Stumbleupon is great, but dumb.
Months and months ago (too many to remember, damn zinc) I started using the StumbleUpon toolbar. Occasionally there’s a few easily solved hiccups, like having to configure my firewall, or me forgetting my password. The dumb part is that you can’t change the options in the toolbar unless you’re signed in. I’ll tell you why thats dumb later.
Enter Google.
Which feed it was exactly escapes me right now, but the other day I read in my Thunderbird news and blogs that Google had released a few extensions for Firefox. The one that interested me the most was the Google Suggest extension, which brings the functionality of Google Suggest direct to Firefox. I’ll let Google tell you what it does.
Google is dumb.
Now I don’t know whether this is Google‘s fault, but I had to refresh the page after having to manually add the google toolbar site to the list of sites that are allowed to install extensions. I also had to manually download then install it.
Is Google evil ?, part 1.
Shortly after installing the extension, I began having problems with the software update feature in Firefox. The progress either froze when checking, or failed entirely, stopping other extensions from recieving updates becase the google extension couldn’t be updated.
Is Google evil ?, part 2.
So eventually I recieve word via Thunderbird that a new version of the toolbar has been released. I uninstalled the old one, installed the new one, and lo and behold, it appears as if Google lets rip a small piece of hell on my Firefox installation. A bunch of the preferences, if not all where reset to factory settings, and StumbleUpon disapeared.
Why StumbleUpon is dumb
Once the toolbar disapeared, my first reaction was to change the position of the toolbar via the Tools>Extensions>(select stumbleupon)>Options window. Except I couldn’t do that, because you have to be signed into StumbleUpon to alter settings (like I said, a bunch of preferences were wiped). Only I couldn’t sign in because the toolbar wouldn’t appear. That is why StumbleUpon is dumb.
My solution to the disapearing toolbar
A thought struck me, I had an idea that I could use the about:config thing in Firefox to manaully change the position of the toolbar. So I went in, used the about:config filter to find the StumbleUpon prefs, changed stumble.toolbar-position from stumbleupon to address, restarted Firefox, and there it was. I checked about:config and it looks like StumbleUpon set the location back to stumbleupon upon reboot fixing the whole problem.
This solution to the common disapearing StumbleUpon toolbar may not work for others, as there were other factors involved (like evil google opening a portal to hell up Firefox‘s ass). Do not mess about with about:config unless you know what you’re doing. Or if you don’t give a shit. But preferably only if you know what you’re doing.
PS: I must stress that I can’t entirely be certain that Google was at fault for causing the problem. It could’ve been Microsoft’s shoddy software that Firefox was running on :-P. Seriously though, while I’m good with computers I’m no technical expert, I’m just telling you what appeared to have happened. Also, If you have Firefox have try the Well Rounded, which adds a nice, simple but elegant touch to the firefox address and search bars.
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