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Jan 24

Firebug 1.5 Web Development Tool for Firefox Released

This article was written on January 20, 2010 by CyberNet.

firebug 15.png

Firebug is well known to web developers as one of the best tools to have at your side when trying to debug website issues. Many have said that it’s a priceless tool, and at one point Joe Hewitt wasn’t sure if it would remain free. He questioned whether users would be willing to shell out $15-$25 for an extension, but he strayed from the paid route in favor of keeping it open source.

Here we sit just days after the 4-year mark of the first public release, and this incredible extension has been downloaded well over 21 million times and has roughly 2.5 million people who start up a version of Firefox that is Firebug-equipped. With nearly 800 reviews this extension has an average 5-star rating, which is an incredible accomplishment no matter how you spin it.

The cherry on top is that Firebug 1.5 was released yesterday after about 6-months of development time. The release notes for this version are quite extensive, and you’ll quickly see that the update touches on just about every area that the extension covers. One of the more important things may be that Firebug 1.5 includes support for Firefox 3.6 that should be available sometime soon (possibly this week from what I’ve read). Here’s a quick rundown on the areas that have been improved upon:

Mike Radcliffe’s Inspector. A key feature, now solid as a rock
Jan ‘Honza’ Odvarko’s expanded and refined Net panel, with accurate timings
Steve Roussey’s reworking of HTML editing and entity support
Kevin Decker’s CSS and Style side panel improvements
Support for dynamic, graphical breakpoints through out Firebug
Tested support for the soon-to-be-released Firefox 3.6

If you use the add-on stop by and leave a quick review. It never hurts to say thanks for developing such an extensive and free add-on.

Firebug Homepage (Firefox extension)

Jan 23

Personas Offers Better Firefox Skinning

Posted in: Today's Chili

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

Firefox Personas One of the things that the Opera browser does way better than Firefox is skinning. In Opera you can go to their skin site, find a theme that you want to install, and preview it immediately in the browser. No restart is required.

Mozilla looks as though they are experimenting with a similar method via an extension called Personas. With Personas you’ll be able to perform basic skinning operations in Firefox without ever needing to restart the browser.

All of the goodness happens in the bottom-left corner of the Status Bar. That’s where a little icon will appear once you’ve installed the extension, and clicking on that icon will immediately present a list of themes that can be chosen. They’re organized according to the most popular, newest ones, and also broken up into categories. As of right now there are a few dozen different themes available for Personas users.

It’s important to note that these themes are not the same as the ones you download from Mozilla’s add-on site. The Personas themes do not skin any of the buttons or the Control Panel area, and the only changes you’ll really see is a new background image behind the Menus, Address Bar, Bookmarks, Tabs, and Status Bar. Despite being such a basic skinning alternative I did find that the themes give Firefox a refreshing appearance.

Now one can only hope that this will result in full skinning capabilities down the road, and that they’ll apply a similar technology to extension installation. Maybe Mozilla will be able to make restarting the browser a thing of the past!

Get Personas [via CyberNet Forum, Firefox Guru, and Ars]
Thanks to Richard and “S” for the tips!

Jan 09

Firefox 3 – Put More Emphasis on URL Highlighting

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on October 22, 2007 by CyberNet.

Firefox 3 URL Bar Stylish Way back in July we introduced a new Firefox 3 feature that focused on making users safer from phishing attacks. This is done using URL highlighting which puts more emphasis on the domain name, kind of like what the Locationbar² extension is used for.

Unfortunately this feature was backed out of the nightly builds shortly after it was put in. Apparently there were some problems getting it to work the way they expected it to, but it has finally made a reappearance in the latest Firefox 3 nightly builds!

Below you’ll find an animated image that show the current state of the Firefox 3 URL highlighting, and also one that demonstrates a tweak that I’m about to show you.

As it stands right now the URL highlighting is a bit basic, and I wanted to make it stand out even more than it already does. Using the Stylish Firefox extension we were able to make the domain name both bold and black, while the remaining portions of the URL were a lighter gray. To do this you just have to create a new style (pictured above) and insert the following CSS code:

#urlbar .formatted-url-domain{
   color: black !important;
   font-weight: bold !important;
}
#urlbar .formatted-url-contents{
   color: #777777 !important;
}

And finally here are two animated images that show the before and after:

How the URL appears before styling:
Firefox 3 Domain Highlight

How the URL appears after styling:
Firefox 3 Domain Highlight Styled

I think that the styled appearance is much better, and those of you familiar with CSS will find a lot of different customization options that you can apply to the different portions of the URL. You can even go crazy and underline, add a background, or put borders around the domain name!

Kudos to WildcatRay over in the Firefox forum for pointing this out!

Dec 24

Helpful Tip: Firefox “Secure Updates” Extension Warning

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on October 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

Firefox Extension Secure Updates

Mozilla is trying to beef up extension security in Firefox 3 by ensuring that the updates are provided by a secure address. All of the extensions on the official Mozilla add-ons site will work perfectly with this new system, but there could be problems when venturing outside of the site.

An example of this happened when I tried to install a development release of Tab Mix Plus. I was prompted with a message that said:

“Tab Mix Plus” will not be installed because it does not provide secure updates

As expected there is a hidden setting that you can adjust to prevent Firefox from checking the address from which an extension retrieves its updates. Here’s what you have to do:

Start Firefox.
In the Address Bar type “about:config” and press Enter.
Right-Click and select New->Boolean.
A box requesting the Preference Name will popup and you should enter “extensions.checkUpdateSecurity” (without the quotes). Press OK to continue.
Select “False” from the box and press OK again.

After that you should be able to install your extensions just as you normally would. Disabling this feature could pose a security risk though, so be careful with what extensions you install when this is disabled.

Dec 07

CyberSearch Passes 50,000 Downloads

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on May 07, 2009 by CyberNet.

cybersearch downloads.png Our homegrown CyberSearch Firefox extension has hit a big milestone last week as it passed the 50,000 download mark! I never expected the extension to be that well received, but I’m happy to see that so many users are finding it to be useful.

On average it looks like there are about 10,000 users running our extension each day, and at its peak there were about 13,200 users. If you’re interested in more stats they are all publicly available here.

So what’s next with CyberSearch? As of right now I don’t have any plans on adding new functionality, but one of the most requested features is to add support for other search engines like Yahoo. I would really like to do that, but the last time I looked at Yahoo’s search API it wasn’t quite as elaborate as what Google offers. So it would probably take a significant amount of work to make it work the way I’d want it to.

The main thing I’m focusing on right now is making sure the extension remains compatible with pre-release versions of Firefox 3.5, because as a Beta tester myself I know it can get frustrating when an extension stops working. I’m not using nightly builds right now though, so if you see a bug in a nightly release please shoot me an email so that I can look into whether it’s something I need to resolve.

We’ve updated the extension so that Firefox 3.5 testers should be able to install CyberSearch without needing to force the compatibility, which is something I’ve received several requests for. So if you’re using the extension I hope you’re enjoying it, and as always feel free to submit your feedback.

Dec 06

CyberNotes: Reduce Tab Clutter in Your Browser

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on April 18, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Tabs are probably one of the things that have almost become a requirement for Web browsers. Without tabs I know for sure that my productivity would dramatically decrease because they help me multitask in a way that keeps all of my Web browsing separated from my other applications. Heck, I probably average around 20 tabs open at a given time, and I can’t imagine having a separate window for each one of those cluttering up my Taskbar.

Now that I’m am addicted to tabs I find myself looking for ways to keep them better organized and separated. Sometimes this consists of opening a few different windows and separating out the tabs between them, or there are even some Firefox extensions that can help you get a little more organized.

—Firefox Extensions—

Seeing that Firefox is one of the most customizable browsers available I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise to you that there are a few extensions that can help reduce your tab clutter. The first extension is called Faviconize and you can set it up to collapse a tab down to only its icon. If you keep a large number of tabs open at any given time then this will save you a lot of room:

Faviconize

Then there is the Tab Groups extension which is essentially folders for your tabs. This is useful for me because I always have articles that I want to read when I get more time later on. I know that if I bookmark them I’ll forget to go back and read them, but with this extension I can keep the tabs open without cluttering up my tab bar:

Tab Groups for Firefox

The Separe extension is a little like the Tab Groups extension in the sense that you group your tabs, but it doesn’t use a folder-like structure for them. Instead it basically creates a blank tab that is orange in color, and you can place it anywhere on the tab bar to serve as a divider. It also includes a group management window that allows you to move tabs from one side of a divider to another:

Separe

—Drag and Drop—

Being able to drag and drop tabs between browser windows is something that both Firefox and Opera support. The concept is simple: open up multiple windows for your browser and drag tabs between them.

Opera Drag and Drop

Opera and Firefox each do drag and drop differently. Firefox actually makes a duplicate tab in the new window and doesn’t close the original, whereas Opera closes the original tab after it has been moved to the new window. I actually prefer the way Opera handles it because the reason I am moving a tab from one window to another is to reduce clutter, and by it automatically closing the tab in the original window it saves me an extra click.

—Overview—

I love seeing how tabs have evolved over the years and how they have become an important part of a user’s daily lives. I’m not sure what new additions will be added to tabbed interfaces, but if I had to guess I would would say being able to select multiple tabs simultaneously would be the next big thing (maybe hold down the Ctrl key and select multiple tabs?). You could then drag multiple tabs from one window to another, or close only the selected tabs. That may not seem like a ground-breaking feature, but it is something I have wanted for quite some time.

Dec 01

Mozilla’s Trimming the Fat from the Add-ons Site

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on February 10, 2007 by CyberNet.

Mozilla has announced that they will be relaunching the Firefox Add-ons site on Monday with only a handful of the extensions that are currently available. In fact, they are said to be trimming down the list of available add-ons to just several hundred, which means they could be cutting 80% to 90% of the ones listed on the site. To see just how many there were I did a quick search for the letter “a” which pulled up 2359 results. That number seems to be accurate since searching for “e” comes up with the same answer.

I am really glad to see Mozilla stepping up and trying to make the Add-ons site even better. When doing my Firefox 200 Extension Test I installed many of the top extensions that can be found on Mozilla’s site. To my surprise a lot of the ones I came across were junk and the download numbers are probably being faked by spammers. This could definitely hinder the experience that new Firefox users receive so I see a change as being a great thing.

Mozilla also said that they wanted to remove extensions that were not being updated anymore, which is completely understandable. They want users to have a great experience and that is often found with well-updated extensions. Using the advanced search feature I was able to find out how often the extensions have been getting updated:

26 extensions have been updated today
90 extensions have been updated this week
306 extensions have been updated this month
1938 extensions have been updated this year

Now all of the numbers I have mentioned here are for all of the Mozilla add-ons and not for just Firefox, which does have more than 92% of the 2359 listed. I thought more of the extensions would actually be outdated, but a huge majority have been updated at least once this year.

The extensions that get pulled will be put in a “sandbox” for users to vote on. That means the add-ons will have to earn their way to the public site in what appears to be a Digg-like fashion. I’m not sure how that whole process will work but I have fears that it may not be much better off than their current system…if spammers want their extension to make the public site they will surely find a way.

This will definitely be a way for Mozilla to analyze the quality of submitted extensions and sounds like it is a scalable solution (meaning as their products grow the system will still be able to manage itself). Just to be on the safe side though, you might want to save some of your favorite extensions to your hard drive especially if they haven’t been updated in awhile. I would assume that they will make it easy to download the extensions which have been removed from the site, but you know what happens when you assume something. 😉

Mozilla Add-ons Site

Source: ComputerWorld [via CyberNet Forum]

Nov 22

WYSIWYG in Firefox for ANY Text Field

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on April 04, 2008 by CyberNet.

Some of you might have heard of Xinha before because it is an open source online HTML editor. It has a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) interface so that you don’t have to understand how to code HTML in order to insert inline hyperlinks, or apply advanced formatting options.

There is actually an extension for Firefox called Xinha Here that will let you use this WYSIWYG editor in any field that you wish. A good example of this is our comment box where users can, if they know HTML, hyperlink text or place emphasis (bold, italics, etc…) on certain words. With this extension you just right-click in a text field and choose Open Xinha Here option. By default it will open along the lower half of the screen:

(Click to Enlarge)

You can edit the text using the WYSIWYG editor, and when you’re done click the Apply button to have the HTML code inserted back into the original text field. Pretty cool, huh? Just remember that this will only work for fields that support HTML code, such as our comments.

Compatibility: The extension is officially compatible with Firefox 2, but I didn’t have any problems with it in Firefox 3 Beta 5. If you’re using Firefox 3 and want to install the extension it’s recommended that you grab it from here. Firefox 3 users will also need to force Firefox to ignore the version compatibility information.

Xinha Here Firefox Extension

Nov 20

Monitor Sites for Changes with Mr. Uptime

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on August 10, 2007 by CyberNet.

Mr. Uptime

There is a cool Firefox extension available called Mr. Uptime. With it you can monitor sites that are currently not available, and it will notify you when the site is back up and running. I’m guessing that this is going to appeal the most to the Digg crowd since they constantly encounter sites that collapse under heavy load.

How does it work? A toolbar will appear anytime that you get "Page Not Found" message, and from that toolbar you can begin monitoring the site to see if it is back up yet. There is also a right-click menu option that will let you highlight text and watch for that text to change on the page. This would be useful for a site that is performing maintenance where there is no error, but you can still have Mr. Uptime monitor for when the text changes.

Here’s a list of it’s features:

Status change – Watch when the server status code changes from an error to OK (HTTP status code 200).
Regular Checks – Mr. Uptime checks for updates every 5 minutes for the first 60 minutes. Every 10 minutes for the next 120 minutes. Every 15 minutes for the next 180 minutes. Every 30 minutes for the next 240 minutes. Every 60 minutes after that.
Efficient – It uses less bandwidth than a regular visit to a website since it either just checks the web server response or if a string exists or not on the page. It doesn’t load any images, etc.
Keywords – Set a keyword that the website should or should not contain to be considered ok.
Time to watch – Set how long you want to keep checking a website. After this time it will be removed from the watchlist even if it hasn’t become available.
Notifications – Choose to open the website in a new tab or a new window when it becomes available. You can also optionally get an alert dialog box to notify you when a website is working again.
Easy to use and discreet – The interface will not clutter your Firefox window. The toolbar is only shown when an error is encountered or when you choose to open it yourself. You will not get another toolbar taking up valuable space in Firefox.

This isn’t an extension that I’m going to install simply because I don’t come across enough sites that are down on a daily basis. I maybe come across two or three each week, so this would be pretty unnecessary for me. If downtime is a frequent problem for the sites you visit, or they are constantly undergoing maintenance then this would probably be pretty useful.

Get the Mr. Uptime Firefox Extension

Nov 14

CyberNotes: Firefox Profile Backup Solutions

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on January 02, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

There’s no doubt that your browser stores a lot of important information that could leave you in quite a bind should it disappear all of a sudden. The Firefox users out there probably have a bunch of extensions installed and configured, settings tweaked just the way they like them, obscure passwords stored that no human could possibly memorize, and enough bookmarks saved to make even a hardcore geek nauseous.

I don’t find much joy in the fact that a hard drive can crash at anytime for any number of reasons. We’ve had it happen twice this year, but fortunately for us we had backups of all our most important information. You shouldn’t even think twice about backing up your browser’s profile, and that’s why today we’re going to show you two easy and free Firefox profile backup solutions!

–MozBackup (Homepage)–

This is a small program that you can download, and on the website you’re given the choice between an installable version or a no-install ZIP version. I opted for the ZIP version because I can always keep it on my USB drive, which conveniently happens to be the place where I store my Firefox profile backup.

MozBackup is not restricted just to Firefox profiles either. It can also backup profiles for Thunderbird, Seamonkey, Mozilla Suite, and Netscape. Don’t worry, you’ll be prompted early on in MozBackup to select specifically what application and profile you want to backup.

You’ll then be able to pick exactly what you want to backup, such as bookmarks, history, extensions, passwords, cookies, and more. I’ve documented the entire process in screenshots:

(Click to Enlarge)

Once you’ve got the backup done it will create a single file that can be used to restore everything that you backed up. To perform a restoration just go back through the wizard, and on the second screen just choose the Restore a profile option instead of Backup a profile.

Tip: Close Firefox before using MozBackup, otherwise it will prompt you to do so in the middle of the wizard.

–FEBE (Homepage)–

I find this to be a rather interesting profile backup option for Firefox. FEBE (short for Firefox Environment Backup Extension) is an extension that can be used to backup important parts of your profile. Things like themes, extensions, bookmarks, preferences, cookies, passwords and more can all be saved to a single file, and restored at a moments notice.

What really makes this a fantastic choice for backing up your Firefox profile is that it has scheduling capabilities. You can choose to have your profile automatically backed up daily, weekly, monthly, or you can just set it to remind you every few days.

The first thing you’ll want to do after installing FEBE is go and setup the directory where your backups will be stored. Then from the Tools -> FEBE menu you can initiate your first backup of whatever profile items you chose in the options.

(Click to Enlarge)

As you can see this is an extremely intuitive option for backing up your Firefox profile, but MozBackup is also nice since it works with several different Mozilla applications. The choice of which backup solution is obviously up to you, but take them seriously because they could save you a lot of trouble in the future.

Hasta La Gadget!

Firebug 1.5 Web Development Tool for Firefox Released

Personas Offers Better Firefox Skinning

Firefox 3 – Put More Emphasis on URL Highlighting

Helpful Tip: Firefox “Secure Updates” Extension Warning

CyberSearch Passes 50,000 Downloads

CyberNotes: Reduce Tab Clutter in Your Browser

Mozilla’s Trimming the Fat from the Add-ons Site

WYSIWYG in Firefox for ANY Text Field

Monitor Sites for Changes with Mr. Uptime

CyberNotes: Firefox Profile Backup Solutions

–MozBackup (Homepage)–

–FEBE (Homepage)–

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