Archive | 2008

Firefox Nebula Wallpaper

Dec/03 in Resources

I am not a big fan of logos or marketing on my wallpaper, however even I have been using this beauty.

firefox-wallpaper

Found it randomly when surfing through Google images looking for something totally un-related.  Maybe finding treasures like this is better when you don’t look for it, it just finds you… or perhaps that is a little too deep of a rabbit hole to jump down this early in the morning.

You can pick the wallpaper up at Gnome-Look.org, and I have also seen it here too (just in case that first one give you trouble or goes down). 

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

A New (Simple) Face for an Old Google Reader

Dec/03 in Greasemonkey

screen

Can you believe that is Google Reader?  Nah, me neither.  There has to be some sort of oddball voodoo magic going on here, right?  What?  You say it is a Greasemonkey script?  Helvetireader breaks Google Reader down to just the things you need.  I true, “Woah, that is awesome” fashion – the userscript creator also encourages people to customize the CSS and make it their own.  (found via Lifehacker)

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Create, Save and Share Your Image Collections

Dec/02 in Add-ons Reviews

There are several add-ons for Firefox that will change the way you can interact with images and galleries, and joining that clan of extensions is OutWit Images.  It is a simple, straight to the point image browser for the browser.  It does all the catching, saving and auto-browsing for you.

Image Browser for Firefox

The thing that makes OutWit Images different than other image browsers, is it allows user to save images right to the hard drive and browse from there.  From within Firefox, you can collect images from various web sources  with just a simple click of the button. 

The sleek design (as you can see above) is also worth pointing out.  It can also be personalized by selecting different background colors and views for the thumbnails themselves.  Here is a little more about this extension from the developers:

The images can be dragged and dropped into the collection basket, “the catch,” from which they can be saved directly onto the computer, displayed in a slideshow, or shared with others. It also offers a variety of other options including filters for viewing and saving the images, as well as, visible source information.

OutWit Images is designed for the collection of images, plain and simple.  You can pickup this add-on for Firefox on the Firefox Add-ons site or the official OutWit site too.

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Best Firefox Facts of November 2008

Dec/01 in Resources

The Thanksgiving leftovers are starting to taste funny, and your already thinking of starting a new exercise program. Those two events coming together as one can only mean one thing. November is over. Here are some of the best Firefox Facts November had to offer.

Firefox Themes

Useful Firefox Add-ons

Best of the Best Firefox Tools

Mozilla and Firefox News

Firefox Tweaks, Hacks and Tips

Just think of this as your Thanksgiving Day leftovers warmed up one more time. Now to start planning for how Firefox Facts will leave you begging for more in December 2008. End of year awards, anyone?

Bonus: Check out podcast #173 of the Web Hosting Show, my web development and hosting podcast side project.  Totally free, and updated every week.

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Christmas Themes for Firefox

Nov/28 in Best of Firefox, Best Themes

Thanksgiving is over, and the black Friday shopping has started.  So there is only one more tradition to start before you head explodes this holiday season, the Christmas decorations!  Before you go out hunting in your attic for your plastic tree – wrap these awesome Christmas-based themes around your browser.

Xmas

A new one to the mix this year, this experimental add-on is another great holiday-based theme that doesn’t make me want to chunk the browser out the window.  Celebrate Christmas with this fun and festive theme.

Xmas theme for Firefox

Tinseltown

This is one of the first Christmas-based themes I ever remember seeing for Firefox.  Tinseltown is a Christmas theme with holiday imagery including Christmas lights, snow, reindeer, presents and more.

Tinseltown for Firefox

Winter Holiday Christmas Toolbar and Theme

There are a few nice perks about this one.  It will change depending on the time of day it is (beautiful night scene or a sunny snow scene), and also comes with a holiday themed sidebar with music and videos.

Winter Holiday Theme

I’ll keep my eye out all month long for more holiday based themes.  If you know of any other good ones to share, be sure to leave a comment.  If you want to give me my Christmas present early, you could always get a few more people to subscribe to the RSS feed.  It is free and always packed full of presents for you all year around.

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Check Multiple Checkboxes with Ease

Nov/27 in Add-ons Reviews, Usability

checkboxmate

Nobody likes having to click on checkboxes, in our e-mail or on the online forms we might need to fill out.  It is a pain in the rear process, that I wish sometimes I did not have to do.  With that said, I have found one experimental add-on that promises to make the pain go away.

CheckBoxMate, an add-on for Firefox, allows you to check multiple checkboxes with ease by drawing a box around them to automatically select them all.  Here is what the developer of the extension had to say about it:

This tool is great for sites that use lots of checkboxes like a registration form or your Hotmail or Yahoo! inbox. Imagine this: Your Hotmail inbox has 10 spam messages and you don’t want to click on 10 separate checkboxes just to select them all. Now you can select them all just by drawing a box around them! To begin drawing a box, your mouse MUST first be positioned over one checkbox. Then drag to activate this tool.

Learn more about the CheckBoxMate add-on on it’s official site, or download it via the Firefox Add-ons web site.

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

ANTHEM for Firefox – Oh Say Can Firefox See?

Nov/26 in Best Themes

I enjoy the dark and original Firefox themes the most, so this one has just tickled my fancy all over the place.  The new ANTHEM theme for Firefox is unique, classy and fun to use.  It isn’t that often we get to see themes like this:

Anthem Theme for Firefox

Here is a little more about the theme from the developer:

ANTHEM is a fun little side project I recently started. It was inspired by my blog layout and the popular “dark” look that has taken over in the past few years. The icons are 100% original. However, some windows still use the original theme buttons.

Using Windows here, there are a few features that are a little buggy it seems – but I this is a great start to a very nice looking theme for Firefox.

You can check out the author’s official site and then pick the theme up from the Firefox Add-ons repository.  Also, for more dark theme selections, go check out the list of the most popular dark Firefox themes.

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

7 Amazing Musical Add-ons for Firefox

Nov/25 in Add-ons Reviews, Best of Firefox

Firefox - Your Musical Jukebox?

Most people might not consider Firefox to be much of a jukebox, however it does know how to “get down with it’s bad self” with the right selection of extensions.  Here are seven of the most popular audio related add-ons for Firefox.

firefox-musicOnline Music Player – It is a music player in status-bar. It provides Firefox with ability to play online mp3 music(local file as well), to search and display the lyrics automatically, as well as to manage the music lists.

Online Music Player

firefox-musicFire.fm – Winner of the Extend Firefox 3 contest, Fire.fm is your direct access to the extensive music library on Last.fm. Listen to music related to your favorite artist, and discover new artists and music in the process.

firefox-musicStop Autoplay – Disable the autoplay of the embedded music and movie.

Stop Annoying Autoplay Embeds

firefox-musicFoxyTunes – Do you listen to Music while surfing the Web? FoxyTunes lets you control almost any media player and find lyrics, covers, videos, bios and much more with a click right from your browser.

firefox-musicTwittyTunes – Allows to post your currently playing songs to Twitter with a click. As a bonus, you can also post the web sites you’re visiting, videos you’re watching and more!

Twitter + Audio = Bliss

firefox-musicMusic Player Minion – Music Player Minion is a client for the Music Player Daemon network music player. The purpose of MPD and it’s clients is to allow music playback on one PC (such as a home media server) to be controlled from another over the network.

Your Evil Music Minion!

firefox-musicAmazing Media Browser – Amazing Media Browser automatically searches for all embed objects in a web site and shows you a list of the source links. You can then conveniently browse through each link to see the content of the source file.

Is there another speaker-loving extension I might have missed? Which one of these would be your personal recommendation?  Let me know in the comments, and I’ll be sure to get it on the list.

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Firefox Holiday News, Tips and Link Rush

Nov/25 in Firefox News

Seems like the deeper we get into the holidays and the end of the year, the more Firefox and Mozilla related news comes out.  Are the two events related?  Could be…

  • Dear Firefox: Please forgive me  When we met three years ago, I thought: This is it, the browser I’ve been waiting for. I’ve found my life partner. So I dumped Internet Explorer faster than you can say “unrecoverable system error” and we moved in together. Sure, we had our ups and downs over the years, but overall it was great. Really.
  • Mozilla Sponsors the First Annual Add-On-Con – the first annual Add-on-Con Conference has been announced. The conference, hosted by add-on developers OneRiot, AdaptiveBlue & Sxipper is the first event specifically designed to bring together developers who are interested in improving their capabilities to produce professional add-ons.
  • Mozilla to Firefox Add-On Developers: Stop Being Lazy – Mozilla evangelists are starting to develop tools to track Firefox’s very healthy add-on ecosystem, primarily with regard to how they adapt to upcoming Firefox versions.  In fact, the newest Firefox version, 3.1, is already in the hopper, but according to a Mozilla blog post, add-on developers aren’t ready for it. Only 20% of the most-used Firefox add-ons are ready for the upcoming version.
  • How To: Disable Google SearchWiki from Firefox and Opera – Google SearchWiki is new feature built inside Google’s Search that lets you customize the search results by moving a site up or down or even adding new pages etc. This feature has created a lot of buzz on the internet as many people has expressed their dissatisfaction for making this feature a default inside Google’s Search.

More Firefox News, Tips and Links

Have a Firefox link, news or add-on review to share?  Feel free to pass them along in the comments!

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Quickly Jump to Un-Linked Hyperlinks

Nov/24 in Add-ons Reviews

You can file this one in the folder of annoying things you find on the Web.  Not to slip into Andy Rooney here, but don’t you hate it when you find a super long link you’d like to visit but it is not hyperlinked?  You have to copy, paste, open a new tab and then navigate to it.  It should be a simpler task to tackle and thankfully the Copy and Go extension for Firefox makes it an easy thing to do.

Copy and Go!

Here is what the developer of the extension has to say about Copy and Go:

With this add-on you just need to mark the link, and choose Copy and Go from the right click menu. The add-on will simply copy the marked text URL, and will open it on a new tab. That’s it!

This makes for a great addition to any Firefox installation you might have.  You can pick up Copy and Go on the Firefox Add-ons site.

Read full story · Comments { 0 }
← Older posts Newer posts →