get the wor(l)d

Hi,

after being quiet for a while I just went through all bug-reports and finished a new version of virtual identity.

bugfixes:

• If Smart-Reply found (for instance) an existing identity, sending works ok and was not tampered by the extension. But Thunderbird doesn’t remove the window, it ‘recycles’ the window. Next time you compose a message, this one shows the same old identity but uses a different one behind the scenes. So I changed Virtual Identity to remove Window completely if message was sended, Window-Recycling is this way disabled (thanks to Charles, john and Henrik for the report).
• repaired Dialog to choose which Virtual Identity to choose, was completely broken (thanks to Mark for the report).
• Connected (and this way limited) usage of newsgroup Identities to the switch which enables Virtual Identity for newsgroups (thanks to Dave for the report).

You can download the new version at http://absorb.it/hacked/thunderbird/virtual_identity-0.4.2-tb+sm.xpi
and soon from addons.mozilla.org.

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It took longer than I expected, but I think it was worth to include a lot of feature-requests and get rid of some bugs. Many thanks to you all who gave me reports and suggestions and translations and thank-you-mails, without this feedback the extension would have been not even half as nice as it is by now. So as you see, I like the result of the last weeks work, and I hope you will enjoy it too. Don’t like to mention the list of bug-fixes again, just the list of new features compared to version 0.4.0:

• you can now sort the header any way you like, also exclude ‘to’ or ‘cc’ as you like it, but you have to tell Virtual Identity that it has to use those headers. So change your settings and add ‘to’ and ‘cc’ to the list of headers. A header name now refers to all headers of that name, not like before only the outmost one of you mail. To select a specific header, just use the number of it’s occurrence, so for instance “:3″ and add it to the headername. And if you wish to use only the email address and not the name, then simply add “:@”.
• reading the headers was in version 0.4.0 dependent on installed mnenhy or enigmail. Now it’s independent on other extensions, so you are free to use whatever you like (but to protect the freedom of having secrets the same way as the freedom of choice or the freedom of speach, you might choose to install enigmail anyway)
• added a nice debug-window, which helps you understanding what Virtual Identity really does. using complex filter rules you might get very creative, and this is the place to look if it doesn’t work as expected. This debug information is also helpful for me to understand how and when problems occur if you are sending a bug report.

Ok, here you can find the recent release 0.4.1, and, tadaa, there will be a documentation soon (have a look at the work in progress)

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Than I had to install some additional software to enjoy the Mac, we’ll see if I keep them for my mother.

First, there is Adium, an Instant Messenger which is able to handle ICQ, Jabber and doesn’t bug you with .Mac (like iChat does). Nice one, but till now I don’t have found how to keep the program at the dock after starting – it always shows you the contact window.

Added the VLC video player as well, my mother should have the chance to watch movies too. After configuring the program this way and that way it crashed after every start. It took a while, till I found the command line to restore all settings (‘/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC –reset-config’).

Next, after a nice (not only geek) evening with Jule (kisses to her and thanks for the tip with the right mouse button – oh yeah, there is one) I had to install KisMAC, great suggestion. And than activated a SIP telephone account and installed XMeeting, which is a nice little SIP-client software.

And for ftp, sftp and so on, I installed the program which has this nice duck as a logo (see right). Cyberduck seems to do what I need, and it’s not only the logo which is nicer than the one from Fugu. Fugu didn’t worked for ftp-servers at my test install and was not able to retrieve whole directories via sftp.

Still have to test the included MacOSX Software, but it’s hard to decide if it’s worth to keep it or not. Descriptions are not always clear, like the one beneath. It tells you that you should decide if you like to use iPhoto now. The Dialog appears directly after I attached a camera to the mac. And there is no description what the program does, they say in this dialog the biggest reason to decide to use this program is that its delivered with my mac – wow. So, still no idea if it’s worth to use iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto and iWhatever, but I’ll ask some mac users around. (and for my personal usage just added Thunderbird, Firefox and Camino).

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Nearly as fast as I got the MacBook, I received the printer I bought at eBay. Just told you, I bought an HP Deskjet 995c, cause this one has bluetooth included and I liked to make the system as flexible as possible. First impression, it’s an heavy printer – the weight of around 6,5kg remembered me on some russian technology…

Anyway, tried to install it as easy as the mouse and the keyboard, but run into problems. The printer was recognized, but I got always the message that no driver was found for it. Looking in the net, they told me that the drivers are included in MacOSX and/or on an install CD which was delivered. So installed driver from CD, driver from the HP homepage but anyway, no chance to let the printer running over bluetooth.

Than, finally, I found a news message describing that it should work, but you have to update the firmware before. And therefore you need a windows system, ok, first time stuck on MacOSX. But had an Windows Copy somewhere lying around, and flashing the new firmware worked fine over USB from Windows on an VMware emulator running at my linux machine. After this firmware update the printer is recognized without problems, printing works fine. The only problem is that the HP administration software is not running on Windows nor on Mac OSX, so anyone can now print on my public accessible bluetooth printer. But I hope there won’t be so many people who figure this out in my mothers apartment.

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A small bug in pre3 caused disabled the whole extension if in the preferences for the place where sended messages should be saved the settings of the default Identity were selected. Thanks to Guy for reporting and helping tracing the bug. New pre-release 0.4.1pre4 fixes this issue.

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network configuration: it wasn’t as easy as I thought to connect the computer to the network. There is an assistent, but as intelligent as assistents are this one didn’t got the idea that I might like to get my internet (by now) out of an ad-hoc WLAN network. The airport was not able to find the network, nor was it able to connect to it if I entered the SSID of our network in the network settings. At some point I found the icon at the upper status-bar, clicked on it and saw not only wireless networks, but also computer-to-computer networks. And there it was, as easy as expected.

configuring accuweather: you need it or not, but if you activate the MacOS Dashboard there is a weather monitor. So I decided to configure it, and (as expected) it’ll download the weather data from the internet. So it opened the safari-browser without interaction and than it gave me a warning: “Your PC stores all information about the sex-sites you have visited” And the solution was near, I should install drivecleaner, which removes all these data. Should I stay or should I go? (installation suggested!) Gladly I decided to abort the process but a while later, I liked to go back in the browser cache and the download startet, but – programmers of this trojan didn’t thought of other operating systems than Windows, so can’t use this great software.

apple remote desktop – vnc: great to have a system using standards. So activated sharing of the desktop (password authentication) and ssh and I was able to connect to the MacBook via vncviewer. Actually only tightvnc worked the way it should, got the tip from a macusenet post.

connecting a external display: the problem is that it’s once again really easy to configure over the mac OSX system panel, but closing the MacBook sended the laptop to sleep. Restarting it on clicking with the mouse worked fine, the image was now on my LCD-display with a bigger resolution. But only for some seconds, than the MacBook went to sleep again. Took a while to figure this out, but after having the right search-term which is “clamshell” I found a nice page describing whats going on. And the mac is so intelligent, that this procedure only works if the MacBook is connected to power, than it stays on. Perfect.

additional software installed: Firefox Webbrowser (just dont like safari till now) and NeoOffice, an OpenOffice – Version for Mac OSX. And remove the MS Office trial version, yes!

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First overall impression was good, the MacBook came in a huge box but after unwrapping all the air-shock-absorbers it ended as a real nice computer. “Designed by Apple in California”, and surely produced in China, but anyway, all looks very solid and nice.

You instantly notice the small things: the Power adapter has to ways of getting plugged into the power-net: with a long cord or as a wall power supply, as you like it. Trying to put the power-cable into the MacBook it jumps at the right place and a small LED-light shows you that something is the way it should. Nice, fancy.

But now the real test. Pressing the power button the first time it gives you some options to change language and so on, but then it’s tries to register. This combined “register and create user accounts” is a real mess (the image beneath shows the same dialog, but later). No indicator what the registration is good for, only a nice long text which ensures that they won’t play around with your data and they need it to give you a better service. And no way to go further without entering a name, fullname, address and a telephone number. What’s this? And you can only go forward (implies entering the data) or back (which is not what you want). Aborting might be possible, but maybe you abort the whole initial configuration? Really bad…

Still impressed by the nice system, I started to configure the new bluetooth mouse. There is a software on CD included, the description say first update your system and then install the driver. But system-update never works, it always tells me that there is a network error (timeout, error -1001 – check your connection and try again!). But the network is fine, browsing works nice and the network assistent also tells me that there are no problems. It really starts to remember me on my old redmond days, maybe I should have registered the machine? (turned out later that the wireless connection had for real a problem with the MTU, so i changed the router firmware and now its working fine)

Anyway, continuing the driver installation (without a system update) the next surprise, the driver for the wireless mouse needs around 133MByte (!) of space. What kind of mouse I bought? I have no idea whats included on this installation CD, but at all it worked fine and the mouse works since than flawlessly. And, have to add, the bluetooth keyboard didn’t requiered any additional software to install, so you can count it down to 66MByte for each device

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Future is now, so it was time to help my mother to enjoy the net as I do. And first I thought I’ll suggest her using a Linux, maybe Ubuntu system, but as much as I personally like Ubuntu there are some problems using Linux (have you ever tried to go to a shop and ask if a specific hardware is working with Linux? than you know what I’m talking about)

So I suggested my mother to buy a mac, more precise the cheapest MacBook available (MacBook MA699D/A, 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2, 512 MB RAM, 60GB disc, 13,3” screen). This way I thought I might have the chance to administrate the machine without going mad and my mother hopefully will get attracted by the fancy computer too. Ok, ordered one at www.cyberport.de (have to mention this, cause it arrived around 30hrs later, wow).

To make it really easy I thought of using the full potential of bluetooth: added a bluetooth mouse (Mighty Mouse MA272ZM/A) and a bluetooth keyboard (Apple Wireless Keyboard M9270D/A) and finally got from eBay a bluetooth printer (HP Deskjet 995C). The idea was to get my mother a notebook to attract her on using it for internet/entertainment in her living room, but give her the chance to add the machine to an existent LCD-Screen in a working room to have a full featured computer. So using bluetooth (and a wireless internet connection) there is only the monitor cable to attach to her mac to transfer the whole thing into a desktop solution … but we will see.

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… And listen to your customers.” So Keith had a good point in telling me that version 0.4.1pre2 destroys the HeaderView. Yes, I managed to read all headers without any other extension in 0.4.1pre2, but ignored existent (already showed) mail headers. Cause the extension adds new headers to the HeaderView and hides them, also existent Headers where hidden.

So, repaired this one and the now released pre-version 0.4.1pre3 should solve the problem. Thanks Keith (and all the others) for testing and reporting.

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Few days ago I released the preview of Virtual Identity and thought of finishing the programming on it for a while. But usually if you think thats it you’ll enter the next level. Olav and Patrick, programmers of the enigmail extension, told me that they changed their extension for the new upcoming Thunderbird release. And cause of that I couldn’t rely on their extension for retrieving the headers, so one of the main features of Virtual Identity 0.4x (looking for Identities in additional headers) would not have worked in the future.

But much better, they gave me the hint about how to retrieve all mail headers in Thunderbird, so I was able to implement a much nicer solution than the one Virtual Identity used before. And (if you are running at least Thunderbird 2.0.0.0rc1 or Seamonkey) it’s now completely independent from any other extensions like mnenhy or enigmail. Additionally I cleaned the option to select a specific header out of headers with the same name (now a mentioned header will match all headers with that name, for selecting the first one just add ‘:1′). Ok, the new version is pre-released now, download Virtual Identity 0.4.1pre2, try it and report any problems.

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