Tag Archives | downloads

The Colorful Themes of Avant.Garde

Dec/24 in Best Themes

I have no clue what avant.garde stands for,  but I do have to say – no matter what you call it, this theme is colorful and unique.

avant.garde Theme for Firefox

I think that the theme creator describes the inspiration for this theme much better than I could do.   So I made a theme based on the humble spiral, and I wanted it to be colorful and fun, but also inherently functional and practical. There are certainly colorful and fun themes out there, and there are definitely practical themes out there, but never both. Why? Or more to the point, why not? As one more surprise to toss in there – there are several flavors of this theme to choose too.

Choose Your Favorite Theme Flavor!

Verde (Green Version) Mandarino (Orange) Lilla (Purple) Blu (Blue) Argento (White) Rosa (Pink) Nero (Black) Classic (as seen above)

Click on the thumbnail above to check out that theme’s page on the Firefox Add-ons site.  They are experimental themes, so you may have to login to Firefox’s site before you can download.  I am looking forwad to seeing more themes by this interesting designer.  Also, interested in hearing what you think about them too.

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Fashion Your Firefox

Nov/22 in Firefox News, Resources

Having a hard time finding the right mix of Firefox add-ons that are right for you?  Well, Mozilla has taken some of the work out of the process with Fashion Your Firefox.  From here, you can choose from several different personality types and then get the best mixture of Firefox extensions to make your browsing experience even better.  Do you fit into any of these categories?

addonguy-large-227x300 Finder and Seeker

“I want to make finding information on the Web simpler and more relevant to me.”

Social Butterfly

“I love social networks! I keep track of friends and family, share photos, organize events, and am always looking for ways to stay connected.”

Shutterbug

“I love to view and share pictures and videos online.”

Digital Pack Rat

“I want a hassle-free way to keep track of my favorite sites, bookmarks, blogs and, well, everything!”

Rock Star

“Music and the Web go together like rock stars and leather — I love to listen while I surf, work, email or research online.”

Decorator

“I decorate my room, my office, even myself! So why not decorate my browser?”

Shopaholic

“I love to shop online and am always looking for ways to take advantage of great online deals.”

News Junkie

“I want to know what’s happening in the world as it happens. And the weather helps me plan my week — temperature, please!”

Executive Assistant

“I need a better way to make lists and organize myself (no more sticky notes!).”

Another great idea from the Mozilla team.  If you want to learn more about the back-end of things, be sure to check out the Mozilla Add-ons blog post about the newest addition to the Firefox customization family:  http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2008/11/18/fashion-your-firefox-a-new-distribution-channel-for-add-ons/

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Firefox 3′s Colbert Bump was Real!

Jul/10 in Entertainment, Firefox News

Not that I had any doubts, but it turns out the Colbert Bump for Firefox 3 was real! For those not knowing what we are speaking of check out the definition of the Colbert Bump for more information.

Here’s what we did:  we looked at downloads of Firefox 3 by users within the U.S. – and then we drilled down to a minute-by-minute view to see what, if anything, could be detected.  At minute 23 of the broadcast, Colbert said, “Firefox 3 just got the Colbert Bump.”  What happened next?

Check out the timeline graph and just in case you missed the plugtastic segment, here it is again:

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Add Favorite Locations to Firefox

Mar/25 in Add-ons Reviews, Usability

fav-loc Right now I use my “downloads” folder as a catch all for all the things (audio, video, pictures and more) that I download from the Web.  From there I sort it out to where it needs to go.  If you want to add a few more favorite locations to save to from Firefox you can do so with the FavLoc addon.

FavLoc (short for favorite location) will let you set certain folders as favorite locations to easily download files to.  For an example, lets say you subscribed to my podcast, the Web Hosting Show and you wanted to send all the mp3s you downloaded to your special podcast folder.  With this extension, you would just add your podcast folder as one of your favorite locations, then you have instant right-click and save access to it.  No more downloading and then sorting it all out later.

The FavLoc menus will appear on the File menu (for saving pages), the context menu (for saving images and links), and on the download prompt.  Sure there are other ways to go about this, but this one was put in place to save us all a little time.

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500 Million Firefoxes

Feb/24 in Entertainment, Firefox News

Wow, Firefox hits another milestone with 500 million installs of Firefox.  Of course this doesn’t mean each download is one single user – one user could have installed it hundreds of times.  This is still saying something though for the ever growing Firefox movement. 

This video I stole borrowed from Asa does a good job at telling the story.

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Quicker Downloads in Firefox

Jan/21 in Usability

Firefox Downloads TipHere is an easy trick to speed up your Firefox downloading. First thing you must do is add the “Downloads” icon to your Firefox toolbar somewhere. From there you can do this to download quicker.

Drag and Drop onto the Downloads Toolbar Icon

Instead of right-clicking on a download link, choosing “save to target” and pressing enter, just drag the download link to the “downloads icon” in the toolbar. The download will start automatically.

Very nice quick trick to get around the “Save as..” box when downloading.

tip courtesy of makeuseof.com

Have any other tips you’ve written about or found via the Web? Share them with me and I’ll be sure to give them their day in the sun.

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Firefox 3.0 May Block Suspicious Sites

Jun/06 in Security

StopWill Firefox start telling you where you can or can not go? Where are my freedoms?! I can already smell some of the outrage that might be building over Firefox 3 blocking Web sites that try to install back stuff onto your computer. Personally I think it is a good thing after reading through this article from Computer World.

Here is the most interesting sample from the article in question.

“Similar to how Firefox 2 blocks Web sites that are potentially going to try to steal your personal information, Firefox 3 will block Web sites that we believe are going to try to install malicious programs on your computer,” said Alex Faaborg, a user experience designer in a blog entry last week. “Mozilla is coordinating with Google on this feature.”

So is it Firefox’s place to tell you where to go and where not to go? I think so. I think this is Mozilla trying to be proactive instead of being reactive.

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Create Your Own Firefox Theme

Apr/26 in Best Themes

iPox RemixTwisterMc is already one of my favorite Firefox theme designers. All of his work always seems to have it’s own individual characteristics and quirks that make it unique as well. So when it comes to learning how to make your own Firefox theme, why not learn from one of the best?

iPox Remix hopes to be a new starting point for people who want to design their own theme, but don’t know where to get started at first. You can download the entire theme via his Web site, and over time he promises to push a few more tutorials and updates so you have something to do with that customizable theme. What are the requirements?

You’ll need to know how to create or edit images to customize your theme. That may be using Photoshop, Fireworks, GIMP or another graphics application. If you know CSS, that’ll help a lot to, but it’s not required. Without CSS knowledge, you’ll be limited to the edits you can make.

+ Learn More on the iPox Remix Web Page! (via TwisterMc.com)

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Organize Your Downloads in Firefox

Apr/03 in Usability

I like to download all of my stuff that I find via the Web into a folder in My Documents called “Downloads”. It is an easy way for me to keep track of stuff I have downloaded so I can save it for later if I need to do so.

How can you tell Firefox to save all of your downloads in one specific spot? First thing you need to do is go into Tools, and then select Options. A new window should pop up with your browser options. In that first tab, go down to the middle of the box where it says “Downloads” and then make your way down to the browse button next to the Window for “Save files to…”.

Download Options

Browse to the folder that you wish to save all of your downloads to, save and then exit. Now Firefox knows your default download location. This is really handy when you wonder what that program was you downloaded last week – or if you misplace an important file from the Web, you can keep a backup of it here.

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300 Million Firefox Downloads

Feb/17 in Firefox News

Yes,the folks at Mozilla have reached a great milestone, that much is for sure.

Firefox has reached a new milestone: 300,000,000 downloads since its initial release back in November 9, 2004. That’s 825 days ago, which makes a cute rate of : 363,636.3636..downloads/day.

As usual, it must be noted that it says nothing about the actual number of users (except they are a pretty big bunch) as a single user may have downloaded it several times for his/her different computers or a single download may have been installed in several computers. So relax, smile (or curse) and move on.

Congrats to one and all, I hope the next 300 million come even quicker!

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