Firefox Minimum Print Font Size

I've been frustrated with font sizes when I print documents and playing games with zoom level, etc. But it turns out Firefox has a good, general solution: no more playing around.

Firefox allows one to set minimum print font size. In limited testing, it works well, as it should, since the browser should be able to re-flow text for changing font sizes. Other browsers probably have some similar mechanism, but this is for Firefox:

Preferences | Content | Fonts&Colors | Advanced | Minimum Font Size

I set mine to 11. It does sometimes use more paper, but several times I've seen a printout, and tossed it directly into recycling and tried again.

Alternatively for nerds: Open about:config, find the variable font.minimum-size.x-western, and set it to your preferred minimum font size.

See also: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/font-size-and-zoom-increase-size-of-web-pages

Google Does Evil and then Lies About It

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-08-09/google-said-to-face-fine-by-u-dot-s-dot-over-apple-safari-breach

Today Google agreed to pay apple $22.5M for allegedly breaching Safari users' browser settings to set cookies. That's evil.  The payment is apparently a record high, but for Google is just a slap on the wrist

But then the above-linked Business Week article quotes Google to say "...[we have taken] steps to remove the ad cookies, which collected no personal information, from Apple’s browsers.” This strikes me as fundamentally dishonest. No, cookies gather no information. However, web servers accessing cookies left previously do gather information, so placing the cookies aided Google's gathering of information about users' browsing behavior. And a user's browsing behavior strikes me as private.

Maryland Charity Campaign

It appears that, except for the fact that they require Internet Explorer, the Maryland Charity Campaign is happy for anyone to sign anyone else up for deductions in any amount to any charity:

The restriction to Internet Explorer suggests that either Andar/360 Fundraising Software is done by a bunch amateur hacks, or they don't want donations from non-Windows users. Okay, I can contact the charities myself.

Avoiding the Worst of myUMBC

I was in a meeting a couple weeks ago, and the person doing a presentation made an offhand comment about having to click through "the useless myUMBC crap." A man after my own heart. He was talking about the media-heavy, irrelevancy-filled page at my.umbc.edu.

I avoid that page most days. Firefox, Chrome, and Opera begin showing possibly-relevant pages as soon as the user begins typing in the address bar (a much more useful use of auto-completion than one can find in office applications). IE probably does this as well. If I need access to web-based functionality hidden behind the dysfunctionality of myUMBC, I just start typing the word 'faculty' into the address bar. Usually the 'f' is sufficient to get me to the myUMBC faculty center, bypassing most of the garbage. Speaking of garbage, though, PeopleSoft is directly accessible from the faculty center, but that's another issue.