Computing desk
< August 15	<< Jul \| August \| Sep >>	August 17 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

August 16

JPEG color

I need to determine the HTML color code - #rrggbb - of part of an existing JPEG image. The color is consistent enough that any pixel will do within the resolution of my mouse. Is there a web tool that will do this? Mandruss |talk 07:34, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Pixlr - open image from URL, use the eyedropper, then click the colour palette to see the colour numbers. It won't work for every image, because some sites will check the HTTP referer and will refuse to send the image of they don't think it's an ordinary request (this is will be true for other web based services too). 80.189.67.91 (talk) 07:55, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @80.189.67.91:. Perfect. Mandruss |talk 08:45, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

<span> tag as template parameter

I'm trying to create my first userbox template, and I need it to support an HTML <span> tag as parameter 1. I can't get it to do the substitution, I guess because the tag is being resolved too early in the process and the result is not a valid template parameter.

The template is here and the transclusion is here. Correct answerer will have my eternal gratitude. Mandruss |talk 08:55, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have cross-posted at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical) because it may be the better place for this type of question. Feel free to ignore if you agree. Mandruss |talk 10:03, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Does Firefox's about:config actually do anything?

When I go to about:config in Firefox, I get this supposed-to-be-scary warning that I might hose the whole thing up if I do something wrong. But lots of times, I just can't tell that it does anything at all.

For example, I just changed spellchecker.dictionary from en_GB to en_US, closed Firefox, and restarted. But in this window, it still puts a red wavy line under "color", but not under "colour".

Similarly, whether I have plugins.click_to_play set to true or false, it doesn't seem to matter: Either way, videos autoplay in Facebook without my consent, unless I actually disable Shockwave Flash.

This is really kind of frustrating. I've used Firefox for years, because they're open-source and because I thought they were committed to user control of the experience. Starting to wonder about switching. Maybe to Chrome? Anyone know whether you have better control there? (Don't suggest IE; I'm a Linux user.) --Trovatore (talk) 09:01, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For disabling the autoplay on Facebook, you might want to look into F.B. Purity which has a few features including disabling the autoplay of videos on your news feed. Dismas|^(talk) 10:46, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Since the release of Firefox 4 Mozilla has been desperately trying to emulate Google Chrome. Such "improvements" include habitually bumping the version number up and up (since apparently the great unwashed masses think Product 27 is better than Product 3 because its version number is bigger), introduction of frivolous "social features", and removable of user-changeable options as part of the process of dumbing the browser down for the Apple Generation. Many options that used to be available in the options dialog (for example, disabling javascript) are now only accessible via about:config. But it gets worse. Mozilla has decided that the user is too dumb to understand what they are doing and even if they have gone to the effort of delving into the bowels of the browser and explicitly setting an option in about:config, so Firefox will now override them whenever it wants because it's "better" for the user. This includes ignoring options to disable functions (javascript, flash, etc), ignoring options not to update the browser (the latest version is forced down your throat regardless of setting Firefox NEVER to update), ignoring cookie options, ignoring cache options, etc. Mozilla clearly yearn for the modern, empty-head hipster user base and have shunned the original power users. Time to change to Pale Moon (web browser), OP. 117.173.108.38 (talk) 11:16, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Since 2012, 90% of Mozilla's royalty revenue is derived from "a search engine provider" (there's a good chance that is Google, because Google is the default search engine selected by Mozilla, and the two organizations have corporate offices literally down the street from Each other). Accounting for the Mozilla foundation's grants, corporate partnerships, assets, and history, at this time it's my opinion that Mozilla Foundation (and its profitable partner, the Mozilla Corporation) is almost a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google, though legally distinct for tax and accounting purposes. But it stands to reason that the creative choices made for the Firefox browser are heavily influenced by said "search engine" who sponsors its development and marketing.

If you actually care about free software, perhaps GNU IceCat is worth a shot. It's derived from the free software that goes into Mozilla's browser, but it does not include nonfree add-ons. It works on most GNU/Linux systems.

Nimur (talk) 14:08, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As the Wikipedia article mentions, the Mozilla Foundation has been primarily funded by Google search revenue since 2005. Google presumably makes money from this arrangement as well. If Google ever decided to cut off Mozilla, Microsoft would probably be happy to get all the extra Bing users. Google management doesn't tell Mozilla management what to do. -- BenRG (talk) 19:43, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Addressing Trovatore's original question: the "about:config interface is one of several backdoors that are built in to Firefox. I mean this term in the literal sense of the word - with and without its negative security connotations. Basically, "about:config" is one of several methods by which you can change the software's behavior, using feature sets that are built in, but for which no user-interface exists:

Some such items have no UI because the creative directors do not want to expose such a UI. An infamous example that caused uproar a few years ago was the removal of certain popular "Disable Feature checkbox", which was widely discussed across the development and user-community.
Other features have no UI because these features are temporary, experimental, or outright broken. Worse yet, most such features are undocumented anywhere - not on developer forums, not in source code, and certainly not on easy-to-digest tutorial blogs.
Waxing conspiratorially: still other features have no UI because you aren't supposed to talk about them loudly or in public. For example, even when you visit a secure website using secure protocols, your traffic is reported to aforementioned search engine - but it's only monitoring your traffic to to keep you safe.

When you use "about:config" or any other method to modify the program's behavior, you are explicitly asked to accept responsibility for the outcome - which is a perfectly fine thing to do, as long as you understand it.

Now, as somebody who has attempted to compile Firefox from source, I can attest: nobody understands all the complex interactions in this very large piece of software. The program has several hundred thousand "moving parts." A handful - say, a few ten thousand of those - have "configuration options" that can be set by the "about:config", "prefs.js", or other methods. Such preferences allow you - the "power user" - a bit more flexibility without implying that you can (or want) to modify the software at the source-code level. Yet, by using these features, you are taking a few steps down the road towards "developer" - which means that you can (and want) to understand the complex interactions of your changes. Nimur (talk) 15:38, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Editing about:config is like editing a textual configuration file, or the Windows registry. Any part of Firefox, or an extension, can put any information it wants in these configuration variables, and use it however it wants. It can be useful to edit it following instructions from someone who understands Firefox internals, but you shouldn't edit it based on your own guess about the meaning of a setting. I suspect the reason that changing the dictionary language didn't work is that you don't have the en_US dictionary installed, so it fell back on one that was installed. It could have downloaded the appropriate dictionary in the background, I suppose, but that would have required them to add code specifically to support changing the dictionary via mucking around in about:config. Instead you should do it through the UI, specifically the Languages submenu of the context menu for a text box. I don't know the status of plugins.click_to_play; it may be obsolete, or overridden by another setting. Check the per-plugin activation settings in about:addons, or search a Firefox-specific forum for help.

Firefox gives you far, far more control than Chrome over all kinds of things. I doubt that will ever change: Google has no apparent interest in adding that functionality to Chrome, and Mozilla would lose too many of its loyal supporters if it tried to remove it. -- BenRG (talk) 19:43, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox 30 is one of the worst browsers ever. It's unstable (it crashes even without user input), and its RAM footprint is huge; it gets into the 10-digit range with less than 15 WP articles (even text-only) and never seems to get back down. Somebody at Mozilla obviously forgot that Firefox is free software... - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 06:28, 18 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Disk Usage Analyzer has stopped working

I've used Disk Usage Analyzer (previously known as Baobab) on Fedora Linux to have a graphical view of how much space my folders are using on disk. But now it has suddenly stopped working. The process starts up, and keeps running, but doesn't seem to actually do anything. It never even opens a window. I don't see any error message either. The funny thing is, it used to work all OK on Fedora 20, but then just suddenly stopped working. I didn't even update or upgrade the operating system. How can I see what is the reason here? JIP | Talk 15:46, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It probably exited before even getting to displaying a window and therefore might have writen someting in a logfile. Take a look at the files in /var/log/ If not, maybe running it from a terminal will be more enlightening. The program might still be 'baobab' (like it is on my system). Astronaut (talk) 16:33, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The thing is, it doesn't exit. It just keeps running all OK, except it doesn't actually do anything. JIP | Talk 16:39, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you run it under ltrace, strace, or ptrace, then you might get some clues as to what it did before it locked up. CS Miller (talk) 21:34, 16 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]