uzbl, the return - day3

uzbl, the return, part3

well, that was odd... i swore i remember posting part one... oh well, starting day 3, and days 1 & 2 are posted now.

i've a graphic design brief about to kick off any day soon (just waiting to be sent a file), and may need a browser to help with that, so this will be it's first real test. eep!

much better rested than i was yesterday (which was mostly squandered on facebook, ugh) so am keen to check out what pogress i made on adblock in those last few hours yesterday through my yawning and bleary eyes.
... or to find out what a mess i've made of my config.

oh, a little list of niggles seems to be the order of this series of blog posts. ^_^
i'm still not fluently making use of it. little things like copying the url of the page i'm on for instance... so used to triple clicking the url bar and ctrlC, ctrlV, or just middle clicking to paste... i'm sure in the uzbl way of doing things, there's a much simpler "press this one key once" and it's in the clipboard. ... yet to get that.

i did spend a chunk of time yesterday just reading through the config.
it was rather dry reading, as you'd expect, and it was late... attention kept wavering... eyes kept closing. ^_^
but i did manage to have a few "a-ha!" moments where i saw where it all fits, how it works, and why it's done like it is.

that's the thing about this level of unixyness... it's not made for immediate intuitiveness for someone who's never used it before... it's made to be the best way it can be for those who know it.
to some that might seem like an insane aproach, but really, it's about ... it's...
... it's like playing diablo2x, and you design your character before even playing with it, with your godly equipment in mind, so you fill all your skill points and attribute points accordingly with that end goal in mind, even though that is likely to cause considerable difficulties and shortcomings on the way. ...but once you get to your destination of having all your godly equipment specially selected for your fully optimised character build, you really apreciate it, and would really regret it if you had compromised. ...yeah, it's like that. ^_^

some of those niggles i have in converting to the interface, get utterly blown away when i learn how it's done in uzbl-browser with the default config. for example.. i was a little miffed earlier that i couldnt zoom with ctrl- and ctrl=, but what elation when i learned i can forgoe the ctrl key, with just a more intuitive - and +... more intuitive, that is, if i hadnt already been conditioned to this other way.

still niggled a bit that my blog would only increase the text size, and not the width of the text area... maybe this is already accomodated for too, and i just havnt encountered it yet, or maybe blogger is lame, and i should see if i can edit it's css.

discovering zoom "1" and "2" was a real treat too. just what the dr ordered. one zoom setting for when i'm leaning forward in productivity mode, one zoom setting for when i'm leaning back in lazy-browse mode. ^_^ usually that doesnt bother me, since i'm so rarely in the latter... but it's nice to know now that should i ever want to lean back, i dont have to squint n keep leaning forward to read small text, nor resize the text with half a dozen key presses. it's touches like this that make uzbl so lush. really shows the benefit of making your software configurable. ... cos then people configure it! ^_^ (the sharing of those configurations, n the good one's making it upstream should go without saying of course. viva free software!)

speaking of real treats,
this page:
http://www.uzbl.org/wiki/configtricks
paints a pretty decent picture of the potential.
if you've read this far, chances are your not one of the highly doubtful naysayers to this sort of software, so you dont likely need this kind of convincing... but maybe you'll want to show this to someone who doesnt yet get it. taking one example from that page... sharing links... how often do we share links through some site... and how much sweeter would our lives be if all it took to do so was press two keys "vr"*. BAM! rather than the lengthy process of selecting, copying, navigating, loading, clicking, pasting, waiting to load again, navigating back. sheesh!

* just for example. of course, it could be any keys you want.

... oh, and it doesnt take long to find what you're looking for with a little help from #uzbl
found how to copy the url of current page.

@cbind yu = sh 'echo -n $6 | xclip'

i missed it in the config while searching through "copy" and "url" instances... but it was hidden under "yanking" and "binds".
yu copies it to the middle click, so i added cu, to copy to the clipboard. mmm, sexy.

@cbind cu = sh 'echo -n $6 | xclip -selection clipboard'

oh sweet lordy lordy do i love uzbl. ^_^
i should have done this years ago. ... oh wait, i did. ^_^ right when uzbl was still new. ... of course, i wasnt giving it a proper chance then though. not like this time. ^_^

if there are two things on a modern computer that you'd be using pretty much all the time, and would be most worthy of learning something a bit more fancy*, it's the window manager and web browser. :)

* s/fancy/expediently useful, even if it takes a little longer to learn in the beginning/

... some time later...
... after some more use and tinkering ...

fuuuuuuuuuuuuu'!

i'm rly in love with uzbl now.

a real grower. ^_^

.. it's got me so damn enthused and excited about it. not since... idk... not since discovering xmonad, or crunchbang, have i got this excited over a piece of software.

... later yet in day 3...

well... it's got to that stage where it's late, n the brain must not be quite as sharp, as evidenced by my inability to figure out that damn change_style.sh ... wouldnt even change the default background. but then, the guy helping me in #uzbl couldnt figure it out either. as best we could, we covered all the bases, and couldnt figure it out. ... i started to suspect version incompatability.


mouse-over links showing what the link is in status would be nice... ~ too sleepy, a lil project for the morning.
~ OH! it does already! ... just couldnt see it with the default colours.

i should point out, there's loads more scripts added than i've mentioned in my todo list bellow.

#####
todo
####

####
in progress.
###


2. video download (AND/OR see #9)
3. flash cookie purge

7. no script
8. pdfs open in zathura (or whatever)
9. flash movies get watched in mplayer.
10. oohooh! want a "add to adblock list" added to the right click menu... aw, that'd b piiiimp!!"


####
complete.
###

1. adblock (still needs extra populating and updating of the block list, but it's catching most now)
5. flashblock
6. copy selected text without right click

####
no longer applicable
###

!4. open in new tab, in right click menu