gHacks technology news » firefox

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

Firefox Locks Components Directory For Third Parties

Martin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:29:02 +0000

Companies basically have three options if they want their software programs to be compatible with Firefox: They can create a Firefox add-on, a plugin, or integrate the program in the components directory directly. The last option caused lots of concern for the Mozilla developers who linked these method to instabilities and crashes in the web browser. The main reason for these was code that was not updated to follow steps with the Firefox development. The code changes in later Firefox versions resulted in these incompatibilities.

Even worse was the fact that Firefox users were not able to manage these components at all as they would not be displayed in the add-on’s and plugin’s section of the web browser. This meant that Firefox users were not able to disable them if they encountered incompatibilities. But the Mozilla developers themselves were also unable to react on incompatible components or those that would pose a security risk to Firefox users. You might remember that they did block a Microsoft plugin globally after a security vulnerability was disclosed but that was a plugin, not something that was added to the components directory.

From Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 on the components directory is locked for third parties. This means that third party programs that were using this way to add their functionality to Firefox are not working anymore since they are blocked by the web browser. Only Mozilla components will from this web browser version on be allowed to use the components directory.

Neowin and others have reported about this but got their facts wrong as they linked this stability and security measure to the Microsoft silent install incident a while ago. Microsoft back then installed two plugins without the user’s consent, something that other software companies like Apple do as well. Microsoft’s bad luck was that a security vulnerability was disclosed shortly thereafter which made the Mozilla developers block the plugin globally for all Firefox users.

The components directory is a subdirectory of the Firefox installation directory.

Tags: components directory, firefox, firefox 3.6, firefox components, firefox security

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 3

Martin — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:36:20 +0000

The Mozilla Firefox developers have released a third beta version of Firefox 3.6 just a week after releasing the last beta version of the web browser. This beta version was not listed in the Firefox roadmap and could come as a surprise to many Firefox users who expected that a first release candidate would be the next public release. The bug list over at Bugzilla lists 83 fixes in this version of Firefox of which two have been classified as blockers and 13 as critical. The release notes on the other hand list two new features in Firefox 3.6 beta 3 which sound interesting:

# (NEW) Changes to how we allow third party software to integrate with Firefox in order to prevent crashes.
# (NEW) The ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load times.

Firefox users who are interested in upgrading to this latest beta version should read the known compatibility issues which are listed in the release notes to ensure that Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 will run properly on their system. Updates are available for all supported operating systems and languages. The easiest way to upgrade is to check for a new version from within Firefox by going to the Help > Check for Updates menu. Another option is to visit the official beta page to download the version of the web browser from there.

As usual this new beta version breaks a few add-ons which need to be forced to be compatible with the Nightly Tester Tools.

Tags: firefox, firefox 3.6, firefox beta, firefox release, firefox upgrade, web browser

Automatically Reload Websites With Auto F5

Martin — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:49:51 +0000

It happens sometimes that you are on a website waiting for something to happen, for example a download that should be available on that day or a registration form for a new web service. And then there are times where you want to reload a page because the contents change all the time. This can be pages that display random photos and images or forums with a large userbase. There are two options to deal with these situations. The first option is to use a program to monitor website changes. This program, once configured will periodically check the websites to see if they have changed in the meantime.

The second option is a script to automatically reload a website periodically. And one of these scripts is the Greasemonkey script Auto F5 which can automatically reload websites.

Auto Reload can be activated with the keyboard shortcut [Shift t]. This will bring up the configuration menu where the web user can configure the automatic reload on the active website. Configurable settings include the reload interval with the default being 5 minutes, a random value that is added to the timeout and the following options that require more explanation:

The option “Ignore everything after these symbols in URL” is a little bit difficult to explain: if there are session id´s in the URL the timeout would only work for this session, but if one wants this page to be refreshed in every session one can enter separators that determine sessions and other things. Another example would be that one wants to store a refresh value for a whole site with its subfolders etc.. Therefor one could enter the “/” as a separator.

“Include the separators in the URL saved” as an additional option for the separators: imagine one wants to have a timeout for all subfolders of /topics/21456/ (discussion of this script) and puts it in the list of separators. Then the URL saved by this script would be http://userscripts.org/ which may not be what one wants, because the main page is to have its own timeout value. Then this option should be activated so the URL is http://userscripts.org/topics/21456/ which is different to http://userscripts.org/, so it can be refreshed independently.

The “Hide menu”-option is to hide the menu when one clicks somewhere that is not the menu.

The “Prolong timeouts”-option is to prevent an unintentional page reload, while working on that page.

Option to relaod all pages with standard timeout when no timeout is set for that page. What else to say? Ok this option is like a wildcard. If checked it reloads every single page (!) with default timeout, unless an individual timeout is setup for that page.

Most users can keep the default settings except for the page reload timeout which might be to high in certain situations. The script will automatically deactivate the hotkey in web forms. Users who want to use the automatic refresh on pages with web forms need to click outside of the web form before the keyboard shortcut becomes active.

Auto F5 Reload is available at the script’s Userscript page. The web browser needs to be restarted after downloading and installing the script.

Tags: firefox, greasemonkey, monitor websites, reload websites, userscript

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 3.6 Beta 2

Martin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:59:48 +0000

The Mozilla Firefox development team has released the second beta of the upcoming Firefox 3.6 web browser. Firefox 3.6 which is still slated for a late 2009 release will succeed Firefox 3.5.x the current public stable branch of the Internet browser. The new beta version of Firefox 3.6 comes with more than 190 changes to previous versions including several critical stability fixes and more than a dozen major fixes to various editions of the web browser. The update is therefor recommended for all Firefox 3.6 users who are not already running the beta 2 release.

Interested users can check out the list of changes in the release over at Bugzilla sorted by severity of the fix.

Firefox 3.6 beta 2 is available for download at the official Mozilla Firefox beta download page. It is available there for all supported operating systems and languages. Users who are already running an earlier version of Firefox 3.6 can also perform an update check in the Help menu to initiate the download and installation of the latest beta version directly from within the web browser.

The release notes are posted below:

What’s New in Firefox 3.6 Beta (revision 2)

Firefox 3.6 Beta is built on Mozilla’s Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering platform, which has been under development for several months and contains many improvements for web developers, Add-on developers and users. This version is also faster and more responsive than previous versions, and has been optimized to run on small device operating systems such as Windows CE and Maemo.

* More than 190 bug fixes from the last beta to improve performance, stability, security and features.
* This beta is available in more than 45 languages – get your local version.
* Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
* Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
* Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
* Support for the WOFF font format.
* Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
* Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

Have you been trying out Firefox 3.6 already? If so, what is your impression so far?

Tags: firefox, firefox 3.6, firefox beta, firefox-update, web browser

My Current Firefox Setup

Martin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:31:37 +0000

The last article that listed the extensions and themes of my personal Firefox setup dates a while back and I thought it would be nice to post an updated list of my personal setup. This setup works for me very well but I’m not thinking it is the ultimate one. To be honest, I do not think that there is a perfect setup for Firefox. It highly depends on what the user does on the Internet. A webmaster or web designer will make use of different add-ons than someone who is interested in social networking sites like Facebook, shopping or extreme security.

I make use of core add-ons that are installed all the time and temporary add-ons that I only install when I need them. Two examples for temporary add-ons are the excellent web development add-on Firebug and the multi-site video downloader Video Download Helper.

I also have to say that I’m running the latest version of Firefox 3.6 and not the latest stable version of Firefox 3.5x. Many of the add-ons had to be forced to be compatible with the Nightly Tester Tools add-on. They do work perfectly though afterwards.

App Tabs – I reviewed the add-on yesterday and really like it. Tabs can be pinned and minimized on the left side of the Firefox tabbar. This is great for websites and services that are open all the time.
Bug489729 – This prevents Firefox from opening a new window if a tab gets dragged accidentally in the web browser. Some users do not have a problem with this at all while others have to cope with this behavior regularly.
Greasemonkey – Userscripts can be very useful in many occasions. There are some great ones out there that really improve the web surfing experience.
Last Pass – I switched to Last Pass after using the build in Firefox password manager for a long time. Last Pass offers a lot of additional features including a secure password generator, form profile manager to automatically fill web forms, automatically log into websites, web access to all passwords.
Multi Links – If you regularly work on websites where lots of links are posted that you all need or want to open then Multi Links is for you. You can draw a rectangle around an area on the website. Every link in that rectangle will be opened once the user lets go of the right mouse button. Excellent for forums, link lists or blog posts.
Nightly Tester Tools – Most add-ons have not been updated by their developers yet to be compatible with the Firefox 3.6x branch. This tool makes them compatible with this version. It will be uninstalled once all developers have updated their add-ons.
No Redirect – If you hate being redirected by your ISP to a search page whenever you mistype an url then this is for your.
NoScript – One of the two Firefox add-ons that I consider most important (the other is Last Pass). No Script will block all scripts from being executed on a website on the first visit. This increases the security of the web browser and computer system as most exploits and attacks make use of scripts to do so.
SeoQuake – Useful for webmasters. SeoQuake can display various SEO related information about websites including their Pagerank, links, Alexa rank and more.
Tiny Menu – I like the Firefox header to be as small as possible so that the actual website makes use of most of the screen estate in the web browser. Tiny Men compresses the menu into one menu entry which can then be merged with the address bar so that only one bar is shown at the top of the web browser.
Operetta Theme – I ran the default Firefox theme for most of the time. But then I discovered the Operetta theme which brings the design of Opera 10 to Firefox. It looks fabulous but only works with Firefox 3.6x versions.

And that’s it. Not a lot of add-ons if you consider that some Ghacks readers use 70+ add-ons.

Tags: firefox, firefox add-ons, firefox theme, mozille firefox

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

A Userscript For Better Userscripts.org Navigation

Martin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:32:33 +0000

If you have been to userscripts.org before you might have noticed that the website holds an incredible amount of userscripts. You might have also noticed that it is extremely uncomfortable to browse and work with in general. Userscripts are JavaScript code snippets that change elements on a website while it is loaded in the web browser. The developer of the “Because it’s your userscripts.org” userscript must have come to the conclusion that a userscript would be the perfect way of improving the userscripts.org website.

And that’s what the developer did. The userscript changes several key elements on the website. Its main features are options to customize the script display on the website and the option to add scripts and authors to a blacklist so that they will no longer be displayed when browsing the website.

The default changes include an increase in the amount of scripts that are displayed per page (triple the default amount), and options to install or blacklist any script right from that page without visiting the script’s profile page first. A trashcan icon is also placed next to each userscript in the script table listings to add it to the blacklist.

The left side contains a link to the settings of the userscript which provide access to additional options. This includes removing rows of the table layout (Hide ‘Rating’ Column, Hide ‘Posts’ Column, Hide ‘Fans’ Column, Hide ‘Installs’ Column, Hide ‘Last Updated’ Column, Hide ‘Votes’ Column), add scripts based on title or description to the blacklist or to change various author and script related blacklisting settings.

Because it’s your userscripts.org can be downloaded from the userscripts website.

Tags: firefox, greasemonkey, javascript, userscripts

Firefox 3.5.5

Martin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:40:48 +0000

The Mozilla Firefox developers are currently distributing the latest official version of the Firefox 3.5.x branch to ftp servers around the globe. Firefox 3.5.5. will soon be announced officially at the official Mozilla website. Most Firefox users will get update notifications about the new version eventually with a high likelihood that the update notifications will appear later today in the web browser if automatic updates are enabled in the Internet browser.

The release notes are – as usual – not up yet and the fixed bugs list at Bugzilla shows only four fixes in this latest version. One of the bugs that has been fixed was rated critical on the other hand with the other three rated as normal.

The description of the release on the Mozilla website states that it is a “short-cycle security and sustained engineering release to fix several top crashing bugs”. In other words a stability update for the web browser. The Firefox release schedule which we posted a few days ago indicates that the next version of the web browser (Firefox 3.5.6) will be released about a month from now on December 15.

We have uploaded the US-English version of Firefox 3.5.5:

Mac
Windows
Linux

Cautious users might want to wait until the official release announcement is public to update their browser from the official source.

Tags: firefox, firefox 3, firefox 3.5.5, firefox-update

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

Tab Preview Features In Firefox 3.6

Martin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:12:05 +0000

Mozilla has integrated several new tab preview features in the recent release of Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 which were initially planned to be integrated into earlier release versions of Firefox 3. Even more problematic than the late implementation of this features is the fact that they are not enabled by default in the web browser. Lets take a closer look at the new tab preview features in Firefox 3.6. It has to be noted that this features are not available in previous versions of the web browser.

browser.allTabs.previews

Enabling this preview feature in the advanced Firefox configuration will add a new button to the right side of the Firefox tabbar. This button, when pressed, will display an overlay window that contains thumbnail previews of all open tabs in Firefox. A click on any tab thumbnail will make that tab the active one in the web browser.

browser.ctrlTab.previews

Enabling this parameter in the advanced configuration will change the default CTRL-Tab feature in Firefox. If you press CTRL-Tab by default in Firefox the browser will cycle through the open tabs in the web browser.The new feature, when enabled, will display a visual tab switcher that is displaying thumbnail images of the current and the five most recent tabs with an option to quickly flip through them by pressing Ctrl-Tab again. The same preview contains an option to display all open tabs.

The very same configuration changes the default behavior of pressing Ctrl-Tab once. It will now switch back to the last tab that was in focus instead of offering the option to cycle through all tabs in the browser.

Do the following to enable one or both of the new features:

Enter about:config in the Firefox address bar, promise that you will be careful and filter for the term previews. This should bring up several parameters with the two mentioned above in the list.

A double-click on either of the parameters will change the default value false to true. The feature is instantly active and can therefor be tested right away.

Tags: firefox, firefox 3.6, firefox tabs, firefox tips

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

Firefox Release Schedule

Martin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:47:24 +0000

Most Firefox users could probably care less about the date the next release of the web browser gets published publicly. But there are some users who like to know. This can be extension developers who want to make sure that their Firefox add-on is compatible with the next releases of the web browser, system administrators who want to make sure they can update the web browsers of their clients in time or advanced users who just like to be up to date with all technology news.

The Firefox web browser, like Google Chrome, is developed in several branches simultaneously which makes it kinda hard to track. There are currently three different versions of Firefox under development not counting the future releases of Firefox 3.7 and 4.0. First there are the two official public releases Firefox 3.0.15 and Firefox 3.5.4 and second there is the soon to be released Firefox 3.6. The release schedule looks like the following currently (subject to change, source: FF Extension Guru).

Firefox 3.5.5 – November 6th
Firefox 3.0.16 – December 15th
Firefox 3.5.6 – December 15th
Firefox 3.6 RC1 – Late November 2009
Firefox 3.6 – Mid December 2009

According to this list two versions of the Firefox 3.5.x branch will be released this year, one Firefox 3.0.x version and the final version of Firefox 3.6 which is likely to replace the Firefox 3.5.x branch. If you are a Firefox user: Which version of the web browser are you currently running and why?

Tags: firefox, firefox 3, firefox 3.5, firefox 3.6, firefox release

Opera Skin For Firefox

Martin — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:18:15 +0000

Version 3.6 of the Firefox web browser introduces several new design options for theme creators that are not available in previous versions of the Internet browser including the latest official release version Firefox 3.5.4. One of the first themes to make use of this new features is the Operetta theme which is available as an experimental theme from the official Mozilla Firefox website.

The Operetta theme comes in two versions, a normal and advanced version, which differ mainly in the toolbar layout. Both Operetta themes are based on the design of the Opera 10 web browser with the normal version making use of the standard toolbar layout with tabs below the other toolbars and the advanced version placing the tabbar above all other toolbars.

Both editions of the Firefox theme look professionally done and the selection comes down to the personal preference of the user. Some Firefox design mockups suggest that the developer’s are thinking about moving the tabbar to the top of the web browser header and the Operatta Advanced theme for Firefox can be used to get accustomed to this possibility. It might also be the prime choice for Opera or Google Chrome users as these web browsers place the tabbar by default above most – in Google Chrome’s case all – other toolbars. The Operetta and Operetta Advanced themes are available at the Mozilla Firefox website.

Tags: firefox, firefox 3.6, firefox theme, opera

Firefox 3.6 Beta 1

Martin — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:37:09 +0000

The Mozilla developers have finally released the first beta of Firefox 3.6 after releasing two release candidates for the beta previously. Firefox 3.6 will be the next installment after the Firefox 3.5x branch and is still slated for a early 2010 release. The Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 is build on the Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering engine opposed to Firefox 3.5 which is based on Gecko 1.9.1. The developers have added several new features and improvements to the Internet browser including:

Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
Support for the WOFF font format.
Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

The most noticeable feature in Firefox 3.6 up to this point is the performance increase. New web technologies are great for web developers but websites that make use of them are still rare. The addition of Personas support – which brings the option to change the basic appearance of Firefox without restarting the web browser – raised questions by some users who preferred that it would remain an add-on that could be installed by the Firefox users who wanted the functionality. Now everyone, even those that never make use of the appearance changing features, are stuck with yet another module in Firefox.

Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 is available for direct download at the Mozilla website. Users who are tempted to try the latest version of the web browser should keep in mind that most add-ons will not work right out of the box. Installing an add-on like the Nightly Tester Tools is recommended to force compatibility.

Tags: firefox, firefox 3.6, firefox beta, firefox-update

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

Firefox 3.5.4 And Firefox 3.0.15

Martin — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:30:33 +0000

Two new versions of Firefox were uploaded yesterday to the Firefox ftp server and website. Firefox 3.5.4 and Firefox 3.0.15 are now available. The automatic update in the web browser should have already recognized the new version and suggested an update to the user. Users who prefer manual updates can visit the Firefox website over at Mozilla to download a version for their operating system and language directly.

The Firefox 3.5.4. release notes classify the update as a security and stability update making it an recommended update for every Firefox user. The full list of fixes and changes lists a total of 124 items with seven marked as critical and 13 as major. The Firefox 3.0.15 release notes list fewer items but still mention several security and stability fixes for that version of the web browser making it a recommended update as well.

It should also be noted that Firefox 2.x is no longer supported by the developers who ask users to update to the Firefox 3.x branch as the older branch contains known security and stability issues that are not (and will not be) fixed.

Both Firefox 3.5.4 and 3.0.15 are available from the Mozilla firefox website.

Tags: firefox, firefox 3, firefox security, firefox-update

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

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