My Geek Notes

I learned a few new things about the Javascript Date object today:

1. When using this constructor: new Date(year, month, day);, month is 0 based. So, if you want to create a date object for September 30, 2007, it would look like this: new Date(2007, 8, 30);
2. It’s far better to use a completely different constructor - one that takes a date string, parses it, and returns a valid date object. So like this: new Date('9/30/2007'); will generate September 30, 2007.

After searching and searching for some sort of solution to fix the crashing that happens with Firefox on Linux when exiting a page with Flash 9 content, I finally found a good workaround that will get me by until someone at Mozilla or Adobe gets it fixed for good. I found this solution while digging through a couple of threads on some message boards. Once I saw it posted a couple of times I figured I’d give it a try myself, and go figure, it’s working!

1. Open up a browser window to some web page that has Flash 9 content on it - Yahoo, Digg, MSN, CNN or whatever - they all have ads in Flash (most times).
2. Move that browser to another desktop or minimize it - make sure not to close it.
3. Open a new browser and use that as your primary browser.

The key seems to be that when you close the only page with Flash on it, it crashes and kills Firefox at the same time. If you have another browser window open then it keeps the Flash alive there and anything you open or close on your primary window doesn’t crash. Simple and stupid, but I’m game until someone finds something better.

Since I couldn’t find a good list anywhere else (insert sarcastic context here), here’s mine:

1. Google Browser Sync - syncs bookmarks, history, cookies, and passwords across multiple computers.
2. Add N Edit Cookies - edit cookies one at a time. Handy for development
3. ColorZilla - a handy color picking tool.
4. Firebug - edit and fiddle with css, html, javascript, etc. in any webpage.  A must have for any web developer.
5. Flashgot - pair this with your favorite download manager for easy downloading of multiple files.
6. Gmail Manager - toolbar to keep a watch on multiple gmail accounts.
7. IE View Lite - opens pages in IE for those websites that just don’t look right or work in Firefox.
8. ShowIP - shows the IP of the server to which you’re connecting in the address bar. Nice if you’ve messed with your host file and are unsure of which domain is pointing where.
9. Tamper Data - mess with any of the HTTP headers, cookies, or other form elements prior to posting back a web page. Always interesting to see what’s getting sent in a given web request.
10. Web Developer - I use this less now that I’ve found Firebug, but still gets plenty of use in my daily development activities.