You can start the plugin manager of Notepad++ the following way. Start the text editor and then open Plugins > Plugin Manager > Show Plugin Manager on the menubar.

All stable plugins are now displayed in a table like interface. You can display unstable plugins with a click on Settings and the selection of “show unstable plugins” in the new window there.

Plugins are listed with their name, category, version and stability there. A description is displayed below the table when you select one of the plugins in the list. You install plugins by selecting them first (place a checkmark in their box) and then the Install button in the Plugin Manager interface.

The plugin will be downloaded from the Internet and installed automatically. It may be necessary to let the program close and re-open itself to complete the plugin installation.

An alternative to the process described here is to download and install plugins manually. You find a list of Notepad++ plugins on the official Sourceforge project page. All you need to do is to download the plugins there, unpack them and place the dlls into the Notepad plugin directory. The site lists additional plugins that are not available in the plugin manager.

Notepad++ checks for compatibility on every startup. You may receive a message that one or multiple plugins that you have installed manually are not compatible with the installed version of Notepad++ on the system.

I suggest you make sure that you run the latest version of the program before you install any plugins. You can do that from within the application. Click on the question mark in the menubar and select Update Notepad++ from the menu there to run an update.

Notepad++ Plugins

Change Markers

This plugin tracks changes made to documents, and enables navigation between changes, with a distinction being made between saved and unsaved changes. The change indicator is either a bar in the left margin or a specific highlighting.

CSS-Explorer

CSS-eXplorer is a CSS and HTML plug-in for Notepad++. It allows easy navigation and edit of CSS files with Notepad++. Main features:

TreeView: Allows easy navigation in CSS file.
Validation Service: Check errors in CSS file, and provide detailed report.
Web Page Preview: Test your work on CSS file immediately via HTML Web Page Preview Window.
CSS Editor: Add new parameters and design options to CSS file quickly and easily (support CSS 2.0 defines).

Function List

Function list offers a list of functions (or sections) according of the language of current document, in order to access to the function or section you need quickly.

Multi Clipboard

MultiClipboard plugin implements multiple (10) text buffers that is filled up via copying and/or cutting of text.

To paste any text from the buffers, use Ctrl-V or middle mouse click (normal paste):
to paste the most recently copied/cut text Ctrl-Shift-V or Shift-middle mouse click:
to pop up a menu with the text buffer entries. Select the desired menu item to paste it

RegEx Helper

A Notepad++ plugin that allows users to develop regular expressions and test them against their open documents

This is only a small selection of Notepad++ plugins. I have tested them with the latest version of the text editor (Notepad++ 5.9.6.2 at the time of writing).

Are you making use of Notepad++ plugins? If so, which plugins are installed on your system?

I have disabled all those plugins and noticed a few months ago that Firefox sometimes re-enables those plugins automatically. When does it happen? I verified that plugins are automatically enabled whenever I switch Firefox versions. My main Firefox installation runs the latest Aurora build, but I have a stable version of Firefox installed on the same computer.

Yesterday I had to switch versions to check out Twitter’s implementation of Content Security Policy which has been only enabled for Firefox 4 versions and not the Aurora builds which are already listed as Firefox 5.

Today when I checked my plugins in Firefox 5 I noticed that they all had been re-enabled. To verify that the version switch was indeed the culprit I disabled all plugins again, closed Firefox 5, loaded and exited Firefox 4, and opened Firefox 5 again. The result? All previously disabled plugins were enabled again.

There may be additional circumstances where plugins are re-enabled automatically. Browser updates are one possibility. Please note that I have not verified this.

The core problem now is that there is no option available to users to block plugins from being installed in the browser. Well, that’s not entirely true but the controls are insufficient at best. See, you can disable plugin scanning, but this will remove already installed – and probably in use – plugins from the browser as well. So that is not really an option.

You can block some plugins either in the Windows Registry, if you use Windows, in the Firefox about:config configuration settings or by deleting plugins locally. All three methods have disadvantages.

Only some plugins can be blocked in the Registry by deleting their keys. While that’s nice and all, it is insufficient to resolve the issue with other plugins that still get re-enabled automatically. It is also likely that updates or new installations of programs that have added the plugins to the Registry in first place will re-add them there.

The Firefox about:config dialog holds options to block all plugin scans, or scans for Acrobat, QuickTime, SunJRE, and WindowsMediaPlayer. The latter can be blocked by changing the minimum version number requirement to a version that is not yet available, for instance 99. Look for plugin. scan.(Plugin-name) to find those plugins after entering about:config in the Firefox address bar. The description on the Mozilla help page seems to suggest that it is possible to add custom plugin names as a parameter, but that’s not explained anywhere on site.

Setting plugin.scan.plid.all to false blocks most plugin scans during startup of the browser.

Deleting plugins locally finally is an option, but those plugins are likely added again if the software that they are linked to is updated or re-installed. You can look-up the path of every active Firefox plugin by setting the parameter plugin.expose_full_path to true. The paths are then shown if you enter about:plugins in the Firefox address bar.

Your best bet currently is a mixture of all methods described above. But even if you manage to remove all plugins that you do not need, there is no guarantee that they won’t reappear later again.

Mozilla recently announced that they would make changes to the automatic integration of plugins in Firefox. This step is long overdue.

If you visit a trailer like this one in Google Chrome you get a notification at the top of the browser. It reads: The QuickTime plug-in needs your permission to run. Options are to always run the plugin on the site, run the plugin this time, load a learn more page or close the notification.

A similar alert is shown when you open a website that requires Java to be installed on the system (The Java plug-in needs your permission to run).

The Silverlight plugin is on the other hand not affected by that change. The selection of Always run on this site enables the plugin for that site, so that the notification is not shown anymore if you open other pages or the very same page on that domain. Run this time on the other hand runs enables the plugin for this moment, but will display the very same notification if you reload the page or switch to another page of the domain that requires Java.

The concept is basically similar to that of the NoScript extension for Firefox, with the difference that NoScript does not allow or disallow plugins, but only scripts that utilize plugins.

The core reason for the change according to Google is to protect Chrome users from vulnerabilities discovered in plugins that the majority may not use at all. And since that majority seems to be indifferent or unaware of the risks, it was necessary to implement a safety mechanism to protect them.

Chrome users who are visiting websites regularly that require one of the plug-ins on the other hand need to enable the plugin for every website that they visit regularly. Depending on how many websites they visit that make use of those plugins, it may take quite some time to get everything up and running again.

There is no option or setting available to enable the plugin for all websites, which is a slap in the face of users who make sure their plugins are up to date.

The missing option to always enable the plugin is a serious issue for users who make use of those limited plugins.

What’s your take on the issue?

Chrome users who want to open some websites with scripts and plugins disabled have now another option. The Safy extension for Chrome offers to open links in the browser in in iframe sandbox with both JavaScript and all plugins disabled.

Options provided are to open the selected link in a new tab in the same browser window or in the current tab. This works fine in most instances, but not all the time. It is for instance not working in Google Search. An error message is displayed if Safy is used to display a search result in a sandboxed tab.

That’s the biggest quirk right now. The other problem that some users may experience is that they cannot launch websites using Safy if no link is present. Say you are on a website and want to open it without JavaScript or plugins, or you want to enter a web address directly, or open a bookmark in the browser. Safy cannot be used in all of those cases.

Then again, it works very well for normal links on most sites. Ideal for opening a link on Twitter, Facebook or blogs in a safer environment.

Safy is available only for the Chrome browser. It can be installed directly from the Chrome extension gallery.

The script blocking options in the Google Chrome browser on the other hand are still very limited, which can be attributed to the architecture of the web browser according to the NoScript developer.

While it is possible to block plugins and JavaScript for all pages, and even enable them on some, it is not possible to block or enable scripts selectively.

Click To Play is a step in the right direction. Users with plugins blocked for all websites, can for instance use click to play to enable Flash selectively. Youtube videos are blocked in this configuration on page load, but can be activated and played with the click of the mouse.

That’s very comfortable as it saves bandwidth and increases the security in the web browser.

Click to Play has been recently added to the dev version of the Chrome browser. It has to be enabled with the command line switch --enable-click-to-play.

Plugins need to be blocked in Google Chrome for Click to Play to become useful. This is done by clicking on the Wrench icon and selecting Options from the menu.

Switching to the Under the bonnet tab and clicking on the Content Settings button opens the configuration menu. Plugins can be blocked in the Plug-ins submenu by selecting “Do not allow any site to use plug-ins”.

Sites that should not be affected by the plugin blocking can be whitelisted under Exceptions, so that all plugins are loaded normally on page load.

block plugins chrome

Every web page that tries to load a plugin will display information that the plugins were blocked on the page.

chrome click to play

A click on run plug-in this time will load the plugin. In the case of Youtube, play the video on the site.

Google Chrome indicates blocked plugins in the address bar as well. The new icon can be used to whitelist the domain, so that it is automatically added to the exceptions list.

google chrome plugins

Click to play is a step in the right direction. If the developers would only add that option for all scripts on a page, not only plugins. Still, it is an improvement over previous behavior.

Expect the new click to play functionality to be added soon in the beta and stable releases of the Google browser as well.

I am here to tell you, at least with Ubuntu 10.04, there is a simple way of installing Java. That’s is the purpose of this article. Of course I will also take this one step further and show you how to make Firefox aware of your java installation. With this installed you can go ahead and visit those java-is-required web sites, as well as build those web applications you need to serve up.

Installation

We are going to be installing Java with the help of apt-get so, as you can guess, we will be doing this from the command line. So fire up your favorite terminal window and get ready to work.

The first step is to add the necessary repositories to the /etc/apt/sources.list file. So open that file up with your favorite text editor and add the following line to the bottom of that file:

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner

Now to update apt, issue the command:

sudo apt-get update

Once apt has completed its update, you are ready to install. The actual installation command is:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts

The above command should install everything you need for you to get your java on. During the installation you may have to “read” and “agree” to the licensing of the software. Do this or the installation will exit without completing. Once the installation is complete you are done. Right? Maybe. But, before you assume all is complete, let’s check our installation. The easiest way to test your installation is to issue the command java -version at which point you should see something like:

java version “1.6.0.20″
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_20-b02)
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 16.3-b01, mixed mode)

That will tell you for sure Java is installed.

Hello Firefox!

Now it’s time to let Firefox in on the installation. This too is simple. From the same command line you installed Java in issue the command:

locate libjavaplugin

The above command should return numerous results. The result you are looking for will resemble /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun1.6.0.20/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so.  Now that you know the path you need to create a link to this in the /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins directory. First change into the plugins directory with the command cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins and then create the link with the command ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun1.6.0.20/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so. Now all you need to do is restart Firefox and then enter about:plugins in the address bar to see that Java is now enabled in your browser.

Final thoughts

Did I say it was going to be easy? Maybe that was a slight exaggeration. I realize that installing Java on Linux isn’t nearly as it is on Windows, but it is certainly do-able. And in some situations, a must do. I hope this has helped make that “do” a little more “able”.

The plugin check would analyse the plugins of the web browser and compare their version to the latest version offered by the plugin’s developer to inform the user if the plugin is up to date or needs updating.

This plugin check has now been extended by the developers to work with other web browsers as well making it a web tool for everyone who wants to verify that the installed plugins are up to date.

All that needs to be done to check the installed plugins is to visit the plugincheck website to do so.

The online service can identify many popular plugins. The plugin database is maintained by Mozilla and constantly expanded. It can however happen that some plugins are not recognized automatically by the service.

Three different statuses are available: Up To Date confirming that the latest version of the plugin is installed, Update suggesting that the plugin is outdated and Research if a plugin cannot be identified yet by the service.

Links lead either to the developer’s homepage or a Google search depending on the individual plugin’s status.

One of the main strengths of WordPress is its huge developer community, something that is unmatched by most of its competitors. With this great third party support comes thousands of plugins and themes. So without further ado, I’ll name out a couple WordPress plugins that every user of the blogging platform should use.

All in one SEO

WordPress has the reputation of being the best SEO optimized blogging/CMS platform out of the box. But even with that it still could use a little work. That’s where “All in one SEO” comes in. Basically it allows you to control the SEO aspect of every post, page or tag on your blog as well as override the default WordPress features.

Customizing the plugin is easy and the readme file helps with any problems you might have. There is a reason why it has well over 2 million downloads. So if you haven’t checked it out, I suggest you do so. If you are looking for something a little more advanced you can check out the Headspace2 plugin which is also popular (at the time of this writing it had over 200,000 downloads).

Broken Link Checker

I didn’t know how much I needed this plugin until I got it and since there I have installed it on all my blogs. As the name suggests, this plugin checks your blog at intervals (user defined) for links that might be broken. I cannot stress how important this plugin is for those who run political, tech or news blogs as it is extremely vital at notifying you if your links are active or leading to 404 error pages.

WP-DB-Backup

If it were not for hackers and hard drive failures, this plugin would be obsolete. But thanks to these and many other problems, database failures are prevalent. At least there are options to help keep your database safe.

WP-DB-Backup is one of those plugins which offers users the ability to backup their WordPress databases instantly or have monthly, weekly, daily or hourly backups. The backups can either be sent to a specified email address or can be downloaded instantly. While this plugin is mainly built for those who carry large amounts of traffic on their websites, I would recommend it for everyone including personal bloggers.

Beware that this only backs up the database and not information stored on the server such as download files, pictures and such. That will require another program.

Redirection

When I first started using WordPress I decided to go with the default permalink structure as I was not versed in customizing .htaccess files. That changed a few months later and by that time my blog had boasted well over 150 posts. I needed to do some major on site SEO but was stuck with the fact that if I changed the permalink structure to something more search engine (SE) friendly, visitors who came to my site from backlines would be left with a 404 page error.

Well after a little Google expedition I came across the Redirection plugin which did exactly what it sounds like, redirects old links to the new location. I was extremely happy and I didn’t lose SERPS because of my updated permalink structure.

Even if you are not in the same position I suggest you get this plugin because it is well worth it and it requires very little configuration.

NextGEN Gallery

It’s not everyday that a plugin crosses the 1 million download mark. But Alex Rabe has struck gold with his plugin. For those who are familiar with the WordPress, it is clear that while 2.7 did fix a lot of issues, the built in media library fails to say the least. It’s OK for basic media but managing gallery’s, albums and such is impossible.

That’s where NextGEN Gallery comes in by providing the best photo gallery plugin for the platform. While it still lacks in certain areas, it is light years ahead of the built-in functions of WordPress. Plus with the numerous plugins that expand its features it is quite a beast. If you would like an excellent example of the plugin in action, check out TechCrunch.com.

cformsII

It used to be the top downloaded plugin on wordpress.org until someone brought to the attention of the WordPress community that its license agreement did not match the requirements of wordpress.org. Since then it has been removed, but even with that it still continues to be an excellent plugin.

Basically cformsII allows you to create contact forms, contest forms and anything else your heart desires. Although it is not the easiest plugin to use, it’s powerful and extremely customizable as the CSS file can be edited to meet any requirement.

The only drawback to this plugin is since it’s no longer available on wordpress.org, those wishing to use it have to install and update it manually. That said I still would recommend using it but if you cannot be bothered with the hassle for the extra features, you can always check out Contact Form 7 which carries many of the features but still lacks in the customizability department.

I’m sure there are many others out there but these are the ones that I have found out to be the most useful and would recommend for every WordPress blog. But if you think I left one out, hit me up in the comments below.

We have covered Notepad++ plugins in the past which can be really helpful under certain circumstances. One of the most useful plugins for users who work with Notepad++ regularly is the Autosave plugin.

The plugin can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It needs to be extracted into the plugins folder of the Notepad++ installation (the folder might need to be created if this is the first plugin).

The new autosave option becomes available after the next program start once the two files have been placed in the plugins folders.

Autosave can be configured to automatically save documents if the application loses focus or at time intervals with the default interval set to one minute. It is furthermore possible to only save the current document or only named ones so that these temp documents that some users like to create do not get saved on the computer system.

There are two main issues that come up with Firefox (one dealing with plugins and the other dealing with a “hidden” lock file). These two issues alone could be considered deal breakers with new users. As for plugins, I am going to show you how to install the Flashplayer plugin (as that is one of the most popular and widely used plugins) on Linux-based Firefox. So, without further adieu, let’s see how to get past these issues. The solutions are very simple.

Plugins

I have seen Firefox behave two ways: I have seen the browser automatically install the necessary plugins, and I have seen it demand manual installation of plugins. I would like to think the automated installation is where Linux Firefox is heading, but you can never count on automation 100% of the time. For those times when you will need to install Flashplayer manually here is how you do it.

The first thing you need to do is to download the appropriate version of the Flashplayer plugin. You can get the plugin from the Adobe Flashplayer Download Page. For simplicity sake download the source file which will be a tar.gz file. Once that is downloaded unpack the file with the command:

tar xvzf install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz

which will create the new directory install_flash_player_10_linux/. Change into that directory with the command:

cd install_flash_player_10_linux/

and you will find two files:

• flashplayer-installer
• libflashplayer.so

The file flashplayer-installer is the executable installer. In order to actually execute this you will have to give the file executable permissions with the command chmod u+x flashplayer-installer. Once you  have done this close your browser and issue the command ./flashplayer-installer. To complete the installation answer a few simple questions. Once the installer finishes, fire up Firefox and enter about:plugins in the address bar to check to make sure the plugin was installed. If all went well you should see a listing for Shockwave Flash.

Lock File

That dastardly lock file can be a real pain some times. When Firefox is running it creates a special file called a lock file in the users Firefox directory. As long as this lock file is there another instance of Firefox will not open. If Firefox crashes and the lock file isn’t automatically removed by Firefox, you will get an error message saying you need to close Firefox before it will run. There are two ways to do this. You can issue the command killall -9 firefox-bin and hope it takes the lock file with it, or you can remove the lock file manually.

To remove the file manually open up a terminal window and issue the command cd ~/.mozilla/firefox. Within this directory will be a directory unique to the user. To find out the name of this directory issue the command ls. The directory will be a random string of characters. Mine, for example, is u6n8y834.default. Change into this directory and issue the command ls. You should now see a file called lock. Issue the command rm lock to remove this file. Firefox should now start up.

The issue of this lock file shouldn’t come up very often. But when it does, it’s nice to know how to solve the problem.

Final Thoughts

Firefox is an outstanding browser. But no matter how good it is, it can still have issues. When these issues arise, it is reassuring to know you can get beyond them. Hopefully, however, your experience with Firefox in Linux will be bereft of problems.

The interface is tab driven and one of the tabs provides access to the list of plugins. You might be surprised about the amount of plugins listed on the page. Each plugin is either shown as enabled or disabled. The enabled plugins are highlighted while the disabled plugins are grayed out a bit to visualize the difference nicely.

A button to enable or disable the plugin is provided after clicking on a specific plugin. The amount of plugins shown in the menu might surprise some users who never looked into there before.

The test system contained plugins for iTunes, Google Update, Microsoft DRM, Java, Microsoft Office, Flash, Quicktime, Silverlight, Windows Genuine Advantage, Windows Media Player and Windows Presentation Foundation. That’s a lot of plugins of which most are probably superfluous.

Hundreds (so far) of more or less useful Flash-based widgets are freely available for your website at Yourminis.com. You can add these widgets to your own site by simply copying the embed code of each widget – no further editing is required. You only need some skills in Macromedia Flash if you decide to create new widgets on your own using Yourmini’s API for Flash8 IDE.

More likely you’d want to try existing “minis” created by other people which are made available on the Yourminis website. These widgets often use some external services (Google, Veoh, Craigslist) to acquire and display desired information or media. You can also remix existing widgets to suit the needs of your site better.

You could add some widgets that display contents of news sources such as Digg or let your users watch the latest videos, embed games and other widgets. Check out some examples of what Yourminis offers below:

Read More:

Yourminis Homepage

You simply use the right-click menu when you have found a link that leads to a theme or plugin for WordPress that you want to install. Choose either to install a Theme or Plugin so that OneClick Installer places it in the correct directory. It works well with zipped plugins and themes which are automatically unzipped during the process.

The One Click Installer WordPress plugin needs to be activated first and both the plugins and themes folder needs a chmod of 755 so that the Firefox extension is able to place the files in the directories.

You would then install the Firefox extension and right-click a theme or plugin to place it in the corresponding folder of your WordPress blog. Plugin diagnostics tell you if everything is configured correctly which is a great way to check if everything is working correctly.

One Click Installer can be password protected to protect your WordPress plugins and themes from being overwritten by other users and offers a so called Purgatory which offers a secure way of deleting plugins and themes.

It can also backup your plugins and themes and store them locally as zip files for later usage. The author is currently developing a version that makes it possible to auto-activate those plugins and themes as well.

found: Digital Inspiration

The major difference is how they add the functionality. Widgets for Opera usually open in their own window (like a mini sized popup) and one can opt to have the widget always on top. This means that they stay on top even if Opera is minimized. I actually prefer to browse the Opera website for Widgets because it looks much cleaner and professional than the one for Firefox. Not a fan of the windows marketplace at all. All widgets are free to download which is another similarity that Opera and Firefox share. Enough of the babbling, here is the list of 10 must-see Opera Widgets.

1. Video Downloader – lets you download videos from many video sites including youtube. It is a little bit different from the Firefox extension with the same name. This Video downloader opens a small popup and requires you to paste a link of the video into it. It displays the download link afterwards.
2. Gmail Checker – displays a very small icon with the amount of mails currently unread in your inbox. Can be moved around any way you like.
3. Image Grep – nice widget that makes it possible to search flickr, google and yahoo for tags and keywords specified. Displays the results neatly in its windows. F5 refreshes the results, a double-click loads the image in Opera.
4. Mini Del.icio.us – this one is fantastic. It ask for a del.icio.us username at first start and offers a quick and easy way to load any bookmark of that user.
5. gCalendar – read only Calendar that pulls data from Google Calendar. Great for the quick overview.
6. Bug Me Not  – Users submit general passwords to the Bug me not database and everyone else may use those passwords to visit the website and read content that is for members only. Just enter a url and the widget searches the bug me not database and displays the results.
7. Pandora Radio – displays the Pandora radio in the widget window. Easy and fast access to your radio stations.
8. Digg Frontpage – displays the frontpage news of digg.com
9. Fark Frontpage – similar widget that displays news of fark.com
10. Bittorent – searches many torrent search engines, displays result in the widget.

AbiWord is open source and available on many platforms including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac Os, FreeBSD and others. The open source tool is able to read and write all important formats like Microsoft Word, Open Office, Word Perfect, Rich Text, web documents and more. This is ideal if you want to import files from different sources and work with them at. Plugins enhance the functionality tremendously, there are currently more than 50 free plugins and tools available as additional downloads from the AbiWord website.