Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on August 26, 2008 by CyberNet.

Last week we told you how Mozilla would soon be pushing Firefox 3 onto the Firefox 2 users who have yet to upgrade. Well, that day is today. If you’re still running Firefox 2 you should see the update prompt in the next day or so when your browser checks to see if a new version is available.

You can, of course, choose not to upgrade. The prompt you’ll receive will give you options to update later, never, or at that very moment. If you have any extensions that won’t work in the new version you should see a notification similar to this:

If you choose not to upgrade it’s important to know that come December Mozilla will stop supporting Firefox 2. At that time they won’t be releasing any security or stability patches, which could leave you vulnerable to outside attacks. By that time most users will have probably transitioned over to the new version though.

Mozilla has created a guide that walks you through the steps in the upgrade process.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

One of the my favorite things in Firefox and Opera is having the ability to perform searches right from the location bar using keywords. In fact I’ve always removed the search box from the browser simply because I never use it. But when I found out about the Peers extension I thought it was going to be the extension that would actually get me to use the search box once and for all. I was wrong.

Ghacks uncovered an incredible extension that could very well be the best one ever created. I know, a lot of extensions have passed through the golden gates of the add-ons site, but I don’t think any of them will save me as much time as this one does.

The extension is called AwesomeSearch, which is named after the new Firefox 3 location bar (pictured above) that’s dubbed the “Awesome Bar.” With it you’ll get Google and Amazon search results intermingled with the items from your browser’s history. Here’s a video demonstration put together by the author to show you how it works.

As you can see in my screenshot the search results that are pulled in are highlighted with a blue background, and that makes it easier to differentiate what’s a search result and what’s a site you’ve previously visited. The true power of the extension, however, will only be revealed if you’re familiar with some of Google’s advanced search operators. A good example of this is what I have typed into the location bar in my screenshot, where the “site:cybernetnews.com” is the advanced search operator. By including that as part of the query it only returns results from our site. This basically gives you a nearly instantaneous way to search specific sites. Another example would be using “site:en.wikipedia.org” to only show results from the English Wikipedia site. Now do you see why this is so cool?

I sent an email to the developer with some recommendations that would make the extension even better. One of the things that came to my mind was having the ability to create keyword searches so that you can force it to only show Google results, and not anything from your browser’s history. That can be taken even further by being able to automatically append text onto the query based upon which keyword you use. For example, typing “wiki [search text]” into the location bar would actually be like performing a Google search formatted like “[search text] site:en.wikipedia.org“. That’s just an idea, but it would give people the chance to add site-specific search capabilities without the developer working overtime trying to make it compatible with dozens of different services.

The extension is currently in the experimental stage, and you’ll have to login with your Mozilla account to install it. It’s also not officially compatible with the latest Firefox 3 release, which means you’ll also need to ignore extension compatibility checking before trying to grab it.

It’s been awhile since I’ve gotten this excited about a Firefox extension! One thing that I do want to point out is that this does also search Amazon, and it uses affiliate links for the results it retrieves. It’s just an easy way to support the developer though.

Get the AwesomeSearch Extension for Firefox 3

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on February 06, 2008 by CyberNet.

One thing that has always left me puzzled is why Firefox takes so long to startup. Both Opera and Internet Explorer take just seconds to get up and running, but on all four of my computers Firefox takes between 10 and 20 seconds to start (even with no extensions installed).

If you find yourself in a similar situation then what you might need is the open source Firefox Preloader. It can be set to startup when you turn your computer on, and with it Firefox will always be at your beck and call. If there are multiple versions of Firefox installed on your computer you can decide which one you would like it to work with.

This feature does come at a cost though. When the preloader first started up on my computer it used about 4MB of memory itself, and Firefox was using about 10MB. Those aren’t drastic numbers, but for those of you conscious about the memory usage you might want to think twice before using the preloader. Also, when you close Firefox it doesn’t actually close all the way, instead it’s just tucked away so that it will still start quickly the next time you go to use it.

Firefox Preloader (for Windows only)
Thanks to “S” for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 01, 2006 by CyberNet.

Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.4 has been released even though Mozilla has not officially announced it. This build has been placed in their FTP folder under the releases section. I would think that they would announce the release later today, or at least by the weekend. However, the Thunderbird 1.5.0.4 release notes page has already been posted which is surprising since the Firefox one isn’t up yet.

For those people who want Portable Firefox then it is simple. All you have to do is download the Portable Firefox 1.5.0.4 file below. Then you unzip the file and browse for the file PortableFirefox.exe. Just execute that file and you will be running Firefox 1.5.0.4! The profile is kept with the PortableFirefox folder so you don’t have to worry about messing up your other profile and the uninstallation process is simple…just delete the folder! Don’t forget to stick it on your USB drive and carry it with you wherever you go.

Download Portable Firefox 1.5.0.4 for Windows – 7.80 MB
Download Firefox 1.5.0.4 for Windows – 4.88 MB
Download Firefox 1.5.0.4 for Linux – 8.07 MB
Download Firefox 1.5.0.4 for Mac – 16.0 MB
 
Download Thunderbird 1.5.0.4

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Why it seems like only yesterday that our little Firefox had its last major upgrade. As expected, the browser turned 5.0 today, and you can celebrate by downloading it now from Mozilla’s site. We’d like to know how your test drive of the update is going so far. Let us know in the poll and the comments below.

View Poll

Firefox 5 is officially released, how are you liking it? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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