Archive | July, 2008

Darkest Popular Themes for Firefox 3

Jul/31 in Best of Firefox, Best Themes

Browsing through some of the most popular themes out there, the dark themes always seem to hold the top spots.  So which dark themes out there are the most popular?  Here are the top ten choices people have been making.

+ Check Out the Lightest Popular Themes for Firefox 3 too!

Aero Fox – All black and blue, kind of like how I ended up after the last Internet Explorer 7 fan club meeting I attended.

2

NASA Night Launch – Want to shoot off to the stars?  Well you might not be able to go to space yourself, but why should you?  Bring space to you!

1

Aquatint Black Gloss – Another shinny black and blue theme with icons so glossy I can see myself in them.

2

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Add Bookmarks Here 2

Jul/30 in Add-ons Reviews, Bookmark Help

Add Your Bookmark Here! Where exactly would you like to put that bookmark?  If you’re in a hurry, and currently in the folder you need to bookmark a link in – you can pickup the Add Bookmark Here 2 add-on for Firefox to get the job done.

This extension adds a new menu item when you right-click any of your bookmark folders to allow you to bookmark your current web site you are viewing into that folder.  Here are a few more features to get excited about.

  • Expand all fields of bookmark popup panel.
  • Allow customize the position of “Add Bookmark Here” & “Open All Tabs”
  • Allow to add bookmarks from the top of Bookmark Menu.
  • Allow to insert a bookmark by using right-click on a bookmark.
  • Auto remember last selected folder when you bookmark a page
  • New option: Don’t show the Edit Dialog when I add a bookmark.
  • New option: Click the Bookmark Star once to show the Edit Dialog.

This is a small change that really does make bookmarking just a little easier.  You can pick up Add Bookmark Here 2 on the Firefox Add-ons web site.

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Ctrl + Shift Your Way Through Firefox

Jul/29 in Usability

You asked for it, time and time again.  You told me Mitch, you awesome guy you… (ok, maybe you left out the awesome part, but I forgive you) we want more Firefox keyboard shortcuts.  I beat my keyboard till it was black and blue to find these shortcuts just for you.

Ctrl + Shift + T = Reload Closed Tab

Ctrl + Shift + R = Reload Web Page, Override Cache

Ctrl + Shift + Tab = Go Backwards When Scrolling Through Tabs (right to left)

Ctrl + Shift + G = Find Toolbar searches page backwards (down to up)

Ctrl + Shift + Del = Clear Private Data

Ctrl + Shift + D = Bookmark All Open Tabs

User Submitted Ctrl + Shift Shortcuts

Ctrl+Shift+Enter = Adds .org to the end of an address in the address bar

(thanks to Jian Li)

Ctrl + Shift + B = Organize Bookmarks

Ctrl + Shift + E = Adblockplus addon preferences

Ctrl + Shift + F = Foxmarks Addon settings

Ctrl + Shift + H = Show Browsing History

Ctrl + Shift + J = Firefox Error Console

Ctrl + Shift + L = Open selected links using the Linky addon

Ctrl + Shift + Q = Foxclock addon Zone Picker

Ctrl + Shift + S = Synchronize books using Foxmarks Addon

Ctrl + Shift + V = Show items blockable with the Adblockplus addon

Ctrl + Shift + W = Close the current window

Ctrl + Shift + X = toggle typing direction of current textbox

(thanks to KeyboardJunkie)

Need more?  Check out my previous post on all of the Ctrl key combos and shortcuts.  If you have stumbled upon any Ctrl + Shift keyboard combos I missed out on, drop in a comment and let me know.

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Simple RSS Reader

Jul/28 in Add-ons Reviews, Usability

simple-rss-firefox Maybe your not a RSS feed junkie like I am, but you do like to do some occasional headline tracking from time to time.  Simple RSS Reader might be the extension for you, as it does exactly what you would think.  It is a simple little RSS reader (minus the geeky complications).

The hardest part about Simple RSS Reader is adding the RSS feeds.  Just click on the blue RSS icon and give a name and URL to each.  That is it.  The thing I like most about this add-on is the fast forward, rewind,  pause, stop and play options for the ticker you get at the top.

simple-rss-firefox-2

You have your headline or link at the left, your source in the middle and then your controls on the far right.  An entire feed reader all in one toolbar.  It also has a very small memory footprint, so if you are staying away from add-ons that eat up too much of your RAM you have no need to worry about the Simple RSS Reader.  It might be the best of the RSS news ticker extensions.

You can pick it up at the official web site or the Firefox Add-ons site.  Oh and if you need an RSS feed to start your collection with, I have a great one for you: http://feeds.feedburner.com/firefoxfacts (shameless plug I know…)

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Get Richer Display Colors in Firefox

Jul/27 in Settings

Are your pictures not looking exactly right after uploading?  If your using Firefox 3, you can edit your settings to make those photos pop and display even richer colors.  To enable Firefox 3′s rich color support you need to:

Step 1: Enter about:config into your address bar

Step 2: In the filter box, type in this string:

gfx.color_management.enabled

Step 3: Now toggle that from false to true, and then restart (or close, and then open back up) Firefox.  Your done!  Now where is the catch?  Here is the explanation from Lifehacker:

From there on in, your photo colors will be richer than they were. Why isn’t this value true by default? Well, according to Mozilla, you’ll see a 10-15% performance hit using this setting, but if you’ve got a reasonably fast machine, it’ll be worth the better-looking photos. Hit the link below for an extended explanation of Firefox’s color profile support.

So, the clift notes version would be if you have a slower machine, you may not want to enable this setting.  If you have a powerhouse though, go at it.

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Remove the Toolbar Notes in Firefox 3

Jul/25 in Hacks and Tweaks

More of a pain than a savior, the toolbar the toolbar tip floating boxes of help and information in Firefox tend to hurt me more than help me.  Yes, I know the reload button allows me to reload the current page, I got it!

remove-helpIf you want to disable this feature, follow these steps:

Step 1: In your address bar, type in about:config

Step 2: If given a warning, tell Firefox you promise to be nice.  Now type this into your Filter search box at the top:

browser.chrome.toolbar_tips

Step 3: Now only one result should be showing up.  Right-click where it says “browser.chrome.toolbar_tips” and select “Toggle”.  You want to turn this from True to False.  (If you want them back, just toggle it again to turn this feature back on).  Now you can go ahead and get back to your browsing.

There you have it, no more annoying popup tips coming your way getting in the way of your browser thanks to our good ol’ buddy, about:config.

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Quick Paste – Quickly Share Blocks of Text

Jul/24 in Add-ons Reviews, Usability

A few weeks back, I posted about a new service named TinyPaste over on Mitchelaneous, which made it easy to copy blocks of text, paste them into a box and then get a short URL so you could share that text with your friends.

What makes this service even cooler, is they have a Firefox extension to help you speed up the link generating process.   Using the Quick Paste add-on, you can highlight text then grab your URL.  Not much rocket science behind it.

Quickly Share Blocks of Text!

Here is a little more about the Firefox extension from the developer:

Have you ever wanted to send a article or long conversation over IM or post to twitter, only to have it be over the limit on size? What about a cool way to share data without the fuss? Thats what TinyPaste is! Its like TinyURL but for text!

You can pick up the extension on Firefox’s Add-ons web site and learn more about the service behind the handy tool at TinyPaste.com.

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No iPhone Firefox, Apple makes it too hard

Jul/23 in Firefox News

No iPhone-fox?

The team over at Wired have posted a very interesting article with Mozilla’s CEO, John Lilly about a number of topics.  One of the topics that came up was iPhone and the easy somebody like Mozilla would have developing for it:

Wired: Are you going to develop a version of Firefox for the iPhone?

Lilly: No. Apple makes it too hard. They say it’s because of technical issues — they don’t want outsiders to disrupt the user experience. That’s a business argument masquerading as a technological argument. We’re focusing on more important stuff. The iPhone has been influential, but there’s not that many of them. We’re part of the LiMo Foundation — Linux on Mobile. The Razr V2 is a LiMo phone, and you’ll see more in the next year or so.

I do understand Apple’s need to “control the experience” with the iPhone, and hey… who knows, this could really open some doors for other phones and mobile devices.  Also Apple isn’t going to want to take away from Safari which for me as a Windows user has not been much than bundle-ware with iTunes. 

Check out the full interview with Lilly:  The Mozilla CEO on His Firefox Strategy, His Google Gambit, and Working With Apple

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Security Zone Policy Errors in Firefox 3

Jul/23 in Security

Here is an interesting update that seems to be drawing a little heat from the Web at large.  Depending on your Internet settings (from Control Panel > Internet Options) you might have issues with some downloads being blocked.

Fx3exeBlocked

Here is what Mozilla has to say about the issue.

Starting in Firefox 3, downloads of executable files (e.g., .exe or .msi) may fail and the Firefox Downloads window will contain this message, under the filename:  This download has been blocked by your Security Zone Policy.

This issue occurs because Firefox 3 now honors your Windows security settings for downloading applications and other potentially unsafe files from the Internet.

The rage here is that the Internet Options you see from the Control Panel links back to Internet Explorer 7.  So in a round about wacky way, Firefox 3 follows IE7′s security settings.  Need a fix?

To change the setting, open Internet Options (via Control Panel or from Internet Explorer -> Tools) and click the Security tab. With the Internet zone icon highlighted, click the Custom level… button. A list of security settings for the Internet zone will appear. Find the “Launching applications and unsafe files” setting (under Miscellaneous) and select “Prompt (recommended)”.

If that does not do the trick for you, there are a few more fix suggestions on Mozillazine.org you can try.  So are you upset about this or could you care less?

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Turn Google a Little Blue, Just for YOU!

Jul/22 in Hacks and Tweaks

Feeling a little blue?  Google can too, thanks to this user style!

Google is a Little Blue?

The Google Web Search – dark blue redesign (vC) user style adds a ‘bit of blue to the otherwise white and bland Google background.  To use this style, you will need to install the Stylish extension for Firefox.  Also as the designer points out on the page,  this style only works for google.com. To make it work for other countries, use a plain text editor to search for “google.com” and replace all occurrences with “google.co.uk” or whatever you use.

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