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Showing posts with the label Firefox

Firefox Status Bar gone missing? Let's bring it back!

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With the release of Firefox 29, the Status Bar workaround no longer worked. I don't recall when it stopped displaying, but now there's no option. I found a handy add-on that brings back the Status Bar, Status-4-Evar , so my other add-ons display again.

Greasemonkey and Salesforce.com

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Updated March 7, 2011: I discovered you can also install the same scripts into Chrome. Chrome supports user scripting without the need for Greasemonkey. I've been somewhat familiar with Greasemonkey , but I never thought I had a real need. Greasemonkey is a Firefox Add-in allows you to customize the way a web page displays or behaves with JavaScript. A common use is to add download options to YouTube videos, such as with YouTube Video Download . Today I discovered 2 scripts for Salesforce.com that make administering Salesforce.com just a little easier. The first removes the click needed to display the menu that is displayed under your name. Most commonly used when you want to go to the Setup screen. With Salesforce.com Setup and Apps Hover Links , by just hovering over your name, the menu expands. It's simple, but quite nice. The second script is quite powerful. Setup Enhancer for Salesforce will add a search box above the setup menu, making it considerably easier to find what...

2011 Tech Predictions

If you've been following me, you know I've made predictions in 2009 and 2010 . While my first years predictions were rather light, I made 5 predictions as well as included further discussion of issues with my 2010 prediction. My record for 2010 wasn't so good, but that's only in a pure hit or miss view. In fact the subject matters I addressed, I believe were quite good, but change just didn't happen as quick as I had thought. See my recap post for further details and analysis on my 2010 predictions. Now that 2011 has started, I'll make another stab at what I believe will happen in the tech industry this year. This first one is rather easy... Facebook will release an email client , putting them in direct competition with Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! mail. The current email within Facebook is limited in functionality, but in 2011 this will change as Facebook continues to look for ways to grow and grab more "eyeballs." Last year I predicted Internet Explo...

Thunderbird links wont open browser tab

My Thunderbird email client quit opening up links when I clicked them, regardless if they were in an email or from an RSS feed. Turns out the issue was with my web browser. I switched from Firefox as my default to Internet Explorer and it worked again. I then reset my default to Firefox, restarted Firefox, and it responded again, too.

View and Manage Your Social Networks in One Place

Update Aug 25, 2010: After 3 1/2 months of using Yoono, I've removed it from Firefox. It had a tendency to crash Firefox, particularly if it contained a lot of unread messages. In addition, it quit updating my Facebook feed, except for notices, around the 1st of August. I've switched back to TweetDeck and Trillian. Earlier this week I installed Yoono's ( Yoono.com ) Firefox Add-on, as a test to see if it can successfully be used to manage all my social networks. Today I removed my other client tools from my auto-start, as I have been very happy with Xoono. As I mentioned, Xoono is a Firefox Add-on (it's also available for Windows desktop) that you can use to manage all my social network interactions. It supports Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, FriendFeed, and 4 instant messaging (IM) clients: AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk, and MSN. Each of these can show in one feed or you can select a tab to see the individual feed. I have been using 3 of the social feeds (Fac...

Exclude Websites in Your Searches / Custom Searches

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I've been doing quite a bit of research lately on technical topics, where the results would frequently include results from a pay site, Expert Exchange. If you;re familiar with Expert Exchange, they've been very successful in getting their pages to return high in the list of Google results. I have found it very frustrating when I inadvertently click-through on one of their pages. With a little research, I found that Google has a custom search option, where you can include and exclude certain websites. I have created a custom search that includes all Google results with the exception of Expert Exchange. To make it really useful though, I needed it to be in my search bar in Firefox, which I use almost exclusively for new searches. I found a Firefox Add-on to do that too. Here's how you can make your own custom search. If you don't already have one, you must have a Google account. Go to the Google Custom Search page and click "Create a Custom Search" I had to...

Firefox 3.5 is embarrassed -- not as stable as Firefox 3

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I had tweeted shortly after Firefox 3.5 was released that it was too unstable for day-to-day work use, and I had to rollback to version 3. Finally after successfully using Firefox 3.5 for about 3 weeks at home I thought I'd give it a go again and upgraded late last week. Today (Monday, 12-Oct-09), I've had two crashes. I suspect it is related to memory usage, as I've had many tabs opened and closed as I do some data cleanup in our CRM system. Below is the last message upon restarting Firefox. While I'm disappointed and a bit frustrated, Firefox is embarrassed. We'll see whether this is a consistent problem, forcing me back again, or if other daily tasks workout.

New "Cookies" and your Privacy

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On Monday this week (Sep 14, 2009), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released the first article of a three part series on how we're being tracked on the web today. After a review of cookie technology as originally designed, the EFF article discusses new forms of cookies. The article is rich with links to more detailed sources. What I would consider the most concerning of technologies is the use of Adobe Flash cookies. Unlike the traditional browser cookie, there is no easy way to delete cookies that are stored by websites using Flash as their storage mechanism (more on this below). I'll also add that all the new "Privacy Browsing" features in the current release of browsers apparently do not always clear all your tracks. If you found this feature helpful in your web browsing, its worth digging deeper into the limitations, and not take the vendors claim of privacy without investigating yourself. I'm not anti-cookie. In fact I think it's extremely impor...

What Firefox Add-ins are you still using?

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I really like the extensibility that Firefox Add-ins provides for browsing -- it is the only reason I have not switched to using Google Chrome as my primary browser. (Google Chrome is compelling due to it being faster.) With that in mind, I though it would be a good time to review the Add-ins I currently have active in Firefox. These are the Add-ins on my home pc, using Firefox 3.5. AI Roboform Toolbar for Firefox : An absolute requirement for any browser I use on a regular basis. Roboform stores all my usernames and passwords, making it extremely easy to login to all my favorite websites. Roboform has a single master password that must be entered only the first time used during a computing session. Clear Cache Button : Very convenient way to clear the browser cache when I'm working on new code. ColorZilla : Perhaps my newest productivity saver. Using ColorZilla, I can sample any color on a webpage and immediately determine its value in hex and rgb. CoLT : Makes it easy to copy li...

Browser Wars III - Revenge of the ...?

Since Microsoft killed off Netscape (Browser Wars, the original), most users were not aware of any alternatives until Firefox (FF) came on the scene ( Mozilla vs. Godzilla - Browser Wars II). Actually, there was a 3rd browser that was and is quite good, Opera . More recently, Google announce their own web browser, Chrome , while Mozilla had released Firefox 3 (now FF 3.5 is available) and Apple released Safari 4. Since Microsoft released Internet Explorer 5 (IE5), I've been quite unhappy with the browser. It has suffered from security holes (predominately due to ActiveX), proprietary solutions (ActiveX again raises its ugly head), and slowness. I've also come to really like Firefox due to its extensibility with Add-ons. With the popularity of Firefox and now the additions of Chrome and Safari, you could say that Netscape is finally getting their revenge, sort of. Since Firefox came out of the aftermath of Nestcape and the additional fire power of Google and Apple, Microso...

Force fit an HTML Table

My previous post had a table that the browser pushed outside the defined dimensions, making half of it un-viewable. Beside the rather narrow body for the blog, which by-the-way makes it easier to read, most browsers just don't know how to break text strings that do not have white space. Turns out there is some CSS code that can be used that will correct this in most browsers. Use the following two CSS properties in your table definition (adjust width to meet your need). table-layout: fixed; width: 425px; Surprisingly, if you use Firefox, it shortens the width correctly but it still has trouble wrapping some lines, while IE and Safari seems to render the entire table correctly. Visit the W3C site to get details on other table options .

Monitor your Gmail accounts whenever your browser is open

With the Gmail Manager Firefox add-on , you can always easily see how many messages you have in all of your Gmail accounts. In addition, with a click or two, you can be in your account, and answering and deleting your email. Features of Gmail Manager include: The ability to monitor multiple Gmail accounts The ability to save your passwords The use of https (secure) connection Various toolbar notices, including Hide unread count Hide alias Unread for email, spam, and or labels Configuration of minutes between checks for new messages Sound notification when new email arrives Though just on version 0.5.7.1, this seems to be a pretty solid Add-on.

Render a site in Internet Explorer every time when using Firefox

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As a Firefox user, there are a few times that I run across a site that requires Internet Explorer (IE). With the right add-ons to Firefox, it's easy to switch the rendering engine with a single click. Of course it would be even easier if the site Firefox recognized sites that require IE, and switch for me. If you use the IE Tab add-on, that is exactly what you can configure it to do. Here's how to do it: Download and install the IE Tab add-on (like all add-ons, this will require a restart of Firefox) Go to the site that you want to render each time in IE Open the IE Tab Options (Tools >> IE Tab Options -- Sites Filter tab) The page you just navigated to should be in the URL box, so you just need to click Add You can skip step 2 and enter any URL manually into the URL box Click OK Now every time you go to a site that is listed in the Sites Filter section of IE Tab, it will automatically render in Internet Explorer. There's one more trick related to this that may be re...

My top Firefox Add-ons

I was reading Webware's Seth Rosenblatt's post, Futzing with features: Firefox add-ons in 2008 , and it made me think about the Add-ons in Firefox that I use on a daily basis. Here my top 10, in ranked in order of value to me: RoboForm : More than an Add-on, more like a toolbar in itself, RoboForm stores all my passwords. If I could only have 1 Add-on, this one would be it. Read my blog post from January 14, 2007 , to learn about the powerful features of RoboForm. NoScript : When visiting a new site, you never know what you might find. NoScript allows me to view the site first without Javascript, first -- letting me decide whether I want scripts to run or not. This is definately a tedious way to surf; on the otherhand my browser and desktop are much more secure, too. IE Tab : Sometimes you just have to look at a page using Internet Explorer -- for those times, I use IE Tab. Download Statusbar : With download status bar, I don't have to bother with a pop-up window everytime ...

Firefox drop zones for keyboard-less surfing

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As read on Webware , using the Drag & DropZones Firefox Add-on you can now surf the web without using the keyboard. Zones are areas in the visible browser window that are assigned various tasks. To use, select a word or phrase and drag and drop into a zone. The process of dragging applies a set of semi-transparent colored boxes with labels, illustrating where the zones exist. Drag & DropZones can be used immediately upon installation, as it will auto-assign drop zones on your browser window to your pre-defined search engines that are defined in your Search Engine Manager. Using the configuration manager, you can move the search engine zones around, delete them, and add new functionality. I think the most valuable time saving feature is for users that actually use more than one of the search engines in your search engine manager. Other functions include: Add to dictionary Back Bookmark Copy Open in a new tab Paste Reload Save View page source As you can see, except for the sear...

Tab preview and switcher for Firefox

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In March I wrote about programs that can improve your alt-tab behavior in Windows. In this 300th blog post, I'm going to share with you a Firefox add-on that works similarly for tabs. With the Ctrl-Tab add-on , press the Control and Tab keys, and you get a preview window of current and other tabs. Continue to press to scroll through and select the tab of your choice. By default, Ctrl-Tab will order the previews based on last viewed. Use it with the Shift key (Ctrl-Shift-Tab) to move in reverse direction. With a small modification, you can configure it to scroll through in order of the tabs. Here's how you change the tab order: Open a new tab Enter about:config Search for browser.ctrlTab.mostRecentlyUsed Change the setting from True to False (double-click on True) Restart your browser Just one more usability improvement to making web browsing a little easier.

Speed up Firefox with pipelining

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Here's just one way to improve the performance of Firefox, through enabling pipelining. Pipelining is having the browser send a subsequent request before receiving a response from the prior request (standard behavior). Pipelining also provides the facility to include multiple requests within a single packet. Mozilla reports the highest potential performance gains for those web pages that have a higher latency rate. Here's how to configure Firefox: Enter about:config in the URL bar Click the warning button Enter "pip" in the Filter -- this should reduce the list of options to four items Click on the Value field for the following two entries and change from False to True network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining Click on the Value field of network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and set the value to 8 Start enjoying a faster Firefox If you set the maximum requests for pipelining too high, you could actually see or just perceive a slower response time, so if y...

Faster Firefox

With the release of Google Chrome just weeks ago, speed tweaking tips are popular topics for Firefox. I found a list at TechRadar to be fairly good. Of the 8 tips offered, I am trying the following: 1 - 3, 6, and 8. Not that some of these are as much about perception as really making any difference. But isn't perception all we really care about? If we perceive it to be faster, it must be faster.

New browser from Google

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Live blog from CNet Webware Today at 11 am PST, Google will announce a new browser from the search giant, Chrome. Chrome promises to start off on the right foot with many great features . Sandboxing: kill one tab while the rest of the browser tabs continue running Blacklists: one for phishing and one for malware, both maintained by Google Plug-ins: dedicated processes Faster Javascript: designed for speed and important enough to be built by its own Google team Multiprocessing: separate process for each task Tabs: placed at the top of the window, giving each tab its own URL (Omnibox) box Google has published a comic book to cover all the features. It will be interesting to watch the responses from the current browser incumbents Microsoft ( IE ), Mozilla ( Firefox ), Apple ( Safari ), and Opera Software ( Opera ). For example, Google is signed up to be Firefox's biggest contributor through 2011, with $56 million of $66 million coming from Google in 2006. As they say in the tech in...

Google Maps not displaying in Firefox 3

In looking up some locations in Google Maps today, I found that the map images were not displaying. The searches worked, and I did get the list of possible matches on the left side. Thanks to some searching through Google I found the problem. The current Skype add-on (v.2.2.0.87) for Firefox is causing this problem. I'm not sure how they are related, but by disabling the Skype add-on fixed the problem. It appears this Skype Add-on is also causing screen redraw issues for some users of Firefox as well.