Hasta La Gadget!

If you, like us, are tired of the so-called browser wars trying to woo us with barely identifiable, context-dependent speed differences, this might be of interest. Firefox is about to get a whole lot more sentient on us — at least those of us with accelerometers in our hardware — courtesy of a new device API that is capable of maintaining a webpage’s vertical orientation relative to the ground, no matter what sort of salto mortale the underlying machine (Mac or otherwise) might be doing. Think of it as the cherry atop your Windows 7 multitouch tablet cake. Originally intended for mobile platforms only, this software will make its way into version 3.6 of the full-fledged browser — and you can find an early demo of what it can do just past the break.

Continue reading Firefox 3.6 will support accelerometers, make the internet seasick (video)

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Firefox 3.6 will support accelerometers, make the internet seasick (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on September 24, 2006 by CyberNet.

For anyone that likes to listen to music while you browse the web with Firefox then I’m sure you are already using FoxyTunes. It is an extension that allows you to control your music player (WinAmp, Windows Media Player, Musicmatch, and many more) without ever having to leave your browser!

Just the other day FoxyTunes released a pretty big upgrade that has the following features:

• Web searches – find lyrics, artist images, videos, bios and more, while listening to music with FoxyTunes. [see demo movie]
• FoxyTunes Mini – now you can enjoy your music with FoxyTunes even when you’re not in Firefox. It’s the only music desktop widget with its own tabbed browser! [see demo movie]. Currently, only supported on Windows.
• Info Box – your music “dashboard”. Shows song info, album art, recent history and more… [see demo movie]
• Podcasts and Web media – quickly preview any podcast, stream any or all episodes to your player, and, if you like what you hear, subscribe. Find music on the Web pages you visit, and stream it to your media player with a click. [see demo movie]

This is one of the top Firefox extensions with nearly 2 million downloads. The new version seems to be getting some rave reviews from users with many people loving the search feature.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

Yesterday there was some concern raised over at Reddit because someone had noticed that both of Mozilla’s flagship products, Firefox and Thunderbird, call home every 24-hours. This happens regardless of whether you go into the Firefox preferences and disable all of the different types of updates. Why then does Mozilla’s products phone home then?

What happens is that the applications check with Mozilla on a daily basis to see if you’re running any extensions that Mozilla feels need to be blocked, whether it be because of stability or security reasons. A list of extensions that Mozilla is currently blocking can be found here, and at this time there are only five on the list:

• Internet Download Manager, v2.1-3.3 for Firefox 3.0a1 and newer (see bug 382356).
• Free Download Manager, v1.0-1.3.1 for Firefox 3.0a1 and newer (see bug 408445).
• Yahoo Application State Plugin, v1.0.0.5 and older for Firefox 3.0a1 and newer (see bug 419127).
• Vietnamese Language Pack, v2.0 for all applications (see bug 432406).
• npLegitCheckPlugin.dll, for Firefox 3.0a1 and newer (see bug 423592).

I think the thing that caused the biggest stir is the fact that with each request Firefox also sends information including what version of the browser you’re using, what operating system you’re running, and other info that they can use to figure out how many active users they have.

This feature can be disabled by going through the about:config and searching for the extensions.blocklist.enabled option. If you set that value to false Firefox will stop phoning home, but you should probably think twice before doing this. A few years ago Mozilla created the block list as a way for them to centrally disable extensions if they are found to be malicious or cause instability in the browser. Remember the virus that modified the Vietnamese Language Pack? That’s exactly why it’s one of the five items currently blocked. If you disable this feature you could end up running an extension that you shouldn’t be.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

Almost all of our MyFive articles up until now have been about things that we like, but we also want to use this as a way to discuss improvements to applications, websites, and more. It will kind of be like our Opera article where I wrote about things I would like to see in the browser.

Like many of you I’m a huge fan of the open source Firefox web browser, but there are still some things that I think it can improve on. So today I’m putting Firefox under the microscope!

In my list that I came up with I tried to avoid the more obvious things that can be done by extensions, such as advanced tab management. I also strayed away from mentioning anything that I know will be implemented in Firefox 3. Shall we got on with it?

1. Bookmark Sorting
   One thing that always irks me with Firefox is its inability to automatically sort my bookmarks. You can always manually sort the bookmarks, but even that can be quite a pain. When sorting by name it doesn’t treat sub-folders any differently than individual bookmarks, that means the folders become intermingled with the other bookmarks instead of being listed before them. I would expect this to work in the same way as a file explorer in an operating system, but it doesn’t.
2. Toolbar Management
   I would like to have more control over the toolbars without needing to install an extension. I should be able to quickly place the Tab Bar, for example, on the side or along the bottom.
3. Theme
   Right now there aren’t many browsers that have much visual appeal, and I would say that the two best looking ones are Flock and Internet Explorer. I especially love IE’s transparent effects on Vista, and something like that would be awesome in Firefox. What can I say, I’m a sucker for good eye candy. I also think that Mozilla should include the classic Firefox theme as an option for the same reason that all versions of Windows still contain the classic skin…some people just like things kept simple.
4. One-Click Private Browsing
   Firefox is making its way onto more and more public computers, and I would like to see a one-click option to get complete privacy. Sure it’s possible to wipe the history clean after you’re done, but maybe I don’t want to lose all of my history and cookies. If I’m paying bills or something it would be nice to disable all of the cookies and caching mechanisms.
5. No Restarts After Extension/Theme Installation
   Installing extensions and themes in Firefox is a regular occurrence for me, and sometimes it can become a pain having to restart the browser. I’m grateful that with Firefox 2 my tabs will be restored, but when I have dozens of tabs open it can take a minute or so for the browser to become usable after it restarts.

I did leave performance off of the list for a good reason, it’s because I’ve seen massive improvements in Firefox 3. That’s a story worthy of its own article though, and you’ll probably be seeing a write-up about Firefox 3 performance improvements in the next week or two.

So now it’s your turn! Hit us up in the comments with what you would like to see in future versions of Firefox.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on September 05, 2006 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

A few months ago Max got me into Greasemonkey and I didn’t realize the power that it had until I really started to search for scripts. For those unfamiliar with Greasemonkey it is an extension for Firefox that will let you add functionality to Web sites. You can do just about anything from changing the way eBay looks all the way to using Google Maps in Flickr. So those things are great, but how about we look for some real time savers…(the last one is my favorite)

–Digg Mirrors (Download)–
Many of us love to browse Digg looking for interesting articles but sometimes it is frustrating when the site you are trying to view won’t load. Most people will wait for someone to post a cached link in the comments but there is no need to wait when you can get a Greasemonkey script to do it for you.

As seen in the screenshot the script will add three buttons at the end of the article’s title: DuggMirror, Coral Cache, and Google Cache. That way you are bound to find out what all the hype is about.

–Greased Lightbox (Download)–
 This script is a must for anyone that views images all of the time. When using Greased Lightbox it will open images on top of the current page instead of opening a new page.

It is also very heavily geared towards Google Image searches, Flickr, Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace, and deviantART. You will find it the most useful on those sites because it will pop-up with the image instead of taking you to another site to see it. For example, if you do a Google Image Search and click on one of the thumbnails you will see the full-size version without being taken to another page. You can also zoom in and out using the buttons that I point to in the screenshot or you can move on to the next picture without even going back to the search results. This script is very useful!

–Auto Login (Download)–
Sometimes it is a pain to hit the submit button each time Firefox fills in your password. Wouldn’t it be great if it just did that automatically? It can!

The Auto Login script is great because it will click on the submit button for you as long as Firefox has already filled in your username and password. If your password doesn’t get filled in automatically then the script will never run…it’s that simple.

You can recognize when the script is automatically pressing the button because it will place a purple border around it. The downside is that it will automatically try to log you into the sites that place a default username and password into the text boxes. I see this happen frequently in forums but you can disable Greasemonkey in a single click so it isn’t really a big deal.

–Allow Password Remembering (Download)–
I have written about this feature before just not as a Greasemonkey script. There are some sites, such as Yahoo Mail, that try to prevent you from storing your password in your Web browser. This is done by adding autocomplete=”off”  to the form’s HTML code. With the autocomplete turned off the browser will not even prompt you to remember the password, but this Greasemonkey script will remove that from the code.

Not every site uses this technique to prevent passwords from being remembered but I’m sure you’ll find a few that it works for. Sorry, there wasn’t really a screenshot that I could take of this one.

–Inline Google Player (Download)–
Every now and then I come across a song that I want to listen to but I hate having to open my media player just to listen to hear it. A few weeks ago Google started to let users listen to MP3 files in their email without ever having to leave their Inbox. It was a great feature and I started to wish that other sites did this as well.

Soon after that Lifehacker put together this script which utilizes the Google MP3 player. Anytime it finds that filetype it will show you the play button along with the timeline. I don’t use this very often but it is nice to have when I do need it.

–My Favorite…GMail Conversation Window (Download)–
Out of all of the scripts that I have mentioned this is the entire reason that I now use Greasemonkey. The other scripts are useful but this is something I use several times throughout the day.

GMail conversation window allows you to right-click on an email in your GMail account and it will pop-up with the entire message. Using this prevents me from having to navigate away from the page I’m currently viewing which saves me a ton of time! To make things even easier you will find some useful links at the top of the message that lets you close the window, archive the message, mark it as unread, or immediately send it to the trash. Ahh, it even works with those really long messages because if it is too big to fit on your screen it will give you a scroll bar.

Honestly I find it so useful that I think Google should implement a similar feature so that I can use this anywhere I go. If you use Greasemonkey only for this script it will be well worth it. What a great way to end the list.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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