In the meantime, I’ve just updated the Mac A-List, which tracks the best software for the Mac according to Scot. It’s a significant update with several additions and subtractions. Among other things, what do I use with Twitter? Find out. And now that I’ve tested VMware’s Fusion to go along with my examinations of VirtualBox and Parallels, how did that turn out? One of those three is not on the Mac A-List.

Question:

I haven’t used Firefox in a while because of a problem I’ve been having. It won’t let me gather any apps. This is the error message:

Could not initialize the application’s security component. The most likely cause is problems with files in your application’s profile directory. Please check that this directory has no read/write restrictions and your hard disk is not full or close to full. It is recommended that you exit the application and fix the problem. If you continue to use this session, you might see incorrect application behaviour when accessing security features.

Is there any help you can offer me? Thanks.

Answer:

I’m not clear on what you mean when you say “it won’t let me gather apps,” but more than likely you have a corrupt Firefox user profile. To solve the problem, you’ll need to delete every file in your Mozilla installation and do a clean install of the latest version of the browser. Some of these files hide in places you might not think to look, so it’s important to follow directions on how to fully remove profile.

If you’re concerned about losing your bookmarks, etc., I recommend installing Foxmarks (if Firefox will let you install it). Foxmarks synchronizes bookmarks and Web-related logins and passwords among different browsers on one machine as well as on browsers installed on multiple machines. The product and its server-based service, is currently free. And it supports Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. By using Firefox to back up your bookmarks and other user info, you should be able to reinstate that information on your cleanly installed Firefox installation.

Here’s a summary of steps you should take to solve your Firefox problem. This solution will work with Windows, Macintosh, and Linux installations of Firefox:

1. Install Foxmarks and synchronize your user data with the Foxmarks server. You might also want to explore synchronizing your bookmarks with other browsers on your machine or other machines you use. Foxmarks is about to undergo a major upgrade. The product and service is in the process of being renamed Xmarks, with new features and functionality.

2. Download the latest version of Firefox (3.0.7 at this writing) and then uninstall Firefox from your computer.

3. Follow these MozillaZine instructions for removing your Firefox user profile and fully uninstalling the browser.

4. Windows users should restart their machines.

5. Install the new version of Firefox.

6. Install Foxmarks in the new Firefox installation, and use it to resynchronize your bookmarks, ensuring that you use the server-based bookmarks to overwrite your local Firefox bookmarks.

This should solve your problem, and may also make Firefox run faster and/or begin performing other functions that may have also stopped working.

To avoid experiencing a corrupt user profile again, I recommend that you cleanly install every major version of Firefox. In other words, when Firefox 4.0 is released, follow these steps again. You can allow upgrade installations of incremental releases, such as the forthcoming Firefox 3.5 — unless, of course, Mozilla recommends otherwise.

What browser is Scot using?

For those of you keeping score, I reviewed Firefox 3.0 from a Macintosh perspective in this Computerworld story: Firefox 3 for Mac: Is it time to switch from Safari? Among other things, the article didn’t reach a hard conclusion about whether I’d be switching from Safari to Firefox on the Mac. (On Windows, I remain a confirmed Firefox user.) I also talked about why bookmark synchronization was important, and I didn’t select Foxmarks at that time, since it didn’t support Safari at that time.

So let me update those two points:

Safari vs. Firefox: These words from the earlier Computerworld story are the salient ones; they sum up the reason why I have remained a Safari user on the Mac:

There is one downside to Firefox 3, however. The first time you launch it after starting up OS X, Firefox 3 takes 5.5 seconds to open a blank page. By contrast, Safari 3.1.1 takes about half a second for the same task. It’s a noticeable difference.

Bookmark synchronization: Foxmarks offers some of the features of Apple’s MobileMe, and it works with IE, Firefox, and Safari on Windows, Mac, and Linux. MobileMe is a Mac-specific synchronization tool that works very well. It’s also able to synchronize a long list of data on Macs, such as the calendar and address book. I’m a MobileMe subscriber, and I will continue to be. But Foxmarks lets me extend bookmark synchronization to all my Windows machines. For that reason, it is installed on at least half a dozen of my computers. I recommend it highly to anyone who works with multiple computers. It may also be a valuable took to those who regularly use multiple browsers on the same computer.

One feature that might make Foxmarks more useful to some users would be the ability to specify specific parts of your bookmarks to synchronize. It is designed to synchronize all bookmarks. Whoops, I stand corrected. The Profiles feature, which works in conjunction with MyFoxmarks — the server-based version of your bookmarks — does allow you to assign specific bookmarks or bookmark folders to different profile names so as to exclude synchronization of personal bookmarks to your work computer for example, or vice versa. The MyFoxmarks instance of your bookmarks will have the superset of all your bookmarks from all profiles. Thanks to reader Evano for pointing this out.

My plans for the A-List include continuing to update it as I evaluate and add programs to my essential list of Mac apps, and also to broaden the information offered on the list with information like what each app costs, if anything, and a little summary of reasons for selection.

I’m pretty ruthless about ripping products off the A-List when I’ve decided they’re no longer valid, are outdated, or have been beaten by a competitor. You’ll notice that in some product categories, there is more than one contender. In that case, I like them both and am still considering between the two.

The A-List is based on real-world research. In other words, I’m not setting up bench tests to assess Mac software. I’m living and working with these products, and when they succeed or fail in real world use, that’s when I make changes to their status on the A-List.

Feel free to send me suggestions for new Mac apps to consider. There’s a specific email address for doing so toward the bottom of the page.

I spent a few hours earlier today reading through IDS’s Odysseus forums learning as much as I could about the company’s development plans. I came away very excited about IDS’s plans, design concepts, and goals. What I like best, in fact, is that while the plan is to start with a subset of Eudora features in the first release, the developers clearly know and love Eudora. Also, though, they’re not afraid to make changes. Eudora has been a hurting unit for several years — especially on the Mac platform, where some of the thinking has been quirky at best. The Windows version surpassed the Mac version quite a while ago and is more up to date. But Eudora in general is best thought of in 2001 terms. Some fresh thinking is definitely a good thing.

So, longtime Eudora owners (and I’m one) may be a little unnerved by IDS’s decision-in-process to make a break from Eudora’s Unix Mbox mailbox structure in favor of a SQL-based approach. But I wholeheartedly applaud this move. The process I went through to convert my Eudora for Windows mailboxes to Eudora for Mac mailboxes (you can’t get there from here) showed me just how painfully antiquated Eudora’s mail store is. I’ve also long had mailbox reliability issues (worse on the Mac) that I just don’t have with other email packages.

In this thread about the possible change to SQL, IDS’s Matt Milano assures forums denizens that the functionality of the mail store will be the same. Messages will be stored in separate mailboxes as they are now, mailboxes will be portable as they are now, and you’ll even be able to edit mailbox contents with an IDS-supplied tool for this purpose. And yes, attachments will still be stored in a separate folder. There are many advantages to the new database structure, but one of the best is the ability to access the mail store on one machine from another machine via the network — something I wrote about as a wish-list item for Eudora several years ago.

Another advantage of the SQL database approach is that IDS will be able to make Odysseus a true multiplatform product that works the same no matter what OS you’re using. Creating the product that way will make it much easier for IDS to upgrade the product and support three platforms simultaneously, the way Firefox and other products are produced.

IDS is planning a Mac UI variant that will look and act a bit more like Apple Mail (while retaining Eudora’s power). Hopefully it will also integrate with the Mac’s environment a little better. There’s a need for this in the Mac world, where Apple has spent a lot of time creating a gestalt among its products, such as iCal, iTunes, Apple Mail, iPhoto, .Mac, Address Book, iPhone, and other pieces. The level of integration creates a powerful advantage for Mac users. But it would be great to see third-party developers plugging into that environment.

From the start, I’ve had serious misgivings about the marriage of Thunderbird and Eudora, which have very, very different design goals. And the development process for Penelope is moving at a glacial pace. It hasn’t even reached version 0.1. The last Penelope update announcement dates back to August.

Contrasting that is IDS’s aggressive roadmap for Odysseus development. The Eudora successor was announced in September, and its makers expect to have their first working beta by the end of December and to ship the product by March 15.

I’m impressed by the orientation, decision-making, professionalism, honestly, and commitment that I sense from the IDS people posting in the forums. And the experience of spending time there has changed my future plans about trying to hold my nose and dip into Apple Mail, which is definitely lacking in the substance I’ve grown accustomed to. (I’m still thinking about making the switch from at least one main account to mail.app, though.)

I’m going to hold out now for Odysseus.

Thanks to Scot’s Newsletter reader George Palfi for alerting me to the existence of Odysseus.

It takes a problem to be won over by a utility product. And that’s exactly what happened. The problem was a disk error that Apple’s Disk Utility was able to identify but unable to repair. There was no apparent problem with my hard drive. No symptoms. SMART checked out fine. It didn’t appear to be a physical problem with the hard drive, but rather a corruption of the data on the disk. I tote my primary machine back and forth from work everyday, and even though I’m extremely conscious of how important that piece of hardware is, and I back it up, well — there are few guarantees in life. And none of them is related to computers.

So, that was the problem. It took me a while to warm up to the $100 DiskWarrior because you have to boot it from the CD, and it takes forever to load. But it’s worth it. Because once up and running, DiskWarrior’s Directory tool made short work of it. Afterward, Disk Utility happily reported no problems.

The next disk problem will be a job for TechTool Pro by Micromat, which is also on the scheduled-for-evaluation list.

Some other notes: I guess I’m becoming more of a Mac guy. I removed Intego’s VirusBarrier X4 from my two most-used Macs. I think it’s a great product, and I’m leaving it on the A-List. But like most Mac users, I just don’t feel the need for this utility right now. I’m not making a formal recommendation with that announcement — just owning up to a reality. There are no viruses on the Mac. It’s possible there will be someday. But I’ll worry about that then.

I’m also adding a program to the evaluation list. It’s called Yank, and it’s another Mac uninstaller tool. I really love AppZapper, but it occasionally misses things that get tucked into out of the way places. When I uninstalled VirusBarrier, AppZapper left behind a context-menu item. Yank doesn’t rely on search to find files left behind when you delete the main program file. It creates a log when you install. What about programs installed before you installed Yank? Matterform offers a file-sharing service for sharing Yank uninstall scripts for specific programs that you can download and run. Not sure that’s going to be a big help, though. The first three programs I searched for weren’t there. Still, I like the idea of a more complete uninstall. Could be I’ll use both AppZapper and Yank. We’ll see.

I’m having some second thoughts about skEdit as a text editor. It’s still my preferred HTML editor on the Mac. But I may go back and check out TextMate again. It’s been very heavily recommended by readers who have written to me with A-List suggestions. Even more so than BBEdit, whose UI I’m not fond of.

I’m also looking at software-launching and UI-shortcut programs, such as Quicksilver, LaunchBar, and Butler. I’ve looked at the first two, and so far, I prefer Quicksilver.

My only real gripe about Quicksilver’s basic program-launching functionality is that you need two sets of keystrokes to launch something. The first opens the QS Execute box, and the second launches a specific program. On the Windows side, there’s a program called ActiveWords that gets it down to one set of keystrokes, and I miss that.

So far I’ve explored only about 10% of what Quicksilver does, so I’m still working through the features and spending time with it. Next up will be Butler, which I haven’t even installed yet.

What’s wrong with LaunchBar? Nothing much was right or wrong about it for me. I just didn’t find it that convenient. Ideally, I could launch Safari by just typing “sa” at any time, anywhere — without having to initiate something or click anything with the mouse. Not only didn’t LaunchBar come close to that ideal, but I just found myself forgetting to use it. And when I did use it, it didn’t really save me time.

The A-List series has generated an overwhelming pile of email that I’m nowhere near finished sorting through. If you’ve sent me suggestions, please be patient. Not only are there a lot of messages to read, but looking at the software takes a lot of time. I’m going to be using the Mac for many years to come, and I’ve got a lot of great software suggestions to explore.

You could probably help by sending me only the one or two best apps you think I should know about.