CyberNotes: Share a Firefox Profile Between Ubuntu and Windows

This article was written on October 24, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

One of the new things in Ubuntu 7.10 is the ability to read and write to NTFS formatted drives, which is great for Windows XP and Vista users. What that means is that you can create a Firefox profile in Windows and set it up so that Ubuntu uses the exact same profile.

Why would that be nice to have? Any bookmarks, extensions, and options you configure in Windows will be used in Ubuntu as well. You won’t have to spend extra time trying to setup a Firefox profile just for Ubuntu, which for me makes this trick a must!

Here’s what you have to do:

  1. Call up the terminal in Ubuntu, and type firefox -profilemanager at the prompt:
    Firefox Ubuntu Profile 1
  2. You should be presented with the Firefox Profile Manager which we’ll use to create a new profile. After you press the Create Profile button you’ll need to click Next on the following screen.
    Firefox Ubuntu Profile 2
  3. Here you’ll want to type in the name of the new profile, and once you’ve done that click the Choose Folder button:
    Firefox Ubuntu Profile 3
  4. This is where you need to hunt down the location of your Firefox profile on your Windows partition, which in my case was labeled by default in Ubuntu as “sda2″. The profiles are located at Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ on Windows XP/2000 or users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ on Windows Vista. After you select your Firefox profile folder click the Open button.
    (Click to Enlarge)
    Firefox Ubuntu Profile 4
  5. Now you can finish up the profile creation process. When you’re taken back to the Profile Manager, select the new profile that you just made, and start Firefox. If you check the Don’t ask at startup option, Firefox will always use that profile as the default one.
    Firefox Ubuntu Profile 5

See, I told you it was simple! The same type of thing can be done with Mozilla Thunderbird, but I thought Firefox was a good place to start. Enjoy having all of the same extensions, bookmarks, and settings in your Windows and Ubuntu versions of Firefox! 😉

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

Helpful Tip: Get the Old Firefox Address Bar Back

This article was written on December 21, 2007 by CyberNet.

If you’ve been brave enough to venture into the realm of Firefox 3 Beta 2 there is no denying that you’ve seen the newly designed Location/Address Bar (pictured above). It’s big, prominent, and is likely to irritate some people who prefer the more streamlined Address Bar that we’ve come to know and love. Give me just 30 seconds of your time and we can bring back the classic look…

  1. Start Firefox.
  2. In the Address Bar type “about:config” and press Enter.
  3. Right-Click and select New->Boolean.
  4. A box requesting the Preference Name will popup and you should enter “browser.urlbar.richResults ” (without the quotes). Press OK to continue.
  5. Select “False” from the box and press OK again.
  6. Restart Firefox

Now you should be able to enjoy your single-line condensed view of addresses that are shown when you begin to type in the Location Bar. Obviously this setting will have no effect on older versions of Firefox, but a lot of people I know have already jumped on the Firefox 3 bandwagon so I thought it would be a good time to share this tip.

Oh, and don’t forget about the last Address Bar tip we posted. That works in all versions of Firefox.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

Firefox 3 – Put More Emphasis on URL Highlighting

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!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

Helpful Tip: Remove Flickr Spaceball.gif in Firefox and Opera

This article was written on September 28, 2007 by CyberNet.

Flickr Spaceball GIF One of the things you may have noticed with Flickr is that the photos will have another image overlaid on top of them called spaceball.gif (here is an example photo) This prevents you from copying the address to the image or being able to save it to your computer. If you try to save spaceball.gif to your computer all you’ll get is a 1×1 pixel image that has no content to it.

Today we’re going to show you how to remove the spaceball.gif overlay image on Flickr photos. It’s pretty easy to do in both Firefox and Opera…

–How do I Remove Spaceball.gif in Firefox?–

  1. Install the Stylish extension if you haven’t done so already.
  2. Create a new Style by right-clicking on the Status Bar icon.
  3. Add whatever description you would like, but in the content area paste this:
     
    @-moz-document domain(flickr.com) {
    img[src*="spaceball.gif"] {display:none !important;}
    }

     
    Firefox Flickr Spaceball GIF Remover

–How do I Remove Spaceball.gif in Opera?–

  1. Go to Tools -> Advanced -> Blocked Content, and press the Add button.
  2. Add this as the URL to block:
     
    *flickr.com/images/spaceball.gif
     
     Opera Flickr Spaceball GIF Remover

Thanks to the anonymous tipster who sent this in!

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

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

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

Firefox Add-ons 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]

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

Drive your Friends Crazy with this Firefox Trick!

This article was written on April 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

Embedded Firefox

I just came across this nifty little Firefox trick that is sure to drive some of your friends crazy! As seen in the screenshot above you can very easily embed multiple Firefox windows inside of your main Firefox window. All you have to do is enter this into the Firefox address bar and press Enter:

chrome://browser/content/browser.xul

The usefulness of this trick is probably next to nothing, but it will surely drive your friends crazy when they see their Firefox looking like the screenshot above! If you set their homepage to the address listed above it will automatically create a second Firefox window, but from what I can tell you can’t make it create multiple windows inside of windows like I did above without manually typing in the address into each address field.

Make sure you let us know any good tricks you pull with this one. 🙂

Source: SeeJay

 

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

Amazing: Add an XGL-Like Effect to Firefox Tabs with this Extension

This article was written on January 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tab Effects

If you are just the slightest bit familiar with Linux then I am sure that you have heard of XGL. It is what adds all of the realistic 3D effects to the windows that you drag around and the virtual desktops that you switch between. Of course, one of the most popular features is probably the 3D cube for switching between your virtual desktops.

There is a new Firefox extension in town and it is called Tab Effect (the screenshot above is from the extension, not XGL). With the assistance of a little DirectX 8 (and beyond) it is able to provide transitional effects when switching between your tabs. Now it isn’t exactly like XGL where you can manually rotate a cube for switching between tabs, but the animation makes it look like you are rotating a cube each time you switch tabs. Honestly, this is the most amazing visual effect that I have ever seen in Firefox. If you’re one of those people who doesn’t like a little extra “eye candy” then this extension won’t be for you…it doesn’t make you more productive or add any useful features.

So now for the downside. I’m not sure if this will happen for everyone, but whenever I tried to create a new blank tab Firefox would crash if I was running this extension. If I was just opening a link to a site in a new tab it would be fine, but that is still quite a huge drawback for me. The extension was just released yesterday so there are a lot of kinks that needed to be worked out (and reading through the comments confirms that), but I’m sure it will continue to be developed since it is a new extension. Not to mention that this could put Firefox ahead of other browsers in terms of visual effects.

Once it stabilizes I will definitely be adding this to my small collection of extensions!

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com