Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on July 17, 2006 by CyberNet.

For all of those MySpace addicts out there you can now get the Unofficial MySpace Toolbar. It will make your whole experience a lot easier by providing links to quickly access your MySpace information. Here are some of the things that it can do for you:

• Auto-Login: Never type in your password again. The AutoLogin tool automatically logs you into MySpace.
• Quick Links: Instantly access your profile, comments, and messages! No typing required!
• User Links: No more searching for hidden links and content! Quickly view a user’s comments, photos, etc.
• NEW! Auto-hide: Enable this feature and the toolbar will vanish when you are not using MySpace. Click the ‘m’ button on your status bar to enable/disable this feature.

If you still aren’t convinced then check out the other screenshots that the developer has provided. One of the coolest things about this is that you can enable the toolbar to appear only when you are using MySpace, so you don’t have to worry about the wasted space.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on February 14, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

One of the things that really seems to draw people to CyberNet is the posting of Firefox Portable builds for pre-release versions of Firefox. Right now Mozilla is testing out Firefox 3 Alpha builds, and the ability to play with it appeals to a lot of people. A while back I wrote a guide on setting up your own version of Firefox Portable, but that was still when the application was called Portable Firefox.

I receive requests all of the time for providing nightly builds of Firefox 3 in a portable fashion so that there is no fear of messing up your stable profile. Heck, I’ll even show you where to copy the contents of your existing profile to in the Firefox Portable so that it is really easy to see if your extensions will work. Let’s go ahead and get started…

–Setting Up Your Own Firefox Portable–

1. The first thing that you’ll need to do is download my “blank” Firefox Portable ZIP file. I say that it is blank because it doesn’t include the actual Firefox files that are needed to run the browser. You’ll be adding those in a few steps from now. Also, it is important to note that the installation I am providing to you is setup to not show a splash screen and to allow multiple instances of Firefox to be running side-by-side. That means you’ll be able to run your nightly build at the same time you’re running your stable build! See this article for an explanation on how I did that.
2. Extract the contents from the file you downloaded in Step 1 which should result in a folder called “FirefoxPortable“.
3. Download the latest nightly trunk to play with the bleeding edge version of Firefox. This is the most recent that you can get, and to find the file that you want to download look for the most recent date that has a “win32.zip” extension.
4. Extract the contents from the file you downloaded in Step 3 which should result in a folder called “firefox“.
5. Drag the firefox folder from Step 4 into the FirefoxPortable -> App folder from Step 2:
   
6. That’s all, now just go back to the FirefoxPortable directory and run the FirefoxPortable.exe file. This is what your directory structure should now look like:
    
7. Note: For future reference, you can update Firefox Portable the same way that you update regular Firefox by going to the Help Menu -> Check for Updates.

–Copying Your Current Profile To Firefox Portable–

When you’re testing out Firefox, it would be nice to just copy all of your settings, bookmarks, and extensions over to the portable version so that you can see what works and what doesn’t. No problem! It just takes a few steps to copy everything over:

1. Locate your existing profile:
   Windows 2000/XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<Windows login/user name>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Profile name>\
   Windows Vista: C:\Users\<Windows login/user name>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Profile name>\
   
2. Copy ALL of the files and folders of your existing profile into the FirefoxPortable -> Data -> profile folder (make sure to delete everything in that directory if it is not already empty):
   
3. That’s all, the next time you start Firefox Portable it should run your existing profile.

–Overview–

That is basically what I do each time that I test out Firefox builds. Similar things can be done using the portable versions of Thunderbird and many other applications. After you have done it once you’ll be able to do the whole process in a matter of seconds because it really is that easy. The thing that takes the longest to do is download the files. Enjoy!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Firefox 4 slips out ahead of tomorrow’s official release originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 17:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Download Squad  |  Mozilla (Windows), (Mac), (Linux)  | Email this | Comments

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

Wired posted an article today discussing what will undoubtedly spark a lot of opinions around the Web. In the article it questioned whether Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser is becoming too bloated, and whether it will be able to maintain its slim identity.

I’ve read so much on this topic over the past year or so that it is starting to wear away at my brain. Wired, however, did a good job covering what I see to be the biggest culprit of performance woes in Firefox:

Statistics are hard to come by, but our own experiences with the browser include crashes, memory hogging, molasses-slow page loads and the spinning beach ball of death. The problems are even worse for Mac users, so much so that last month, Firefox developer Colin Barrett broached the question on his blog: What sucks about Firefox on the Mac?

…

Certainly, Firefox’s infinitely customizable nature remains one of its most-loved features. But those third-party add-ons can also be the source of many Firefox woes. As users pimp their browsers to the extreme, they introduce a greater potential for performance problems.

I regularly cleanup my own Firefox extensions whenever I find Firefox becoming bloated. One thing that I do recommend you do periodically is create a new profile in Firefox and start from scratch. By creating a new profile you don’t lose any of your extensions, bookmarks, or anything else but at the same time it gives you the chance to evaluate which extensions you really miss. If you find yourself being less productive because you don’t have a certain extension installed go ahead and download it, but keeping a set of checks and balances with the extensions will keep your Firefox running smoothly.

With that being said, there is still no doubt that Firefox has some memory management problems aside from just the extensions. I have tried everything, including using absolutely no extensions, and if I open a fair amount of tabs (around 20) I have seen the memory usage clime upwards of 500MB. For that reason I actually use Opera for my heavy browsing because it hovers around just 100MB, and almost never increases as I continue to open more tabs. At any given time you’ll find that my computer has both Firefox and Opera open because each browser has their benefits.

So what does Mozilla need to do in order to please the community? Actually, I think I know just the thing. They need to start a collection of add-ons/extensions that they develop so that users can pick and choose which new features they would like to add to the browser. I’m not sure if they will be able to implement a lot of the features using only the add-ons framework, so maybe they could also offer two versions of the browser: one that is slim and light with the bare-minimum installed, and another that is feature-packed?

Mike Schroepfer, the Vice President of Engineering at Mozilla, said that “one of the reasons it takes so long to get features in the browser is that any new features should not affect the startup time or performance of the browser.” As an idea that is great, but is that really the truth? If I compare the startup time of Firefox 1.0 versus that of Firefox 2.0 I notice a difference of several seconds in the startup time. With absolutely no extensions installed, even Internet Explorer 7 starts faster than Firefox 2.0 for me.

So what do you think? Will Firefox’s future continue to be bright, or will Mozilla need to start looking into other solutions so that they can offer the idea of a slim browser that has been associated with Firefox for several years?

Note: Firefox still continues to gain in the market share and as of April 2007 it sits at 15.42%.

Read Wired’s Article (Thanks for the tip CoryC!)

P.S. Hope you like the bloated Firefox logo I made.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on October 31, 2006 by CyberNet.

I know many of you were waiting for Fasterfox to release a Firefox 2 compatible version before upgrading, and now you don’t have to wait any longer. The newest version also comes in 11 new languages  but doesn’t contain any new features.

It has been awhile since I have tried Fasterfox so I figured I’d give it a whirl. I haven’t had it installed very long but I don’t notice any tremendous speed improvements when loading websites.  I’m not going to give up that quickly though and I figured I’ll leave it installed for about a week and then remove it to see if I go through withdrawals by not having it.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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