the front page.

Google Maps a Bit Busted

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 18:17:38 -0500

It seems that Google maps are a bit broken right now. In the "Screen Shot 1" you can see that I got two hits for the same store, differing only that one has the word "The" in the name. Excluding abbreviations, their addresses are the same although one has the unit # while the other just the address. One also lists a local number while the other an 800 number. These are a few minor problems. But the major problem is first that only one of the items is selectable. If you look at the "B" entry you can see that it is a red circle and not a push-pin shape it should be. But even worse, the "B" entry is shown about a dozen blocks away from correctly placed "A" entry.

Screen Shot 1
(Click for full Size Map)

The second picture shows a bigger problem. First, if you look at the listings, you'll notice that "A" and "E" are the same addresses and appear to differ only in the phone number and the exact name ("Walgreens" vs. "Walgreen Drug Store"). A similar problem exists for listings "B" and "F" except that they have the same phone number and address but a name and a different city. You might also notice on the map that "B" and "F" are shown over 10 miles apart. Furthermore "B" is a push-pin on the list and on the map but "F" is a circle on both the list and the map.

Screen Shot 2
(Click for full Size Map)

Perhaps the strangest problem is that in Screen Shot 2 I have selected the "A" entry. You see the familiar pop-up from the red push-pin for "A". But if you look at Screen Shot 3 where I have selected the "E" store with the same address, you'll notice that the "E" push-pin appears directly on top of the "A". So, at any zoom level, only the "A" or "E" can be viewed.

Screen Shot 3
(Click for full Size Map)

I'm sure Google will get this straightened out soon (you can reproduce

Annoyed By Your Boss's Email? No Problem.

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 16:45:34 -0500

Keeping up with email can be a difficult task. Assuming that you have a good spam filtering mechanism in place, many people get hundreds of emails a day; either at the office, because of mailing lists they are on at home, or both. On my office email reader I filter many emails out never to be read (typically ones sent to large distribution lists that I know that I won't need) and still get just under 200 emails a day. So the question is what to do.

I've previously discussed GTD methodologies and their application for email management. That's half the philosophy behind the Clear Context Information Management System(CCIMS). Before I can describe the second half of the philosophy, let me make an aside into some of my mother's advice on organizing a house (one glimpse of my room when I was a teenager would show that I obviously paid more attention to her words than I did in following them). Her advice, like most good advice, was simple yet brilliant. She advised "As you organize, try to touch each item only once or, at least, minimize the number of times you must handle each item as best you can." In practice this means that once you've figured up what to do with something, do it. Don't make piles that you have to sort through a second time or third time. I view it like doing laundry. One strategy is to take the clean clothes out of the dryer and put it into a basket, carry that basket to your work area, take the clothes out of the basket and fold them, put the folded clothes back into the basket, carry the basket to each dresser, sort through the basket for clothes that belong in that dresser, and then proceed to the next dresser. Another strategy is to take the clean clothes out of the dryer, fold them as you remove them, put them into baskets arranged by the dresser they belong to, and then move each basket to the corresponding dresser and unpack it. Assuming you have the room, laundry baskets, and other tools to do the latter mechanism, it seems clearly more efficient. CCIMS is just those tools you need to implement the second laundry strategy within Outlook.

GTD tools such as GTDGmail provide some sorting, labeling, and archiving abilities for email. They perhaps even allow you to touch each email once. But, CCIMS is designed, not on sorting individual pieces of email, but rather on sorting entire threads. And while tools such as GTDGmail require you to follow ritualistic behaviors such as examining the list of deferred items and determining whether each one can be enacted upon or not, CCIMS automates all of this for you. Some of its more exciting features include:

Once you've labeled a thread, all subsequent email in that thread, whether it arrives in a minute or a year, is automatically labeled. Furthermore, with a weak built-in rules engine and a strong engine weekly connected to Outlook rules (i.e.: neither is great but each is useful and has a different range of functionality), you can automate the labeling of threads. For example, you can say that any email that comes in from MyImportantCustomer.com should go into the Customer/MyImportantCustomer topic.
When you defer a mail message, you specify how long you wish it deferred and, when the time arrives, it will magically appear in your inbox awaiting your attention.
When responding to an email message you can specify that you wish, by means of an Outlook task with a due date and alarm, be notified that there has been no response and that you should take follow-up action. If a reply comes back, the task is marked as completed. This gets setup with the click of a button.
Should you receive a mail message that will take more than the 2 minutes of response time recommended by the GTD methodology, a simple click of a button will turn it into an Outlook task for you to deal with at a later time.
Even with Outlook 2007 and Windows Desktop Search, finding related items in email is greatly simplified with the use of CCIMS. At a button click, all related items will be shown. Besides showing related items, CCIMS can show related actions, alerts, and the history of the individual item.
Should an email thread arrive and you just don't care (say it is an argument about what color to paint the walls of the janitor's closet, you can "unsubscribe" from the topic. After that, you just never see another email on that topic again.
While far from the last wonderful feature that CCIMS provides, one of the coolest is that besides automatically labeling each thread, it also prioritizes each thread. It prioritizes each thread into one of five priority buckets based on a multitude of factors including your participation in the thread, if the email is sent directly to you or a list you're on, who sent you the email, etc... The relative values of these factors can be individually configured. Of course, you can rank your boss as "Junk" and automatically prioritize their email to the bottom of your inbox. On the other hand, if your boss requires instant attention, you can set up an alert such that you are notified if email comes in from your boss and isn't read in two hours, you'll get a pop-up notifying you of the unhandled email.

All-in-all, CCIMS is a wonderful tool. I've used it for a couple of years and recently switched from Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007 and, much to my surprise, CCIMS configured itself for 2007 and had several features that were better or better integrated. I'm certain that it reduces the time I spend dealing with email to under 50% of my what it was without it. Between the ignoring of features, automatic categorization, push-button task creation, deferring items, and automatically prioritizing incoming mail, I can quickly view the most important emails and (don't tell anyone at my office) just file many complete email threads without even glancing at their subjects. If ClearContext gives a thread a priority 5 then the odds are that I'll never even see the subject. There is, of course, some setup to get the priorities right but ClearContext does a lot of it automatically (it begins with an initial scan of all of your email to determine what senders you consider most and least important) and allows simple adjustments such as marking a contact with priority of Junk or stating that having your name in the To or CC header is of great importance.

Say Goodbye Mr. Scrollbar

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:12:00 -0500

Grab and Drag, a Firefox Extension, takes scrolling and turns it on its head. Before I explain what it is, let me explain what it is not. I'm sure everyone is familiar with the little hand cursor in Adobe Reader that allows you to click on a portion of the page and move the page around. Basically this feature is as electronic version of putting your hand on a piece of paper on a table and moving it around. While Grab and Drag has a hand cursor and allows you to move the contents of the screen around, it is definitely not the same feature as that offered in Adobe Reader.

For starters, Grab and Drag has a multiplier. This allows you to set, you guessed it, a multiplier for the page movement. For example, if the multiplier is set to 2, then for every pixel that you move the cursor vertically, the page moves 2 pixels. Similarly for horizontal movement. The multiplier can take a value between 0.1 for those times when you want to be scrolling a pixel at a time and your hand is a bit shaky (or, more likely, your mouse needs a cleaning) to 8 which allows you to scroll through almost any web page in a single movement from the bottom of the page to the top (ie: you move the mouse 1 screen and web page scrolls through 8). I like to keep mine around 5.5 for quick scrolling.

Besides the multiplier, it has a feature called "flick". This allows you to push down the mouse button and give the mouse a filck to enable one of four operations. You can either do a scroll one page up or down (depending on the direction of your flick), or a scroll to the top or bottom of the page. As an aside to the functionality provided by Grab and Drag, I must mention that, while not one for esthetics, Grab and Drag is darn pretty. By default it never scrolls and comes to a jarring halt. It scrolls and then slowly decelerates to a stop. This is, of course, customizable in its well-designed control panel.

Well, having saved the best for last, Grab and Drag has a feature called momentum. As you have probably guessed, if you grab the page, move it, and let go in a motion bigger than a flick, it starts scrolling and keeps scrolling. It will stop when you grab the page again, when it reaches the top or the bottom of the page, or, if you have set up friction, it slows down and eventually comes to a stop potentially before the top or bottom of the page. I use this feature just all the time. The trouble is, it does not work in any other application (eg: Adobe Reader, Word, etc...). While it is not a big deal in terms of functionality, Grab and Drag only works on the page portion of Firefox. This leads to me routinely flicking my bookmark window or some other window that just does not respond the way I want it to :-)

Grab and Drag has some features to make it work with a tablet or other touch-screen enabled computer. It even has a You Tube video showing how cool it is. That being said, I don't have a touch-screen computer (excluding my Treo, of course) and hence do not care about these features.

In summary, Grab and Drag presents several twists on scrolling that I have never seen before. Furthermore, it does it with such skill and elegance that I'm totally hooked.

PS: If you wish you can download a slightly older version of Grab and Go from the Mozilla website. Extensions there to be a bit behind the Mozdev site but Mozilla takes time to certify them, hopefully producing greater confidence in their quality.