Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, have been working on the “Ubuntu Netbook Remix” (UNR) for a little while now, but the recent release of Ubuntu 9.04 has seen it promoted more heavily as a viable replacement for the operating systems …
Read moreDell Mini 9 and Ubuntu 8.04
Having discussed the Dell Mini 9 hardware, it seems only fair to devote a few paragraphs to its software. You may recall that I ordered the Ubuntu version of the netbook, which ships with a Dell-modified version of Ubuntu 8.04. …
Read moreDell Mini 9
A couple of months back I finally succumbed to the allure of the netbook and bought myself a Dell Mini 9. I’ve been considering a netbook since the introduction of the original 7″ Asus Eee PC, but held out for …
Read moreUbuntu 9.04: restoring the Shut Down entry to the System menu
Yesterday I wrote about my initial impressions of Ubuntu 9.04, “Jaunty Jackalope” – but the bulk of the post ended up being about the decision to remove the “Log Out” and “Shut Down” options from the System menu. In the …
Read moreThoughts on Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope
Having upgraded a few machines to Ubuntu 9.04 a few days ago, here are my thoughts on this latest version: Things I Love The speed of the system – both in booting and in general use – seems to be …
Read moreUpgraded to Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope
The new version of Ubuntu came out on Thurdsday, so I grabbed the Alternate Installer CD via BitTorrent in order to upgrade my Linux virtual machine at work, and my desktop machine at home. While I was at it, I …
Read moreXBL
XBL – a dubious abbreviation for eXtensible Binding Language – is perhaps the most important part of the XUL platform that we use, other than XUL itself. XBL is a mechanism for encapsulating a XUL UI and javascript code into …
Read moreXUL Overlays
In short, overlays are a mechanism by which one XUL file can be inserted into another XUL file, in a controlled manner. That last bit is the key: “in a controlled manner”. There are lots of ways to insert one …
Read moreServing all the other files
Back to this diagram: I’ve spent a couple of posts discussing the complexities of the DTD files. Thankfully the rest of the diagram is fairly easy to explain. A user requests a XUL file from the server – initially this …
Read moreA final word on translations
The short version of my previous XUL post is that our framework attempts to convert entity references into translated strings by trying three different approaches until one succeeds: A fast and accurate method, provided the developer has added a <tfs_string> …
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