Conservatives new Energy and Climate Change man

The Conservative party has appointed Greg Clark as their Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. This is a pretty un-enviable job, how to secure our energy supply and reduce carbon emissions is bad enough, but to push through useful measures with a nuclear-sceptic public is a real challenge.

Close Remember The Milk Tab Firefox

When logging in to Remember The Milk for GMail (at least in Firefox with TabMix Plus) a rather annoying empty tab is left open, with no content. This page actually has a JavaScript close instruction, but by default a JavaScript is not allowed to close windows that it didn't open.

This can be overcome by entering about:config into the Firefox address bar, and double clicking the dom.allow_scripts_to_close_windows to set it to 'true'. A warning is in order: now JavaScripts can close windows (tabs) that they didn't open (I haven't had any problems with this however).

Microsoft Outlook Web Access in Firefox

Despite the fact that it may have spawned the wonder that is AJAX Outlook Web Access (OWA) has a lot to answer for. Fist of all it really is tightly bound to Microsoft Internet Explorer. IE is something that I avoid whenever possible: Firefox has been my browser of choice for a while now.

Unfortunately Microsoft prevent uses of non-IE web browsers from using the 'Premium' version of OWA - forcing them to use 'Basic'. I have to use OWA at home as the administrators of our Exchange server refuse to allow me to have my e-mail automatically forwarded to GMail. I also refuse to have two browser windows open when one would suffice. Thankfully by using the IEtab extension for Firefox it is possible, IEtab allows you to use the (rather poor) IE rendering engine in specified Firefox tabs.

Install it, restart Firefox and head to your OWA login page. Find the little Firefox logo on your status bar, and right click with the mouse. Click the 'Add' button to force Firefox to use the IE rendering engine for your OWA. Refresh your OWA login page and voila.

I really wish Microsoft would grow up and realise that not everybody wants to use IE!

Blogging Frequency

I seem to have burst of blogging. Periods of frantic activity penetrating larger, generally devoid times. It's not that I have nothing to write about, I have too much to write about! I have a folder of bookmarked web pages that I want to comment on - across three different blogs. I just don't get around to it all that often, and when I do start I tend to go on until I have emptied the folder.

I plan to empty the folder after lunch. So be prepared.