Hasta La Gadget!

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

We’re almost halfway through the year, and it looks as though Internet Explorer is once again continuing its steady decline in usage. April’s stats were interesting because Internet Explorer appeared to have a nice boost in market share, but it was then discovered that there was a big IE marketing campaign going on that caused the stats to be skewed.

All of the mainstream browsers other than Internet Explorer saw a nice little bump in market share for May 2008. In fact, Firefox, Safari, and Opera all hit record highs according to the statistical history available at Net Applications. Those three browsers combined now control over a quarter of the browser market.

And then there is the whole “Safari on Windows” saga that continues. Safari for Windows only saw a 0.04% increase in market share over the previous month despite Apple’s valiant effort to push the browser on any user with iTunes or QuickTime installed on their PC. That brings the total market share for Safari on Windows up to 0.27%, which isn’t too shabby considering how new it is.

Alright, here’s the rundown on the top 10 browsers in terms of market share for May 2008, along with how much they changed over April:

Congrats to Firefox for being the biggest mover of the month! Can’t wait to see what the next few months are like as Mozilla tries to attract new users with Firefox 3.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 12, 2007 by CyberNet.

There are some Firefox extensions that are more useful than others, and one of the featured extensions over at Learn Firefox yesterday was StatusbarEx. It is probably one of the more useful extensions that I have seen because it not only displays the memory usage for your entire computer, but also for Firefox.

Using this tool you are able to monitor both the memory usage of Firefox as well as the CPU usage. That way you’ll be able to keep tabs (no pun intended) on possible memory leaks so that you can restart Firefox before it gets too slow.

The only thing that I couldn’t get to work was the network usage. It is supposed to show how much data has been transferred, but it always remained at 0K for me no matter which adapter I used. Oh well, being able to monitor the Firefox memory and CPU usage is worth enough in itself for me to keep this extension installed.

For more extensions head on over to Learn Firefox. Almost 50 Firefox extensions have been reviewed at this point, and there are dozens of other guides available on using and tweaking Firefox.

Install StatusbarEx

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on December 05, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

One of the things that I’m looking forward to the most with Firefox 3 is to see what kind of redesign they will come up with for Vista users. Right now the Firefox theme in Vista is anything but stellar, but it is possible to improve it with very little work on your part. We are going to walk you through several changes that you can make, all of which will keep the default Firefox theme in tact. We’re not looking to clone Internet Explorer 7 … we just want a good looking Firefox!

All of the tweaks we are going to demonstrate are available on Userstyles.org, which means you’ll want to have the Stylish extension installed before continuing. That way it will just take a few clicks to get each feature installed. Lets get stylin’!

–Toolbar Color (Homepage)–

One of the things that irks some people, including me, is the toolbar background color in Firefox. It is like a pastel blue, and doesn’t feel anywhere near the same as it does in other versions of Windows. You can change that though by adding this style to your repertoire, and you should notice a difference rather quickly:

Note the change in background color behind the navigation buttons

–Maximized Toolbar Color (Homepage)–

When you maximize Internet Explorer 7 in Vista it darkens the toolbar background to make it easier to focus on the content of the page. This style will do the exact same thing for Firefox so that only when the browser is maximized will it have the dark background. In the screenshot below we also have the Hide Menubar extension installed which makes the Menubar disappear until you press the Alt key.

–Tab Background (Homepage)–

If you didn’t decide to go with the first style mentioned in this article you may want to consider using this one. It will alter the background color behind the tabs to match that of the toolbars (the pastel blue), which I think does help tremendously in making Firefox have more visual appeal:

Note the difference in background colors next to the last tab

–Joined Back/Forward Buttons (Homepage)–

I’m a bit uneasy as to how well this fits into the default Firefox theme, but it will work for any theme that you are using. If you prefer to have the back and forward buttons “joined at the hips” like they are in Internet Explorer 7 just install this style, and voila:

Note the different back/forward buttons

–Vista Throbber (Homepage)–

In our quest to Vistify Firefox we can’t forget about the little throbber icon! Naturally it only makes sense to use the same “busy” icon that the mouse uses for indicating that a program is busy, and this will do just that:

–Address Bar Progress Meter (Homepage)–

This isn’t something that will necessarily make Firefox more like Vista, but it does look pretty sweet. You’ll need to install the Fission extension first, which makes Firefox show the page loading progress in the Address Bar. Then when you apply the style it has a Vista-esque feel to it:

–Overview–

I’m anxious to see what Mozilla has been brainstorming for a Firefox 3 theme in Vista, but as it stands they will be shipping a Vista-specific theme to compliment the eye candy incorporated into the operating system. One can only hope for amazing things!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on July 11, 2006 by CyberNet.

According to web analytics, Firefox is continuing to see growth around the world,with with almost 13% of the global share and more than 15% of the U.S. market share. Interestingly, in Germany, 39% of the users are using Firefox as their browser and 24% in Australia. Open source seems to be the way to go these days.

With a new release of Firefox expected shortly, this will be a great time for Firefox to sweep up more users and gain a larger portion of the market share. All of the customization makes Firefox a top pick among those who’ve experienced it. The web browser race will be on as Microsoft is set to release a new version of Internet Explorer before years end!

Also worth mentioning, Opera is currently holding 1% of the market with its newly released version 9.0. Opera is a browser popular among “tech geeks” that is slowly gaining popularity. Just like Firefox, Opera users are certainly dedicated! Apple’s Safari ranks number three behind Internet Explorer and Firefox with almost 2% of the market.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on August 27, 2008 by CyberNet.

Mozilla has released a new prototype extension that attempts to bring the command line to the browser. The extension, called Ubiquity, uses a set of predefined commands to do things like map an address the user has highlighted, shoot off an email, and more. A good example of this can be seen in the screenshot above where the user highlighted “Chicago Comics,” launched Ubiquity, and was given a list of matching addresses.

Once you’ve got Ubiquity installed you’ll be able to press Control+Space (Option+Space on Mac) to launch the command line window. From there you can use one of the 71 built-in commands (that URL will only work if you’ve installed Ubiquity) to manipulate highlighted text, perform searches, and more. Plus users can even create and share their own Ubiquity commands.

The extension is pretty powerful, and I was surprised at it’s stability considering what an early release it is. They’ve setup a nice tutorial for beginners that will walk you through how a lot of the different stuff works, and it’s something you’ll really need to go through if you want to make the most of what it has to offer. There’s also a video demonstration I’ve posted at the end of this article.

I’ve read on some sites that a feature like this could be something we see in the next big Firefox release. In the past Mozilla has said that they only add features to the browser that will be used by over 90 percent of their users. Ubiquity is undeniably appealing to power users who praise the keyboard, but anyone that is mouse-centric probably won’t touch this with a ten foot pole. My guess is that this one will remain in the land of add-ons.

So what do you think of it? Is it something you’ll use, just try out, or don’t even have any plans on installing it?

Ubiquity Homepage
Thanks Trip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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