Tagmarks - Better Tagging Through Icons

Comments (1) · August 14, 2008 at 6:55 am · Bookmark Help

Want to make tagging your bookmarks as easy as clicking an icon?  Tagmarks, the add-on for Firefox, hopes to do just that.  The idea here is to bring one-click bookmarking in Firefox together with the tagging power of the browser.

With Tagmarks, you have a lot of different icons that popup whenever you hover over the traditional bookmarking star you see in the Firefox 3 address bar.  When you click in each icon, it will add the page to the bookmarks and associate that icon with that page, through the use of tags.

Selecting one icon has the same effect as clicking on the bookmarking star. It will add the page to the bookmark.   The perk here is that it will also apply a tag to the page and always remember and show that icon when you are at that page.  Think of it as a visual tool for you too, to say for example, “oh that is a search magnifying glass, this must be a search site”.

Watch the Screencast of Tagmarks in Action!

You can pickup Tagmarks on the Firefox Add-ons site.  It is still sandboxed, so if you need a login to download it, check out this list of user names and passwords you can use.  Also check out the author of the add-on’s web site for more information on how to get the most out of Tagmarks.

Firefox’s Navigation Bar Keyboard Combo Cheat Sheet

Comments (3) · August 6, 2008 at 7:04 am · Firefox Usability

We have covered a lot keyboard shortcuts thus far, but today I wanted to cover some of the default tasks you might want to do.  Replicating the navigation toolbar, here are the tasks and then the tips on how to get them done quicker with a few strokes of the keyboard keys.

  Alt + Left Arrow or Backspace = Go Back a Page

  Alt + Right Arrow or Shift + Backspace = Go Forward a Page

  Alt + Home = Go to your Homepage

  F5 or Ctrl + R = Reload a Page

  Esc = Stop a Page from Loading

  Ctrl + P = Bring up the Print Options

  Ctrl + J = Launch the Download Window

  Ctrl + H = Open Your History in the Sidebar

  Ctrl + B = Open Your Bookmarks in the Sidebar

  Ctrl + T = New Tab

  Ctrl + N = New Browser Window

  Ctrl + X = Cut

  Ctrl + C = Copy

  Ctrl + V = Paste

There is at least one (and sometimes two) keyboard combinations you can use to get the navigation toolbar tasks done.  Anymore keyboard tips you’d like me to go over as we all become Firefox keyboard ninjas? 

Use PayPal like a Credit Card

Comments (11) · June 5, 2008 at 11:00 am · Firefox Usability

How would you like to be able to use PayPal anywhere and everywhere, even where it is not accepted?  At this point the PayPal people hope you are excited because that is what they would like to offer to you via a new Firefox plugin.

Once you get it up and running, a window should come up when you visit a web site asking for your credit card information. With this new Firefox extension, you now have the choice to pay via a card that PayPal creates for you or you can generate a card manually through a drop down menu.

Some of the other features include:

Backup Firefox Passwords (the Manual Way)

Comments · May 20, 2008 at 6:33 am · Firefox Basics

Sure there are tools, downloads and services that may do this for you, but what fun is that?  Just in case you don’t feel the need to download another addition to the browser just yet - here is how you can backup your Firefox saved passwords the manual way.

First, navigate yourself to your profiles folder and then you want to copy three files, they are named:

• signons.txt
• signons2.txt
• key3.db

Copy and past them into the place you want to back them up to, and you are done.  You can also move these three files to a new Firefox profile (say on a new computer, for example) if you wanted to have the same password information on your laptop.

More Command Line Firefox Tips

Comments (2) · January 3, 2008 at 8:09 am · Firefox Settings

After yesterday’s post about launching tabs from the run box I thought I would share with you some other command line Firefox tips worth getting familiar with.

Open the Firefox profile manager: firefox -p

Start Firefox with a specific profile: firefox -p “user name”

Open a Specific URL: firefox -url http://www.firefoxfacts.com

Open a URL in a New Window: firefox -new-window http://www.firefoxfacts.com

Open a URL in a New Tab: firefox http://www.firefoxfacts.com

Search Your Default Search Box Search Engine: firefox -search yourtermhere

For more that you can try I would suggest checking out the command line article over at MozillaZine.org or at Mozilla.org. Some still work, and some might not - but these are the best of the ones I found. If you have any suggestions for alternatives you know feel free to drop in a comment here and let us all know about your favorite.

Check out the other posts in this series:

• Launch Tabs from Run Box
• More Command Line Firefox Tips
• Learn to Write a Batch File with Firefox

Video Downloads Without the 3rd Party

Comments (2) · September 6, 2007 at 6:33 am · Entertainment, Most Wanted

I have had a few people ask me how to download flash or embedded movies without having to use extensions that push you through a third party.

There are a lot of extensions out there that will open up a pop up window, and if they support the site you want to download from there should be no mess. People want to cut out the middle man though and go right to downloading what they want. For those people I have a solution.

Although it might be a little more on the geekier side than some might like the UnPlug extension is what you are looking for. It goes right to the source, digging through the web site code and turns up what will most likely be the file you want to download.

Unlike the extensions people have problems with, UnPlug scans the page, and if it doesn’t know there the data comes from it can guess. I would say nine times out of ten it guesses the correct one too.

WordPress Installing via Firefox Extension

Comments off · August 15, 2007 at 6:18 am · Firefox Usability

Now I love WordPress, and I use it for nearly all of my various Web projects. I agree with the mass majority that installing WordPress plugins and themes can sometimes be a pain. Sure it isn’t rocket science, but it could be a little easier.

The OneClick Installer for WordPress extension for Firefox hopes to change that for me. A very unique idea indeed - this extension promises to give you that “one click” install process for any WordPress theme or plugin out there.

This makes the job of customizing your WordPress install just a little easier for folks that don’t want to dive into the HTML editors and FTP clients to get things done. To learn more about it, you can check out the author’s post on it - or check it out for yourself at the Mozilla addons web site.