Change Firefox Cache Location

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Digital Media Minute did a post a while ago about the location of the Firefox cache.
To change Firefox cache location, add the “browser.cache.disk.parent_directory” preference (by editing your configuration) and enter a folder path. When you specify this preference, a new directory, “Cache” will be created at the path you have set.

These other two preferences must set as follows (edit configuration):
Set “browser.cache.disk.enable” to ‘true’ to store cache on the hard drive. (The default is true.)
Set “browser.cache.disk.capacity” to a positive integer equal to the max hard drive space in KB to use for cache. (Firefox default is 50000 KB)

Also, for Windows, the path separator must be 2 backslashes (for example “C:\\Path\\To\\Parent”), if the “browser.cache.disk.parent_directory” value is set in prefs.js or user.js file rather than about:config.

Changing the cache location in Firefox might be something you want to do if you would rather route cache data to an encrypted hard drive rather than leaving it on the drive to which it’s currently being stored even after you clear your cache.

Google Wave, First Thoughts

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I just spent a fun hour watching the introductory Google Wave demo.

Google touts it as a ‘demonstration of what’s possible in the browser’. Hello HTML 5. The larger message from Google is clear: you need the (Microsoft) desktop even less than you did before. Well we’ll see.

A Wave is a multimedia shared object on steroids, combining aspects of instant messaging, email, wikis and document sharing, that can easily be rewound by people who belatedly join the conversation. As you communicate, there is a cool instant transmit feature, “live collaborative editing”, where you can see your friend’s message as he types it, without having to wait until he sends it to see it. IMs will flow along like conversations… an amazing time-saver. (But wait, it’s not IM, it Wave-ing!)

There’s a lot more and I’d recommend checking out the video.

One possible shortcoming that I see is that if a Wave is an ongoing ‘conversation’ about a given subject, will I still have to check my email for entirely new messages that have no place in an existing wave? If I do, then Google seems to have fragmented, not integrated, my communications, and I have yet another place to check for vital messages each day.

Wave could be a threat to many of Google’s existing products, bundling the functionality of many existing tools together as it does, but you have to respect Google for taking that chance. One lesson of the last 15-20 years is that if large established tech companies don’t retain a tendency in their cultures toward disruptive innovation, smaller more nimble companies with less to lose will displace them. The real significance of Wave might be that it shows that despite Google’s size and large pile of cash, it hasn’t lost its willingness to take chances.