Archive | May, 2008

When a Greasemonkey Goes Bad

May/09 in Greasemonkey, Security

Like many of the rest of you out there, I love hacking around with web sites and adding functionality to Firefox by plugging in a few Greasemonkey scripts.  Do you know what to watch out for when Greasemonkey scripts go bad?  You have probably seen the warning up on UserScripts.org but I wanted to touch base to let you know what you should be looking for.

The main problem is that people are writing scripts that steal your cookie.  With your cookie, they can grab other information such as your login and other sensitive information.  They say these are two things you should search any script for before installing:

.php?cookie=

and

encodeURIComponent(document.cookie)

For more tips on how to stay on the safe side, I would recommend reading through this thread via the UserScripts.org forums.  It has a lot of handy information if you install and uninstall a lot of Greasemonkey scripts.

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Making Your Smart Bookmarks Even Smarter

May/08 in Bookmark Help

firefox-smart-bookmarks

Over at CyberNet they have posted a great guide on how to create your own smart bookmarks. Smart bookmarks are the new feature to Firefox 3 that allow you to bring up your saved links in new, unique and useful ways. For example, you could browse through your most recently bookmarked links, your most recently visited links, and so on.

Check out Create Your Own Smart Bookmarks in Firefox 3!

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Think You Lost Your Firefox Bookmarks?

May/07 in Bookmark Help

bookmark-backups I have had a few friend and read a few horror stories Online about people who for one reason or another have lost their Firefox bookmarks and had to start all over.  What they were not aware of is that you may not have totally lost your Firefox boomarks at all.  There are backups hidden within your PC that I bet you haven’t even checked yet.

First thing you need to do is find your profile folder for Firefox.  Depending on your operating system this may be in a different location.  If you are unsure, be sure to check out this previous post:  Where is my Firefox Profile Folder?

Once you make it in there you should see a folder named “bookmarkbackups”.  Double-click that folder, and there you have some of your saved boomkarks that you thought you had lost waiting for you to restore them.  To restore your bookmarks, you can launch Firefox, then go to “File” and then “Import”. 

Also if you want to live a little more on the dangerous side (first make sure Firefox isn’t running) you could copy one of the bookmark backups, rename it “bookmarks.html” and place it inside of your profile folder replacing the one that is not right.  As a bonus, if you need more help on how to backup Firefox using other tools – be sure to check out this previous most wanted post from the Firefox Facts archives.

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Add Flags to Firefox Tabs

May/06 in Add-ons Reviews, Tabbed Browsing

firefox-flag-tab We have colored them, moved them, shrunk them – so why not add little colored flags to your tabs?  The FlagTab add-on for Firefox gives a little more control when it comes to organizing your open tabs in Firefox.  For each tab open you can add a different colored flag, or give several the same colored flag.  The organizational options here are endless.

This extension for Firefox would come particularly handy when it comes to working on a project, where you need to keep track of which tabs are with which set of sites.  For example, if I was writing something about Firefox, I might flag the Mozilla sites I was getting information from green and the non-Mozilla sites red.  That way I can quickly see the difference between the two.

So if you are in need of another way to organize your open tabs – FlagTab might just do the job.

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Firefox 3 Themes Get Named

May/06 in Best Themes

According to Mozilla Links, the new line of Firefox 3 themes all have their own names now:  Tango!, Strata, and Firelight.

firefox-3-theme-names

Personally, I think I might like the Tango one the best.  The other day played with Strata some but still not a big fan of it.  I am sure it will also be only a matter of time before people release “classic” versions to make the theme look more like Firefox 2.

Tired of these themes?  Try a few of the best new ones out there!

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WALL•E Theme for Firefox Delights

May/05 in Best Themes

Awesome Disney Theme! In the need of a futuristic and dark theme featuring the characters from Disney and Pixar’s new movie, WALL•E?

You can pick it up at the Mozilla Add-ons site (will need to register and login though).  Don’t know much about the movie, the the theme is nice no mater if your a fan of the movie or not.

Could probably do without the movie name on the theme, or the Disney/Pixar branding.  I really do like though the dark background with the red icons as highlights.  Makes them stand out without being too distracting.

Download it and give it a shot.  For a promotional theme to get you excited about a movie, this one is pretty delightful.  Whish more movies would get into this type of hype and marketing.  Thanks to TwisterMC for finding this goodie.

Update: Here is the Wall-E theme for Firefox 3: Download Here! (thanks to Pixar Planet!) – check here for instructions on how to install.

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Compose a New Gmail Message in Firefox Sidebar

May/04 in Hacks and Tweaks

firefox-sidebar-gmail You should know I love the “Open a Tool in Firefox’s Sidebar” tips by now. 

This one crossed my feed reader, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to send it to all of you.  With a ‘bit of a work around you can now open your “compose a new e-mail” link from Gmail in as a Firefox sidebar.  Here is how to get it done:

You’ll want to login to Gmail, and then click on the “Compose Mail” link.  When the new message page comes up, you want to click on the popout icon in the upper right corner.  When the popup comes at you, go to the address bar of the new window and copy the URL for it. 

If you can’t see the address bar then just right click on the page, and select “Bookmark this Page”.  Add the bookmark to a location you can remember and hit the “OK” button.  Then you need to right-click the bookmark, select Properties and then hit the check mark to “Load this bookmark in the sidebar”. 

There you have it, now you can compose Gmail messages right from your Firefox sidebar.  Thanks goes out to Digital Streets for pointing this neat sidebar hack out.  Does this work better for you, or would you rather have the popup?

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Firefox 3′s Color Profile Support

May/03 in Firefox News

When it comes to tweaking some of the internals of Firefox, your average user won’t care that much – but for the graphic or photography nuts this next ‘bit of news should be exciting.  It seems that the color profile support for Firefox 3 will be better.  Although, the updated and upgraded is not enabled by default (due to resource issues) if you need it – it will be there.

2451824239_3b06c9bf5b

This image above should give you a good idea of what you can look forward to once it is enabled.  See how Firefox 3′s color representation and Photoshop are just about the same?  I won’t lie, I am not as up on this color profile information as much as other may be so let me direct you to a great article that tackles this subject even deeper. 

One thing that has always irritated me about looking at pictures on the web is that browsers don’t seem to display photographs properly. And by “photographs” I really mean “colors”. I spend a lot of time tweaking pictures in Photoshop, but when I upload them to my Flickr account and look at them in Firefox 2 the colors aren’t the same — they’re more washed out, dull, and lifeless. It’s a subtle thing, but annoying nonetheless.

You can check more out about Firefox 3′s color profile support and what to look forward to on Firefox 3: Color profile support (oh the pretty, pretty colors) (a great article by the way) via dria.org.

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Download MP3s from MuxTape

May/02 in Greasemonkey, Hacks and Tweaks

Download from Muxtape.com! I figured this hack was in the works for some time now, just happened to run across it this morning.  Thanks to Firefox, Greasemonkey and a little creativity from a scripter out there you can download music from the MuxTape web site.  Here are the words of wisdom from the script creator…

This downloads muxtape songs. Just click the “Download me!” link, change the file-name to your liking and append .mp3 to it.

There you go!  Pick up the Greasemonkey script in question here:

logo_greasemonkey  http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/24382

Now of course I am not encouraging you to go out there and be a pirate, but for those tunes up there that you can not find anywhere else or may be original works from an independent artist you would like to enjoy – the option to download is now there.  I have a feeling though they will more than likely get this fixed soon on the MuxTape side of things.

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