[Companion] Yahoo updates toolbar for Firefox

[Brian Erst]

I have been underwhelmed by the official Yahoo! version. It's only a
beta, so I can't realy complain.

An unfortunate side-effect of the official version, though, is that it
seems to have stopped development of the Mozilla version cold. We don't
even have the "good" version of the Mozilla edition on our website -
unless you trudge thru the mailing list archives, you have no way of
knowing that there is a MUCH superior version than the 0.54 release at
companion.mozdev.org.

During the early days of the Yahoo! beta, I used to evangelize the
Mozilla version over on the Yahoo! mailing list, but I could never get
anyone associated with the Mozilla version to update the website with
the best available copy (0.5.5.20050110).

It's too bad - fortunately I've got 0.5.5.20050110 and it does
everything I need it to do.

- Brian Erst

--- Jim <techguy_jim at verizon.net> wrote: 
> I just abandoned my experiment using Yahoo's version
> of the toolbar.  Apparently every time it goes to
> check on the status of new mail etc. it freezes up the
> keyboard (in firefox) for 1 to 4 seconds.  Very very
> annoying, especially since I use web based email.  It
> would happen about every 30 seconds.  So I am back
> using the mozilla companion.  I'm wondering if anybody
> else who tried the yahoo version had the same sort of
> trouble? I'm also curious to see how well behaved the
> mozilla companion is (I have noticed slight glitches).
> 
> Now if I were able to disable the search box and
> search button on the toolbar I might never go back to
> yahoo's, even if they fix the problem I described. 
> This should also serve as a warning, beware how much
> code is executed in one chunk and how long you wait
> for a server response (except on initialization in
> which case it does not really matter).  I'd suggest
> breaking up checks for alerts up into several very
> small and responsive pieces and then executing them in
> series one second apart.  Is it possible to request
> the feed and not have to wait on the response (just
> check back a short while later)?  I'm wondering if the
> responsiveness of the server could be responsible.
> 
> Jim