Oct 26

Firefox Rolls Over the 500 Million Download Mark

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on February 22, 2008 by CyberNet.

firefox counter Back in September, the Firefox download counter rolled over the 400 million mark giving Mozilla yet another reason to celebrate over their open-source web browser. At the time, Ryan looked at their current trend in growth and estimated that around April 15th, 2008 Firefox would hit their 1/2 billion milestone. Well, it’s only February 22, 2008 and they’ve just hit their 500 million mark. Congratulations Firefox!

On the Mozilla Blog, they made the announcement and helped show the significance of it by explaining that in terms of dollars, $500 million would be enough for you and 15 of your friends to fly to the International Space Station. In weight they say that it would be like 8,500 Boeing 747 airplanes.  For Mozilla, part of celebrating this milestone includes giving back.  They’re inviting people to help celebrate by playing a “game” over at www.freerice.com.  We’ve written about it before, when you go to the site, a word will be displayed and you’ll be given four difference choices of what the word means.  For each word you get right, they’ll donate 10 grains of rice to a hungry person through an international aid agency.  On their blog, they said that they are trying to break another milestone by donating 500 million grains of rice in on day.

Looking ahead, given the current trends, it looks like the next big milestone will be around Wednesday, July 30th 2008 when they’ll hit the 600 million download mark. Once again, congratulations to Mozilla and the Firefox team!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments | Tags: ,
Oct 26

Space Saving Extension for Firefox Bookmark Toolbar Users

Posted in: Firefox Extensions, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on February 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

Smart Bookmarks Bar

Anyone that has a lot of bookmarks on the Bookmark Toolbar in Firefox is sure to be looking for a way to save some space. What if you could remove all of the text from the bookmarks and only see the icons? That would definitely save some room, but that might not make it easy to distinguish between multiple bookmarks that have the same icon.

That’s where Smart Bookmarks Bar comes into play (pictured above). After installing that extension it will collapse all of your bookmarks down to just their icon, but if you hover over any of them it will expand to show the name you designated for that bookmark. This makes it a lot easier to find bookmarks that might have the same icon while saving you a lot of space.

Personally I don’t use the Bookmarks Toolbar because I rather have them shown in the sidebar where I can see more of them simultaneously. If I didn’t have a widescreen monitor, however, I definitely wouldn’t want to sacrifice the space that a sidebar takes up so I’m sure I would just use the toolbar.

If you’re looking for a way that you can retrieve your bookmarks from any location you should try out Foxmarks. After several recommendations I decided to give it a go and see how much I liked it over my existing Gmarks Firefox extension. Using Foxmarks you are able to synchronize your Firefox bookmarks with a remote service (registration is required) and you can then access them from anywhere with the remote website that they have setup. I considered giving the Del.icio.us extension a try, but I don’t like that I have to check a box each time that I want my bookmark to be private. If there was a default option for that it might be a little better. I’d definitely be interested in hearing what everyone is using for your bookmark manager in Firefox.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments | Tags:
Oct 24

Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.7 Released

Posted in: Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on September 14, 2006 by CyberNet.

Firefox Logo Mozilla has placed the official release of Firefox 1.5.0.7 on their FTP for download. Typically I would just link to the FTP and tell you to go find your language but I figured I do this so much now that I should come up with a better way. I don’t think I could do it much easier than this:

I probably don’t even need to explain how to use to it since it’s so simple. :D

Mozilla is yet to make the release notes page available and they have not updated the fixed security vulnerabilities page either.

I’m sure the “What’s New” section will look something like

Well, I hope you like the new download option I put together. Let me know if you see a mistake in it.

Update:
Thunderbird has also been updated to 1.5.0.7…thanks to the commenters who noticed this!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments | Tags:
Oct 24

CyberNotes: A New Web Browser, Firefox In Disguise?

Posted in: CyberNotes, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on June 21, 2006 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday
 

Everyone knows the people that refuse to use or even try Firefox because they are already used to Internet Explorer. You know, the kind of people that don’t like change? You tell them “it is easy to learn how to use it” but they just tell you “Internet Explorer does everything that I need it to”. You want them to use Firefox because of the additional security features and the extensibility but they could care less. What if you could switch them over to Firefox without them even knowing?

A great piece of software called eFox (also known as FirefoxIE) will help you switch those people over from Internet Explorer. eFox models itself after Internet Explorer 7 but has all of the stability of Firefox 1.5.0.4!


eFox
 

You have a few options to get eFox (I recommend the second option, at least to test it and make sure you like it). First, you can download it from their site and install it. This is a good solution if you know that you will like it because this will overwrite your existing Firefox profile and your Firefox installation (If you have a version of Firefox installed, let’s say 1.5.0.3, and you installed eFox it will change your installation to version 1.5.0.4).

I downloaded the executable file and while that was downloading, I backed up my profile folder and my Firefox installation folder. After it finished downloading I went ahead and ran the EXE file. I waited about 15 seconds and nothing happened, so I double-clicked on it again. Still nothing, so I opened up Firefox and wham!!, eFox was running. The installation process doesn’t prompt you for any information or directories. It would have been nice to get a confirmation box that said “Make sure you back everything up and press OK to continue” but there was nothing like that.

It was up and running, and I have to say it was pretty slick! Everything was setup as best as it could be to make Firefox appear to be Internet Explorer 7. This isn’t just a theme like some are probably thinking– but I will get into some of the features after I discuss my “easier” method of trying eFox.

Portable eFox

Like most people, you will probably want to try this out before you commit yourself to a newly styled browser. That is how I was but there was no hope of it being that simple for me. To make my second method of getting eFox simple for you,download this Portable eFox that I put together. Simply run the IEXPLORE.EXE file (as pictured to the right) and it will be up and running. This also makes it easy to trick someone that this is Internet Explorer because all you have to do is replace these files with the ones in the “Program Files/Internet Explorer” folder. This way, anytime that they execute an Internet Explorer shortcut it will run eFox. Clever huh?

eFox

There are a lot of things that eFox does to make it resemble Internet Explorer. Besides for the obvious theme, it also replaces the Firefox logos with IE7 logos. It comes with a small list of extensions already installed: UI Tweaker, Google Toolbar, Bookmarks Menu Button, IE Tab, ChromEdit, Compact Menu, Launchy, FirefoxIE SMS Messenger, and Firesomething. Some of these extensions are to make the theme more like Internet Explorer– however, some of them are also used to make your browsing experience better.

Portable eFox

One thing that I didn’t like was that the Menu bar was removed and there was no way to get to some of the menus I use– like Tools. In the portable version I was able to put the Menu back in next to the Bookmarks. This Menu will provide every option normally found in the complete Menu bar, except this is more condensed. You can do this in the installation version by simply right-clicking on a toolbar and select “Classic Menu”. Right-click on a toolbar again and select “Customize”. Drag the Menu button down next to the Bookmarks. Now you can remove the Classic Menu bar because there is nothing else you will need on it.

Overall there has been a lot of great work put into eFox. I am impressed with how it handles, but then again I love Firefox. Even though I won’t be using this browser on a daily basis, (I actually like the default Firefox theme) I will always keep it in the back of my head for the next time that I meet the person that doesn’t want to try anything other than Internet Explorer.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments | Tags: ,
Oct 24

Shareaholic Supports More Web 2.0 Sites

Posted in: Firefox 3, Firefox Extensions, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 21, 2008 by CyberNet.

shareaholic Shareaholic is an add-on for Firefox that’s all about helping you bookmark and share the content you come across on the web.   Up until recently, they only offered support for Firefox 2.0 and Flock. With their newest release, there’s now support for Firefox 3, and they’ve added a bunch more Web 2.0 sites where people can share content.

The list of supported sites continues to get longer, especially when you compare it to the list they initially supported which consisted of only five sites. Now you can bookmark and submit content to the following sites using the Shareaholic bookmarking tool:

  • Del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Ma.gnolia
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Truemors
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Mixx
  • Simpy
  • FriendFeed

Shareaholic also serves the purpose of giving you an idea of how popular a web page is by letting you know how many times the web page you’re on has been dugg or saved to social site del.icio.us. This helpful sharing extension launched several months ago and so far it’s received rave reviews. Shareaholic says that they will be adding even more sites in the future which will help attract even more users.

Download Shareaholic here.

Source: Mashable

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments | Tags:
Oct 24

Both Opera and Firefox Benefit from Mozilla’s jsfunfuzz

Posted in: Freeware, Mozilla, Newly Released, Opera, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 03, 2007 by CyberNet.

Black HatAt the Black Hat conference this week Mozilla announced a new tool called jsfunfuzz that was developed by their very own Jesse Ruderman. This is something developers can use to test the JavaScript engine for both stability and vulnerabilities. Here’s what Mozilla had to say about it:

The responsible sharing of security tools is an important way to contribute to the overall health of the web. We worked with Microsoft, Apple, and Opera to reduce the possibility that this tool might adversely affect users of those browsers. All of these browser vendors reviewed the tool and let us know that they were okay with the release.

The great news is that Mozilla isn’t the only one benefiting from it! Opera posted version 9.23 Beta today that fixes four bugs that caused crashes, and one that could have compromised the security of the browser. All five of those problems were found using the jsfunfuzz tool that Mozilla announced and released to the public.

Of course the tool was developed by Mozilla, and so you would expect it to help them the most…and it has. Using it they’ve found 280 bugs in Firefox’s JavaScript engine with about two-dozen of those that could have been exploitable. More than two-thirds of those bugs have already been fixed, and their working on nailing down the rest.

So even if you aren’t using a Mozilla-based browser, I think we all owe Mozilla a big thanks for making this tool available to the public!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments | Tags: , ,
Oct 24

Mozilla Updates The Firefox 2 Release Schedule

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 16, 2006 by CyberNet.

Firefox 2 Release ScheduleFirefox 2 Beta 2 has already been delayed as most of us know, and now it looks like that delay has rippled through to the other milestones. Here is the most recent schedule for the upcoming Firefox builds:

  • Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 – August 23
  • Firefox 2.0 RC1 – September 19
  • Firefox 2.0 RC2 – October 2 
  • Firefox 2.0 RC3 – October 11 
  • Firefox 2.0 Final – October 24 

The two-week delay of Firefox 2 Beta 2 appears to have pushed back the final release nearly one month. Even though it is disappointing to hear this I am glad that they are taking their time to ensure that this is a quality release.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments | Tags:
Oct 23

13 Firefox Themes for NFL Fans

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on September 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

It’s football season again!

Below you’ll find 13 NFL themes. Unfortunately, developers haven’t created one for every team yet. Clicking on the team name will take you to the Official Firefox Add-Ons page where you can download the theme.

If you like how the themes are presented below, make sure to visit Learn Firefox’s Themes section, where you can browse through over 200 more in the exact same way.

Arizona Cardinals

 

Chicago Bears


 

Dallas Cowboys

 

Denver Broncos

 

Green Bay Packers

 

Jacksonville Jaguars

 

Kansas City Chiefs

 

New England Patriots

 

New Orleans Saints

 

San Diego Chargers

 

Seattle Seahawks

 

St. Louis Rams

 

Washington Redskins

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments | Tags:
Oct 23

CyberNotes: Bookmarklets that make Subscribing to Feeds Easier

Posted in: CyberNotes, Freeware, Internet Explorer, Opera, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on April 04, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

I subscribe to feeds all the time, but many of the browsers are different in the way they handle feeds. Firefox has a pretty nice interface for choosing an external application as the default subscription handler while Internet Explorer (IE) and Opera are both a little more tricky. IE and Opera are setup to handle feeds from within the browser itself so they don’t offer many options for subscribing to feeds using external applications.

When you install an external application to handle your feeds on your computer, such as FeedDemon or RSS Bandit, it registers the “feed://” protocol with the operating system much the same way that your browser registers the “http://” protocol. This means that anytime a URL begins with feed:// it will actually try to launch your external feed program.

This bookmarklet doesn’t work for Firefox (at least I don’t think it does), but that doesn’t really matter because in the options you can choose a default program to handle the feeds. So if your using Internet Explorer or Opera the first thing you need to do is drag this bookmarklet into your bookmarks:

Now anytime you click on the bookmarklet it will take you directly to your external RSS feed application so that you can add the feed in there, instead of in the browser. The first time you will probably see some sort of warning like this one giving you a heads up that the browser is trying to pass a URL onto your default feed program, but you can just check the box to permanently allow this action:

Approve Feed

Don’t worry, if a site has more than one feed available the bookmarklet is designed to ask you which one you want to use before sending it to your feed program:

Select Feed

All you have to do is enter in the corresponding number of the feed you want to subscribe to and press OK.

Then I thought to myself that there had to be a better way to subscribe to the feeds…and I remembered Chris R. telling me about AddThis. It is a service that I could setup much the same way I setup the bookmarklet above, but for some people it is a little nicer. It will display a website that lists all of the feed URL’s associated with a specific site instead of having to use a popup window to select which one you want. With the way I had the bookmarklet setup it was easy to modify it to work with AddThis.

Internet Explorer and Firefox users just drag this link into your bookmarks:

AddThis

Opera users can click on this link if they want to create an orange RSS button to add to any toolbar:

Subscribe2RSS

I tested it in Firefox, IE, and Opera and it works in all of them from what I can tell. If you create an account with AddThis.com you can set it up so that you’re never asked for your feed subscriber preference again, although it can be changed later on should you decide to switch what program/service you’re using.

One quick thing that I wanted to mention is that in Firefox if you use the “Google Reader” option for subscribing to feeds you’ll be presented with an option to add the feed to your Google Personalized Homepage or to Google Reader. Most of you probably use one or the other and you can configure Firefox to automatically bypass that screen and go to your favorite service by following these instructions that Chad posted in our forum.

So that’s it…the first of the bookmarklets that I actually made myself and they came because I had received a few questions about changing how Opera handles feeds by default. If you have any ideas on how I can make it better or another service you would like it to work with just let me know, and I’ll do my best to fulfill your requests! :)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments | Tags: , ,
Oct 22

CyberNotes: Tweak Firefox’s Maximum Connection Limit

Posted in: CyberNotes, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on September 14, 2006 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Tutorial Thursday

I have never tried to find a download manager because most browsers (except Internet Explorer) are able to handle my downloads just fine. However, one limitation that has always bothered me is the inability to start more than two downloads at the same time. I can click on a link to start the first download, and then start another download, but as soon as I click on the link to start the third download I don’t get my “Open/Run” dialog box until one of the other two downloads have already completed.

This gets especially irritating when downloading Linux ISO’s which can be 5 CD’s at 600MB each. I just want to start downloading all of them at the same time so that I don’t have to babysit it.

It didn’t take much research before I found the option that I needed to change. We need to increase the number of connections that are allowed per server and that will solve our problem. Mozilla sets the option to two by default because that’s the recommendation in the HTTP/1.1 specification.

Here’s how you change the value:

  1. Start Firefox.
  2. In the Address Bar type about:config and press Enter.
  3. Find the option that is named network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server and double-click on it.
  4. Increase the value to something a little more reasonable. I changed mine to 10.
    Firefox Persistent Connections Tweak
  5. That’s all! 

I can now have more than two files simultaneously downloading…ahh the bliss. If you are on a slow dial-up connection then you may not want to do this but broadband users rejoice at every opportunity to maximize the use of their bandwidth.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments | Tags: ,