Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on October 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

The other day Netscape took the plunge and provided a completely reworked version of their browser. The new Netscape 9 is based on the Firefox 2 browser, and therefore has some really nice features such as inline spell checking. It kicks things up a notch by including several features you won’t find in Firefox, well, not by default that is.

Most of the features in Netscape 9 aren’t really innovations, and really only demonstrate how well the Netscape developers are able to integrate existing Firefox extensions into the browser. So it really poses the question “why would you want to install Netscape?” Honestly, I have no idea. By using Firefox you are guaranteed to be among the first to get security patches, the same ones Netscape users may have to wait awhile for until they are ported over.

We didn’t write a review of Netscape 9 because we covered it pretty in-depth when the first Beta was released. Since then there has been hardly any changes, and so we thought this time around it would be better to show where you can download many of Netscape’s best features for Firefox.

Note: All screenshots have been taken in Firefox 2 using the Netscape theme.

–Netscape 9 Theme (Download)–

Inevitably one of the first things that we have to do is grab the Netscape 9 theme. It is available for Firefox as the Netstripe theme, and you’ll quickly see the resemblance. In fact, the theme was actually posted by the Netscape team. Hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

Click to Enlarge

One of the major differences is that in Netscape the Stop and Reload buttons are combined, but in this theme it just hides the Stop button when it’s not needed. It will show up when a site is loading though, and will appear immediately to the right of the Reload button. We’ll show you how to circumvent this problem later on.

–URL Correction (Download)–

Netscape 9 monitors the URL that you type into the Address Bar with your fat fingers just waiting for you to make a stupid mistake. If you misspell something it will automatically correct it, and if you so desire it can show a confirmation before it does so. This feature was essentially yanked straight from the URL Fixer extension for Firefox.

An example of where this works is if you type in cybernetnews.con into the Address Bar it will automatically change it to cybernetnews.com:

–Link Pad (Download)–

This is one of the more unique features that Netscape 9 does have. It provides a quick way for you to save a link to a website without actually having to store it in your bookmarks. It’s a nice feature, but I have “junk” folder in my bookmarks that serves this very purpose.

There is a Firefox extension, however, that does virtually the same thing as Link Pad plus some. It’s called ScrapBook, and with it you can “bookmark” sites. ScrapBook also lets you add notes to sites.

–Sidebar Mini Browser (Download)–

This feature doesn’t have an exact counterpart, but the Firefox alternative is a little bit better. In Netscape you can show full navigation controls (forward, back, stop, etc…) in the sidebar so that you can truly browse a website from there. In Firefox you can open sites in the sidebar, but navigating around can be a little bit of a pain.

To conquer that issue we turn to the Split Browser extension. With it you can “split” a window as many times as you would like, which can lead to some pretty crazy collages. It also lets you tile tabs, which is one of the reasons I think it is better than Netscape’s offering. And since this doesn’t use the sidebar to display the secondary site you can still have your bookmarks, or other things open there.

–Restart the Browser (Download)–

Ahh, it’s amazing what a difference the simplest things can make. The “Restart Navigator” option that was added to the File Menu in Netscape is really nice because it keeps all of your current tabs intact after a restart, but likewise there is an extension to do it in Firefox.

–Resizeable Textarea (Download)–

Don’t you just hate when you’re commenting on a site or in a forum and it only has a small box to type your reply? That’s one of the reason I added the expand/contract option to our comment box below, but what about sites that don’t have such a feature?

In Netscape 9 all you have to do is grab the corner of a text box and drag it until it’s as big as you want it to be. And Firefox users, yep, there’s an extension for that as well called Resizeable Textarea:

–Tab History (Download)–

Picture this, you’re doing a search on Google and you open one of the search results in a new tab. When you try to hit the back button it does nothing, which is expected because the search result was the first thing to be opened in that tab, so there is no history associated with it.

That’s all in the past now (no pun intended)! The Tab History extension will let you retain the history of any parent tab. In this example screenshot I was on our site, and opened the “Live Search 411″ link in a new tab. You’ll notice that it retained the history of the originating tab:

–OPML Support (Download)–

OPML files are commonly known as the primary way for importing and exporting RSS feeds from a feed reader. Seeing that Firefox supports Livemarks (a.k.a. RSS feeds in your bookmarks) it would only seem natural to be able to import and export items to/from your bookmarks, right?

OPML Support is an extension that will do just that, and it lets you choose whether to just do Livemarks, bookmarks, or both.

–Combined Stop/Reload Button (Download)–

This extension works wonderful with any theme, and is needed if you want to mimic how the Netscape 9 theme works. Once installed the Stop button will only be shown when a website is loading, and the Reload button will show the rest of the time. It works perfectly as you can see here while our site was loading:

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

Netscape Navigator Kicks the CanYour Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryYour Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryBest Greasemonkey Scripts – Element ResizerYour Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

This article was written on June 25, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Firefox 3 (review) has been out for just barely over a week now and it has been downloaded over 19 million times according to Spread Firefox. Many of you requested that we assemble a tweaks guide just like we did with Firefox 2, and so that’s exactly what we’ve got in store for you today.

Before we get started with our guide we would like to mention is that we also have a Firefox 3 extension in the works that will be ready for all of you eager testers next week. We’re not going to say too much about it right now other than it’s something that can greatly enhance your productivity. So keep your eyes peeled for more information early next week!

–Table of Contents–

To make the guide a little easier for you to navigate we’ve created a table of contents that highlights all of the tips and tricks covered in this article:

1. How to use About:Config
2. Session Restore Saving Frequency
3. Don’t Search Bookmarks or History in the Address Bar
4. Increase the Number of Results in the Address Bar
5. Use Bookmark Tags for Better Address Bar Placement
6. Get a Firefox 2 Style Address Bar
7. Manage Search Keywords
8. Enable Advanced Color Profile Support
9. Get the Firefox 3 Theme used on a Different OS
10. Smaller Back Button (Remove the “Keyhole” design)
11. Supercharge the Smart Bookmarks
12. Change Default Applications
13. Change Page Zoom to Text Zoom
14. Get Notified when a Website Redirects You
15. Disable Antivirus Scanning
16. Some Oldies, but Goodies
17. Overview

–How to use About:Config–

If you’ve been following our site you’re probably already familiar with how the about:config works in Firefox, but since several of these tips utilize the about:config screen I figured it wouldn’t hurt to provide a crash course. So before we dive into the tweaks glance through to make sure you know how to make the adjustments, or just reference this section when you need it.

1. Start Firefox.
2. Type about:config into the address bar and press Enter. When you’re presented with the warning screen click the I’ll be careful, I promise button:
   
3. You should see a long list of hidden settings that look meaningless and confusingly complicated:
   
4. Now comes the fun part of actually modifying and/or creating new values:
   • If I tell you that the key already exists then you can type the name of the preference in the Filter box, and it will instantly show only the matching results. Once you find the preference you’re looking for just double-click on it to change the value.
   • If I tell you that the key does not exist you will need to create a new value manually. Don’t be intimidated… it’s not as difficult as it sounds. Just right-click on any entry on the about:config screen, go to the New menu, and choose either string, integer, or boolean depending on what I tell you.
     
5. You may need to restart your browser for some of the options to take effect.
6. Wanna go back to the way something was before you tweaked it? Any of the preferences can be reset to their default values in the event that something doesn’t work the way you expected it to. This can be done by right-clicking on the particular option in about:config, and selecting Reset. Values that have been changed at one point or another will appear in bold text, and once they have been reset they should no longer be bold.

–Session Restore Saving Frequency–

Whenever Firefox crashes it will try to restore all of your open tabs to the way they were. This has come in handy several times for me before, but sometimes I notice that it isn’t able to restore all of my tabs for me.

That’s because Firefox, by default, only saves the session restore data every 10 seconds, but you can configure that time interval to whatever you would like.

• Name: browser.sessionstore.interval
• Preference Needs to be Created: No
• Preference Type: Integer
• Default Value: 10000
• Possible values:
  • The number of milliseconds between session restore saving. For example, entering in 1000 would cause the session restore data to be saved every 1 second, whereas a value of 20000 would make it happen every 20 seconds.

–Don’t Search Bookmarks or History in the Address Bar–

One of the big complaints that I’ve heard with the new address bar is that it includes results from your bookmarks and browsing history, instead of just the website addresses you’ve typed into it. While I’m glad to see that the address bar includes bookmarks and history, I know that this can add some unwanted “noise” to the results for some people.

• Name: browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped
• Preference Needs to be Created: No
• Preference Type: Boolean
• Default Value: False
• Possible values:
  • True – Will only search addresses you’ve entered into the address bar, and will not search your bookmarks or history.
  • False – Will search addresses you’ve typed in, bookmarks, and history

–Increase the Number of Results in the Address Bar–

By default the address bar will always show 12 results in the drop-down menu, which is probably more than enough for most people. If you prefer to see more (or fewer) results you can alter how many items can be displayed with the following setting:

• Name: browser.urlbar.maxRichResults
• Preference Needs to be Created: No
• Preference Type: Integer
• Default Value: 12
• Possible values:
  • The number of results you would like to appear in the address bar drop-down menu.

–Use Bookmark Tags for Better Address Bar Placement–

Tagging bookmarks is one of those things that I wasn’t sure I’d use when I first played around with it in early versions of Firefox 3, but since the address bar also includes results from your bookmarks it can come in handy. To demonstrate what I mean I created a fresh profile in Firefox 3. Then I visited our homepage, bookmarked and tagged it with “cybernet,” and then went to Yahoo.com and tagged that with “cybernet” as well.

I visited Yahoo a few more times to make sure that I had visited it more than “cybernetnews.com,” and then when you search from the address bar you’ll notice that it also searches your tags:

Since I had visited Yahoo.com more than CyberNetNews.com the Yahoo result showed up as first, and the point of this experiment is to show that you can use the tag system to help manipulate what results show up for certain keywords. If I hadn’t added the “cybernet” tag to the Yahoo.com bookmark it would have never shown up here.

–Get a Firefox 2 Style Address Bar–

I understand that some of you don’t like the new address bar at all, and there’s an extension available for reverting back to the default Firefox 2 address bar behavior. The layout is more compact, the Go button will always be visible, and only addresses that you type into the address bar are included in the results.

This extension is still experimental, which means you’ll need to login to the Mozilla site before being able to install it. If you don’t have a login you can use a generic one that I’ve created over at Mozilla:

• Username: firefox@cybernetnews.com
• Password: cybernetnews

Note: If someone decides to be funny and change the password just let us know. Since we have full control over the email address we can change the password back at anytime.

Thanks to Jann for the tip!

–Manage Search Keywords–

We’ve shown you how to add keywords for pretty much any website, but Mozilla wanted to make it a little easier to add keywords to the sites in the search box. To do this just click the arrow in the search box that is used to display a listing of all your search engines. Then choose the Manage Search Engines option. From here you can manage all of the keywords that are used for the search engines:

–Enable Advanced Color Profile Support–

Those of you that are photo enthusiasts might enjoy the fact that Firefox has advanced color profile capabilities. It’s not enabled by default because it can cause a 10-15% performance hit for the browser, but if image quality is that important to you this might be something you want to enable. Here’s a great comparison between Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 (with the color profile turned on):

• Name: gfx.color_management.enabled
• Preference Needs to be Created: No
• Preference Type: Boolean
• Default Value: False
• Possible values:
  • True – Enables color profile support so that the colors appear richer
  • False – Disables color profile support so that you have better performance

[via dria & Lifehacker]

–Get the Firefox 3 Theme used on a Different OS–

Don’t like the default theme that’s included with Firefox 3? There is an abundance of other themes available, but as you’re probably aware Firefox 3 ships with customized themes based upon the operating system that you’re using. The good news is that you can grab the default Mac or Windows themes no matter which operating system you’re using.

–Smaller Back Button (Remove the “Keyhole” design)–

Mozilla wanted to make an aspect of their browser stand out from the crowd, and they did so by super-sizing the back button in the browser with a “keyhole” design. That button single handedly makes the navigation toolbar taller than it needs to be, but luckily there’s a quick fix without having to scrap the theme all together.

To remedy this go to View -> Toolbars -> Customize, and check the Use Small Icons box. You should see the back button shrink down to the size of the forward button, just like in the screenshot above.

–Supercharge the Smart Bookmarks–

Firefox 3 includes advanced bookmarking capabilities known as Smart Bookmarks, and they are similar to the automatic playlists that media players, such as iTunes, can generate for you. These Smart Bookmarks can show you things like your most visited sites, recent bookmarks, and even the most visited pages for a specific domain. Here’s a rather comprehensive set of instructions as to how you can create your own Smart Bookmarks.

–Change Default Applications–

Firefox has a nice configuration tool for selecting the default applications for certain types of URL’s and media. And when I refer to “applications” I don’t just mean the programs you have installed on your computer… it also includes web applications such as Gmail and 30Boxes.

If you pull up the preferences for Firefox you should see an Applications tab, and from there you can configure the default applications. Although it’s not there by default Gmail can be configured for mailto links.

–Change Page Zoom to Text Zoom–

Firefox 3 introduced a new type of zooming that scales everything on the page, including the style, images, and text. That way when you zoom in or out it’s a little more like taking a magnifying glass to the whole site, but some people still prefer the old method where Firefox only adjusted the size of the text when zooming. You can re-enable the text-only zoom by going to View -> Zoom, and selecting the Zoom Text Only option.

–Get Notified when a Website Redirects You–

Some websites redirect users from one address to another, and it often happens so quickly that it can be difficult to catch. This could be a bad thing because the site could try to redirect you to a malicious or inappropriate site, but you can setup Firefox 3 to alert you when things like this happen. To enable this feature open up the Firefox preferences, switch to the Advanced -> General tab, and then check the box labeled Warn me when web sites try to redirect or reload the page. Then whenever a site tries to redirect you from one page to another you should see a warning bar like this one:

–Disable Antivirus Scanning–

For Windows users when Firefox 3 finishes downloading a file it will initiate a virus scan using any antivirus application that the user has installed on the computer. If you download a lot of files (especially large files) this can become a bottleneck for you as you wait for each file to be scanned, especially when many antivirus applications will automatically scan all incoming files. That means each file you download might get scanned twice.

By jumping into the about:config you can enable or disable this setting at your leisure:

• Name: browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone
• Preference Needs to be Created: No
• Preference Type: Boolean
• Default Value: True
• Possible values:
  • True – Scans each download with the installed antivirus application
  • False – Does not scan each download with the installed antivirus application

Thanks to xpgeek for the tip!

–Some Oldies, but Goodies–

Most of the stuff that we’ve covered today we’ve never written about before, but we didn’t want to leave out those tips and tricks from the days of Firefox 2 that still work. So here are some of our favorite tweaks from our Firefox 2 configuration guide:

• Change the minimum width of the tabs
• Configure when/if the close button should appear on tabs
• Eliminate JavaScript popups
• Enable inline spell checking in all text fields
• Increase the maximum number of connections
• Open search box results in new tabs
• Lower the amount of physical memory used by Firefox

Thanks for the tips Max!

–Overview–

We’ve included a lot of great Firefox 3 tricks here, but there are a lot more that have yet to be discovered. As we come across other great tips we’ll be posting them to the site just like we have been over the last few years. Plus we’re sure that many of you have plenty of your own tips, and hopefully you’ll take the time to share them with us in the comments!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

Your Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryCyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryCyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryYour Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryFirefox 3 Download Stats

We know Google mentioned it would be a “good citizen” and allow Hulu to block its browser ID, but that doesn’t mean you have to be one too. By default, accessing the website from a Google TV device yields a prompt hoping you’ll wait for the two to work out some kind of agreement on Hulu Plus access, but with a Flash enabled browser at the ready, we’re sure all you want to do is press play. The fine folks over at GadgetWhore first discovered that by digging deep into the advanced settings of the Chrome browser app and changing the browser ID to “Generic” or any custom string one may prefer, Hulu streams immediately start playing with no problem (users may want to change back to default afterwards to make sure other pages render properly.) That’s one benefit of having a “run-of-the-mill” desktop browser integrated into your set-top box, so w while early adopters may only be moments away from discovering the dark side of Google TV, it seems like a few easy browser tweaks may take care of most issues — let us know if you’ve run into any others.

Playing Hulu on Google TV is as easy as changing one setting originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink GTVHub, Simply Google TV  |  GadgetWhore  | Email this | Comments

This article was written on December 17, 2005 by CyberNet.

Maxthon has released the next version of its web browser, version 1.5.1 which is the only update over the past two months. They fixed many of the internal bugs, along with adding better pop-up blocking. Also, they redesigned the home page so that it will be better for the user’s needs. Lastly, they added a “Pin to start page” on the RSS side bar which makes it easier to add feeds to your home page. If you are a Maxthon user then you should rejoice at another update! Maxthon is great because it will added the critical features that Microsoft Internet Explorer lacks, such as tabs (duh!). It adds a ton of features all while using Internet Explorer as a base, which is great because any site that works in Internet Explorer (just about all of them, except maybe www.killbillsbrowser.com) will work in Maxthon. If you are looking for an Internet Explorer Alternative then look no further.

Some more features include:

• Tabbed Browsing Interface
• Mouse Gestures
• Super Drag&Drop
• Privacy Protection
• AD Hunter
• RSS Reader
• IE Extensions Support
• External Utility Bar
• Skinning
• And Much More to Explore…

Maxthon’s Home Page

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on April 30, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

One of the most popular extensions for Firefox is Greasemonkey simply because it gives developers and users a chance to customize their browsing experience with very little work. The extension has been downloaded over 165,000 times which is pretty incredible, and new scripts that power the extension are always being created.

Given the popularity of the scripting system it comes as no surprise that Internet Explorer has something very similar, but it too requires an add-on before you’ll be able to get it to work. It just so happens that one of the best add-ons for doing so is IE7Pro, which in general is an awesome tool to have installed in Internet Explorer 7.

Once you get IE7Pro installed and running you can check out some of the scripts that it comes with by pulling up the configuration screen. Along the left side you should see a section dedicated to the User Scripts:

It comes with over a dozen different scripts out-of-the-box which is definitely a nice touch. Some are more handy than others, but there are a few that really stand out to me. The Show Password onMouseOver is really nice because it will reveal the contents of a password field when you hover over it with your mouse.

One problem with finding more is that you can’t go and grab a script designed for Greasemonkey because not all of them will work. The creators of IE7Pro realized that, and that’s why they setup their own script site that hosts only the scripts that function properly with their add-on. We thought it would be fun to go through the scripts they have posted, and pull out our favorites. So that’s exactly what we’ve done.

–No JavaScript Errors (Homepage)–

If you’ve ever used any version of Internet Explorer it’s very likely that you’ve been pestered by those annoying popups saying that there is an error with the JavaScript on the page you’re viewing. I’m not sure if anyone really knows why Microsoft decided to show the general population this message when the developers are really the only ones who can do anything about it. Oh well.

This script will, however, save you some frustration by hiding those popups from you. Is it not amazing that something so simple can be the number one script on the site with over 64,000 installs!

–Google Redesign (Homepage)–

If you’ve been wanting to make Google look a little better then this is the perfect opportunity. With this script your Google search results will use up the full width of the screen, and each result will be nicely divided making it a lot easier on the eyes. Check it out:

–Google Two Columns (Homepage)–

If the previous Google redesign wasn’t for you, then maybe this one will be! This takes your Google results and splits them up into two different columns. You might find this especially useful if you have a widescreen monitor and like to browse the Internet using all of the screen space that it has to offer.

–Compatibility Script for IE7Pro (Homepage)–

This script doesn’t actually “do” anything. It’s sole purpose is to make more Greasemonkey scripts compatible with IE7Pro. It consists of over 1,500 lines of code that try to replicate the functions and features provided by Greasemonkey so that it’s a lot more likely for these scripts to work. I’m actually a little surprised that this doesn’t come with IE7Pro.

–EZ Resize (Homepage)–

I find this script to be one of the more essential ones. With it you’re able to resize any text area or input field on a site. If it’s an input field that you’re dealing with (such as the search box on Google’s homepage) just put your mouse along the right side and you should see your cursor turn into the double-ended arrow. You’re then ready to resize the box.

Similarly, if you’re trying to resize a text area (such as our large comment box) you’ll want to put your mouse in the bottom-right corner. The cursor will once again turn into a double-ended arrow indicating that you can begin resizing the box.

–Inline MP3 Player (Homepage)–

Ever come across an MP3 on the Internet that you wanted to play, but didn’t want to download? This script will add a small icon next to any MP3 file that will let you stream the song instead of downloading it first.

–Overview–

Right now the number of scripts that are on the site is quite small, but I suspect that they will be growing as more people realize that they are available. Not only that but with the help of the Greasemonkey compatibility script that I mentioned above you should be able to use most of the scripts that are already out there.

Hope this helps some of you who are still using Internet Explorer!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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