I got my tablet PC this week. It looks like an excellent machine. If only the carrier hadn’t dropped it and broke the screen and some other stuff. I’m fairly confident the carrier will do the right thing. Ed Bott, who sold it to me, has already refunded my money. And yet, I’m still depressed. This was a perfectly good tablet and I was going to give it a perfectly good home. Now it’s worthless and who knows how long it will be before I find a deal that entices me into a tablet. I was looking forward to using it on my way out to Eugene next weekend. I sure would like to have one before the MVP Summit next year. Oh well.
I downloaded, and am using, Firefox 2.0 this week. I like the built in spell checker. I thought someone said there was tab-close-undo that would be built into this version, but I don’t see it. I had a couple of problems with the new version. It seems to hog the resources on occasion, but I can’t pinpoint why. Also it didn’t save my preferences, particularly in the Tabbrowser Preferences add-on. Overall, it seems to work nicely.
This week’s question comes from Mike in Beantown:
I’ve been trying to create some reports using a Pivot Table and it’s “Calculated Field” functionality. There is a huge drawback to these, however, since I can’t figure out how to reference the column or row totals. For example, there is a way to show a column as “%of Total” or “%of column”, but this functionality isn’t available inside the formula space for the “Calculated Field”. What if one wanted to utilize these totals in a formula generation. For example, a running weighted average, or a transformation to a %of column or something.
If you’re going to a Halloween party this weekend, what are you going as?
Dick, get the “Tab Mix Plus” Firefox add-in. That gives you tab close undo. Just middle-click the tab bar, and your deleted tabs come back one at a time.
That spell checker in the text boxes is pretty handy, eh?
I haven’t had any memory/resource problems at all. In fact, I’ve noticed a huge improvement in that area.
I don’t have a middle clicker, only a touchpad on a laptop.
Dick Kusleika wrote: “I thought someone said there was tab-close-undo that would be built into this version, but I don’t see it.”
Repeat after me. Google is my friend. Google is my friend. {g, d, r}
Use the menu item History | Recently closed tabs >
or the mouse-challenged {g, d, r vvvf} CTRL+SHIFT+t
Here’s some config tips for dealing with Firefox’s memory usage and some other useful stuff.
John
Tab Mix Plus 0.3.0.5 doesn’t work with firefox 2 but a new version is due out soon ?
Hui…
Thanks Tushar.
Dick,
Sorry to hear about your tablet. That must be frustrating, I know you’ve been looking forward to it.
Thanks for the heads-up about FF 2.0, I didn’t know it was out. On my touchpad, I can right-click on a tab and choose “Undo Close Tab” or in your case, click “U”.
I’ll be in Eugene next weekend as well. I’ll keep an eye out for you.
I’m using Tab Mix Plus Tab Mix Plus 0.3.0.61001.
Really sorry to hear about the tablet.
My daughter and I spent some fun evenings together painting a skeleton costume for her. We got the idea together watching the Red Hot Chili Peppers at Slane Caste DVD where Flea had one of those.
http://clevescene.com/webextra/2003-12-31/flea.gif
It turned out even better than Flea’s costume and she’s really looking forward to use it.
Doug: When I tried it last night, I closed a tab which left me with one open (and set to not show tabs when only one is open). So I didn’t have that right click menu. Do most people show the tab even when only one tab is open?
What are you doing in Eugene?
Dick,
In tools>options under tabs choose “always show tab bar” then you’ll be able to do it even with one tab. I didn’t have this setting on because my home page is multiple tabs and I seldom get back down to one.
I’m visiting my folks, who live in Eugene(about 2 hours of my home). I like visiting there. There’s a great bike path that goes for miles along both sides of the river and Roma’s is a good coffee place next to the campus, especially if you, like me, are a fan of the fruity, flaky pastry. It’s also a great town for seeing old school buses, guys in skirts and other signs of the Northwest’s enduring hippie culture.
John
Tab Mix Plus 0.3.0.61001 does the trick
Hui…
Hi,
anyone any idea to Mike’s question?
I have some problems myself with calculated fields in pivot tables and would be interested in getting some more information. Bought myself (Pivot Table Data Crunching from Bill Jelen) but unfortunately the book doesn’t help on this matter (although it is a very good book).
Cheers.
Firefox question.
In my old 1.x version, i used the quick search a lot. type “/” to bring it up and then start typing what you’re looking for. Enter will follow the link if the result is linked.
There used to be a button on the quick search bar that came up to find next, find previous, or highlight results. How can I access these?
Really I’d like a handy keyboard-based way to do this like type “/excel” to find excel, then press down arrow or tab or something to scroll through the results.
This was one of my favorite features from the former firefox. Any assistance is appreciated!
To find text on a page in Firefox, I just hit Ctrl+F and start typing. The Next & Previous buttons are in the status bar (you can also use Alt+N and Alt+P).
Jason B: If you want to use QuickFind, F3 will get you to the next instance. I wonder why the Next and Previous buttons don’t show up in QuickFind – seems like they could.
Thanks guys! Good to see the wizardry is in no way limited to Excel.