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Rantlets

Random rantage, assorted annoyances, miscellaneous mumblings.

• Updates to Mail.app in Panther include some new sound effects. There is a new ‘mail sent’ sound, like a swoosh or airplane taking off; there’s also a ‘no new mail’ sound (played only if you asked for mail check manually) that’s a charming mix of fingers on a blackboard and the shower scene from Psycho. In Mail’s preferences dialog, you can change the new mail sound (just as you could in Jaguar), but you can’t change any of the other sounds. You can only turn ‘other sounds’ on or off. That’s just lazy and sloppy.

• If you’re going to bother inserting ads in a webpage, use a permalink. Ads on Macintouch are tasteful and subtle (one line of text, in a colored box, inline in the articles), but when I saw one today for something I was interested in, the link took me to the advertiser’s home page, not to the product mentioned in the ad. I searched and found the product is still caried and in stock (just out of curiosity as to why the link failed), but they lost a potential sale.

• Firebird 0.7.1 has been bugging me lately. Granted, it’s beta, but this is just one of those things I keep noticing. I use the status bar, so I can hover a link and see where it goes before deciding to click. I also tend to maximize my Firebird window. At this point, if I click a link from another app (like NetNewsWire) which opens a new window, it’s top-left corner is tiled over and down from my existing window. Since the existing window was maximized, the new window is the same size; but since the new window is tiled down, the status bar is now off the bottome of the screen.

• Speaking of status bars, Mail.app doesn’t have one. It claims to, but this is the info bar between the mail list and the preview pane. I need a real status bar, at the bottom of the window, so I can hover links and see where they go. Or show me this info as a tooltip. Don’t make me click blind.

• Football coverage on CBS is just plain painful. Greg Gumble has got to be the worst commentator I have ever heard. Thank goodness the Eagles games are usually covered on Fox. Go Birds.

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