And this is the same photo as seen by Firefox:

Safari’s rendering is exactly how it should look. Firefox both brightens the exposure and softens the colors.

Another example, and this is the one where I first noticed the problem. Here is a photo taken specifically to highlight the bright red color. This is how it looks in Safari:

And here it is in Firefox:

The reds are much more muted in Firefox and it looks like a completely different exposure. Safari comes much closer to the original.

So what’s going on? Why do I only notice this for some of my own photos? Well, I think it must have to do with my photographic workflow. The photos above were taken in RAW format with my Nikon D50. I imported them into Adobe Lightroom, played around with the exposure and color a bit, then exported them to JPEG. There must be something about the process that messes with Firefox’s little brain and causes it to reinterpret how the images should look.

At least, that’s my guess. Does anyone have details on what this effect is and how to overcome it?

In the meantime, I’m considering switching to Safari when looking at photos online. It seems to most accurately present a photo as it is meant to be seen.

It turns out GDS looks for browser handling instructions in a dimly lit and dusty corner of the Windows Registry, a place not subject to the commands sent from the “Set Program Access and Defaults” applet or “Tools | Options | Default Browser” setting. If you would like to sever ties completely between GDS and IE, here’s how:

1. Open the registry editor: regedit
2. Find: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\open\command
3. You will likely see a string value with the full path to iexplore.exe. Replace the value with: "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -nohome
4. Enjoy GDS once again.

I found this solution in the archives of the Google Desktop Google Group. Thanks CB!

One final note for those who’ve installed the latest GDS v3 beta, do not enable “search across computers.” At this point, it’s an unnecesarry privacy and security risk. More on that here and here.

I have updated my Amazon-to-Seattle Public Library lookup Greasemonkey script to work with Firefox 1.5 and Greasemonkey 0.6.4. Get it here.

It inserts a link under the book title indicating the book’s status at SPL.

Here’s the original post.

I’ll be keeping tabs on Greasemonkey developments in the near future, and should something turn up that I can use to update my library lookup script for Firefox 1.5, you can be sure I’ll post about it here.

What does this plugin do? It adds to the list of search engines you can pick from in the Firefox toolbar. By default, you get Google, Yahoo!, and other major sites. There are a plethora of other engines you can add. (One of my favorites is for Netflix.) After installing the plugin, you’ll see a new option in the drop-down menu next to the toolbar search box for the Seattle Public Library. If you select it, enter some key words in the text box, and press Enter, your search terms will be passed to the SPL catalog website where the results will be returned. Nifty! What could be simpler?

Now, this is a basic keyword search, and the results are sorted by publication date. This means you can put in a book title, or an author’s name, or whatever, and the catalog will do its best to return good results based on those words. If the results aren’t what you were hoping for, you have the option of executing a more advanced search right on SPL’s website.

A big thanks to Corey Seeman of the University of Toledo for offering excellent documentation on his search plugin.

Get the plugin.

Have fun, happy searching, and use your library!

For a related hack, try my LibraryLookup Greasemonkey script for one-click searching of books using Amazon and the SPL Catalog.

A few weeks ago I set out to paste together my first Greasemonkey script along the lines of Jon Udell’s uber-cool LibraryLookup. What I have so far falls short of Udell’s, but it is a step forward. I borrowed code not from Udell but from another LibraryLookup script: Amazon Linky.

My script does one thing. On any Amazon.com book listing page, the script inserts a link below the book title which, when clicked, will search for the book in the Seattle Public Library catalog. It’s like inserting a LibraryLookup bookmarlet into the page itself. Here’s a picture:

To make use of this script you’ll need Firefox and the Greasemonkey extension. Once those are installed, right-click (or ctrl+click) amazonspllinky.user.js and choose “install user script.” Then browse for a book.

I’ve set upon myself to create a similar Greasemonkey script for the Seattle Public Library. So, while I bone up on JavaScript and flail about helplessly for a time, I’ve decided to update my Seattle Public Library LibraryLookup Bookmarklet which had become useless since the library upgraded its catalog at the end of February. Just drag and drop the link to your bookmarks toolbar. Then when you’re viewing a book listing at Amazon (or other site that includes ISBNs in the URL) you can click the bookmarklet and a new window will pop-up showing you the status of that book at the Seattle Public Library.

Here’s a complete menu of all my collected bookmarklets, some of which I made and others I found elsewhere. Drag and drop any and all just like the LibraryLookup bookmarklet above.

• King County Library Lookup
• 43 Things tags search
• Technorati tags search
• del.icio.us tags search
• Flickr tags search
• Metafilter tags search
• Upcoming tags search
• del.icio.us linkbacks from the inestimable Alan Taylor.

First, on a PC, why bother using Alt+D to bring focus to the addres bar when you can just click F6? In fact, F6 is what Internet Explorer users would be familar with, thus, we have another reason why it’s easy to switch from IE to Firefox.

Second, they claim you can substitue Alt with the Apple key on OS X. Not true in the case of Alt+D. If you type Apple+D in Firefox on OS X, you open the Add Bookmark dialog. Try Apple+L and you’ll bring focus to the address bar.

Also, it doesn’t appear to me that Command+Enter appends ‘www’ and ‘.com’ to whatever you type into the Firefox address bar on OS X.