Hasta La Gadget!

When you use a site like Gmail, you have to decide: Do I want to use the service’s website, or do I want to use it through an app, like Outlook? Here’s how to get the best of both worlds.

What I’m talking about is something called site-specific browsers, which are essentially dedicated apps derived from the browsers already installed on your system, designed to load up a single web app. Nothing else. The thing is, limiting the app’s functionality to a single website means it can do native-like things, like have its own icon, serve up notifications in the OS X dock, and be launched from Spotlight or the Start Menu like a regular, native program. It’s also a great way to run multiple instances of the same service—like two Gmail accounts—without one forcing the other to log out.

And hell, you use web apps like Facebook, Last.fm and Gmail just as much and just as hard as you do regular apps, so haven’t they earned their own icons? Their own windows, so they don’t get lost in a sea of tabs? Their own notifications? Their own places in your application menus? Their own system processes, so a browser crash won’t knock them out, too? Their own lives? Yeah, sure they have. Here’s how to make it happen.

Mac OS X: Fluid

The best tool for creating site-specific apps in OS X is called Fluid. It’s a free framework for creating your own site-specific apps, based on WebKit, like Apple’s Safari or Google’s Chrome. So!

1. Download it Fluid here, and drag the app over to your Applications folder.

2. Since the site-specific browsers you’ll be creating will have their own icons, you’ll need to download those. If you don’t, Fluid will pull the site’s favorites icon to use as the system icon, which is fine, but can look a bit rough, especially if you run your OS X dock large, or use CoverFlow a lot. This Flickr group has hundreds of available icons, covering just about any site you can imagine. To use them, download the full-size .PNG from Flickr.

3. Create your app! When you open Fluid, You’ll be prompted with a window asking you for a URL, a site name (Which will be the app’s name, as far as your OS is concerned), a place to save the app (the Applications folder by default) and an option to either use the site’s favicon or a custom icon. Fill the fields out, and hit create.

4. Launch your app. The first time you start the app, you’ll be prompted to log into the service. After the initial login, though, Fluid will remember your details, so that when you start the app again, it’ll be all ready to go.

5. Customize! Ok, so you’ve got your web app—now it’s time to tweak. If you want to change the look of the site, or how certain parts of it function, Fluid supports client-side userscripts, which basically let you reformat the page, or add functionality to it, however you want. From within a Fluid app, click the Script icon in the Menu Bar, and click “Browse Userscripts.org” and see if you find anything you like. If you do, the script should be downloaded and copied to YourUserName/Library/Application Support/Fluid/SSB/YourApp’sName/Userscripts.

There are also a small number of Fluid plugins, which give Fluid greater native app-like powers. These are scattered around the internet, and a good central resource is hard to come by. This Google string tends to work pretty well for finding them, though.

In addition, Fluid itself has some application settings to play around with, most of which are self-explanatory. One that’s not, and that comes in handy a lot, is the “Allow Browsing to any URL” option under Settings > Advanced: This prevents new windows opened in Fluid from opening in your default browser instead, and cures most of the issues I’ve come across with using Fluid with less popular sites that may not have automatic presets built into Fluid.

Windows: Prism

Prism takes a slightly different approach to the creation of site-specific browsers, in that it’s an extension for Firefox, not its own app. The creation process, though, isn’t terribly different. Here’s the routine:

1. Download the Prism extension for Firefox here. (Note: some people have issues with Prism freezing during the setup process, or find core functions, like minimizing to the system tray, missing in this version. In that case, download the last version of Prism right here—it should fix everything, without sacrificing any major features.)
2. Navigate to the webpage you want to convert into an app, let it load, and select “Convert Website to Application” from the Tools menu in Firefox. You’ll be prompted with these options. Fill them out as you please:

If you’d like to use a custom icon, as opposed to the website’s favorite’s icon, you should download a full-res .PNG file from this Flickr group. These are icons created with Fluid (above) in mind, so some may have an OS X-like aesthetic, but they will work, and in the context of Windows 7, they usually look pretty great.

And that’s it! Prism isn’t as immediately customizable as Fluid for OS X, but it gets the job done.

Alternative: Prism supports something called “Bundles”, which automatically apply settings and application icons for popular websites with a single click. Here are a few to try.

Alternative II: Chrome for Windows offers similar functionality to Prism, albeit in a rather basic, stripped-down form. If your only goal is to isolate web apps in their own windows, though, this’ll work fine, and takes just a few seconds:

Hat tip to Lifehacker for introducing us to Prism.

And that’s it! If you’ve got any great icon, user script or Prism bundle resources to share, throw them in the comments—your feedback is hugely important to our Saturday How To guides. And if you have any topics you’d like to see covered here, please let me know. Happy web-app-Pinocchio-ing, folks!

This article was written on August 26, 2006 by CyberNet.

Firefox 2 Beta 2 RC2 (Release Candidate 2) is now available on the Mozilla FTP server in all of the various languages. Here are the English (United States) download links:

• Linux (TAR)
• Mac (DMG)
• Windows – Install (EXE)
• Windows – Compressed (ZIP)

Firefox 2 Beta 2 RC2 has a lot of the new theme already implemented in it. However, there is still a long list of bugs for the theme so there are still some things that might change.

If all goes as planned (which it hasn’t for the 3-weeks) we should see Firefox 2 Beta 2 released on August 30. The final release is still about 2-months away and is scheduled for October 24.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Mozilla just announced that they are planning on having the first Release Candidate build of Firefox 3 Beta 3 coming this Monday, and although no word on a release date was announced it can probably be expected about a week after that.

The new Beta will be the first release to start showing off the new Windows themes that they’ve been working on, but as it stands right now the Vista-specific theme is not available. Vista users will see the same theme as XP users, which I’ve captured in the screenshot above. I definitely don’t like how that theme looks on Vista, and I don’t think it would look all that much better on XP. As other people have iterated before the theme has a plastic-like look to it that makes it feel like a toy.

And no, the theme is not the “big new feature.” Just the other night Mozilla rolled out a new section to the Add-ons manager for finding extensions without ever going to the add-ons site:

It only shows a handful of results, and then provides a link to the add-ons site to view the remaining extensions. I’m guessing that Mozilla is doing this in hopes of getting the add-ons to gain traction with new Firefox users.

That’s about all the new stuff that users will see in Firefox 3 Beta 3 since the last Beta was released, plus a bunch of bug fixes. After Beta 3 there will be another “quick” release of Beta 4, and then they will be moving on to the Release Candidate stage. You know what that means don’t you? Mozilla might be able to pull off a release in the first quarter of 2008 like they have been anticipating.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 12, 2006 by CyberNet.

For all of the past Firefox 2.0 builds I have not written a review so I have figured it is time to do so. This review will cover all of the new features that have been implemented since Alpha 3 but it will also cover older features for those people that are starting with Beta 1 as their first Firefox 2.0 build.

You can also download Firefox 2 Beta 1 and test it for yourself. If you are a little weary of testing a Beta build then you can download the portable version which leaves your current profile and settings untouched.

I will be referencing my guide several times throughout this article. It covers some tweaks for many of the features I will mention here. Okay, so why don’t we go ahead and get started.

–Branding–
The first thing that you may have noticed when running the new Beta 1 is that everything has now been branded as Firefox. Each release up to this point had the Bon Echo logo which can be seen here. This will hopefully help Mozilla get more testers by providing a familiar icon and name. Think about it, how many people that you talk to actually know that Bon Echo is the codename for Firefox 2?

–Suggestive Search Box–

The new search box has become more useful and a little more sleek. You can see here a comparison of the old search box to the new search box. The old search box doesn’t have the nice magnifying glass that is used to process your search when clicked. The down arrow next to the magnifying glass is used to select which search engine you would like to use with Google being the default of course.

You will also notice that when you are typing in a search you will see search suggestions. These suggestions work for the Google and Yahoo search engines. If you have enabled Firefox to remember items in the search box you will see recently searched for items above the "Suggestions" divider.

–OpenSearch–
Some sites that you visit may support the OpenSearch which will make future searches a breeze. An example of a site that supports the OpenSearch is Technorati. When you visit Technorati the drop-down search box will display an an option so that you can add it to your list of search engines.

–Search Engine Manager–
The Search Engine Manager is a great addition to the browser. It allows you to easily add, remove, and reorder your search engines in just a few clicks.

If you are looking for more search engines then you just have to click the "Get more search engines…" link.

–Add-ons Manger–

Click on an image to enlarge it

The new Add-ons Manager has two different "tabs", one is for managing extensions and the other is for themes. The extension manager reveals three buttons once you have selected an extension: Options, Disable, and Uninstall. This makes it easier for the user to see which extension they are currently dealing with and prevents them from accidentally uninstalling the wrong extension. The disable feature is especially nice because some extensions you only need once in awhile and now you don’t have to constantly install/uninstall them!

–Anti-Phishing–

There is now a built-in anti-phishing feature that will check to make sure the site you are visiting is not fraudulent. This was in previous builds but they have changed the wording now. Before the title read "Web Forgery" and the body said "This page is very likely to have been designed to trick users into sharing personal or financial information. Entering any personal information on this page may result in identity theft or other fraud." The new text isn’t that much different but they tried to make it read a little easier.

If you go to the Options-> Advanced-> Anti-Phishing you will notice a few options that you can select. By default Firefox will only check to see if the site is a scam by using a locally stored list. That means that the list may not be completely up-to-date so I would recommend using the option "By asking Google". That way it will check Google each time to see if the site is a forgery.

–Feed Subscriber–

The new Feed Subscriber is one of my favorite features in Firefox 2. I am constantly adding new feeds that I find to my Google Reader and the Feed Subscriber makes it a quick process. When you try and subscribe to a feed Firefox will use the Live Bookmarks by default. If you select the "Change Reader" option located near the top of the Web page you can customize how you want to subscribe to feeds. You can either use an external application, Google Reader, Bloglines, My Yahoo, or the classic Live Bookmarks. If you want to add NetVibes or another Web site to the list you will find the step-by-step process in my guide.

Also note that you can have Firefox automatically open a feed in your chosen reader by selecting the checkbox at the bottom in the options. This will completely bypass the preview screen that you see in the image above.

–Inline Spell Checker–

Now this is my favorite feature by far. I do so much posting and commenting on sites that it is always good to have something check my spelling while I type. If it finds a misspelled word it will underline it in red so that you can fix it right away. You can always add a word to the dictionary if it is something that you frequently type but it marks as misspelled, like the word Firefox as seen above . I have noticed that some smaller fields, like a text box for your name, are not checked for spelling by default. You can always right-click anywhere in the text field and select "Spell check this field".

–Microsummaries–

Microsummaries are the bookmarks of the future. Instead of assigning your own title to a bookmark you can choose to assign a "Live" title. The live title will update itself with information as it becomes available.

To get Microsummaries to work you need to go to this site and install a generator by clicking on it. I chose the eBay Auction Item generator and after I installed it I went to ebay.com to find an item. Once I found an item I selected "Bookmark This" and selected the name dropdown menu. As pictured above you can see that I can choose the static bookmark name that will never change or I can select the "Live Title". The Live Title, for eBay auctions, will update information like the current price so that you can easily keep a watch on it.

Make sure you check out the Microsummaries site above because they have cool generators for tracking your FedEx and UPS packages, too! Heck, you can even track your stock quotes using Yahoo Finance.

–Session Restore–

The Firefox Session Restore is also among my favorite features. By default your session will be restored if you install an extension or upgrade Firefox and choose the option to restart the browser. After either of those two things occur your session will automatically be restored for you upon a restart of the system.

If the system crashes you will be prompted with a message when you try to restart Firefox. It will give you the option to either restore your session with all the tabs and windows that were open before the crash or you can just start with a new session.

I decided that I wanted to make full use of the Session Restore feature so I found out how I could make Firefox restore my session every time I restarted it.

–Undo Close Tab–
The Undo Close Tab is a feature that I didn’t expect to see Mozilla put in Firefox. This helps make up for all those times you accidentally close a site and you can’t remember what it was. There is actually more to the undo function than you think: what do you do if you close 3 tabs and realize that you need to get all 3 of those tabs back but you only have the Undo Close Tab feature to use? Well, if you select the Undo Close Tab option 3 times it will restore all three tabs! Some people think that it just remembers your last tab and nothing more, but that is completely wrong. Also, the History Menu (discussed below ) has a type of "trash bin" for your closed tabs.

–Scrolling Tab-Bar–
The scrolling tab-bar is probably my least favorite feature that has been implemented in Firefox 2. It may not be such a bad idea but the default settings only let me have 10 tabs open on my 1280×800 widescreen monitor before they start to scroll. Luckily I was able to find a way to adjust the settings using the about:config screen so that Firefox will not scroll the tabs so frequently.

–Red X (Close Button)–
Ahhh, that pesky little Red X that Mozilla placed on each tab which upset many people. I actually liked (note the past tense) having the close button on the tabs until I accidentally started closing windows all the time. The Undo Close Tab works nice to recover those pages but eventually it gets frustrating having to constantly undo a closing of the tab. I found some information on how to configure the close button in a few different ways: display a close button on the active tab only, display close buttons on all tabs, don’t display any close buttons, or display a single close button at the end of the tab strip (Firefox 1.x behavior). If you go here I will show you the quick process to change the settings yourself.

–History Menu–

There is no longer a "Go" Menu and now it has been replaced by a "History" menu. the primary difference is the new "Recently Closed Tabs" option that will show you a listing of tabs you have recently closed. This feature coincides with the Undo Close Tab that was mentioned above. I guess naming it "History" makes a little more sense because everything in this menu has to do with the past. It might also be a little easier for people transitioning from Internet Explorer because in IE there is a History sidebar.

–Overview–
I have been extremely happy with the progress Mozilla has been making on Firefox 2. I am a little disappointed that they couldn’t get the new preferences screen into Beta 1 but they have said that it should be ready by Beta 2. Hopefully by that time we will also be able to play with the new look that Firefox 2 is supposed to have. Keep up the good work Mozilla!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on February 26, 2006 by CyberNet.

After this test Firefox has proven itself to be the ‘Superbrowser’. This guy installed over 100 Firefox extensions (currently over 1100 available) and tested the stability of Firefox. He said that Firefox behaved itself very well and allowed the extensions to all function at the same time without any issues except the speed of Firefox. In his posting, he said:

It was really extraordinarily stable. The work of hundreds of programmers who had no idea their code would be used together, coexisting happily in the browser.

This is another amazing story of Firefox. Also, for those of you that are still waiting for the release of Firefox 2.0 Alpha then hopefully it won’t be too much longer. The meeting notes from February 21 don’t have any mention of a release date but many believe it should be soon.

News Source: Splasho’s Firefox Test

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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