A certain fox, it is said, wanted to become a wolf

Citation

(2005), "A certain fox, it is said, wanted to become a wolf", Soldering & Surface Mount Technology, Vol. 17 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ssmt.2005.21917bag.001

A certain fox, it is said, wanted to become a wolf

A certain fox, it is said, wanted to become a wolf[1]

Keywords: Internet, Keyboards, Electronics industry, Printed circuits

For a change, let me talk about a delightful piece of hardware that I've discovered. It is a keyboard and an ideal keyboard, at that, for use with the internet, be it for browsing or for e- mailing. It is called the Cherry CyMotion Master XPress and you can find details at: www.cherry.de/english/cymotion-line/cymotion-line_master_xpress.htm

Before describing it in detail, I must say that the “feel” of it is great, with a key pressure and movement that I find just right, at least for my clumsy fingers (have you thought that the keyboard is the only true digital computer peripheral?). As delivered, it is already internet-ready, with keys for starting up your browser and e-mail client and navigating within them. It does not stop there as there are specific keys for Back, Forward, Stop, Reload, Find, Favourites/Bookmark and there is even an @ key (no Shift required). There is also a series of keys if you wish to play multimedia, including a very useful volume control. Further general functions include single keys for Scroll up, Scroll down, Scroll right, Scroll left, Cut, Paste, Copy, Undo and Redo, plus keys to bring up lists of My Files, Office Programs and Accessories, as well as a number of other ones. However, there's more to come. As technical guys, we often need special symbols when e-mailing or writing papers. This is where the best feature of all can be found. It comes with a software called Keym@n, which allows you to programme any of nearly 30 of the keys to suit your own purposes. For example, I've keys on two out of three of my keyboards with symbols, such as °, ±, μ, ², 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, , £, etc. but you can put in what you like. As I often e-mail in French, I've added à, â, c¸ and all the rest of the diacritical vowels used in that language and this on a standard US keyboard (there are also versions available for most countries, as well). I've also put in some text macros for my three most usual signatures for e-mails, such as:

Regards, or   Best regards,Brian Ellis    Brian

This is a great time saver and other text macros of almost unlimited size can be put in. Keypress and chained program start-up macros are also possible with emulation of mouse movements. The possibilities are almost endless (Plate 1).

There is one problem that users may experience at first with this keyboard. There is an 81 page Operating Manual, which is in rather arcane language, probably written by the software developer who understood what it was all about. It took me a few hours to feel really at home with the niceties of programming it, but well worth the effort.

Plate 1 Cherry CyMotion Master Xpress programmable keyboard, ideal for Internet browsing. Some of the programmable keys can be seen on either side of the usual keyboard, over the number pad and in the silver-coloured areas above and below the traditional keys

I should like to finish by saying that it costs very little more than a standard keyboard, so it is an excellent investment, of good quality. Needless to say, I have no vested interest in recommending this device.

My second news item of the day is the Firefox browser from www.mozilla.org/. I've been using the b versions (formerly Firebird) of this and the Thunderbird e-mail client for about a year and have been impressed with both. Mozilla have now issued the full release version of Firefox 1.0 and Thunderbird 1.0 and I'm even more impressed. For this paper, I'll concentrate on Firefox and will discuss Thunderbird in the next issue. The browser is faster downloading pages than any other one I've tried and is jam-packed with features, including multiple pages and tabs, multiple search engines on the standard toolbar, choice of sidebar function, configurable menus and so on.

One of the new features that I especially like is the new “Find in Page” function, which is brought up by Ctrl-F or from the menu. It opens a toolbar and menu at the foot of the page, as well as a text box with a white background. It starts the search as you type in the first letters of the word or phrase, so that you frequently don't even need to finish it. If there is nothing corresponding in the page, the background turns immediately to pink and a pink icon appears, along with a warning sound, so no time is lost in fruitless searches. The first match is highlighted in green. If you move onto a new page or tab, the toolbar stays put, until you decide to click it away, so that you can easily search on multiple pages. I grant you, this is only a small advance on the traditional Mozilla/Netscape/ Internet Explorer function, but a very clever and useful one.

One of the most important features is that, by default, Firefox blocks the very dangerous pop-ups that sometimes harbour spyware functions. A banner strip warns you when a pop-up tries to be loaded and it gives you the choice between allowing them or not from the particular site you are viewing. This is particularly useful for some net- banking sites that use pop-ups as an intermediary to printing out statements. Of course, you don't have to wait for the banner; if you have a list of trusted sites, you can easily enter them into a dialogue box. There are many other security features that you will not find elsewhere, making this one of the safest means of surfing, whether you use any one of the 32 bit Windows, Linux or Mac operating systems.

Traditionally, many browsers have shown an open or closed padlock to demonstrate whether one is operating with a secure site. This is usually a tiny icon tucked away in a corner of the screen. In Firefox, it is to the right of the box, where you type in the URL, a more obvious place for such an important security feature. In addition, and this becomes a much more apparent and useful property, the whole of the box changes from white to yellow when in secure mode.

This browser is open-source, meaning that it can be downloaded free-of-charge and used by anyone, or even modified to suit your own needs, as the source code is also downloadable. It is easy to install and simple to operate. Individual configuration is equally simple, to suit your needs. It therefore offers anyone an alternative to the Microsoft Internet Explorer that, from the point of view of security, is as full of holes as a sieve and has become quite dated compared with a number of other browsers. At the same time, it offers its speed and advanced features, which are not to be found elsewhere and, unlike some others, it conforms rigidly to HTML coding without individual quirks. I strongly recommend it.

Well, will Firefox ever become the wolf that eats up the numeric supremacy of Internet Explorer? At the time of writing, over 16 million downloads have been made, in just 6 weeks, which is impressive, but this does not necessarily mean that there has yet been a vast movement away from MSIE towards it. On the other hand, it could be a start. In a way, I selfishly hope it does not become the de facto standard, because it would then attract more crackers and hackers to exploit its weaknesses and weaknesses it must have, despite its apparent robustness at this time. What I have observed is that there is a steady, but slow, trend in the numbers of MSIE users choosing other browsers, possibly because Microsoft has not been making significant improvements to it over the last couple of years or so, while the competition have. Also, the display of many pages, which were not developed with MS software, has become increasingly quirky (and, to some extent, vice versa) because of Microsoft's insistence of using non- standard code. Time will tell!

My screenshot in Plate 2 shows the appearance of Firefox, as I have it set up, as well as the content, the latest IPC Home Page. At long last, the frames and clumsy graphics that have plagued this site have disappeared, giving a much better and faster download with a better corporate image. The only thing that I don't like is that the page is restricted to a tabulated 730 pixels, which is too small for most surfers who might have widths of 800, 1,024, 1,280 or even more pixels on their monitors. I'm a great believer in setting tables to 100 per cent width, even if the portal- like boxes on either side are of fixed width. This would use the available real estate to better advantage and reduce the amount of scrolling necessary.

Plate 2 IPC Home Page, as displayed in the new Mozilla Firefox browser, showing tabs, Google^° and find functions

Keeping with the IPC, for my review section, I propose that we have a look at the IPC List Servers that are relevant to the subject of this journal. The complete catalogue can be found at http://listserv. ipc.org/archives/, but some of these are either moribund or simply off-topic. Many of them are also specific to committees, and I'll ignore these, concentrating on the general discussion ones. Obviously, the archive list will change between mid-January, when I'm writing this, and the end of April, when this journal arrives with a thump into your in-tray, but this will not change the basic themes of discussion. You will find that there is some subject overlap between different lists. Note that non- IPC members are welcome to join in most of the discussions.

http://listserv.ipc.org/archives/compliancenet.html

Despite having over 200 members, ComplianceNet is not very active as a discussion group. Its short name is not very explicit, but this is corrected by its full title, Environmental Health and Safety Compliance. Its main purpose now appears to be to broadcast relevant information from the IPC HQ to its subscribers. It is a pity that it now seems so little used, because this was not always the case. If we look at the 1996 archives, for example, there were over 180 threads, most of which evoked some quite lively discussion. Considering that we, in the electronics assembly industry, use some quite dangerous chemicals that are more or less regulated, I would have thought that there would have been more debate. That there isn't may very well be a symptom of H&S-rules-fatigue. If there are too many, there is a tendency to ignore the lot. It should be mentioned that, as can be expected, the main themes revolve around US regulations, although there are a number on EU ones, as well.

http://listserv.ipc.org/archives/designercouncil.html

The Designer Council Forum is very apt because, if a printed circuit board is not designed with the assembly parameters in mind, the finished product will cost too much and the reliability will go down the drain. This is an active list, with over 500 participants. As a good example of the concurrent engineering inside this subject, if one does a search, within the forum, with solder as the keyword, over 750 responses will come up. One of the most recent (thread 17, January 2005) is to determine optimum pad shapes for lead-free solder, just as a sample. This is one place, where the assembly people should interact with the designers.

http://listserv.ipc.org/archives/environet.html

A small forum (some 100 odd members) with a steady trickle of environmental discussion, some of which is very relevant to the readers of this journal, some isn't and the rest is of more general or academic interest.

http://listserv.ipc.org/archives/halogenfree.html

The HalogenFree List is small, with only about 60 members. Notwithstanding, it evokes a steady, but irregular, dribble of contributions. Of course, this may not seem to be very interesting, until one has to change the soldering machine settings when the laminate suddenly changes. Apart from the fact that totally halogen-free laminate does not really exist, it seems clear that there was more interest 5 or 6 years ago than today, mainly because there was a fear, falsely founded, that the tetrabromobisphenol A, used in making conventional FR-4 laminates, was in the collimator of some authorities. Incidentally, I looked cursorily at several months of archives, going back to the beginning and found no reference to either halogen-free fluxes or halogen-free cleaning solvents. Does it really make sense to solder an assembly on a halogen-free board with a chloride/bromide-activated flux whose residues are then cleaned off with a chloro- or bromo-carbon solvent?

http://listserv.ipc.org/archives/leadfree.html

As may be expected, the LeadFree forum is a big'un, with some 800 odd subscribers. It is probably the second most important in terms of the number of messages, too, with two new threads per working day, on average, and some six responses to each new thread, also on average. There is therefore a wealth of information in the 4,000 or so messages posted here. Like in all major forums, there is some repetition of subjects (it is much easier to start a new thread than to search the archives for the same subject, that was posted the previous month!). There is considerable overlap between this forum and some of the others, including TechNet, EnviroNet and ComplianceNet. One word is in order, though; the motor behind this list is the EU RoHS and WEEE directives, which cover a much wider range of rules than just eliminating lead in solder. As a result, this agora has become, by public demand, the discussion place for such items as cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chrome, bromocarbon flame-retardants and similar subjects covered in these directives, not just lead.

http://listserv.ipc.org/archives/noleadtech.html

Some 3 years ago, there was a complaint that the LeadFree list was inundated with regulatory messages and that technical information was difficult to find whether this complaint was founded or not is immaterial! In their wisdom, the IPC started a separate one for purely technical issues, NoLeadTech. There are about 200 subscribers, about one-quarter that of the LeadFree one. There is, at the most, one message per month, if you discount the IPC announcements, so it has hardly been successful. And there are still technical messages in the other one!

http://listserv.ipc.org/archives/technet.html

TechNet is the workhorse list, immensely popular amongst the nearly 1,000 subscribers. It is used for all subjects concerning both PCB-Fab and Assembly and, occasionally, some related subjects that do not fall in either category or, dare I mention it, totally off-topic subjects. In some months, there may be over 150 new threads, each with half-a-dozen or more responses. There are almost 75,000 messages archived, since 1995, so the amount of information stored there is stupendous. There is much overlap between this forum and the others, probably because it is the first port of call for some, when they have a question to ask.

To finish with, I'd like to make a few general comments about these lists. To subscribe or unsubscribe to any of them, it suffices to send an e-mail, according to the instructions at www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16. You have total control over whether or how you wish to receive e-mails. Thumbing through the archives, I find it a pity that they include a small number of automatic messages such as, “Joe Bloggs is out of the office”; I would enjoin the IPC to discard these. Searching the archives is very easy, with an excellent engine for the job. I do not hesitate to recommend any reader of this journal to subscribe to one or more of these forums.

Brian EllisCyprusb_ellis@protonique.com

Note1. Jean de la Fontaine, Certain renard voulut, diton, se faire loup. (A certain fox, it is said, wanted to become a wolf), Fables Choisies (1693 ed.) bk. 7, no. 9