Not sure how many of you use iGoogle... but I recently did some restyling of it (with the Firefox Stylish plugin) that freed up a ton of screen real estate.

The result:


This is what I see now every time I open up my browser. I got kinda sick of visiting all of these different sites, so now they're there on my home page to distract me.

An explanation: The top left is just my GMail account, below that is recent Google Trends for Japanese keywords. Almost always, it's someone's name...but as you can see there Samoa is the #1 search due to the earthquake. Below that is just the date, which I'll replace if I find anything else more worthwhile to have there. heh...

Middle-top is just RSS from some blogs and stuff. That's where the bulk of the articles go. It really annoys me you can't have the Google Reader RSS widget display more than 10 articles as I'd expand that to cover the whole page if I could. Below that is some webcomics which I read, only one of which is Japanese (that XKCD Japanese translation page). Wish I knew more

Top-Right is hot Kotonoha.cc questions... love that site. And below that is recent threads on the Komachi Yomiuri message board. Unfortunately, that site is basically just a bunch of 30-40 year old women I think. Nothing against them, but we don't have a lot in common. Anyways, it's decent reading practice as most of the posts are well written and you get to read real stuff that real people are writing about. Wish I knew a better, more interesting message board to read though.


Stylish scripts I use:
New iGoogle - Hide the Sidebar (I hate that thing)
Hide Header/Footer
Custom CSS Style for fonts and stuff which is pretty easy to write up.

Anyways, just felt like sharing.

Nice, but why is Firefox in English?

At one point, I had all my computer programs switched to Japanese... but that quickly got old.

I sorta thought I'd just get used to it, but it was still just annoying every time I went to mess with some settings. And more often than not, I'd just memorized the locations of where stuff was anyways so wasn't exactly learning anything. So I switched it back.

I'm just teasing you. Actually I agree that switching all software to Japanese is mostly useless (and extremely annoying when you have to be productive for something else). I've kept Firefox in Japanese but it's more for fun than anything else.

Using a Japanese UI is only annoying if your Japanese isn't at a point where you can comfortably use it (Japanese) in daily life.

The best way to get comfortable with using it in daily life is to... use it in daily life.

Jarvik - Yeah, though during that "getting comfortable" period I found I was way less productive, way more annoyed at my computer, and way less likely to actually do anything using it.

When I think my Japanese is to a level where I can learn things more through context without having to pour through a dictionary while trying to change one little setting, I'll give it another thought. But something that takes about 30 seconds with English settings seems to push 10 minutes if I don't know most of what a few dialogue boxes say.

Anyways, I have my Japanese netbook to toy with while I'm at work and stuff, and all those settings are in Japanese. I'll stick to English on my desktop, where I actually try to get stuff done.


To get back on topic-ish: Anyone else use iGoogle? Any good iGoogle widgets that you'd suggest? I've got a little more screen space with that clock setting there and wouldn't mind putting something else in. Also good RSS feeds would be cool.

Ben_Nielson Wrote:To get back on topic-ish: Anyone else use iGoogle?

Nope, and had no intention to use it before, but since your screenshot looks interesting, I'll try it again

I set my computer to Japanese. It's mostly fine, except I can't figure out how to get that Vista side bar-thing back up(where you can put a clock, note pad, calender etc).

Is there a way to have Firefox in Japanese without the browser thinking I'm in Japan instead of Canada? Not being able to browse the net properly(not being able to google a Canadian bookstore, sites that require registration asking for Japanese prefecture etc.) wasn't worth the language practice.

yukamina Wrote:Is there a way to have Firefox in Japanese without the browser thinking I'm in Japan instead of Canada? Not being able to browse the net properly(not being able to google a Canadian bookstore, sites that require registration asking for Japanese prefecture etc.) wasn't worth the language practice.

Go to the content tab (コンテント） in the options menu（ツール　ー＞　オプション）. Click 言語設定. It should bring up a menu that lets you choose the default language of the pages you browse. If you don't see 'en' or 'en-us' click on　追加する... and select 'en-us' from the list. The language you move to the top of the menu should now be the priority language.

yukamina Wrote:I set my computer to Japanese. It's mostly fine, except I can't figure out how to get that Vista side bar-thing back up(where you can put a clock, note pad, calender etc).

On Vista, I think you can get to it through the Start menu: スタート→アクセサリ→Windowsサイドバー should get it.
Alternatively, you can type サイドバー into that little search box thing in the Start menu to start it.

You can then right click on the icon that comes up on the bottom right, click プロパティ, then check the option for "Windows起動時にサイドバーを開始します"　to automatically start it whenever Windows starts.

yukamina Wrote:Is there a way to have Firefox in Japanese without the browser thinking I'm in Japan instead of Canada?

There's an extension for Firefox called Quick Locale Switcher. I think it can do what you're looking for. It can change the user interface language too but there's an option to stop that.

Annnnd kazelee beat me to the punch there with a much more elegant solution. :|

Thanks, guys. I've got the side bar up, but Firefox is still giving me issues. It seems as long as the browser is in Japanese, it won't find the sites I need. Is there a way to change the google bar that sits next to the address bar to google.ca? That might be enough to solve my problem.

So it's the google bar giving you the problem? I figured out something a while back, but i can't remember at the moment.

Edit:

Found it!

Close firefox

In C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins...

there should be a file named 'google-ja.xml'

Change the lines in the file that say 'google.co.jp' to 'google.com.'

Change the 'lang' field from 'ja' to 'en.'

Copy the file to the searchplugin folder in the application data directory

C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\randomnumbers\searchplugins

Rename the file google.xml

Reopen firefox

Not sure what I did, but after some fiddling with the Locale Swithcer, the search bar's working the way I want it to and the browser's still in Japanese. So, um, yay.

Really cool thing (for Linux users only):

You can temporarily run programs as though your entire computer was set for another language.

First, install the language support if you don't have it. For debian based systems it's generally something like "sudo apt-get language-support-ja" (for Japanese)

Second, open a terminal and enter these two lines:

export LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8
export LC_ALL=ja_JP.UTF-8

This changes the environment variables for that terminal. Any program you run from that terminal (try "firefox") will act as though your computer is set to that locale. (if the program supports the language)

This is great for people that share a computer or can't switch the locale for another reason.