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Google Cache Checker

Oct/27 in Add-ons Reviews

Ever wanted to check to see if a page is cached by Google yet or not?

google-cache-checker

Now you could search Google for cache:yourdomain.com or you could use an extension to get this ability added to your status bar.  Google Cache Checker, currently an experimental add-on for Firefox, displays a checkmark icon if the current page is Google cached. If it is not, the extension displays a red X.

The result is immediately shown conveniently in the browser status bar.  Where would this be handy to have?  Well, let’s say your viewing a web site that is currently down.  By viewing the cache (if it exists) you could at least see what it looked like before it went down.  You can download the add-on from the Firefox Add-ons web site or get more information from the official web site.

For more status bar tweaks, be sure to check out 25 Tweaks for Your Firefox Status Bar and 25 More Tweaks for Your Firefox Status Bar.

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Save Your Lost Tabs

Aug/05 in Add-ons Reviews, Tabbed Browsing

save-that-lost-tab What was that tab you closed about three tabs back again? Could it have been the fourth tab back, before you got your coffee? If you find yourself using the Ctrl + Shift + T keyboard combination to bring up lost tabs a lot, there is a better way to get the job done.  The Undo Closed Tabs Button add-on for Firefox gives you a few ways to save your lost tabs.

This extension allows you to undo closed tabs via a toolbar and/or tab bar button or the right-click context menu. Also it comes with a much easier keyboard combination of its own to remember, Ctrl + Shift + Z.   You must add the toolbar button by going to View -> Toolbars -> Customize, then drag and drop the icon where you want it on the toolbar.

Save your lost tabs, and save yourself a lot of wear and tear on your Ctrl and Shift keys while you are at it.  Your keyboard will thank you!

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Add Some Color to the Awesome Bar

Jul/04 in Hacks and Tweaks, Usability

Is the awesome bar a little bland for you?  Firefox 3′s address bar seems to be something people either really love or love to hate.  Now due to a little creativity and the Stylish extension you can color it up a little ‘bit to help usability.

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This changes up how you use the awesome bar.  Your tags will be light yellow, you bookmarks will be blue, and your history items will be light green.

Colorful, isn’t it?  If you like this you may also want to check out more work by the creator, -=Ben=-.

If you would like to include this tweak to your own Firefox 3 awesome bar, all you need to do is pick up the Stylish extension for Firefox and then install this script:  Awesome Bar Background Color Based on Type (WOW) *.

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Weave 0.2 Ready to Sync You Up!

Jul/01 in Firefox News, Usability

weave-logo

Along with a fresh design, Mozilla Labs has also release Weave Prototype 0.2.  What is Weave, you say?  It is Mozilla’s answer to the problem of keeping all your bookmarks, history, passwords and more in sync across multiple computers.

So what is new in this 0.2 version of Weave?

  • Intelligent scheduler for synchronization to improve performance.
  • Expanded set of supported browser settings and metadata, including:  Bookmarks, Browsing History, Cookies, Saved Passwords, Saved Form Data, and Tabs.
  • Support for retrying failed network operations.
  • New server format performs better when there are frequent changes (e.g., for history sync).
  • Significant reworking of the startup experience, including a new Setup Wizard that performs account creation in chrome and allows for customization of settings.
  • Improved error detection and handling.
  • Notification dialog added to the status bar for displaying error, status and asynchronous events with or without required actions, e.g. authentication errors, notification of shares, etc.

Might be worth mentioning that they are still saying this version is for testing purposes only, so if Firefox later on kicks you in the head, points its browsing finger and laughs while your down, you were warned.

Ready to test it out?  Then download Weave 0.2 here!

Here recently, I just switched from Google Browser Sync to Foxmarks.  Once Weave gets all the kinks out though, I’ll probably be switching again because I really like the idea of having everything accessible no matter which PC I might be at.  Check out the Weave 0.2 Release Notes for more information.

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The Awesome Bar Excites Me!

Apr/23 in Firefox News

I’ve been doing some additional reading this morning about Firefox’s address bar – which seems to be slowly converting over in the minds of the public to being renamed the awesome bar.

One of the features that makes the new address bar system really awesome is that it will match what your typing against the URLs, page titles and tags in your bookmarks and history – in turn giving you what you have been looking for.

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The best news is that in Firefox 3 Beta 5, they have cut down a lot in the CPU power that is used when searching via the bar of awesomeness.

If you want more insight into the awesome bar and it’s development, go check out Edward Lee’s web site. Now I haven’t really been a huge bookmarker in the past, but with Firefox’s new address bar and bookmarking system I might have to rethink the way I browse the Web.

Update: If you find yourself not so happy with the new awesome bar here is how you can get rid of it:

The easy way woudl be grab the Old Bar Addon for Firefox 3

The hard way would be to type about:config into the address bar, and type this into the filter box (or scroll down to look for it) browser.urlbar.maxRichResults . Set the value of that to be “0″ and then restart Firefox.

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Make Menus Stay Open!

Apr/04 in Add-ons Reviews, Usability

It can become a nuisance when you want to click on multiple items in a menu inside of Firefox and right before you get to click that second or third link, the menu disappears and you have to go hunt it down again. If you want to make your menus stay open then you need to pick up the Stay-Open Menu add-on for Firefox.

stay-open-menus

With this addon you can lock your menus in place so you can go in and select multiple items before you are ready to close. Here are a few additional notes from the developer:

  • Middle-clicking each Bookmarked item in the Bookmarks Menu will open it in a tab, while leaving the menu open for further selections. (Left-click the desired menu to open it, find the items you wish to open, then middle-click each desired item to open it in a tab.) When you are done making selections, click somewhere outside the menu (or press ESC) to close the menu.
  • Also works in the same way with the Bookmarks Toolbar. This applies to the new ‘Smart Bookmarks’ as well, since by default it is a folder residing in the Bookmarks Toolbar.
  • Same functionality in History Menu (added in version 0.5).
  • The Bookmarks Sidebar stays open by default even without this extension, but I prefer the Bookmarks Menu because I like the way the folders automatically open when hovered.

You can pickup Stay-Open menu on the developer’s web site or if you have a login to Mozilla’s Add-on site you can pick it up there too.

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Firefox Search Box Hacks, Tips and Tweaks

Dec/05 in Settings

Firefox Search Box Guide The search box in Firefox as totally revolutionized the way we deal with search engines on a day to day basis. I don’t go to Google.com to do my searching anymore – I do it from there. There are many more tips, tweaks and tools you can use to get the most out of this built in browser innovation.

Get More Firefox Search Plugins

The first place to check out would be Mozilla’s own search engine page. From here you can add many of the top search engines from around the Web. From Live.com to Wikipedia to even Flickr – the best of the best are all listed.

To remove one, click on your search box and select “Manage Search Engines…”. On that new options window you can sort your search engines and remove the ones you don’t want. Continue Reading →

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A Look Back and Forward With Mozilla

Sep/20 in Uncategorized

As a long time Netscape (now SeaMonkey, a community maintained project) user, having an E-mail client that was integrated into a suite came as a big help as an all in one solution.

Then a relatively new browser came along by the name of Mozilla Firebird, shortly afterwards because of a trademark dispute it changed to Fire Phoenix. Then, finally, it changed again in February 2004 to Firefox. Back in 2003 the (newly established) Mozilla Foundation announced they were to begin working exclusively on Firefox and Thunderbird as part of the Mozilla Project.

Late in 2004 (August/September), I switched over to Firefox. Then shortly afterwards, Thunderbird. They both – in my opinion fitted in with the Unix philosophy: Continue Reading →

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Browse Through Firefox’s Cache

Jun/14 in Settings

CacheViewerTrying to browse through your old saved browser history can be a pain in Firefox in comparison with Internet Explorer.

IE has “Temporary Internet Files” – Firefox has a pain in the rear interface for browsing through its cache. One way to fix this design blunder though is do download and install the CacheViewer extension for Firefox.

This extenion is a GUI Front-end of and for “about:cache”. It allows searching and sorting memory and disk cache files. All in all a pretty nice tool to help you get going with browsing through what you have saved from the Web on your PC.

If you’d rather do it without the extension – here is a method thrown out there by the folks at Lifehacker:

If you prefer the old-fashioned way of browsing your cache, in Windows you can navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\********.default\Cache and see the hodge-podge of files that make up your cache. CacheViewer is a free download and works anywhere the ‘fox does.

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What is Mozilla Firefox?

May/21 in Firefox Support

Firefox?

I want to tackle some of the more basic questions people have about Firefox. What could be more basic a question than “What is Firefox?”. It like Opera and Internet Explorer is a Web browser. It allows you to view Web sites on the thing we call the Internet or World Wide Web. Here is the definition of Firefox from Wikipedia:

Mozilla Firefox is a graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation and a large community of external contributors. Firefox, officially abbreviated as Fx or fx and popularly abbreviated FF, started as a fork of the Navigator browser component of the Mozilla Application Suite. Firefox has replaced the Mozilla Suite as the flagship product of the Mozilla project, under the direction of the Mozilla Foundation.

Mozilla Firefox is a cross-platform browser, providing support for various versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. However, the source code has been unofficially ported to other operating systems, including FreeBSD, OS/2, Solaris, SkyOS, BeOS and more recently, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

Firefox’s source code is freely available under the terms of the Mozilla tri-license as free and open source software.

You can also check out more about Firefox’s history and future on Wikipedia as well. Have any more basic Firefox questions to ask?

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