Archive | May, 2007

What is Mozilla Firefox?

May/21 in Firefox Support

Firefox?

I want to tackle some of the more basic questions people have about Firefox. What could be more basic a question than “What is Firefox?”. It like Opera and Internet Explorer is a Web browser. It allows you to view Web sites on the thing we call the Internet or World Wide Web. Here is the definition of Firefox from Wikipedia:

Mozilla Firefox is a graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation and a large community of external contributors. Firefox, officially abbreviated as Fx or fx and popularly abbreviated FF, started as a fork of the Navigator browser component of the Mozilla Application Suite. Firefox has replaced the Mozilla Suite as the flagship product of the Mozilla project, under the direction of the Mozilla Foundation.

Mozilla Firefox is a cross-platform browser, providing support for various versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. However, the source code has been unofficially ported to other operating systems, including FreeBSD, OS/2, Solaris, SkyOS, BeOS and more recently, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

Firefox’s source code is freely available under the terms of the Mozilla tri-license as free and open source software.

You can also check out more about Firefox’s history and future on Wikipedia as well. Have any more basic Firefox questions to ask?

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6 Best Oddball Firefox Extensions

May/18 in Best of Firefox, Entertainment

Since today is Friday, I figured why not lay back – kick my feet up and just look for some really wacky and maybe even useless Firefox extensions for you to play with? Here’s what made the list for this round up of oddball extensions.

Secret Word Grabber – Inspired by the “secret word” off of Peewee’s Playhouse. Yeah, that’s enough of that one already. As long as it doesn’t expose itself to me we will be alright.

OfficePoltergeist – Turn your web browser into a web server… of terror!

Anti-Paranoia – No, this extension will not spy and destroy your personal data, remember: Everything is good! Don’t panic!

Firesomething – This extension will give Firefox an identity crisis by generating a new randomized browser name every time you open a new window. Who doesn’t want to use Firetoad?

RandomMessage – For those of us out there who really do like to be bugged with random messages with no real purpose behind them. Excellent tool for those people who want to look busier than they really are.

STOP! Hammertime! – You can never get enough MC Hammer. Yeah, I had the baggy pants when I was young and you know you did too.

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INpact Themes for Firefox

May/17 in Best Themes

Do you want your browser to make an INpact on your desktop experience? Well if you have Firefox installed you can now pick up these two new INpactful themes to use on your own.

Blue INpact Orange INpact

Want to try them out? Click on the box for the color you want. Should link you right up to the right Web page to get it downloaded. All in all a very unique yet familiar set of themes.

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Personas – More Firefox Customization

May/16 in Best Themes

Firefox PersonaA few weeks back I got an E-mail from a guy who wanted to know if there was an easy way to customize the toolbar background for Firefox. You know, a simple way for people who just want to do a little personalization – not write an entire theme. Well, even though it is in an early beta I have found a project that will do that and a little more. Personas for Firefox is one of the more interesting Firefox projects I have seen for while.

Personas are lightweight designs that “skin” the Firefox web browser. Delivered as a web service, the menu interface and the Persona designs are exceptionally dynamic, and should allow for a wide range of interesting possibilities.

+ Check Firefox Persona Out | Read More at MozillaLinks.org

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Stupid Photo to Text Trick

May/14 in Entertainment

Photo 2 TextJust call this stupid browser tricks Monday! Ever felt that need to turn your favorite photo you have on the Web into some ascii art?

With this Firefox extension from Photo2Text.com now you can. Now I am not going to pretend that anybody has a good reason to do this. There isn’t one darn good reason you can think of either – go ahead and try. Time to geek out, relax and transform your photos into a load of interesting characters.

+ Download and Install the Photo to Text Firefox Extension!

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Firefox Eating IE Icon

May/11 in Entertainment

Firefox Eating IEWant to pick up one of the more famous Firefox images I have seen Online in icon form? You know the one with the mad Firefox chewing on the Internet Explorer logo? Well now you can. Looks like this guy isn’t the actual artist who first created the image – just a fan who wanted to use it as a desktop icon.

+ Download the Firefox Eating IE Desktop Icon from Deviant Art!

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Firefox Phone

May/10 in Firefox News

Firefox PhoneWill Firefox be moving into the mobile market? Well, I don’t think it will be happening anytime soon. If it does happen eventually though, Opera might become even more of a non-player in the browser market. Found this interesting ‘bit of news over at Download Squad.

Baker says developers are working on a mobile browser, but says it’s a long term goal and nothing users should expect to see anytime soon. While the Minimo project is based on Mozilla, it isn’t an official product and it’s still a few (dozen) steps behind Opera Mobile when it comes to speed and performance.

It might be a lot of promise and “maybe” right now, but if it does happen I have a feeling that the people using Opera’s mobile browser will feel like the ones using the desktop Opera. Lonely.

Related Reading: Download Squad | Interview with Mitchell Baker

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More Mindless Twittering

May/09 in Entertainment

Twitter

For the cyber-stalker in all of us, we have another slew of Twitter tools this time coming from Mashable.

Months after the initial Twitter boom, it’s still strong and kicking. A day rarely goes by that we don’t notice some new Twitter tool in the wild. The ideal place for Twitter-related tools is the web browser, which is apparent from the quick-rising number of Firefox plugins. We’ve found eight; you let us know if there are more!

+ Check Out the Full List of Stalker Twitter Extensions!

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Putting Links on Speed Dial

May/08 in Bookmark Help

Now we all use speed dial on our phones to quickly dial up those numbers we often use but never remember. It looks like Firefox is getting into the speed dial game with the extension with the same name. The Speed Dial extension for Firefox gives you a neat thumbnailed preview of nine links you can quickly switch between.

With Speed Dial, you can easily access your most used websites. To show the Speed Dial tab, use the Speed Dial button (which can be added to the toolbar), or enter “chrome://speeddial/content” in your location bar.

One more cool thing about this tools is it will automatically load in blank new windows or my favorite selection in blank new tabs. To configure this, and other options, use the extension settings panel.

+ Download and Install the Speed Dial Extension for Firefox!

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Make Firefox Show Foreign Text

May/07 in Most Wanted

Most Wanted
So how do you make Firefox show those foreign characters? You know – the ones that show up as “???” when your looking at a Web site from a different country? Amy sent me in this question last week.

I’ve added many languages under Firefox options. And yet when I view a site with Japanese writing, for example, it comes up as “?????”. Even when I’m absolutely sure of the language, and have added it to my language options, the characters won’t show.

The answer? I didn’t know – but Amy figured it out and shared it with me.

It was an Windows OS thing, not a FF thing.
Controls panel –> Regional and Language Settings –> Languages –> check the “Install files for East Asian languages” box.

Have any Firefox issues that are giving you troubles? Want to be able to do something, but don’t know how? Send it in to me and I’ll do my best to find any answer to your most wanted as well.

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