Tag: development

  • Running Android Studio Flatpak in Wayland

    Wayland has been tested in Android Studio for quite some time. Despite officially not being stable yet it works very well and removed the mouse stuttering or lag I personally was experiencing on XWayland (X11).

    I created an issue and added a PR to the Android Studio Flatpak repository, however I had to close it as Wayland is not considered stable yet.

    Instead I added some instructions to the documentation on how to use Wayland instead of running Android Studio in XWayland (X11).

    By simply enabling the Wayland permission in the Flatpak advanced settings for Android Studio it will work on next launch. The same can also be achieved in the console:

    $ flatpak override --user --socket=wayland com.google.AndroidStudio

    Please note that the AVD Emulator will still continue to run on XWayland (X11) as it does not yet include Wayland Qt libraries so do not remove the default X11 permission just yet.

    Once launched you can go to Help > About and click the blue “Copy and Close” button. When pasted into the text editor you will see near the top either of these two lines:

    Toolkit: sun.awt.wl.WLToolkit (Wayland)

    Toolkit: sun.awt.X11.XToolkit (X11)

  • Running several Firefox versions simultaneously

    Ever been in the need of running more than one instance of Mozilla Firefox? Well, I have. Multiple times.

    I use Firefox for my browsing and development. Combining both in the same profile has been a pain many times especially when ones development is intensive leading to high memory and CPU consumption unfortunately ending with a browser crash.

    Some time ago I starting using Firefox Beta since it included the Sync feature built-in. At some point I wanted to revert back to the release version again as the add-ons needed to be ready for Beta as well and it could take the add-on authors some time to update leaving them disabled till then.

    The easiest thing is to run two or more versions simultaneously of Firefox which provides you with increased flexibility, especially if you do web development of any type.

    To proceed simply download another version of Firefox and install selecting the custom choice. Make sure you install it in a different path than your current Firefox installation.

    The key to get more than one instance of Firefox running is to use multiple profiles. To create an additional profile for your next version open the command prompt (if on Windows) and type the following:

    "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox" -profilemanager -no-remote

    Obviously change the path to match your own system if needed.

     

     

    Now the profile manager should be open and you can simply create a new profile and call it something else like e.g. “BETA”. Then click “Exit” afterwards to quit the profile manager.

     

     

    Next you need to edit the launcher of your newest installation of Firefox, by right-clicking its icon in the Start menu and selecting Properties. At the first text box add the following to the path:

    -P yournewprofilename -no-remote

    So it looks something like this:

    "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox Beta\firefox.exe" -P BETA -no-remote

     

    Save and launch your second instance of Firefox by clicking on the same icon. You should now see two different “Firefox.exe” processes in your task manager.

     

     

    In that same screen you were before you can also change the title and icon itself so that it is easier to distinguish which version is which.

     

  • Rounded corners online tool

    Lately I have been working on improving my consultancy’s website towards a more showcase based look’n’feel. I had to post a photo of myself so I first decided to use my Gravatar image. As you can see below it looked a bit dull with square corners, so instead I changed the photo to round corners:

    Indeed nicer, no? Gravatar should definitely offer rounded corners as an optional feature.

    Thanks goes to RoundPic for providing an easy way of quickly rounding the corners of any photo or image.