Firefox Web Developer Toolbar Extension

[kchayka]

http://prefbar.mozdev.org/

I use the web developer toolbar for just about everything, but the
prefbar has one extra handy feature - changing the UA on the fly. There
is only 1 site I frequent where I actually need it, so most of the time
the prefbar stays hidden.

plus it has the
ability to disable more things, such as Flash.

I prefer the FlashBlock extension for this, since all Flash is turned
off by default and I can enable only those I particularly want to see on
the fly, rather than an all-or-nothing switch. Need I mention that I
rarely enable any?
<URL:http://flashblock.mozdev.org/>

 

[Stan McCann]

Thanks for that. I fixed it. If you know of any other good
extensions for web development let me know and I'll add them to the
site.

Nice site. Bookmarked. Thanks.

 

[Els]

Roy Schestowitz wrote:

[tabbing between tabs]

Do you not suffer from that spatial clutter? I bet you cannot read
the tab titles, not even with a high-resolution dual-head.

Only in Opera I have so many open at the same time. Basically cause
it opens every link from Usenet in a new tab. Occasionally it happens
that I want to check a page again, after opening four more, but
holding down the CTRL key after one 'CTRL-tab' gives me a vertical
list of all the open pages, so it's easy to find it back.

Firefox doesn't allow for vertical alignment of tabs, yet. Must be
like hell working on your browser...
CTRL+W+W+W+W+W+W+W+W+W+W+W+W+W+W+W+W+W+W+W, which luckily in
Firefox requires 2 persistent keystrokes (Linux at the least).

I never use CTRL+W

In Firefox I like the fact that the cross for closing a tab is not on
the tab itself, but to the right. The usual amount of tabs open in
Firefox for me is about 6 to 10. And usually pages I'm accustomed to,
I recognize the favicons if I can't read the titles.

It's usually quite consistent too, which serves as a mnemonic. When
I come to think of it, it is reminiscent of my placement of
applications on the display. XMMS between screen 1 and 2, desktop
junk on the left, browser on the right screen (which has better
definition) and the rest is tossed at the left.

Two screens... I can only wish :\ ;-) I have a sidebar on my desktop,
and use alt-tab (with some XP power tool) between progs. Dialog and
OE are always full screen, Opera on about 1000x950, and Firefox on
whichever size I'm checking pages in. Apache minimized, chatwindows
about 500x900, Textpad and Ace-FTP almost fullscreen.

[personal portal]

At risk of crossing the line onto self-promotion, many things I
learned from experience are here <
http://www.schestowitz.com/Portal/ >.

That looks very interesting. Especially the way you grouped the
links. I'll be sure to have another look at it when I revise my own.
Thanks

Hmmmm... if only I could find shareware beer...

Isn't that what you have when you're playing quarters?

I am just as guilty as you are. I have just set up a professor with
OE. I told him that he should use Thunderbird, but sitting here at
the office downloading and installing it would have been bad use of
my time. *grin*

...at least I told him it was cr*p... same about Windows...

You did good. <g>

[mail]

CD's are hard to mirror,

What do you mean by that?

so I keep everything on a single physical
hard-drive. My obsession with archives sometimes scares me.

With such an obsession for archives, I'd be scared of a crashing
hard-drive.

It outputs rich HTML. Then again, by importing OE to Thunderbird,
which is a non-lossy conversion, you get MBOX archives, which
MHonArc, for instance, handles gracefully.

Okay, thanks.

As time goes by, I am beginning to lean towards Web-based because I back my
webspace up very frequently, it backs 'itself' up and it keeps mail away
from me. I remember the days when I woke up looking forward to mail in my
box. I am the complete opposite now.

I still like getting mail. Get disappointed about 20 times a day, but
that's okay ;-)

I never noticed that one. Perhaps it got fixed?

Doubt it.
Some time ago someone said it was fixed, so I downloaded the latest
version. It wasn't.

*LOL*

http://www.schestowitz.com/IMG/roysuse.gif

I never saw that one, but it proves I'm right
(well, unless I have the wrong impression of you <g>)

 

[Roy Schestowitz]

__/ On Friday 26 August 2005 21:28, [Els] wrote : \__


[tabbing between tabs]

Only in Opera I have so many open at the same time. Basically cause
it opens every link from Usenet in a new tab.

I ended up with the same setup some months ago, particularly for opening
from feeds. I kept 'losing' tabs if links were opened in the tab currently
in focus. I am more afraid about losing track of 'impending Web pages' to
skimp than I am of having many tabs open.

Occasionally it happens
that I want to check a page again, after opening four more, but
holding down the CTRL key after one 'CTRL-tab' gives me a vertical
list of all the open pages, so it's easy to find it back.

I still think that vertical tabs may (if not should) become an option, even
a hidden one. Did you know about the 'search as you begin typing'
accessibility feature? I use it all the time, especially in my portal. I
can type the first 2 or 3 letters of a link, which then sets in in focus
(yes, it does that!), so ENTER follows the link. It is useful once the
portal gets gigantic; you only need press 3 keys to get to each
destination. CTRL+T->ALT+Home to return to the portal in new tab. This had
me lose the hype for mouse gestures.

Excuse my freaky browsing obsessions... I hope I don't give the wrong
impression. Honestly.

I never use CTRL+W

In Firefox I like the fact that the cross for closing a tab is not on
the tab itself, but to the right.

Yes, I know exactly what you mean. RSSOwl makes that mistake.

The usual amount of tabs open in
Firefox for me is about 6 to 10. And usually pages I'm accustomed to,
I recognize the favicons if I can't read the titles.

It becomes problematic if sites are broad or when you visit foreign sites.

Two screens... I can only wish :\ ;-) I have a sidebar on my desktop,
and use alt-tab (with some XP power tool) between progs. Dialog and
OE are always full screen, Opera on about 1000x950, and Firefox on
whichever size I'm checking pages in. Apache minimized, chatwindows
about 500x900, Textpad and Ace-FTP almost fullscreen.

You know exactly what you like. *smile*




[personal portal]

That looks very interesting. Especially the way you grouped the
links. I'll be sure to have another look at it when I revise my own.
Thanks


Isn't that what you have when you're playing quarters?


You did good. <g>

Good for me, or good for him? *grin* And don't get this reversed, what I did
was good (easier) for me, but bad for him. Some would be inclined to think
that I am a UNIX crusader because I converted quite a few... but moving
someone to a free O/S is enlightment, not a conversion.




[mail]

What do you mean by that?

Making a back-up of the back-up. See below.

With such an obsession for archives, I'd be scared of a crashing
hard-drive.

No, au contraire (pardon my French). I am prepared to lose a hard-drive any
day. Last time I backed up this entire hard-drive was... about 12 hours
ago. A cron job put all changes since then on the SAN a few hours ago. A
cron job takes care of it.

Okay, thanks.


I still like getting mail. Get disappointed about 20 times a day, but
that's okay ;-)

I like 'passive' mail. With all the mailing lists and spam, I still get
plenty to read, but I usually just read some subject lines. Newsgroups are
the exception.

Doubt it.
Some time ago someone said it was fixed, so I downloaded the latest
version. It wasn't.


I never saw that one, but it proves I'm right
(well, unless I have the wrong impression of you <g>)

I bought a new Linux box about 2-3 hours ago... sister will take my old
laptop. SuSE would be insulted because it's a Mandrake box that I bought.

With 3 Linux boxes (home, work, university) I can now have my triple backup.
Can't beat that! *smile*

Roy

 

[WD10]

http://tips.webdesign10.com/web-developer-toolbar.htm

Nice overview. I just added that to my bookmarks for when I suggest the
WD extension to someone and they ask, "What's it do?"

I'm working on a few other pages about Firefox too, so check back there in a
couple of days. Nothing too detailed, but just a basic overview of certain
good extensions, and things that you can do with Firefox.

Is the 'cane season over, yet, down there?

I left Miami before the current one hit, and am in Tallahassee at the
moment. I think Katrina is supposed to miss us here... I think the season
is just starting...

 

[WD10]

Nice site. Bookmarked. Thanks.

Thanks for the feedback...

 

[WD10]

http://prefbar.mozdev.org/ - very handy for testing sites with/without
Javascript, etc. I know some of those can be done through the web
developer toolbar, but I find the prefbar easier to use, plus it has the
ability to disable more things, such as Flash.
http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/ - view the HTTP headers for a page in
the page properties dialogue.
http://jennifermadden.com/scripts/ViewRenderedSource.html - makes the
source code much nicer to read. Kind of a cross between the DOM
Inspector and View Source.

Thanks for those links. I'm working on about 4 more pages about different
Firefox extensions. I just installed about 7 more new extensions tonight
Firefox is great...

 

[Blinky the Shark]

I still think that vertical tabs may (if not should) become an option, even

I really miss them. I got used to a tab stack on the right side of my
Opera window, and I don't want to use the only extension I've found for
Firefox that will do that.

 

[Blinky the Shark]

I'm working on a few other pages about Firefox too, so check back there in a
couple of days. Nothing too detailed, but just a basic overview of certain
good extensions, and things that you can do with Firefox.

Will do.

I left Miami before the current one hit, and am in Tallahassee at the
moment. I think Katrina is supposed to miss us here... I think the season
is just starting...

Good luck with the rest of it.

 

[Blinky the Shark]

I use the web developer toolbar for just about everything, but the
prefbar has one extra handy feature - changing the UA on the fly. There
is only 1 site I frequent where I actually need it, so most of the time
the prefbar stays hidden.

If that really is the only reason you have PrefBar, I'll mention that
there's a little 23kb extension named UserAgentSwitcher that does that,
with preconfigured UA strings and the option of creating your own.

http://chrispederick.com/work/firefox/useragentswitcher/

 

[Els]

I ended up with the same setup some months ago, particularly for opening
from feeds. I kept 'losing' tabs if links were opened in the tab currently
in focus. I am more afraid about losing track of 'impending Web pages' to
skimp than I am of having many tabs open.

Yup. I actually like it to, in the end of the day, look at all the
open tabs one by one, and leave the interesting ones open while
dismissing the rest. In the morning Opera only shows good information
and funny pages

I still think that vertical tabs may (if not should) become an option, even
a hidden one. Did you know about the 'search as you begin typing'
accessibility feature? I use it all the time, especially in my portal. I
can type the first 2 or 3 letters of a link, which then sets in in focus
(yes, it does that!), so ENTER follows the link. It is useful once the
portal gets gigantic; you only need press 3 keys to get to each
destination.

Do you know you can let Firefox go to whichever URL by mapping words
to URLs? Like I've mapped a Dutch dictionary (vandale.nl) search page
to the 'word' "vd". I only type 'vd' in the address bar and hit enter.
Goes straight to the right page. The portal is handy for the larger
lot of links, but the ones you use really often are quick enough via
the url and typing short codes.

CTRL+T->ALT+Home to return to the portal in new tab.
This had me lose the hype for mouse gestures.

I never even got into mouse gestures. Sometimes I make some funny
move, and Opera will ask if I want to start using mouse gestures. I
like the "no" button

Excuse my freaky browsing obsessions... I hope I don't give the wrong
impression. Honestly.

That all depends on what impression you wanna give. You mean you wanna
come accross as someone who doesn't care about how he's using the

Yes, I know exactly what you mean. RSSOwl makes that mistake.

Opera too. Very hard to click a tab open without accidentally hitting
the little cross. (only cause I have 28 tabs open)

Had never heard of RSSOwl, so I just downloaded and installed it. Now
I just have to see if it has any advantages over Awasu and/or
Feedreader

It becomes problematic if sites are broad or when you visit foreign sites.

Why? Not sure what either the width of the site or the origins have to
do with the width of the tab?

You know exactly what you like. *smile*


Good for me, or good for him? *grin* And don't get this reversed, what I did
was good (easier) for me, but bad for him.

I meant you did good in at least mentioning to him that it's crap
I did the same with my Dad. I installed Firefox on his pc, but left IE
on too, so he has something to fall back to when hitting a site that's
"not designed for" Firefox. Basically means I didn't make his
environment any safer, but I did broaden his horizon a bit ;-)

No, au contraire (pardon my French). I am prepared to lose a hard-drive any
day. Last time I backed up this entire hard-drive was... about 12 hours
ago. A cron job put all changes since then on the SAN a few hours ago. A
cron job takes care of it.

Ah right, you have more than one drive with the same archives on it.
I'd do that if I didn't need all the space on my two harddrives

I like 'passive' mail. With all the mailing lists and spam, I still get
plenty to read, but I usually just read some subject lines. Newsgroups are
the exception.

You /read/ all the messages on Usenet (well, for the groups you
subscribed to) ?

I bought a new Linux box about 2-3 hours ago... sister will take my old
laptop. SuSE would be insulted because it's a Mandrake box that I bought.

So, why did you get Mandrake and not SuSE again?

With 3 Linux boxes (home, work, university) I can now have my triple backup.
Can't beat that! *smile*

Indeed. I'd have to go back to school, and start work somewhere else
than at home to be able to do that <g>

 

[Els]

I really miss them. I got used to a tab stack on the right side of my
Opera window, and I don't want to use the only extension I've found for
Firefox that will do that.

Why don't you wanna use that extension?

 

[Blinky the Shark]

Why don't you wanna use that extension?

1. From personal experience, it seems to slow down Firefox.

2. From reading about it, including a warning on the author's site,
it's buggy to the point of causing problems with other extensions on
some systems.

3. Both 1 and 2, above.

4. None of the above.

Correct answer: 3

 

[Roy Schestowitz]

__/ On Saturday 27 August 2005 08:07, [Blinky the Shark] wrote : \__

1. From personal experience, it seems to slow down Firefox.

Join the club. *smile* It takes 5+ seconds to launch Firefox even if the
modest system resources are fully available. I did some rough benchmarking.

2. From reading about it, including a warning on the author's site,
it's buggy to the point of causing problems with other extensions on
some systems.

Again, join the club. My many extensions interfere with one another. I don't
know which one of the boys is fighting with who (with more boys now, it's
even harder to debug), but all I know is that memory begins to spill and
CPU usage soars 2-5 times a day, especially if I use mouse gentures
excessively. That Optimoz mouse genture thingie must be the naughty little
boy, but I can't reproduce the error when I wish to...

Luckily, I can save my work before I call 'kill' so no data is ever lost. I
have to re-open all the tabs though.

3. Both 1 and 2, above.

4. None of the above.

Correct answer: 3

There is more. You become dependent on your extesions. I know I do. It took
me 3 hours just to set up Thunderbird the way I liked it. Since my Firefox
upgrade, I have never been truly satisfied. I spent 1-2 hours just fidling
with the DPI for fonts. It is still set wrongly... but I gave up.

Roy

 

[Roy Schestowitz]

__/ On Saturday 27 August 2005 07:14, [Els] wrote : \__

Where have you been darling? Me missed you...

Yup. I actually like it to, in the end of the day, look at all the
open tabs one by one, and leave the interesting ones open while
dismissing the rest. In the morning Opera only shows good information
and funny pages

See earlier message. I have some risk of losing my tabs when extensions
interfere with one another. *frown*

Do you know you can let Firefox go to whichever URL by mapping words
to URLs? Like I've mapped a Dutch dictionary (vandale.nl) search page
to the 'word' "vd". I only type 'vd' in the address bar and hit enter.
Goes straight to the right page. The portal is handy for the larger
lot of links, but the ones you use really often are quick enough via
the url and typing short codes.

Yes, I heard about it, but keymarks will not 'travel' with me. I discussed
that with John Bokma yesterday. The portal is more -- shall we say --
universal.

I never even got into mouse gestures. Sometimes I make some funny
move, and Opera will ask if I want to start using mouse gestures. I
like the "no" button

Keyboard is quicker. Gestures are more admirable.

That all depends on what impression you wanna give. You mean you wanna
come accross as someone who doesn't care about how he's using the
browser? Failed <g>

Use of the browser is very important to me. I haven't written some code to
track and /summarise/ my usage (getting close though <
http://www.schestowitz.com/Utilities/Complete/Linux/Display_Grabber/ > ),
but I imagine that I use the browser 70% of the time (this includes mailing
lists and remote mail), newsgroups reader about 20%, feeds reader under 5%
at the moment and I hope to reach 0% when it comes to personal E-mail
messages (I recently get annoyed when that little icon comes up). I use
Wikis to correspond with friends and family, parents included.

Opera too. Very hard to click a tab open without accidentally hitting
the little cross. (only cause I have 28 tabs open)

Had never heard of RSSOwl, so I just downloaded and installed it. Now
I just have to see if it has any advantages over Awasu and/or
Feedreader

It might not, but it's Open Source and cross-platform (import/export
included, hence 'cross-application'... did I just coin that term?).

Why? Not sure what either the width of the site or the origins have to
do with the width of the tab?

I was thinking about site breadth, i.e. number of pages, levels, complexity.
One domain = one icon (usually), but one domain = many pages/sections.

I meant you did good in at least mentioning to him that it's crap
I did the same with my Dad. I installed Firefox on his pc, but left IE
on too, so he has something to fall back to when hitting a site that's
"not designed for" Firefox. Basically means I didn't make his
environment any safer, but I did broaden his horizon a bit ;-)

I gave up on dedicating my whole to convince people that Windows-bundled is
not always best. I think my mom still uses Firefox because it supports
Hebrew fonts.

Ah right, you have more than one drive with the same archives on it.
I'd do that if I didn't need all the space on my two harddrives

One of the main purposes of the new machine is to server as a storage area,
thereby helping me sleep well at night. Not bad for a powerful box that
cost around $300... it was a rational choice. Nytol is more expensive.
*grin*

You /read/ all the messages on Usenet (well, for the groups you
subscribed to) ?

Gosh, no. *smile* 50 or so newsgroups are too much to keep track of. I just
have a wider variety to select from. Feeds likewise (I think over 100).

So, why did you get Mandrake and not SuSE again?

It comes pre-installed. I enquired a few hours ago to see which distro will
serve me best. I might wipe it in favour of Ubuntu or SuSE 10 beta 3, which
one of the gurus (Alan) argued should be highly compatible. It is so
wonderful to have choice.

Indeed. I'd have to go back to school, and start work somewhere else
than at home to be able to do that <g>

School is for suckers, but industry over-evaluates it. Nothing /useful/ that
I learned was acquired at school.

Roy

 

[Els]

__/ On Saturday 27 August 2005 07:14, [Els] wrote : \__

Where have you been darling? Me missed you...

I've been sleeping actually - it was night here between last night and
this morning

[too many tabs open]

See earlier message. I have some risk of losing my tabs when extensions
interfere with one another. *frown*

So I read. So far I haven't had any clashing extensions, but I must
admit I don't use many.

[keymarks in Firefox]

Yes, I heard about it, but keymarks will not 'travel' with me. I discussed
that with John Bokma yesterday. The portal is more -- shall we say --
universal.
True.


Keyboard is quicker. Gestures are more admirable.



Use of the browser is very important to me. I haven't written some code to
track and /summarise/ my usage (getting close though <
http://www.schestowitz.com/Utilities/Complete/Linux/Display_Grabber/ > ),

Incidentally, I had just looked at that page, and copied the code -
still have to go through the rest of the steps though.

but I imagine that I use the browser 70% of the time (this includes mailing
lists and remote mail), newsgroups reader about 20%, feeds reader under 5%
at the moment and I hope to reach 0% when it comes to personal E-mail
messages (I recently get annoyed when that little icon comes up).

You can just make the icon disappear I think. Even when you do get
mail

I use Wikis to correspond with friends and family, parents included.

How? Like you just edit the same file online? Doesn't that mean you
never have any archive of what you wrote, if someone else deletes it?

It might not, but it's Open Source and cross-platform (import/export
included, hence 'cross-application'...

True. Forgot that Awasu isn't.

did I just coin that term?).

Not sure, but I don't think so

I was thinking about site breadth, i.e. number of pages, levels, complexity.
One domain = one icon (usually), but one domain = many pages/sections.

Ah yes. Indeed.

I gave up on dedicating my whole to convince people that Windows-bundled is
not always best. I think my mom still uses Firefox because it supports
Hebrew fonts.

Other browsers don't?

One of the main purposes of the new machine is to server as a storage area,
thereby helping me sleep well at night. Not bad for a powerful box that
cost around $300... it was a rational choice. Nytol is more expensive.
*grin*

I think I'm more ignorant: I sleep well, even though I hardly ever
backup anything. Stuff I have that matters is also on a server online,
so there's already two copies anyway, and the only thing I do backup
is photos and occasionally mail.
If my pc crashed today, it would really only mean that I get rid of a
lot of excess baggage, and that I'll have the most up-to-date versions
of all the downloaded software I use

Hmm.. reading that, it might actually be a good idea to let it
crash... ;-)

It comes pre-installed. I enquired a few hours ago to see which distro will
serve me best. I might wipe it in favour of Ubuntu or SuSE 10 beta 3, which
one of the gurus (Alan) argued should be highly compatible. It is so
wonderful to have choice.

Very true.

School is for suckers, but industry over-evaluates it. Nothing /useful/ that
I learned was acquired at school.

You spelling is very good. Didn't you learn to read and write in
school? But yes, school isn't as useful as it could be. It does
however train the brain, which in itself is enough reason to let kids
attend school imo

 

[Neredbojias]

With neither quill nor qualm, Roy Schestowitz quothed:

School is for suckers, but industry over-evaluates it. Nothing /useful/ that
I learned was acquired at school.

That's what I told my teacher, but she insisted that fifth grade was
essential for natural development. Besides, she was mean.

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

If that really is the only reason you have PrefBar, ...

I use it to toggle JavaScript, Java, Falsh, the referer, Off and On
easily. Toggle colors when you get to a site with blue on black text
.... toggle images, weird fonts ... more ...

 

[Roy Schestowitz]

__/ On Saturday 27 August 2005 13:37, [Neredbojias] wrote : \__

With neither quill nor qualm, Roy Schestowitz quothed:


That's what I told my teacher, but she insisted that fifth grade was
essential for natural development. Besides, she was mean.

You must have been a clever 5th grader in that case. They usually take
advantage of us when we are young and innocent, teaching us history,
politics and sometimes religion. Then, we grow to become cold and bitter...
*smile*

Roy

 

[Roy Schestowitz]

__/ On Saturday 27 August 2005 09:33, [Els] wrote : \__

I've been sleeping actually - it was night here between last night and
this morning

I am losing sense of time...


[too many extensions]

So I read. So far I haven't had any clashing extensions, but I must
admit I don't use many.

I could disable some of them, leaving them in my profile directory if I ever
want them back. Let me look... the only one I can forsake is FireFTP
because I rarely use it; I use it more at home.


[usage tracking]

Incidentally, I had just looked at that page, and copied the code -
still have to go through the rest of the steps though.

If the explanation is messy, please tell me. I am enthusiastic about writing
code, but when it comes to documenting and publishing, I always have to
force myself to do it. It just drifts mañana, mañana in my Palm for about a
week and ends up written up when I no longer have the logical structure
fresh in my mind.


[mail notification]

You can just make the icon disappear I think. Even when you do get
mail

It wouldn't be a good idea. That icon corresponds to the only account which
gets important messages. About 30 filters ensure that certain people cannot
reach it even if they try and some people like my bosses are always forces
to be 'tunnelled' onto it so that I read their messages immediately. I have
another account which is for urgent messages, whichwould go as far as
waking me up, e.g. server down or 'sky collapsing' due to bad <div>'s.


[wiki talk]

How? Like you just edit the same file online? Doesn't that mean you
never have any archive of what you wrote, if someone else deletes it?

I get backups to avoid vandalism, but I also keep monthly archives that I
lock. It is easily searchable and content is accumulative. I put it here <
http://www.schestowitz.com/Software/Correspondence_Wiki/ >


[rss reader]

True. Forgot that Awasu isn't.


Not sure, but I don't think so

Me neither.

Ah yes. Indeed.


Other browsers don't?

Not my mom's installations.


[backup]

I think I'm more ignorant: I sleep well, even though I hardly ever
backup anything. Stuff I have that matters is also on a server online,
so there's already two copies anyway, and the only thing I do backup
is photos and occasionally mail.
If my pc crashed today, it would really only mean that I get rid of a
lot of excess baggage, and that I'll have the most up-to-date versions
of all the downloaded software I use

Hmm.. reading that, it might actually be a good idea to let it
crash... ;-)

I sometimes wish that this happened to me. I need to upgrade, but I don't
have the will to invest days in restoration, installation and
customisation. I always say "next year".

Very true.


You spelling is very good. Didn't you learn to read and write in
school?

Not in English. *frown*

But yes, school isn't as useful as it could be. It does
however train the brain, which in itself is enough reason to let kids
attend school imo

With all due respect to the educational system and the 'wise guys' on top,
kids discover their passion when they are younger than 18. There needs to
be more choice, freedom and specialisation. Studying of the humanities is
not something that sticks with the student unless it gets recited. I think
I spent too much at school doing stuff which was of little practical use. A
waste of teaching effort; a waste of student potential. In the later years
of high school, much of the time I just drew or slept on my desk. I am sure
that many in this group could sympathise.

Roy