Most Firefox users know that they can start Firefox so that it automatically displays one website which is also known as the homepage. Readers of my blog also know that it is possible to load multiple homepages by separating every website with the | char. To load Ghacks and Google whenever Firefox starts users would add the line http://www.ghacks.net/ | http://www.google.com/ to the Home Page option in Firefox.

Far more interesting than this well known feature is another option that is quite hidden in the same menu. Let me first explain how you open it. The Firefox options open in a new window and are located in the Tools > Options menu. The Main tab of those options define the Startup options which includes setting the homepage.

It is furthermore possible to configure Firefox to open the tabs and windows from the last Firefox session.

continue reading "Quick Overview of Firefox Startup Options"

Firefox is by default saving the active session every ten seconds. This is handy if the browser crashes to avoid data loss. I was more than once happy that Firefox provided the session restore functionality to avoid loosing part of the article that I had written during that session. Some users might need to change the interval that is used to save the active session either because they want to make sure that the active sessions is stored more often to reduce the data loss further or to extend the interval to free up some resources that are used by this feature.

The parameter can be found in the Firefox configuration that is available by typing about:config in the address bar (also known as location bar and awesome bar). The name of the parameter should be entered into the Filter field so that only this parameter is shown in the configuration to avoid mistakes.

Filter for browser.sessionstore.interval to find the parameter. The interval is specified in milliseconds. To reduce it simply enter a smaller value, 5000 would mean that the active session is stored every 5 seconds instead of 10. If you want to increase the value you could add 30000 for 30 seconds or 60000 for 60 seconds.

continue reading "Change the Session Store Interval in Firefox"

It’s pretty well documented at the moment that Adobe wants Flash on the iPhone and Steve Jobs doesn’t think it’s good enough.

What’s interesting about all this is that now the iPhone has sparked significant interest in web browsing via mobile devices, the race is on for developers everywhere to tap into that growing market.

Skyfire is a new mobile browser I only just came across and claims to be the first and only browser to present the web on your phone exactly as it would be on your computer.

Yes, that includes all embedded content including all flash applications and media, Quicktime, Java and Ajax.

It’s a Windows Mobile browser, but will soon also be available for the Symbian mobile operating system as well.

continue reading "Flash on your Phone"

What Google has done for text search, TinEye is trying to achieve with image search. Instead of typing in keywords to find images, you can upload an image, or copy a link to an image and you will be presented with all the occurrences of that image on the net. At first you will see images which are identical, but as you go down the list, you will see variations.

This is a great tool for image researching and especially blogging, because often I find an image I like and want to use, if only the hand wasn’t in the way like that, or the background was different. Of course many of these can be Photoshoped, but not in all cases, and quickly searching for a different image is infinitely faster.

If you install the Firefox plugin your searches will become much faster, you can just right click on a picture to search for it via TinEye. It doesn’t get much more productive than that!

continue reading "Image searching that works by TinEye"

That’s at least what Sam Allen discovered who used a software that he programmed to record memory usage of processes in Windows. He tested Safari 3.1 along with Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 and Flock and discovered a huge gap between Safari and the other four browsers.

His application recorded the memory usage of the browser every three seconds over a period of three hours each and the graphs show clearly that there does not seem to be an end to Safari’s memory hunger. In the end Safari was using more than 630 Megabytes of RAM compared to 111 Megabytes for Firefox 3, 191 Megabytes for Flock, 190 Megabytes for Opera and 194 Megabytes for Internet Explorer 8.

The conclusion of the author is that “Safari on Windows shows extremely poor memory management [..] certainly a design that looks inefficient and seems to contradict Apple’s marketing”.

continue reading "Safari on Windows is not really memory efficient"