Archive | October, 2009

Add-on Compatibility Reporter

Oct/30 in Add-ons Reviews

Want to help your good friends at Mozilla do a little add-on testing?

Does you Firefox add-on need updating?

It takes a lot of work to see if add-ons still work or not, so you can do your part by installing the Add-on Compatibility Reporter.  Help the Firefox team make sure your favorite add-ons get updated for upcoming Firefox releases with this tool. 

Here is a little more about the add-on from the Mozilla team:

After installing the Add-on Compatibility Reporter, your incompatible extensions will become enabled for you to test whether they still work with the version of Firefox or Thunderbird that you’re using. If you notice that one of your add-ons doesn’t seem to be working the same way it did in previous versions of the application, just open the Add-ons Manager and click Compatibility next to that add-on to send a report to Mozilla.

Also worth mentioning is that Mozilla only recommends this add-on for alpha and beta users only. So if you like to stay on the cutting edge, this add-on is for you. You can pick up the Add-on Compatibility Reporter on the Firefox Add-ons web site.

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Perfect Add-on for Webmail Addicts

Oct/29 in Add-ons Reviews

Stay up to Date on Your Webmail

Are you a webmail addict? 

Maybe you share a browser between family members, and you both use different webmail clients?  No matter the reason you need to use it – one thing is for sure.  This plugin is one of the best to make sure you stay up to date with your latest e-mails.

You can also use multiple accounts in a same host. The Web Mail Notifier currently supports:

  • mail.google.com(Gmail & Google Apps)
  • mail.yahoo.com (yahoo.com, ymail.com, rocketmail.com, yahoo.co.jp)
  • mail.live.com(hotmail.com, msn.com, live.com)
  • www.daum.net(hanmail)
  • www.naver.com
  • www.nate.com(nate.com, empas.com)
  • and more!

You can pick up the Web Mail Notifier add-on on the Mozilla Add-ons web site.  By far one of the best webmail tools for Firefox.

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Raindrop Makes Communication Easier to Manage

Oct/26 in Firefox News

Raindrop - Mozilla's Perfect Messanger?

Over the weekend I started checking out the newest project out of the Mozilla Labs, Raindrop.  To some it might sound a little like Google Wave – however it offers much more, and is also much easier to wrap your mind around. 

Here is more about the program, in a nutshell, from the developers:

When a friend’s link from YouTube or flickr arrives, your messaging client should be able to show the video or photos near or as part of the message, rather than rudely kicking you over to a separate browser tab. Notifications from computers and mailing lists should be organized for you, not clutter your Inbox or require tedious manual filter setup. It should be easy to smoothly integrate new web services into your conversation viewer entirely using open web technologies.

I am all about the “making things easier to manage” so I eagerly anticipate learning more about what Mozilla has planned for this service.  If you want to learn more about the fundamentals of Raindrop, watch this video:

Raindrop UX Design and Demo from Mozilla Messaging on Vimeo.

What do you think?  Are you excited, or does it look like another web trend that is doomed to trip over itself?  Leave a comment and let me know how excited you are about Raindrop.

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Grab and Drag Scrolling

Oct/22 in Add-ons Reviews, Usability

Do you like being able to virtually grab a page and scroll up or down it in your browser?  Now, some other programs have this ability (such as most PDF readers out there) however the web browser does not, until now.  The Grab and Drag add-on for Firefox will enable grab and drag scrolling, flick gestures, and momentum scrolling in Firefox.

This comes in really handy for tablet PCs, where your pen is taking the place of your mouse.  You can though use it with your mouse too, as it comes ready for 1, 2, or 3 button mouse support.

Grab and Drag gives Firefox a new way to browse, and also has plenty of options to tweak till you get it just the way you want it.  You can pick it up on the Firefox Add-ons site or MozDev.org.

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Easier Access to Private Browsing

Oct/20 in Hacks and Tweaks, Usability

Here is a quick tip that is not that well known.  If you want to start private browsing in a hurry, and you don’t have time to dive through the menus to start it (Tools > Start Private Browsing) then just type about:privatebrowsing into your address bar.

are you really sure?

There you have it.  Once you have done so, it will ask you if you want to switch into Firefox’s private browsing mode.  You could also save about:privatebrowsing as a bookmark, so you have easy one click access to the private browsing mode, without adding any extra add-ons to Firefox.

Now here is my challenge to all of you out there, does anybody know a quick way to stop private browsing, and return your browser back to normal (other than the traditional menu method).  If you do, leave it in the comments!

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Great Tool for SEOs or Web Developers

Oct/19 in Add-ons Reviews

yExplore - Seo's new best buddy!Want to quickly search for more social media or search engine information for any web page or link on the Web?  yExplore 2 is an excellent add-on for Firefox that does exactly that, and more.

By simply right-clicking on any page you can find out the following:

  • Yahoo Site Explorer Backlinks & Index
  • Google Backlinks, Index, Cache
  • Archive.org
  • Bing Index
  • Delicious saves for a domain.
  • Highlighting of NoFollow links.
  • Whois Info
  • and much more!

You can get more information about yExplore 2 via TwisterMC.com or the Firefox Add-ons web site. It never hurts to do your homework when it comes to looking up more information about web site links or domains out there, and the yExplore 2 extension for Firefox makes that task a whole lot easier.

For more web development add-ons for Firefox, be sure to check out my hand-picked selection of the 10 best tools out there.

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Unique Browser Backtracking

Oct/15 in Add-ons Reviews, Usability

Unique Firefox Navigation Tip Need to quickly navigate back in the browser history?  Now sure, you could click the actual backwards button, in the Firefox navigation toolbar.  I have another alternative for you to try though.  MileWideBack is an add-on for Firefox that will let you click on the left border of your Firefox window to go back to the previous web page you were viewing.

What does does this extension for Firefox allow you to do?  Well, if you can navigate forward if you right-click with your mouse on the Firefox border too. If you are using tabbed browsing, middle-click on the left border to close the current tab, or rotate the mouse-wheel to cycle through your current tabs.

To learn more about how to tweak this add-on, check out this tutorial:

So if you are looking for way to make your browsing experience more user friendly or unique, MileWideBack is well worth your time.  Give it a shot, and let me know if you find browsing this way is better or worse than your more traditional methods.

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Crooked Browser Support for Firefox 3.6

Oct/14 in Firefox News

Always a perfect picture with Fierfox 3.6

In what is being seen by some as a silly feature to add, Firefox 3.6 is apparently getting better support for orientation of where it is at.  What does this mean, exactly?  Firefox will know, if your computer has an accelerometer in it, if it is tilting to the left, right, front, or back and will respond with the way the web page your looking at is displayed.

Here’s a few more details about the new feature coming to Firefox:

Originally built as something that we would include for our upcoming mobile browser release, we’ve made it available on desktop systems as well. Many modern Macbooks and Thinkpads contain devices and drivers that expose this information. We’ve added support for Linux, Macs and some Thinkpads where drivers and devices are available.

Overall, this is a pretty awesome new feature for the computers that will support it.  This picture really does not do it justice, go check out the video demonstration over at hacks.mozilla.org.

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Copy, Bookmark or Open Multiple Links

Oct/13 in Add-ons Reviews, Usability

image

Need to save a list of links, but don’t want to copy each one, one by one, individually?  Then you might check out Multi Links.  This Firefox add-on will let you open, copy, or bookmark multiple links, rather than having to handle each one individually. 

To get started, all you have to do is right-click and hold to drag a box around the links you want to effect or “take action” on.  When you release the mouse button, you will have opened, copied and/or bookmarked those links. 

Now how do you decide which of those actions you take?  You can customize that in the options.  Overall, Multi Links is a great add-on that simply adds a lot of functionality to your links and how Firefox relates to them.  If you spend a lot of time copying and pasting resources, this is an add-on you can not do without.

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Best of the Web Development Add-ons

Oct/12 in Add-ons Reviews, Best of Firefox

Most Popular Firefox Web Development Tools

One thing is for sure, with the correctly equipped Firefox browser, you too can become a better web designer or developer. How so? Well, Firefox has some really great tools for both of these jobs. Finding the one that doe the best job, is another job all on it’s own.

Firefox has a lot of web development add-ons you can use, however these are the best of the best at what they do.

  • Console² – Console² (pronounced Console Squared or Console Two) replaces the JavaScript Console with what could be the next generation Error Console. From v0.5 includes the Console Filter extension previously available separately from the Console² website.
  • User Agent Switcher – The User Agent Switcher extension adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.
  • Firebug – Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
  • MeasureIt – Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.
  • FoxyProxy – FoxyProxy is an advanced proxy management tool that completely replaces Firefox’s limited proxying capabilities. It offers more features than SwitchProxy, ProxyButton, QuickProxy, xyzproxy, ProxyTex, TorButton, etc.
  • FirePHP – FirePHP enables you to log to your Firebug Console using a simple PHP method call. You must have Firebug installed and the “Net” panel enabled to use this extension.
  • ColorZilla – Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies. Perfect color picker tool for Firefox.
  • Stylish – Perfect for testing those tiny CSS tweaks, you can also restyle the rest of the web too with this unique user styles manager.
  • View Source Chart – Graphically displays HTML tag boundaries, nesting tag orders, structure and hierarchy. In other words, it makes it all pretty looking.
  • Web Developer – The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.

Disagree or have your own suggestion for the perfect web designer or web development add-on that should be on this list? Drop in a comment and let us know. We’d love to hear your feedback!

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