*Review* Mozilla Weave

Mozilla Weave isn’t too old, yet it’s not new either. I’ve known about Weave for some time now, and thought it was a wonderful idea. When I first tried Weave a while back it was glitchy, the UI was horrible, and it didn’t do anything worth having. Up to now I’ve been very content with Xmarks. It’s very simple to use, the UI is amazing, and it even has a web interface. It’s everything one could dream of for bookmark/password sync. Back to Weave… I decided to give it another shot, and see if it has progressed into something usable? Weave is touted to be “secure”, and to “transport your browsing experience across all your devices.” These sound like wonderful features, lets see if Weave meets its promises.

Install:

The install was very simple, straightforward, and concise. It gathers all the information needed, in very few steps, and proposes what will happen in simple English.

Step 1 (Do you have an account?):

I like sites/services that are taking this approach as opposed to the all too common login/register approach.

Step 2 (username/password/email):

Again I’m impressed with how clean the page is. Along with three tidbits of collected information there is a captcha.

Step 3 (Secret pass for password sync):

Step 4 (Select services):

Sync-able services include:

• Bookmarks
• History
• Tabs
• Passwords
• Preferences
• Forms

Xmarks handles bookmarks/passwords, but not tabs, history, preferences, or forms. The major plus to Weave is that it handles Preferences. I can’t verify that all the kinks are worked out, but it seemed to work alright with some of the basic settings.

Step 5 (Fin):

This took less than two minutes, and everything “should” sync up between my browsers… The syncing works with a little pushing. I tried Weave on a few different systems, and one worked right away, and the other required me to manually “sync” before it automagically started working. This is simple, it’s a matter of clicking the Weave logo at the bottom of your browser, and clicking sync now.

Settings Menu (Sync that sucker):

Other than that the hiccups weren’t that bad. Seems like the UI is too minimalistic compared to Xmarks. There is no web interface, or simple way to change settings.

Dropdown 1:

• Sign out is self explanatory.
• My account – lets you change email/password.
• Sync now – SYNCS NAO!

Dropdown 2:

It’s interesting to look at the debug log, but not very useful to me.

Summary:

Mozilla Weave seems like a promising product, yet I just can’t commit to it yet. I used it a couple days, and it works as advertised, yet the UI is very basic. It would be nice to have some more options in the dropdown that allow some more finite account tweaking. Also it would be great to have a web UI to check out your settings/bookmarks. Or at least a simple way to integrate with a current service such as Delicious.

I wish that Mozilla Weave was more refined, yet it will prolly take some time until it’s a viable alternative to Xmarks. I can’t wait till I can feel that Weave is secure, bug-free,  and has decent features that I can replace Xmarks.

Linux | Firefox 3.5.2 Google Finance Fix

Recently I tried to edit the settings in my google finance portfolio to no avail. I have the newest version of Firefox. Ie. Shiritoko 3.5.2. Come to find out google finance was disabling the features because of the UserAgent that was specified in about:config. To fix, open up about:config and enter the following for the User Agent

Preference Name:
general.useragent.extra.firefox

Value:
Firefox/3.5.3pre

This will make everything work how it should.

Before:

After:

Firefox Multi-Select

Just in case you didn’t know >> Firefox allows you to multi-select lines, and have your way with them

I made a little video to demonstrate: