I am an avid tweaker. (No, not that kind.) I like things just so, and if anything should be changeable on a whim it’s software. So when I install something new, one of the first things I do is hit the Options menu.
Toolbars are also something I need to “fix” to get rid of useless buttons. And there are always plenty. My Microsoft Word toolbar, for example, is pretty Spartan, because I hardly touch what’s in the default. (Paste? Who needs a button when you have Ctrl-V?) Clutter just distracts me, so my toolbar is geared more toward showing me information (what style or font is in effect) than anything else:
That’s one reason I love Firefox for the Web and Thunderbird for e-mail — complete customization. You can configure not only how it looks but how it behaves to exactly your liking. (And that’s one thing I like about Microsoft Office, at least till Office 2007. You can customize the heck out of it. Big step back with 2007, IMO.)
Firefox and Thunderbird go a step further, allowing you to use basic HTML and CSS to customize anything about the interface, from the font used in the folder list (or, separately, the e-mail list), the color of any part of the screen, which menu items appear, and more. Lots more.
But I go even further than messing with Firefox’s userChrome.css file.
Google’s Picasa is a great program for working with images. But it’s very Google-centric, as you might imagine, including a prominent link to log into your Picasa Web Albums. Well, I don’t use those, but there’s that link, annoying me. So I used a hex editor to edit Picasa’s actually program files and remove that link. (Hex editors, for those of you who don’t know, allow you to edit program and other binary files that would look like gobbledygook in a text editor.)
One of the blogging tools I like (although it’s not as good as Windows Live Writer) is Scribefire — an addon for Firefox. But the people who made it added some features that not only would I never use, but that I would find really annoying. Specifically, a way to “monetize your blog!”. No thanks. But the button to launch that is as prominent as the one to actually edit a post, and the one to set your options.
So I dove into Scribefire program files until I found the code that contained that “monetize” button and I killed it. Presto: Customized, tweaked blogging tool.
There’s a spectrum of people and the changes they make. On one end are the folks who just use things as they are, and are content with the default. On the other are disturbed people like me who want things just so. And I can live with that.
ValerieInRke (twitter) says:
I resemble these remarks – Ctrl “C” and Ctrl “V” are like breathing to me.
Explorer 8.0 – all those buttons and I can’t find the few I use. In Outlook Express I use RULES but still can’t get organized. “Find” is my savior. Second to “Find” is “Rules.” If “From = Kantor then move message to “Geek dude” folder.” :)
Why I don’t use Firefox more I don’t know except that “change” is difficult for this ol’ gal.