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Showing posts from May 26, 2009

IceWm and GMail

I have been using the IceWM window manager and have been exploring how to add functionality and usability to it since it presents as basic window manager. The homepage provides useful documentation and FAQs. By default, IceWm expects you to have traditional UNIX tools at hand and doesn't automatically provide for newer technologies like GMail . It would be nice for the mail icon to work with a GMail account. Joel Dare has built upon the work of others and crafted a URL that automatically opens your GMail account in a browser. Importantly, Joel's version of the URL closes any open logins to GMail before attempting to log in; earlier versions of the URL would not complete correctly if you have multiple GMail accounts as I do. Since the URL contains my password in plain text, I chose to create a script at ~/bin/gmail-login with permissions of 700: #!/bin/sh # the following is all on one line firefox https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginAuth?continue=http://mail.g

KDE's kdict, dict.org and Firefox

I haven't used the KDE desktop since the release of KDE4, instead relying on IceWM . and while I may go back to it, I miss one of the desktop applets, kdict. Using it to check a definition, spelling, synonyms, etc. was very handy. Since I use Fierfox as my primary browser, it made sense to consider using a bookmarklet. Bookmarklets are small pieces of javascript code that can be treated as a bookmark. When clicking the bookmark, the code will be executed. I modified a bookmarklet for Dictionary.com to use the dict.org dictionary like kdict did. To make one for yourself, right-click on the Firefox Bookmarks toolbar, then select "New Bookmark", then fill in the following information. The javascript is all on one line. Name: Dict.org Location: javascript:void(q=prompt('Dict.org%20Search:',getSelection()));if(q)%20void(location.href='http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query='%20+%20escape(q)) The Database=* value mimics that used by k