conormulligan.com / blog

This Tuesday, the 17th of June, Firefox 3 will finally come out of beta. Just so you know.

Ireland doesn’t have zip codes (per se: Dublin has postal codes, but they’re not strictly analogous to zip codes). Almost all the time, this is not a problem. Ireland is small enough to get by without needing such a system, and so has avoided introducing one so far.

This is going to change; Eamon Ryan plans to introduce an national postal code system by 2009 (whether on not this is actually going to happen is debatable; proposed changes on this subject have died before).

But in the meantime, Irishmen continually have to suffer the regular annoyance of being prompted constantly for out not-existent zip code. Usually, it’s not so bad; entering a random string generally gets you by. Other sites, in the name of rock-solid input validation, check the validity of said entry and reject any code deemed non-existent.

Now, normally I applaud thorough input validation (I especially like it when sites check the top level domain of an email-address to ensure its existence); but if you’re going to insist on a valid zip code, it’s important to understand that postal coding is not a universal policy.

IGN and Google have mapped Liberty City, featured in the just-released GTA4. Places of interested are already cropping up, thanks to the community. This is just another reason in the list of many testifying to the sheer brilliance of Google Maps.

I moved to using Firefox 3 nightlies as my primary web-browser a few months ago, a move that was painful not because of the volatile nature of pre-release software, but because of the patchy support for the Minefield builds amongst the most popular Firefox plugins. Slowly but surely, I got all my essential add-ons functional with the glaring exception of the Del.icio.us plugin. I eventually resorted to using an-invasive add-on (Shareaholic) just to have access to simple Del.icio.us functionality.

Well, my worries are finally over, as today Yahoo! released a Firefox 3-friendly Del.icio.us plugin.

The first thing I noticed when I installed the update was how all-encompassing it is; by default it adds:

• 3 navigation-bar buttons
• 3 status-bar icons
• A toolbar
• A sidebar
• A main-menu entry
• An options-menu entry
• Integration with the location-bar bookmark icon
• An ‘imported’ column in the bookmarks library
• And possibly more to be discovered

It sounds a bit much at first, especially when you take into account the massive overlap of functionality between all UI additions, but it is immensely customisable so you can get rid of as much or little of the fluff as you like. If, like me, you’re bookmarking needs are relatively simple you’ll likely get rid of everything barring the navigation-bar buttons.

Anyway, you can download the extension here; as always be careful as this is still technically beta software.

It occurs to me that a major shortcoming of the user-generated content side, Digg,com, is the inability to submit content that is specific to certain locals. More than once I’ve come across news or media that would appeal only to Irish digg users; there was no sense submitting it because it would been lost almost immediately in the noise. If it were possible to bind Irish content to a certain local (they could even be stacked, for example some content may be suited to Irish, British of Europe localisation) this wouldn’t happen.

Surely I’m not the only one who thinks this is a good idea?