gHacks technology news » firefox-add on

Firefox Image Host Downloader

Martin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:56:41 +0000

Imagehosts like Imagefap, Fapomatic or Photobucket are popular places to host photos and images on. Many blogs, forums and other websites make use of these image hosts to avoid huge bandwidth and server costs as the majority of traffic is shouldered by these services. Users on the other hand do not like image hosts that much as it can be quite strenuous and unnerving to download multiple images from them as most of these hosts want to generate pageviews for advertising reasons. This makes them place images on individual pages on their website. A user wanting to download ten images would therefor need to open ten pages to do so.

ImageHost Grabber provides a solution for several image hosting websites. The Firefox add-on is compatible out of the box with many image hosting websites provided that the user updates the so called hosts file with the latest version that is available on the developer’s website. This host file is an xml file that contains information about the various image hosts. It basically consists of regular expressions that try to identify the location of the image from the information provided on the pages where the image thumbnails are shown.

A right-click on any page will display the Image Grabber menu entry which can be used to grab all images from that website. Image Grabber will check if a rule for the image host is configured and if it is it will start downloading the images.

Users who know they way around regular expressions can also add their own image hosting websites to the hosts definition file. Everyone else might have luck by posting a request at the developer’s forum.

Image Grabber is compatible with dozens of websites including Photobucket, Facebook, Picasa, Imagefap or Blogspot. It is currently only compatible with Firefox 3.5x and not Firefox 3.6x although it can be forced to be compatible. The latest version is not available at the Mozilla Firefox website but at the developer’s website.

Tags: firefox-add on, image grabber, image host, image host downloader, photo downloader

IMDB Movie Review Shortcut

Martin — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:43:13 +0000

If you are like me you use IMDB to look up movies that you read or heard about. The process to look up these movies was a bit tedious if you originated from a different website, say a shopping site, forum or website that listed one or multiple movie titles. To read the review on IMDB one had to copy the movie title from the website, open IMDB in the web browser, paste the movie title in the search box at IMDB and locate the correct result.

IMDB Movie Review is a Firefox add-on that aids the Internet user in this task. It basically offers a shortcut to the IMDB site by selecting the movie title, right-clicking the selection and triggering the IMDB Review link that is appearing.

This shortcut actually works not only with movie titles but also other information that are stored at IMDB including artist biographies, directors or tv shows. The add-on will open a new tab and load the IMDB website in it or use an already existing tab if IMDB is already loaded.

The add-on does not provide any other options beyond that functionality. It nevertheless could be interesting for users who look up movie information regularly on IMDB. IMDB Movie Review is compatible with all Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 versions (heck it is even compatible with Firefox 1.5x). It can be downloaded from the Mozilla Firefox website.

Tags: firefox, firefox-add on, imdb, imdb movies, imdb reviews

Firefox Video Download Comparison

Martin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:07:04 +0000

Firefox users have a great number of add-ons at their disposal if they want to download videos from video portals. Some of these add-ons are very specialized and only compatible with one video website while others support dozens if not hundreds of different video sites. The comparison in this article will concentrate on the top rated Firefox video download add-ons based on the ratings at the official Mozilla website. It will only include add-ons that support multiple websites and work in all versions of Firefox 3.

Each add-on is tested if it can be used to download videos from the following sample video portals: Youtube, Dailymotion and Gametrailers. The main goal is to see if the add-ons can download Youtube videos, dailymotion videos and gametrailer videos including the way these downloads are offered. We will take a look at the video portals that are supported by the add-ons and possible usability issues.

The following Firefox add-ons have been selected for the test:

All of these add-ons are highly rated and compatible with all versions of Firefox 3 even though some of them have to be forced to be compatible with the latest beta of Firefox 3.6.

Bbmao Video Downloader

This add-on was the only add-on in the test that was not compatible with Firefox 3.6. It was still possible to install and work with it after forcing compatibility with the Nightly Tester Tools.

The add-on places an icon in the Firefox toolbar at the top that will spin if a video has been discovered on a website. A click on that icon will open a popup window with links to all videos that have been discovered by the add-on. Links that are selected can be played right in the window or downloaded to the local computer system.

Bbmao Video Downloader worked well with both Youtube and Dailymotion but failed to recognize videos at Gametrailers. No information available on the amount of supported video websites.

Flash Video Downloader

Flash Video Downloader is the only experimental add-on in this test. It did install fine and display a download icon in the status bar. This download icon displays a license agreement after the first left-click which needs to be accepted. A left-click on the icon (which can also be placed in one of the toolbars of the web browser) will open a popup window with a download link and other information including add-on updates (somewhat confusing for users who are running the latest version) and an ad for a (free) video converter software.

Each new download will spawn its own popup window which can become somewhat messy for heavy downloaders. The add-on worked well with all tested video portals. The developers state that it is currently compatible with more than 200 different video sites and even some game hosting websites.

Flash Video Resources Downloader

The icon in the status bar that was supposed to be there after installation of the add-on did not appear. There was no option available to display the icon in another way or to use the add-on. Flash Video Resources Downloader is supposed to work with a few dozen websites including Youtube and Dailymotion but not Gametrailers. No rating for this add-on since it failed to install properly even though it was reported to be compatible with Firefox 3.6.

NetVideoHunter Video Downloader

Net Video Hunter is compatible with all versions of Firefox 3. It places an icon in the firefox status bar after installation that can be used to download videos from video hosting websites. The status bar icon will display a number that indicates the amount of videos that have been identified by the add-on.

Net Video Hunter makes use of a popup window to display all the videos that it has discovered in this browsing session. This is a very comfortable way of displaying those download links especially for users with enough screen estate to place both the web browser window and the Net Video Hunter video download window next to each other.

The add-on displays options to play or download each video that has been recognized. Another interesting detail is the display of the direct url to the video in the same interface.

The video download add-on was compatible with all three test video portals. The developers have not published a list of all compatible video websites but it is fair to assume that the add-on works with most “Youtube-like” video sites.

Video DownloadHelper

Video Download Helper supports all versions of Firefox 3 out of the box. It adds a single icon into the Firefox status bar which serves to purposes. It will for one indicate if videos have been detected on a website with options to download these. The other option is to display the list of supported sites which are opened in a small popup window. A right-click lastly will display a context menu with options to configure the add-on.

Youtube videos can be downloaded in various quality versions. This can be somewhat confusing to the user as it might not always be possible to identify the quality by looking at the download options of the Firefox add-on. It was also no problem to download videos from Dailymotion or Gametrailers using Video Download Helper.

Video Download Helper offers a very comfortable way of downloading videos from video portals. The amount of video portals supported goes even beyond the few hundreds that are listed in the add-on as it is able to detect videos on many (officially) unsupported websites. The download links are sometimes a bit confusing and the links in the supported list of video portals does not lead directly to those portals but to the homepage of the developer’s first.

The Verdict:

Out of the five add-ons that have been tested one failed completely, two were only compatible with two of the three test sites and two were compatible with all test sites. Video Download Helper and Net Video Hunter were the only add-ons that were able to download videos from these websites. Both add-ons have their uses. Net Video Hunter makes it easier to manage video downloads while Video Download Helper offers a list of supported websites which is interesting for exploration purposes.

Tags: download-videos, firefox video download, firefox-add on, video download, youtube videos, youtube videos download

Sort Tabs In Firefox

Martin — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:23:49 +0000

If you are one of those Firefox users who likes to have dozens of tabs open in the Firefox tabbar then you might have sometimes lost track of where specific websites where located in the tabbar. Options were to simply click through the tabs one by one until the right tab was found, to use an add-on that would search in the tabs or use a tab preview feature like those implemented in Firefox 3.6.

Sort Tabs offers another option. The Firefox add-on adds the option to sort all open tabs in the Firefox web browser. The tab sorting option is added to the right-click menu when right-clicking the tabbar. The option provided is to sort the tabs by url. There is unfortunately no option to change the sorting criteria to another value like page title or age.

This will sort all open tabs in Firefox. It did even move locked tabs (locked with App Tabs) to their appropriate place based on their url. It could therefor also affect other add-ons that lock tabs in the Firefox tabbar.

The only other options that are provided by the Sort Tabs add-on are to close blank tabs and duplicate tabs when the tabs are sorted by the add-on. It is also possible to reverse the sort order in the options.

Sort Tabs is available for download at the Mozilla Firefox website. It is compatible with all Firefox 3.x versions.

Tags: firefox, firefox sort tabs, firefox tabbar, firefox-add on, mozilla-firefox

Remove Colors And Backgrounds With No Color For Firefox

Martin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:07:32 +0000

Internet users sometimes visit websites that make excessive use of colors and background images so that the actual contents of the website are hard to read. There are a few options on how to turn those unreadable pages into readable ones including bookmarklets, Greasemonkey scripts, web proxies and add-ons. One of the latest add-ons to implement this functionality is the No Color add-on for the Firefox web browser.

No Color is basically an on and off switch for colors and image backgrounds on websites. The developer mentioned that the Firefox user had to drag and drop the icon into one of the toolbars of the web browser after installation; This was not necessary on a Firefox 3.6 test system. The icon to switch the design and layout of a website was already linked in the status bar of the browser.

A click on the button will remove the colors and the image background of the page. The Ghacks homepage looks the following after clicking on the icon in the status bar:

The settings of the add-on contain an option to remove the icon from the status bar and place it in the View menu instead. No Color works extremely well on pages that use irritating colors or background images that make it harder to impossible to access the actual contents of the website. The add-on is available at the Mozilla Firefox website where it can be downloaded. It is compatible with all Firefox 3 versions.

Tags: firefox, firefox-add on, no color, remove backgrounds, remove colors

Save Websites With Mozilla Archive Format

Martin — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:23:53 +0000

Internet users who want to save single webpages in their web browser can usually do so by going to the File menu of their browser and selecting Save As. This will save the html file along with all the objects of the website in an extra folder on the local computer system. Many users who save websites regularly to their computer do not like the default option to save websites as it quickly leads to a huge number of files and directories on the computer system which makes keeping an overview difficulty.

There are other options to save a website into only one file. One of these options is to convert the website into a pdf document, another the Mozilla Archive Format add-on for Firefox. The Mozilla Archive Format can be used to save websites either as MHTML (MHT) files supported by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or MAFF multi-page archives.

The functionality is automatically integrated into the Firefox web browser after installation of the add-on. The fastest way to save a website is to press the [Ctrl S] keyboard shortcut which will open the Save As dialog window. Among the available choices are both the MAFF and MHTML format.

The differences between the two formats are the following: MAFF uses zip compression to save one or multiple websites into an archive. This ensures better compatibility and accessibility even on computer systems that do not have access to the add-on as it is still possible to browse and extract the date with any compression software supporting zip files. The MHTML format on the other hand is not compressed, can only save one website per file and is only working with a limited number of web browsers. It is however better integrated into Internet Explorer and could be the choice of the user if Internet Explorer is the target web browser.

The add-on will save the following additional information with each save:

The original location the page was saved from. This normally matches what is displayed in the address bar of the browser.
The date and time of the save operation.
The title of the page, if present.
The character set in effect at the time the page was saved. If the character set was changed manually using the View » Character Encoding menu item of Firefox, the custom choice is remembered. This allows the document to be displayed correctly when it is reopened from the archive, even if it contains internationalized characters.

The add-on can also be used to convert previously saved websites (e.g. with Firefox’s default Save As function) so that they are better accessible from then on. Mozilla Archive Format is available for download at the Mozilla Firefox website for all Firefox 3.0 to 3.5.x browsers. It can be forced to be compatible with Firefox 3.6.

Tags: firefox, firefox-add on, maff, mhtml, Mozilla Archive Format, save websites

Firefox App Tabs Add-On

Martin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:16:48 +0000

Remember Pin Tabs? The Firefox add-on that we reviewed recently was mysteriously deleted from the Firefox add-on repository over at the Mozilla Firefox website. No one knew why it was deleted and it was not clear at that point in time if the developer would make it available again. The wait is now over with the release of the App Tabs add-on. App Tabs is basically an advanced version of Pin Tabs. The name now reflects the feature of the same name that the Firefox developer plan to include into Firefox 4.

The basic idea of App Tabs is to offer Firefox users a way to pin selected web services and websites to the tabbar of the web browser making them available always in the same spot. The idea works perfectly for websites that do not require back and forward navigation like Gmail or Google Docs but also for any other website or service that the user accesses all the time.

App Tabs pins selected tabs to the left side of the tabbar in Firefox. The tabs are minimized so that only the favicon of the website or service is displayed. This saves space in the tabbar and is usually appreciated by most users.

The new version of the App Tabs add-on adds comes with the following features:

App tabs can be saved across sessions! (default)
App tabs can be merged when closing a window. (default)
App tabs can be protected from being closed individually.
If you have Tabberwocky installed, App Tabs will automatically also lock app tabs that you create. This feature can of course be disabled by going to about:config and setting extensions.apptabs.lock to false.

Tabs can be converted into app tabs by ctrl-clicking them in the Firefox tabbar. App Tabs is currently compatible with all versions of Firefox 3.5x to 3.7x. The download is available at the Firefox add-on’s website.

Tags: app tabs, firefox, firefox tabs, firefox-add on, pin tabs, tabbar

Firefox Batch Image Downloader

Martin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:24:23 +0000

Downloading multiple images that are displayed on websites can be a tedious and boring process. The standard procedure without tools and add-ons would be to right-click and select the save image option from the context menu to save each image individually. Download managers, plugins and add-ons aid the user in the process by offering ways to batch download the images that are displayed on websites. One of the latest add-ons that utilizes this functionality is the Quick Image Downloader add-on for the Firefox web browser.

The experimental add-on is a bare-bone add-on that currently comes without any means to modify settings. It adds a new icon to the Firefox status bar after installation which, when clicked on, will ask the user to pick a directory where the images from the active website should be saved to.

It will then start to download all images that are displayed on the website. It will also process all images that are linked from the active website. This means that it can download images from pages where the images are displayed as thumbnails with the original sizes linked from those thumbnails. It fails however if the links are html pages that contain the original image (like Flickr handles it for example).

The add-on works extremely well if the original images are linked on the active page. It does fail on the other hand if that is not the case. It will for instance download only thumbnail images at Flickr but the original images at Google Images search. It will also always download all images which includes thumbnail images and other images used on the website.

The add-on needs settings where the user can change this behavior. It would for instance make sense to add a size and file type filter to the program so that small images and those of a certain type are not downloaded automatically. Firefox users who want to try out the batch image downloader can visit the add-on’s profile page at the Mozilla Firefox website to download and install it.

Tags: batch image downloader, firefox, firefox-add on, image downloader, quick image downloader

Pin Tabs In Firefox

Martin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:54:56 +0000

The Google Chrome browser provides access to a feature to pin tabs in the web browser by default. Pinned tabs will be moved to the left side of the tabbar where their tab will be changed to a smaller icon that is showing only the favicon of the website in question. The benefit of this approach is that the tabs take less space in the tabbar while they can still be accessed normally by clicking on them.

Pin Tab is a new experimental Firefox add-on that brings this feature to the Firefox web browser. Yes, there have been some tab managers in the past who also provided that option (like the Faviconize Tab extension), but none looked as promising as the Pin Tab extension.

Tabs can be pinned in Firefox by Ctrl-clicking them in the web browser. This will automatically shrink the tab to the size of the favicon and move it to the left side of the tabbar.

The picture above shows a tabbar with two pinned tabs on the left. A left-click on a pinned tab will open the website as usual. It is possible to change the default hotkey to pin tabs or use the right-click context menu option to do so. It is furthermore possible to pin tabs by dragging unpinned tabs to the pinned tab area with the reverse option possible as well.

The main benefit of pinning tabs up to this point should be obvious: Space. It is possible to place roughly 5-7 pinned tabs in the place of one open tab. Unlike the pinned tab option in Google Chrome the Firefox add-on comes with additional features. The pinned tabs will for instance remain pinned over browsing sessions if Firefox is configured to remember browsing sessions.

Pin Tab is an interesting add-on for the Firefox web browser. It can be useful for Firefox users who regularly work with a set of tabs that they usually have open in Firefox all the time. The Firefox add-on can be downloaded from the Mozilla Firefox website.

Tags: firefox, firefox tabs, firefox-add on, pin tabs

Google Sidewiki Firefox Add-on

Martin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:31:11 +0000

Google introduced a new service called Google Sidewiki some time ago which basically gives Google account owners the opportunity to share their views and opinions about a website, service or page with the rest of the world. Google Sidewiki was integrated into the Google Toolbar. An unofficial bookmarklet appeared on the web soon thereafter allowing users without the Google Toolbar to view the comments left by other users. Still, only Google Toolbar users were allowed to leave comments about a website.

The Firefox add-on Google Sidewiki Client adds the full Google Sidewiki functionality to the Firefox web browser. Google Sidewiki information are added to a new sidebar which can be displayed by pressing the Sidewiki button in the status bar.

Users of the add-on can read the reviews and notes that have been posted by Google users about the website they are on. A little bit unfortunate is that the information are not automatically refreshing. The information are only refreshed if the button in the status bar is pressed again. This needs to be done for example when switching tabs or loading new links in the active tab that lead to other pages or websites.

Users who are logged into their Google account can submit their own reviews of the website, express their opinion about other reviews by voting for or against them, share reviews or report abusive reviews. It is basically the complete Google Sidewiki client in the Firefox sidebar.

The add-on is in an early stage which becomes apparent in two key areas. The first is the already mentioned auto-refresh that is missing. This makes the add-on cumbersome to use. The second are the missing controls in the sidebar. It is not possible to go back or forth and the login screen breaks the layout of the sidebar.

Interested users can download the Firefox add-on from the Mozilla website where it is available for all Firefox 3.x versions.

Tags: firefox, firefox-add on, Google, google sidewiki, sidewiki

Cybersearch 2 For Firefox Released

Martin — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 06:58:42 +0000

Ryan over at Cybernetnews has released version 2 of his Firefox add-on Cybersearch. Cybersearch expands the capabilities of the Firefox address bar (or awesome bar as the devs like to call it). The add-on adds the functionality to perform searches in various search engines right from the Firefox address bar with the results being displayed next to results from the user’s history and bookmarks. These results are distinguished by icons so that they can be distinguished easily.

A new feature are link previews in the selection process. The description of the link along with other information (if available) are displayed in the web browser. Take a look at the picture to see how this is done:

That’s a big change to the previous version of Cybersearch where you did not get these previews. Another new addition in Cybersearch 2 is support for the Bing search engine which can now be used alongside Google Search. The default search engine can either be Bing or Google with the other search engine available through keyword commands in front of the search term. A set of predefined keywords are already available. It is for example possible to search IMDB (with imdb in front of the search term), Wikipedia (with wiki in front) or Google Video (gvid) with the option to add new keyword searches easily.

The latest version of Cybersearch can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is only compatible with Firefox 3.x.

Tags: cybersearch, firefox, firefox-add on, search

Verify Firefox Bookmarks With Check Places

Martin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:05:49 +0000

The amount of bookmarks increases with time. Most users add bookmarks regularly from time to time but do not delete them if they are not needed anymore or if the websites ceased to exist. One of the main reasons for this is that most web browsers do not provide the tools to check bookmarks effectively. It feels strange that no web browser offers a tool to verify that the bookmarks are still pointing to a valid website and not a 404 error page.

Check Places for Firefox adds the option to verify all bookmarks in the Firefox web browser. It can be used to check all bookmarks (with the option to exclude folders) or only specific folders that the Firefox user selects.

A click on the check bookmarks button will start the verification. The time it takes to verify the bookmarks depends on the amount of bookmarks and the Internet connection.

It took about a minute to check 489 bookmarks on a fast Internet connection. The add-on will display statistics on the report page including the time it took to verify the bookmarks and the number of bookmarks that got verified.

Errors are divided into the three categories failed pages, duplicates and empty folders. Failed pages are those with dns, page or other errors. These pages can be temporarily or permanently unavailable.

Each bookmark is listed in its own row. Selecting a bookmark will display additional information about the bookmark with the options to open, delete or exclude the bookmark.

The whole process – even if the pages with errors are verified manually – takes less than five minutes to complete.

Check Places is an add-on for the Firefox 3 web browser. It can be downloaded from the Mozilla Firefox website.

Tags: check bookmarks, check places, duplicate-bookmarks, firefox, firefox bookmarks, firefox-add on

Bypass Megaupload Captcha And Wait Time

Martin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:28:17 +0000

It is a cat and mouse game between file hosting websites like Rapidshare or Megaupload and unofficial tools that make it more comfortable to work with those websites. The latest mouse to enter the play field is Muautolink, a Firefox add-on that offers a comfortable solution for users who are downloading files from Megaupload.

Megaupload has two “protections” in place before a normal user can download files. The first is a captcha while the second is a countdown timer. This means that users need to enter a captcha whenever they want to download a file from the file hosting website. Even worse, they also have to wait some time before the download becomes available.

Muautolink solves both problems at once. It will immediately display a file download window when the user opens a Megaupload download page in the Firefox web browser. It bypasses the Megaupload captcha and countdown completely.

Best of all: It even works if the Megaupload website is embedded in another website like several Megaupload search services have implemented it. Muautolink is an experimental Firefox add-on for all versions of the web browse (from 2.x to 3.7x). It can be downloaded from the official Mozilla Firefox website.

Tags: file host, file hosting, firefox, firefox-add on, megaupload

Yahoo Mail Notifier

Martin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:55:30 +0000

Ghacks has been pretty Gmail centric in the last year. The main reason for that is probably because there is more to write about Gmail than about other email services like Yahoo Mail or Live Mail. Could also be that Google is doing a better job at communicating changes they make to their email service. We have published a post a few days ago about Yahoo Mail login problems that some users experienced on the Yahoo Mail website.

These users have two alternative options on how to connect with their Yahoo Mail account if they experience the problems. The first is by using a desktop email client like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird, the second a notifier like Yahoo Mail Notifier for Firefox.

Both solutions obviously only work if the username and password of the Yahoo Mail account are at hand and still working. They can however cope with display or loading problems of the Yahoo Mail website. Yahoo Mail Notifier is a simple Firefox add-on that will display the unread mail count of a Yahoo Mail account in the Firefox statusbar. The add-on supports multiple Yahoo accounts which can be switched easily from the statusbar.

The preferences contain options to change the frequency new email checks, clicking preferences to open Yahoo Mail and notifications if new emails have been received.

Yahoo Mail Notifier is a simple Firefox add-on that can be helpful for users who do not want to check the Yahoo Mail page all the time to see if new emails have been received. It is available at the Mozilla Firefox website.

Tags: firefox, firefox-add on, yahoo mail, yahoo mail login, yahoo mail notifier

Google Wave Add-On For Firefox

Martin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:56:19 +0000

Google Wave is a new service by Google that is currently tested in a limited preview. Google Wave invites are in high demand as everyone and their mum are trying to get into the service that is said to “change the way we communicate”. Google Wave is basically a realtime communication platform, a mashup of email, instant messaging, chat rooms with project management features thrown into the mix. If you are already in you might find the following add-on for the Firefox web browser quite handy.

The Google Wave add-on for Firefox informs the user when new messages arrive for him. It works like any other notification add-on and tool available on the Internet these days. It starts by entering the account data of the Google Wave account in the add-on’s settings.

This is required to access the data of the account. It can – and certainly will – turn away security conscious users who do not want to part with their account data. Those who do will from then on be notified of new Google Wave messages in Firefox. The add-on places an icon in the Firefox status bar that is displaying the number of unread messages with the ability to hover over the icon to see previews of the messages.

The Google Wave add-on for Firefox is available at the Mozilla Firefox website. The add-on is compatible with Firefox 3.5.x only at the moment.

Tags: firefox, firefox-add on, Google, google wave, google wave add-on

Firefox: Show Mouse Over Urls In The Firefox Address Bar

Martin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:02:56 +0000

Firefox users: What do you need the Firefox address bar for? Many will probably answer that they do not need it at all while some say that they use it to check out links by hovering the mouse over them on the website. Then there is also the group of users with other add-ons that have placed their icons in the status bar to fill it with life.

Displaying the url of a website that the user is hovering the mouse over on the page. That’s something that can be achieved in another way; That must have been the reason for Josiah Decker to create the Firefox add-on Status Address Bar. The add-on displays the urls of links that the user hovers over in the Firefox address bar as well.

Why would someone want this? The answer is screen estate. Moving the functionality to the address bar makes the status bar in Firefox redundant if it is only displayed for that purpose. The status bar can then be set to hidden so that it does not appear on the computer screen anymore.

It is at first confusing to see the link urls appear in the Firefox address bar especially since it removes the url of the website the user is on for that time. There is another problem that was acknowledged by the developer of the add-on: Relative links are shown without part of the domain structure, e.g. /en-US/firefox/ instead of https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ which would appear in the Firefox status bar at the Mozilla website.

Status Address Bar might still be an interesting option for users who use the “hover over link” functionality in Firefox regularly but do not need the status bar otherwise and run Firefox on a small computer screen. It can be downloaded for all Firefox 2 and 3 versions at the Mozilla Firefox website.

Tags: firefox, firefox-add on, status address bar

Automatically Shutdown Computer After Firefox Downloads Finish

Martin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:24:49 +0000

Auto Shutdown is an add-on for the Firefox 3 web browser that adds the option to automatically shutdown the computer after downloads finish. It is generally not advised to use the Firefox download manager to download large files as it does not play well with download problems like interrupted downloads. Third party download managers like Down Them all for Firefox are generally a better choice for downloading large or multiple files in the web browser.

That’s probably the main reason why Auto Shutdown supports the Down Them All Firefox add-on. The Auto Shutdown add-on places an icon in the Firefox status bar that will automatically try to configure the shutdown on the first left-click for the operating system that it detects. This left-click enables the auto shutdown feature which can be easily disabled again with another left-click.

The add-on could be very handy in situations where a large download will finish at a time where the user is not near the computer system. This would mean – without the add-on – to either stop the download or keep the computer running until the return. Main features of Auto Shutdown are:

Executing user scripts after all downloads are finished or computer is idle for specific time
Play sound after each/All downloads are finished
Restore Firefox from last session
Customizable shutdown/idle scripts
Supporting DownThemAll

Auto Shutdown can be downloaded from the Mozilla Firefox website.

Tags: automatic shutdown, download-manager, firefox, firefox-add on

Download Panel Displays In Depth Information About Firefox Downloads

Martin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:45:53 +0000

The download manager of the Firefox web browser is not displaying many information by default. Only the name and size of the file, the time and the main domain it was downloaded from are displayed in the Downloads window. A right-click offers the possibility to open the folder the file was downloaded to, to load the url of the download or to copy the download path.

Download Panel is a Firefox add-on that displays additional information about each download during the downloads and afterwards. The add-on displays the full path to the file directly in the download manager next to the referrer (the site the download was initiated on), the size of the download in bytes and the directory it was saved to.

It can furthermore add the start and end time of the download which includes information about the date the download was started. The referrer and directory link are clickable in the downloads window. The first link will open the website the download was started from in a new tab while the second will open the folder in Windows Explorer.

The add-on might be useful for users who keep the downloads in the Downloads history. Most of the additional information that are displayed are accessible through other means which are usually more complicated (e.g. right-clicking on the download link and selecting to go to the download page versus left-clicking on the displayed download link). Download Panel (via How To Geek) is available at the Mozilla Firefox website.

Tags: download panel, firefox, firefox downloads, firefox-add on

Price Comparison With Invisible Hand For Firefox

Martin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:41:21 +0000

Price comparison is one of the essentials things that Internet users should do before buying a product on the Internet. It does not matter if they do it manually by visiting several Internet shops that carry the product or use one of the price comparison services. Users can save lots of money when comparing prices before buying a product.

The Invisible Hand add-on for Firefox is an unobtrusive add-on that will notify the user if it knows of an Internet shop that is offering the product for less than the current shop the user is visiting. It will display a row beneath the tabs in Firefox whenever it found a shop with a lower price. The system only works if the user is visiting one of the 50+ supported Internet shops in the United Kingdom or United States.

The bar with the better price will not appear if there is no better price or if the shop is currently not supported by the Firefox add-on. There are currently a few problems associated with the add-on that I would like to outline below:

Supports only 50+ shops in the UK or US. That’s ok for popular items but no where in the range that the price comparison services offers.This also means that users from other countries have no use for the add-on unless they do shop in the US or UK.
A click on the better price button (or the other retailers button) will open that website in the same tab. There is no way of opening the site in a new tab or window.
The service does not add (potential) shipping costs to the price comparison. It can be that the price at a lower price shop can turn out to be higher if shipping costs are added to the price.
The service sometimes fails to find the right product. A Guitar Heroes 5 bundle with hardware for the Nintendo Wii for example was said to be about 30 Pounds cheaper at another retailer. It turned out to be that this was the version of the game without the hardware.
The price comparison is restricted to the same country. It is for example not possible to see if the price in another country is cheaper than the price in the current country. This is probably linked to the shipping costs problem. It would make a lot of sense once more countries of one continent (e.g. Europe) are added so that users from one country could check if the product is a lot cheaper in another country (which often is the case if you look at the German and UK Amazon shop for example).

The service is currently in beta and the developers have already mentioned that they are working on several of the problems listed in this article. Invisible Hand is nevertheless an interesting alternative for Firefox users from the UK and US who do a lot of online shopping. Interested users can take a look at the developer website to see the list of supported retailers or download the add-on from the Mozilla Firefox website.

Tags: firefox, Firefox Price Comparison, firefox-add on, invisible hand, Price Comparison

Backup Facebook Accounts

Martin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:52:10 +0000

Many online services do not offer the means to backup data locally. Users who want to backup data are usually left with a tedious manual process (like downloading pictures or videos one by one). Data that cannot be downloaded right away is even harder to backup, think of contacts or private messages for example.

Archive Facebook is an add-on for the Mozilla Firefox web browser. The purpose of the add-on is to provide the tools to backup facebook accounts. The add-on can backup photos, messages, friends list, notes, events, groups, information and the activity stream. And since it is an experimental add-on it is likely that the developers will add new features to it in the future.

Here is how the add-on works:

An ArchiveFB entry is added to the Firefox Tools menu after installation of the add-on
Activate ArchiveFV > Archive from the menu after logging into a Facebook account
The process is automatic and can take minutes or even hours depending on the data in the account
A Facebook menu option is added to the ArchiveFB menu giving the user the option to view archived accounts

Once the archiving process has completed, you will see an entry in the sidebar that says “Facebook | username date” where username is your Facebook username and date is the current date. Click on the entry. You will see your Facebook profile page appear and at the bottom will be an annotation bar where you can highlight text or make comments on a page for your personal records. Click through your archived Facebook pages to ensure that all pages have been archived. All pages listed in the introduction should be archived. You can tell if a page has been archived by placing your cursor over a link. Look in the bottom left hand corner and Firefox will show the location of the link i.e. if the location starts with “file://”, it is on your hard drive, if it starts with “http://”, it is on the web. If it is not on your local hard drive, try to archive your account again. If the second attempt doesn’t work, please notify us and we will attempt to fix the problem.

Facebook users who like to backup their Facebook accounts can download the Firefox add-on from the official Mozilla Firefox website.

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