Pidgin's Weirdnesses with Shortkeys
One of the strangest errors ever appeared to me: After fiddling around a bit with application shortkeys and keyboard config in XFCE, I wasn't able to type "o" anymore in Pidgin (a common XMPP/Jabber-client, case you did not know). Instead of displaying an "o" as usual, Pidgin turned on logging, whenever I hit the "o" key - which made my cönversatöns löök slightly excentric as I had t0 substitute the missing character. Stangely, I neither found any menu entry to configure shortcuts in Pidgin nor would anything I tried reconfiguring XFCEs keyboard actions have the slightest effect.
Finally I remembered Pidgins config being well hidden under $HOME/.purple/accels where I found the following line: (gtk_accel_path "<main>/Options/Enable Logging" "o")
I swear, I have no clue how it ever got there! Nevertheless, commenting said line out by adding a semicolon at the beginning of it brought Pidgins behaviour back to normal.
Preventing Firefox From Ratting Out Your
Typos and Browsing Habits To Search Engines
One of Firefox' rather new features, I deeply distrust is the so called "awsome bar". I can't see anything awsome typing search strings into the location bar instead of the search bar. Vice versa appears even worse to me. You really don't need Google to find the URL for "www.ax11.de" for you. That's what DNS and the location bar are good for. More important: you probably don't want Google -or anyone else- to protocol any web site you visit - which is exactly what's happening if you keep the not-so-awesome-bar or "safe browsing" on. To turn the spying off, type "about:config" into the location bar (the big one, left on top) or into the "awsome" bar, if you don't have them separated. (You can adjust that in the general preferences or "customize" menu.) Just ignore the warnings as you probably are doing anyway, all the time, search for "keyword" and turn the corresponding value from "true" to "false". Same thing with "browser.safebrowsing.enabled". Now, if you're trying to enter a URL that doesn't resolve, you'll just get an error - as it is meant to be, not an intrusive search engine trying to "improve your overall experience" - and secretly tracking your browsing habits and typographical weaknesses.