• Added support for Firefox 4.x but no longer supports Firefox 3.x. It would have been too confusing and time-consuming to maintain two different interfaces.  Use version 2.3.0 for Firefox 3.6.x.
• Tab backgrounds can now be any solid color, transparent, or anywhere in between to integerate better with translucent Firefox 4 themes.
• Removed choice of solid or clear “close tab” buttons. Now reverts to the Firefox default which is clear in FF4.

The new beta can be downloaded from the Addons site. Scroll to the section labeled “Beta Channel.”

Here’s what’s new:

• Updated settings window
  • Instead of vague sliders, you can use textboxes to directly specify the time  (in milliseconds) for tabs to open or close.
  • Similarly, replaced the frame rate (FPS) slider with a textbox.  Also added the word “maximum” because there is too much going on in Firefox during page open/close (especially with several other extensions loaded) to guarantee a minimum frame rate.
• bugfix:  Settings would be zeroed out when re-opening the settings window under Linux.
• bugfix: “High Priority” setting was not loaded when the browser loaded.

“Oh, really?” I wondered.

Lately I’ve been trying to learn to write Android apps but I quickly found that I needed a refresher in Java.   I learned C++ and Java in college, like many CS students, but aside from a short stint with C# at work,  my knowledge of the language has waned over the years.    When I revisited that post on Reddit a few days later, I came up with an idea to bring everything together:

1. Find a set of scripts from the different Star Trek series.
2. Write a program in Java to read the scripts and pull out phrases that mention course, heading, etc.
3. Analyze the results.

Finding Scripts

This was pretty easy.  A quick Google search led me to TWIZ TV where I found scripts for every episode of every season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine conveniently bundled into ZIPs.  Unfortunately, they didn’t have anywhere near as thorough collections of The Original Series, Voyager, or Enterprise.  But this is a good start.

Writing the Java Program

This took more time than I expected, but it was well worth the trouble.  Thanks to a good Java book, and a bit of googling, I wrote my first arguably useful Java program in years.

From a given starting folder, the code iterates through all its sub-folders and analyzes all the text files within.  Each time a keyword shows up — course, heading, mark, range, or distance –    a line is output that contains the filename (indicating the series, season, and episode), the line number (to verify using Notepad++), which keyword was detected, and any numbers (spelled out in the scripts) that immediately follow the keyword.  Output is written to console which can be easily piped to a CSV file.  From there, the CSV can be exported to a database or spreadsheet for analysis.

Some caveats:

• If there is any text between the keyword and the number sequence, it does not register as a “hit” in my code.  So if the script reads “Heading of three-two-one” it will be missed because of the word “of” in the middle.
• The “Is the next word after the keyword a number?” function tries to cover all types of numeric text (one, two, …, nine, zero, oh, ten, eleven, … twenty, thirty,… hundred, thousand, million, but I’m sure  something slipped detection.
• I got lazy near the end, so I just hard-coded parameters like the path to the files and the keywords to search for.

Results

The following results were the result of passing the CSV output into OpenOffice Base, where I could run a few simple SQL queries:

• First, let’s look at the phrase that started this mad journey.
  • “Bearing three-one-zero” appears once (DS9  Rocks and Shoals).    For what it’s worth, “Mark three-one-zero” appears twice (TNG All Good Things and DS9 Valiant)
  • “Mark two-one-five” is mentioned eleven times, but it is not the most frequent “mark.”    “Bearing two-one-five”  appears twice (TNG All Good Things and DS9 Destiny)
• The most common bearing is one-eight-seven with four instances — four different episodes, two are TNG and two are DS9.  Tied for second place are a half dozen values with two instances each.
• The most popular sector is zero-zero-one with seven instances — six of those were from the TNG Best of Both Worlds two-parter, and the other instance was from DS9′s first episode whose opening scene takes place at the same time as Best of Both Worlds.  The second most popular “sector” was twenty-one-five-oh-five — five hits, all from TNG episode The Wounded.
• The top five “marks” were: four (12), two-one-five (11), three (8), zero (7), and seven (6).
• There were no “heading” or “range” values that stood out statistically.

I’ve provided the CSV below, which you can view in your favorite spreadsheet or database software and make your own observations.  I’ve also provided the source code, so others may continue where I leave off.

Files

• Scripts
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation (TWIZ TV)
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (TWIZ TV)
• Java Source Code
  • ScriptScannerTest.java (PasteBin)
  • ScriptScanner.java (PasteBin)
• Output
  • CSV (PasteBin)

Simply put, Liquid Tabs animates the opening and closing of tabs in Firefox.

Give it a spin, and let me know how it goes!

With a brand new year underway, and a brand new Firefox out the door, a new and improved version of ChromaTabs Plus has arrived.

• Firefox 3.6 compatible
• Added tolerance when calculating “most frequent” color.  For example, the Google icon should now be green instead of grey.
• Separate opacity/saturation/luminosity values for selected tab, unselected tab, active tab (on mouseover)
• Added option to do nothing if a site icon is missing. The alternative would be to pick a color unique to the site’s domain name
• When coloring based on domain name, offer the option for different subdomains to share the same tab color.
• FIXED: “color is null” error message
• FIXED: No longer need to restart browser or hover over tabs for new appearance settings to take effect.

Visit the ChromaTabs Plus home page for a closer look.

ChromaTabs Plus 2.2 screenshot

I am pleased to announce the long-overdue update of ChromaTabs Plus. 

• Firefox 3.5 compatible
• Can now use the most frequent color instead of taking the average.  You must enable this in the settings. 
• Transparent Close Tab buttons
• Improved compatibility with Tree Style Tab.  The vertical splitter is colored, too.
• Bugfix: Tab colors are preserved when restoring sessions.
• Bugfix: Tabs are colored when using Open Link In New Tab

Download the new release from Addons.Mozilla.org.

Visit the ChromaTabs Plus home page for a closer look.

I took a break from my Mars 3D hobby this week to bring one of my favorite Firefox 2 extensions into the Firefox 3 era.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think of it!

ChromaTabs Plus Homepage

All the images can be seen in my Flickr set. And Flickr members (free!) can enjoy the images in their full glory–up to 1024×1024 resolution!

This is much better.  Credit goes to this page for the PaintShopPro-specific how-to.

This won’t be as compelling as those beautiful pseudo-color panoramas that the fine folks at JPL and the University of Arizona will be putting together in the next couple days.  Nevertheless, this 3D image I’ve put together gives you a sense of standing in the northern polar region of Mars and looking down at your feet.  Click on the image to get the full-size version from Flickr.

The picture is composed from images (1,2) captured by both cameras of the Surface Stereo Imager on Sol 0.  I used Paint Shop Pro to merge the images and an old pair of cardboard red-and-blue 3D glasses to test the results.
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