Minor things that bother you

[Scott5114]

I wish there was a way to hug KWin for not putting me through...whatever the hell explorer.exe is trying to accomplish these days.

[vdeane]

Firefox.  I was going to switch to it as a result of my Chromium/Google/YouTube problems affecting Vivaldi, but that quickly collapsed.  First, it seems to consume more RAM than Vivaldi does.  It nearly locked up my computer after a couple hours streaming Paramount+ last night (to the point where I needed to unplug both Ethernet and my HDMI cable to the TV to regain control).  This in and of itself wasn't a showstopper, as I was running Vivaldi at the time as well and figured that having both open contributed.  However, my further difficulties that night quickly changed that assessment.

Due to this, I decided to accelerate my plans for switching, as I didn't want the same thing to happen when I watch Doctor Who tomorrow.  I installed FBPurity (which needs to be sideloaded for some reason, not sure why), imported my bookmarks, turned on cloud storage for uBlock, set up a Firefox account with sync, and installed the app on my phone.  This is when a few Firefox issues that I hadn't previously noted, or hadn't been able to previously evaluate, became apparent.  First, sync wasn't quite as capable as I had hoped; it was janky getting things to my laptop and settings didn't transfer to my phone.  Getting my new tab page set up how I want it was a nightmare too; Vivaldi lets people fully customize it with "start page shortcuts" that function just like bookmarks.  Firefox is more like Chrome, populating it with frequent pages from history, although it does allow items to be pinned and edited (manually adding things, alas, isn't possible; the workaround is to edit an existing one into what you want to add).  This also doesn't sync.

Search engines can't be added as easily on Android, which is especially an issues as setting don't sync; getting Startpage added was a nightmare, especially as Android didn't want to copy text from Vivaldi to Firefox (what's especially interesting is that the way search engines need to be added on Android isn't even allowed on desktop; granted, the desktop way is one of the things Firefox does well, allowing search engines to be added with a click on supported sites, eliminating the need to type URLs with query placeholders).

Then we get to the lack of a reading list.  When Chrome introduced it, it quickly became a part of how a browse, even moreso when I switched to Vivaldi and the UI became even better (in fact, Chrome burying the reading list into an otherwise useless and rather imposing sidebar was one of the reasons why I dumped it in the first place!).  Supposedly Pocket is supposed to function in this capacity.  It does not.  I tried.  I really did.  But Pocket fundamentally serves a different niche than how I was using it.  Pocket is more about "here's an interesting story that I might want to read later" and using analytics to suggest other stories.  Things like keeping up with fanfiction or online serials, and passing links between devices, or storing temporary bookmarks (like I did for a Montreal weather forecast and Quebec 511)?  Not so much.  It doesn't even work in private windows.  I posted a question to the community support forum on whether any extensions have the functionality I require.  24 hours later, I still have received no response.  I'd probably give it time, but then we come to the final dealbreaker...

To make matters even worse, it turns out that Firefox always opens bookmarks and links from the new tab page by switching to that tab, even when you middle click.  There appears to be no way to have middle click open tabs in the background, which is the whole point of opening a bookmark that way in the first place.  Epic fail, totally breaks how I browse the web, at this point I gave up and just installed uBlock Origin on Vivaldi.  This is, alas, only a temporary solution before Google forces Manifest v3 on everyone (and until it the deprecated context menu UI that I'm using through a Vivaldi option gets removed), at which point I don't know what I'll do.  But I do know that I can't make Firefox work for me.  It's fundamentally incompatible with how I browse.


In non-browser related stuff, my apartment's maintenance.  I called to report mildew on my bedroom ceiling shortly after the eclipse (unbeknownst to me, my upstairs neighbor got a mysterious leak near his sink around the same time).  They didn't bother to do anything until two weeks ago, after I reported that it worsened, and all they did was slap a new coat of paint on it (getting paint dust on all my furniture in the process).  Needless to say, this did not fix the problem.  In fact, it made things worse.  I came back from Montréal to find water dripping from the ceiling in that spot, completely soaking the carpet.  By this point, the leak was also affecting my downstairs neighbor as well.  They ripped out part of the ceiling that day, and I had my bucket collecting the water that night.  They next day they came in, and after a whole day, had finally located and fixed the leak, which was coming from a pipe that collects stormwater from the roof (next to the sink drain for my upstairs neighbor).  Thankfully, my furniture was covered this time, especially as I found out later that this fix involved maintenance flooding the apartment of my upstairs neighbor (and only getting towels after my neighbor yelled at them to do so).

The hole in the roof didn't get filled until Monday, at which point my bedroom became a construction zone for a whole week, making access to it and especially my dresser very difficult.  They only just finished repainting today, hopefully with furniture covered, but I'm not really sure.  There's small drops of paint on my dresser which I can't remove, although that may be from their first repair attempt, as my lamp has them as well (it was moved after the leak appeared as it was directly under it).  To make matters worse, maintenance attempted to clean my dresser and my bed table, leaving a nasty goop on them in the process.  I have not been able to remove said goop; it did not come off with a wet paper towel, and it did not come off with a magic eraser.  I am out of ideas, so between that and the paint drops, the surface of both is completely ruined and I will need to replace them.  Priceless furniture, inherited from my grandmother, ruined by a careless and incompetent maintenance person (I also lost two light bulbs due to him handling a couple lamps roughly, but those at least can be replaced the next time I go to the store, though I'm not liking the 3 phase CFL that's in one temporarily; looks like my bedroom is getting LEDs sooner than I thought it would).  I wish he had left well enough alone, as I'm cleaning everything with my swiffer dusters tomorrow anyways.  They would have taken care of the paint dust without ruining my furniture.    

I wish there was a way to hug KWin for not putting me through...whatever the hell explorer.exe is trying to accomplish these days.

97.7 & 98.3?

https://www.kwin.com

[Rothman]

Yeesh, vdeane.  That's horrible.