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Making Amazon Shopping Better

Looking to make Amazon a little better?  Look no further, because I have found the perfect Greasemonkey user script for you to use.

Making Amazon Better with Greasemonkey

Better Amazon promises to make your Amazon shopping even better in a number of ways.  If you shop on Amazon a lot, this is a great companion to the browser.

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Control Firefox With Your Wiimote

There is no question that Firefox was designed with extensibility in mind.  With it you can hack, modify and bend Firefox and web sites in many different ways to best suit your own needs.  With that said, how many people have wanted to control Firefox with the Nintendo Wii Wiimote?  With the Nintendo Wiimote driver, you can do it.

So, now the question is – what does it look like in action?

I do have to say, this is a very innovative idea.  Not sure if it is really practical, but shows that there are still a lot of creative minds out there tweaking around with what Firefox can do.

Read more about this project over at blog.mozbox.org.

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Enable the Tab Preview Menu Button in Firefox 3.6

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I have one more Firefox 3.6 about:config tip up my sleeve.  By toggling one setting, you can go from having a drop down list of tabs to a thumb-nailed view of each tab that is open.

Here is how you too can enable this secret Firefox 3.6 feature.

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Firefox 3.6 Fix – Open New Tabs in Far Right

Fix New Open Link in New Tab Behavior in Firefox 3.6

New to Firefox 3.6, when you are on a page, and you want to open a link in a new tab – rather than opening the link in the far right of the tab bar, Firefox will now open the link right next to the tab you are in.  Now, while this might be convenient for some, it is a feature I don’t really need.  So here is how you can disable the new “Insert Related Tab After Current” tweak in Firefox 3.6.

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Enable Visual Tab Switcher in Firefox 3.6

Better Tab Switching Hack

With Firefox 3.6’s release, we can all do a quick about:config tweak that will enable the prettier tab switching.  By default, when you hit the keyboard keys Ctrl + Tab you just rotate through your tabs.  By making some quick adjustments though, you can pull up the new tab switcher that you see in the picture above.

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Add Color Coding to Google, Yahoo, Bing

More Colorful Search Engine Results

One big complaint about search engines is they are all rather vanilla with their visual representation.  Wouldn’t it be better if you could color code things a ‘bit more?  One Greasemonkey script that does a great job at this is Colorful Search.

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Hide Everything Useless on iGoogle

Hide iGoogle Content

Want to hide all the stuff you do not really need on your personalized iGoogle homepage?  Thanks Super iGoogle, a handy Greasemonkey script, you can simplify iGoogle to only show you the content you need to see.

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Move the Close Tab Button in Firefox

In an effort to simplify the Firefox interface, did you know you can make a few changes in the about:config page to move the close tab buttons around?  I’ll show you how to move it to the far right of the browser, in just six easy steps.

Before the tweak (notice the close tab button is on the tab itself)

Firefox's Normal Close a Tab Button

After the tweak (notice the close tab button has been moved to the far right)

Move the Close a Tab Button to the Far Right

Now what is the secret?  You just need to do a little editing in your about:config page.

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Easier Access to Private Browsing

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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Use Firefox to Customize Your Web

I think everybody, at times, would like to be able to customize certain web sites to better meet their goals.  Now, I am not talking about simple visual edits – like making the background black and the text white.  How about adding keyboard shortcuts for certain web site links and navigation elements?  You an do that and more with the Customize Your Web add-on for Firefox.

So do you want to customize web sites without writing one single line of code?  Check out this video tutorial for a little more information about the Customize Your Web add-on for Firefox.

Some of the other customizations featured include:

  • Removal and rearrangement of elements (cut / copy / paste behavior)
    Modifying of elements in every possible way (changing size, color, default values etc.)
  • Definition of keyboard shortcuts / shortstrings for any clickable element (shortstrings are multi-character shortcuts, e.g. "SO" for a "Sign out" Button)
  • Adding keyboard navigation support for any list of elements  (e.g. for the result entries of search)
  • Insertion of arbitrary HTML and JavaScript code
  • Definition of small macros which are triggered by a shortcut
  • Automatically triggering actions on page load (e.g. for automatic click on a login button or focusing a special field)

I am just having fun playing around with this add-on figuring out all the things I can do with it.  For some, it might seem a little complex, however there is extensive documentation to help you along.

You can pick up the Customize Your Web add-on for Firefox from the Firefox Add-ons site or from Mouseless.de.

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