Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on May 08, 2008 by CyberNet.

Last week we took a look at where the various browsers stood up against each other in terms of market share. I was shocked (to say the least) when Internet Explorer triumphantly came out on top with a 1.22% market share increase. That really hit hard for Firefox who’s market share was sent spiraling down to 16.96%, which was nearly a percent lower than the previous month. It’s not too often that you see a single browser gain or drop an entire percent from one month to the next.

When the stats rolled out there were a number of red flags thrown up questioning the integrity of the data. Mozilla, confident that their internal numbers did not show such a significant drop, started to investigate the findings. Net Applications gave them a hand, and here are some of the things they found:

1. Usage of Firefox did not appear to decline in April.

2. Usage of IE saw an ultra unusual spike over the period of a few days in April. While there was steady traffic from IE users – as measured by page views – for a short period surrounding April 18th, there was a huge spike in traffic from IE users – as measure by unique visitors – during the same time period. When I say “huge spike”, I mean something on order of 25% to 50% greater than what could have been expected.

3. Most of IE’s spike was attributable to IE6 users on XP (with some assistance from IE7 users on Vista), and nearly the entire spike came from users outside North America.

Net Applications receives traffic data from nearly 40,000 different business websites, and as it turns out there was an online marketing campaign aimed only at Internet Explorer users. There was no details released as to what sites were running it, but Net Applications said that it was “totally unrelated to anything with Vista, Microsoft or Windows.”

They have now put additional filters in place to watch for abnormal behavior like this. According to them they were already watching for stuff like this to happen on any one particular site, but they weren’t expecting such a widespread campaign to occur.

The stats have been updated, and it looks like things have returned to normal. Firefox and Safari both dropped slightly in market share, but only by miniscule amounts this time. Internet Explorer only saw a 0.03% increase instead of the 1.22% that is was at with the incorrect data. Here are the revised stats:

Much better! If you’re curious about what the stats looked like before hop on over to our previous post.

[via ComputerWorld]

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

Web Browser Wednesday

Last week we covered 10 Firefox extensions that would keep your information private and make your browsing experience as safe as possible. Going beyond the security we need to also think about what cool (and sometimes productive) extensions we can install that will make Firefox even better. Let’s target tab browsing this time…

–Tab Mix Plus (Download Page/Homepage)–
If you use Firefox, I’m sure you have heard of Tab Mix Plus. When I setup computers for people this is always one extension that I install for them just so that they can harness the real power of Firefox. I mean really, those buttons that you see all over the place that say “Download Firefox with Google Toolbar” should really read “Download Firefox with Google Toolbar and Tab Mix Plus.” Nah, scratch that, it should just be included with Firefox.

I think that this extension actually has more options within itself than the actual Firefox preferences has. You’ll find everything to tweak the session restore functionality all the way to customizing the context menu of the tabs.

If you decided to venture off and test out Firefox 2 Beta 1 then you should use the developer version of Tab Mix Plus to ensure proper compatibility. You can also check out my Firefox 2 Beta 1 tweaking guide for a how-to on customizing the built-in features.

Getting overwhelmed and don’t know what all of the options do? Go ahead and open this PDF which explains every option in the extension.

–Firefox Showcase (Download Page/Homepage)–
This extension pretty much had its concept taken from the upcoming Internet Explorer 7…except this takes it even further. The interface looks so simple that you would think it lacks in features but that is very deceiving.

For starters you can Ctrl or Shift click on any of the thumbnails to select multiple “tabs.” Then you can perform tasks such as Close Selected, Close Other Tabs, Duplicate in New Window, and Merge In New Window.

It also has its own Find feature that is activated the same way that it is normally used: Ctrl+F. The difference is that the Firefox Showcase Find feature will search all of your thumbnails for the text including the URL and title of the sites.

–IE Tab (Download Page/Homepage)–
IE Tab brings the Website compatibility of Internet Explorer into Firefox. At the press of a button you can switch from a page being rendered by Firefox to it being rendered by Internet Explorer.

You can also permanently set a site to open using IE Tab which makes it extremely easy to do your Windows Updates. The newest version that is available now supports the use of your Internet Explorer passwords which has been a requested feature for a long time.

–Tab Sidebar (Download Page/Homepage)–
Okay, the first time I saw Tab Sidebar I just had to try it. If you have looked at the screenshot closely, you can already see how cool this is. This is a replacement to your tab bar and it will actually hide the tab bar when you make the sidebar visible.

Yes, those are fully functional navigation buttons on the bottom of each thumbnail. If you choose to you can even drag the “tabs” around to reorder them.

You don’t have to worry about those thumbnails not refreshing either. They will automatically update themselves each time you visit a new page. Heck, they will even update when you refresh the page!

–Page Title Eraser (Download Page/Homepage)–
This extension is for when you’re at work with people looking over your should you don’t want to have them see what tabs you have open. Page Title Eraser cures that problem by giving you the option to hide the title and icon on any tab. If you have multiple sites open there is an option available that will let you hide all the titles on all of your open tabs.

–Tab Preview (Download Page)–
The concept of having a preview of a tab has become one of Opera 9′s nicest features. This extension for Firefox will give you a little more control over the appearance versus Opera.

You get to choose the size of the preview box that is displayed. Maybe you want it to be 50% as wide as the browser’s window is or, if you are like me, you just want it to be as wide as your tabs are. The choice is yours.

–Colorful Tabs (Download Page/Homepage)–
Colorful Tabs is nice because it makes finding certain tabs a little easier. When I have a bunch of tabs open it will sometimes start to look like one large tab with a horrid number of icons. I can find the site I am looking for 10 times quicker if I use this extension in conjunction with the Tab Preview one that I just mentioned.

–Ctrl Tab Preview (Download Page/Homepage)–
Are you an Alt-Tab addict? This is the Alt-Tab option except for Firefox. Yep, you can shuffle through all your open tabs and see small previews by simply using the Ctrl-Tab keyboard combination.

Without this extension Ctrl-Tab will go through all of your tabs showing you the most recently open ones first. I have written an article on these type of extensions before if you want to see other alternatives.

–PageStyle2Tab (Download Page/Homepage)–
This extension and Colorful Tabs have some similarities. The goal of Colorful Tabs is to make each tab stand out so that you can easily recognize different sites. Well, PageStyle2Tab actually makes it easier in my opinion. The color of the tab will match the style of the current page you are viewing. I am sure there are several sites that you visit that have a unique theme to them. Using this extension means you would be able to identify those sites even quicker.

If you really want to take it to the extreme, you can have the site’s style go beyond just the tab and on to your toolbars. That is a bit much for me but you may really like the themes of the sites you visit.

–Viamatic Tabnail (Download Page/Homepage)–
Everyone loves to use thumbnails in extensions they create. The downside to Viamatic Tabnail is the fact that you must use up a large portion of your screen space. Actually, the size of the thumbnail is up to you which means the amount of space the extension uses is at your disposal.

It is also pretty cool because the thumbnail will show the Website in real-time as the page loads. Wouldn’t that be something if they could just make those tiny links clickable. It might not be practical but it would still be cool.

–Overview–
So those are the extensions that I either currently use or I have used in the past. They all serve one purpose or another but some of them actually help me to be more productive, such as the Firefox Showcase extension. Let us know what other extension make your tab browsing experience better!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

Web Browser Wednesday

Firefox is an extremely customizable browser, and combining that with the growing popularity of widescreen monitors results in more sidebars. I used to never use sidebars before I got a widescreen computer because it just took up extra screen space that was otherwise pretty useful. Now you’ll hardly ever find me with a sidebar not open on my computer!

There are so many things that you can do and so many Firefox extensions available to utilize your sidebar space. Most commonly it is used for bookmarks, but there are a lot of other things that you can do with it as well. For example, Digital Inspiration recently noticed that you can place Google Talk in your sidebar:

It may sound like you need an extension to do something like this, but surprisingly, you don’t. Firefox is designed so that you can have any website open in a sidebar and since Google made the Google Talk client available on the Web, it is possible to chat with your friends in the Firefox sidebar. We’ll use the Google Talk as an example of embedding a website into a sidebar:

1. Right-click on this URL: http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/client and bookmark it.
   
2. After you have saved the bookmark, go back to the Bookmarks menu and right-click on the bookmark. Choose the Properties option.
   
3. Now check the box that says Load this bookmark in the sidebar:
   
4. Now the next time you click on that bookmark to open it will popup in the sidebar!

You can use that trick with any website, but it is really only useful if the website is designed for smaller screens so that it fits the width of the sidebar well. I would also say that it doesn’t work too bad with Meebo, but if you have a lot of chat windows open it can quickly become cluttered.

If you wanted to put your Google Personalized Homepage in the sidebar it wouldn’t look quite right since there is a huge header area that you probably don’t need, and all of the modules are spread out over three columns. There is an actual extension called iGoogle that will bypass this problem by putting all of your modules into a single column, and you’ll still have access to your tabs:

But how do you manage all of your sidebars in a quick and easy way? For that you’ll probably want to use All-in-One Sidebar which makes it easy to switch between all of your different sidebars. Not only that but it also lets you configure which side of the screen, left or right, the sidebar actually appears.

Now if you are fortunate enough to have a lot of extra screen space, you might want to use multiple sidebars. There is an extension for that as well called MultiSidebar that lets you pick the position of the sidebar in the browser as well as open multiple sidebars:

There is so much that you can do with the sidebars that it may seem a little overwhelming at first. Once you start getting used to them, you begin to wonder how much more productive they let you become. Let us know in the comments below how you use your sidebar to help you be more productive or useful.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on January 05, 2010 by CyberNet.

I heard about the InvisibleHand Firefox/Chrome extension on the Windows Weekly podcast, and it sounded like something that would be useful for all the online shopping that I do. Its purpose is to notify you when something you’re looking at or searching for can be found even cheaper at another site on the web. As you can see above when I was searching for a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium on Amazon it notified me that it was $6.50 cheaper on Buy.com. It’s very unobtrusive, which is a must for an add-on like this.

It supports 52 different retailers in the United States, 46 in the U.K., and 15 in Germany. What’s nice is that the “View all offers” button doesn’t take you to ad-ridden site, and instead presents you with a simple drop-down list of the other retailers, sorted by price, who match your product.

The add-on obviously makes money through affiliate programs thereby giving the developers a percentage of the purchases that you make. That doesn’t bother me because I think that it’s a no-brainer way to help support the add-on development cycle. From my point of view the downside is the data they collect:

• The URL of the site that you originally search for your chosen product on.
• The characteristics of the product that you search for.
• The URL of any site that you visit that is notified to you by the Add-on.
• Other anonymous technical and routing information relating to your product search and any visit that you may make to a third party site that you were alerted to by the Add-on. This information may include your IP address, but you will not personally identifiable from this information.

This add-on is awesome and all, but I’m not a huge fan of products that are keeping tabs on my surfing habits. Unfortunately the only option you really get with InvisibleHand is whether you want it to automatically do price lookups for the things you’re Googling for, too. You can’t actually turn it on or off as needed, which for me is a necessity. Personally I’m going to leave the extension installed, but I’ve disabled it in the add-ons management screen so that I can switch it on only when I need it.

Get InvisibleHand for Firefox or Chrome

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 15, 2008 by CyberNet.

We know that you’ve had less than two weeks to kick around our CyberSearch extension, and we hope by this point you’re finding it to be an indispensable tool. The true power lies in the keyword system that it comes with, but it might take a little time to really understand how it works. Our video demonstration should be enough to get your creative juices flowing though.

The whole reason that I created this extension was because I saw how it could make me more productive. I laid out a plan with the features I knew I’d use (namely a keyword system), and dove in head first. The end result didn’t turn out half bad, and what I want to show you today are some ways that you can maximize the usefulness of the extension.

1) Using Firefox’s Built-in Keyword System

Our extension uses Google to do all of its searching, and I know that a lot of you would love for our extension to search more sites directly. In fact that is one of the things I’ve received the most requests about. The reason why that isn’t feasible is that there aren’t many sites out there that are designed to return results in a text-based fashion that is performance friendly. Google, on the other hand, is capable of returning search results in a no-frills format that we can quickly pull data from. Other sites… not so much.

If you want to search sites directly the best way you can do this is by setting up a keyword search in your browser that is identical to one of your CyberSearch keywords. For example, setup a keyword search in Firefox for Google called “goog”. The CyberSearch extension ships with a keyword already named “goog”, and these will work well together.

Once you have duplicated some of your important keywords you can start taking advantage of them. Now when you type “goog” followed by a word/phrase it will show you the instant results in the address bar thanks to our extension. If you don’t see what you need just press enter and the built-in Firefox keyword search will kick in. You’ll then be taken directly to the results page for the keyword that you have setup.

2) Search More Specific Pages

When you’re setting up a keyword there’s a good chance that you’ll restrict the search to a specific domain, but don’t be afraid to use longer URL’s to get precisely the data you’re looking for. What do I mean? Imagine setting up a keyword search that returns results for Firefox add-ons. Don’t vaguely specify “mozilla.org” as the domain you want to search. Instead use “addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/” so that only pages from the Firefox add-ons site are returned.

3) Search Multiple Sites Simultaneously

Sure it’s nice being able to search one site with a keyword, but don’t forget that you can also search multiple sites! In the website URL field all you have to do is separate multiple sites by commas. Then when you perform a search using that keyword the results from all of those sites will be intermingled.

When would this be useful? There are a few different things that pop into my mind, but one of my favorites would be searching all of your favorite BitTorrent sites at the same time.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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