Hasta La Gadget!

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

Mac only (kind of works on other OS’s… read on)
The features and performance of Firefox 3 have helped me fall in love with the browser all over again, but the “native” themes need some work. I’ve been keeping an eye out for a theme that is more along the lines of what Safari looks like on my Mac, and one developer has stepped up to the plate with two gorgeous alternatives: GrApple Delicious and GrApple Yummy.

At first glance the two themes look nearly the same (as seen below), but the differences lie in the details. GrApple Yummy is almost an exact clone of Safari, which is what I thought I was looking for. That was until I noticed that each individual tab does not include the site’s icon, which I didn’t even realize Safari lacked until this theme made me go back and double-check. I was very bummed because I loved the theme otherwise, but that’s when I came across GrApple Delicious which does show the icons on each tab:

The only thing that is really different between the two themes (at least that I noticed) is the tab bar. In GrApple Yummy the tab bar hangs from the toolbar located above it just like in Safari, where as GrApple Delicious displays the tab bar in the typical old-school Firefox fashion. It doesn’t really bother me which way the tab bar is oriented as long as I have my icons on each tab, and so I’m loving the GrApple Delicious theme.

And the oversized fonts in the location bar… gone! As you can see in the screenshot to the right the location bar is toned down a bit in both themes by using slightly smaller fonts.

Obviously these themes are targeted towards Mac OS X users, but they do surprisingly work on other operating systems. The only issue was that the menu (File, Edit, etc…) layout was a bit off from what it should be, but that can quickly be cured with an extension such as Personal Menu. If you want to install it on an operating system other than Mac OS X you’ll need to do so from one of these two pages: GrApple Delicious or GrApple Yummy.

Get the GrApple Delicious or GrApple Yummy Firefox themes

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on March 20, 2007 by CyberNet.

Mozilla has posted final versions of both Firefox 1.5.0.11 and 2.0.0.3 earlier today that fixes 6 bugs. These bugs (listed below) deal with varying issues, some of which are actually security related, so an update is strongly recommended.

Since the Firefox homepage has not been updated at this time, I have put together two downloaders for each of the new versions of Firefox:

Download Firefox 1.5.0.11:

Download Firefox 2.0.0.3:

There is also no official release notes page available at this time detailing the changes. When ready, the release notes page for 2.0.0.3 will be here and 1.5.0.11 will be here. However, these were the bugs that had to be fixed before Firefox 2.0.0.3 could be shipped:

• Backbase bug
• Subscribing to RSS feeds
• Rendering problems for tfoot
• Firefox 2.0.0.1 and later breaks automatic client certificate authentification
• Password Trouble with Multiple Accounts
• Handling responses to ftp pasv command

More information will probably be posted on the Security Advisory site after Mozilla officially announces the release of Firefox 2.0.0.3 and 1.5.0.11 a little later today or tomorrow. GetFirefox.com should be updated with this new release in about 6 to 12 hours (that’s what it typically takes) for those people who want to hold off until it is on the Firefox homepage.

If you decide that you’re just going to wait for Firefox to notify you of the update it will probably be 24 to 48 hours before they activate the automatic updates. After all, they don’t want everyone rushing to download it at the same time!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on August 02, 2006 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

John Haller recently updated Portable Firefox to the most recent builds but before that I frequently received requests from people to update the build for them. It is actually super easy to do and so I thought I would walk you through the few steps that you need to do in order to upgrade Firefox builds yourself.

The first option that I will recommend is going to your Help menu and selecting “Check For Updates.” The new version of Portable Firefox supports the partial updates for Firefox but previous versions will still be able to update properly. The older versions will normally have to download the entire Firefox file which is around 7MB instead of being able to download a small patch that is just 400KB.

If checking for updates doesn’t work then you can just do it manually. It really isn’t difficult to do and the funny thing is that an extra step is required for versions of Firefox that have been released. It is a little easier for the test builds of Firefox that are released every night.

–Instructions for Released Builds–

1. Download the released version of Firefox that you want to run unless you have already installed that version on a computer. If you have installed it then skip to step 3.
2. You have to install Firefox because Mozilla doesn’t offer a ZIP version of builds they release.
3. Download Portable Firefox (argh, I just can’t get use to the Firefox Portable name so excuse me if I don’t say the proper name throughout the article). Extract the contents wherever you would like.
4. Find the installation folder of Firefox which is “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox” by default. Just right-click on the Mozilla Firefox folder and select “Copy”.

   

5. Browse to where you extracted Portable Firefox and open the App folder. Delete the folder named “firefox”.

   

6. Paste the Mozilla Firefox folder into this directory and rename it to “firefox” (without the quotes).
7. That’s it, go ahead and execute the FirefoxPortable.exe file.

–Instructions for Nightly Builds–

1. Download the ZIP file of the Firefox nightly build you want to run. The latest nightly build of Firefox 2.0 can be found here.
2. Download Portable Firefox. Extract the contents wherever you would like.
3. Extract the contents of the nightly build you downloaded in step 1. Copy the folder named “firefox”.

   

4. Browse to where you extracted Portable Firefox and open the App folder. Delete the folder named “firefox”.

   

5. Paste the “firefox” folder from step 3 into this directory.
6. That’s it, go ahead and execute the FirefoxPortable.exe file.

By doing it that way you are able to keep all of your settings, bookmarks, extensions, and anything else that you do to customize your Firefox. If you don’t mind waiting for a release of Portable Firefox to come out then you can always copy your profile over from your old installation to your new installation. You can locate your Portable Firefox profile in the “FirefoxPortable\Data\” and once you are there just copy the “profile” folder over to the same directory in your new Portable Firefox.

Whatever way you choose to use Portable Firefox I am sure it will be a good one. Testing the nightly builds would be a little more cumbersome without using Portable Firefox but it can still be done.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 23, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

The new Firefox 3 address bar is one of those things that you either love or hate, and it’s quite amazing how much buzz such a simple aspect of the browser can cause. The new address bar is often referred to as the AwesomeBar because of how useful it can be, but more officially it is considered the Smart Location Bar.

Why does the Smart Location Bar get so much attention? In most browsers the address bar only looks at the sites you’ve previously typed directly into the bar, but in Firefox 3 it also includes results from both your history and bookmarks. This kind of behavior definitely takes some getting used to, and it wasn’t until I had been using it for a few weeks that I really began to love it.

We’ve got a bunch of different things in store for you to today. To get the ball rolling we’re going to briefly explain how Firefox 3 calculates what results should be at the top of the address bar when you’re typing, and what should be at the bottom. Then we’ve got a bunch of tips on how you can tweak and alter various aspects of the location bar until it’s exactly what you want it to be.

–The Algorithm: Frecency–

Firefox 3 assigns a rank to every site that you visit, and it uses multiple criteria to do so. The two main things that factor into how a URL’s value is calculated are how often you visit that site in conjunction with when the site was visited. This value is often called the Frecency: frequency combined with recency.

That sounds simple enough, but as Mozilla’s documentation demonstrates there is a lot more to it. Bonuses are given to sites that you manually type into the address bar, bookmarks that you visit, and more. Plus more weight is given depending on whether you visited the URL in the last 4 days, 14 days, 31 days, or 90 days. All of this plays into what appears in the address bar when you start typing.

The good news is that you can essentially customize each aspect of the algorithm using about:config in the browser. If you pull up about:config and type frecency into the filter list you’ll find all of the different values associated with the algorithm. It’s helpful to know the formula used in the calculation because it will help explain what each of the different entries represent:

Visit Value = Bucket Weight * (Visit Bonus / 100)

The bucket weight values appear in in the about:config as firstBucketWeight, secondBucketWeight, and so on. These “buckets” correspond to the recency of your visit (4 days, 14 days, etc…) which can be adjusted with the firstBucketCutoff, secondBucketCutoff, etc… settings.

Visit bonuses are given to various URL’s depending on a variety of factors, including whether a site is bookmarked, whether it was visited by clicking a link, or whether it was visited by entering the address into the location bar. All of these values can be adjusted as well, and of them have the word “Bonus” on the end of them in the about:config frecency section.

–Deleting Entries & Resetting Stats–

Although the system seems overly complicated it’s pretty easy to mange what items appear. For example, I’ve read stories by several people saying that they don’t want results from their history showing up in the address bar because of questionable sites that they visit. Well, the results that are available are only those that are in your history, which means clearing out your history will wipe out those “questionable sites.”

You can do this in a variety of ways. If you want to wipe out your entire history (and therefore reset the stats) you can go to Tools -> Clear Private Data, and from there you can erase your browsing history among other things. Alternatively you can go to History -> Show All History where you can manage individual items, and you can also search through your entire history. Just select the items you want to remove and press the Delete key.

If you want a really fast way to remove items from your history you can use the… address bar! That’s right. Select an item from the address bar using the keyboard arrows, and then press the Delete key (Shift+Delete on a Mac) to see it get removed immediately.

–Removing History & Bookmarks–

If you don’t want the address bar searching both your history and bookmarks there is actually a quick fix. Open up the about:config, navigate to browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped, and change the value to true. Now the address bar will behave just like it did in Firefox 2 where it only searches those addresses you’ve typed into it.

–Removing Bookmarks–

Believe it or not you can prevent your bookmarks from showing up in the results without giving up the history results. Just open up the about:config and set places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus and places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus both to 0 (that’s the number zero). The next thing you’ll want to do is restart Firefox and clear your history. This is because Firefox has the frecency values stored, and without clearing the history your bookmarks will likely still show up.

Tip: If you want bookmarks appearing that you have visited only set the “unvisited” option to zero. That way your visited bookmarks will continue to show up as normal.

–Hide Unvisited Extension–

The Hide Unvisited add-on is similar to the method I described above for removing your bookmarks from the results, but it eliminates some of the hassle. What it does is set the following values in the about:config to zero:

• places.frecency.unvisitedTypedBonus
• places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus

After those have been set to zero it will erase the frecency values for the bookmarks that you haven’t visited before. This prevents you from having to wipe out your browser’s history in order to see the new values take effect.

This doesn’t, however, prevent your bookmarks from being displayed all together. This only affects those bookmarks that you haven’t visited since the last time you cleared your browser’s cache.

–Alter the Appearance–

The OldBar add-on for Firefox 3 won’t touch the address bar’s algorithm, but it will change the appearance to make the results look like they did in Firefox 2.

–Displaying Google Results–

We’ve supercharged the Firefox 3 address bar with our own homegrown CyberSearch extension. In a nutshell it lets you search Google and see the results right there in the address bar. It’s highly customizable and can make you a lot more productive.

–Distinguishing the Types of Results–

If you want it to be easier to recognize the different types of results in the address bar you may have to look no further than this style designed for the Stylish extension.If you don’t mind diving into the CSS code you can (of course) customize the color scheme, too. With it results from tags will be highlighted in light yellow, bookmarks in light blue, and history items in light green. Similarly our CyberSearch extension has a built-in customization option so that you can pick what background color its results use, and so this works well with it.

Thanks for the tip Mark! [via Ghacks]

–Overview–

Hopefully this article has helped you understand exactly how the Firefox 3 address bar functions, and how you can make it work for you. Be sure to checkout our other Firefox 3 tips, and let us know in the comments how you’ve gone about customizing the address bar.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

Cookies are used in your web browser to store information, but have you ever thought about how easy it would be for a hacker to quickly gain access to them? It is actually frighteningly easy as Robert Graham, the CEO of errata security, demonstrated at the Black Hat security convention. All it really takes is a point-and-click of the mouse:

First Graham needs to be able to sniff data packets and in our case the open Wi-Fi network at the convention fulfilled that requirement. He then ran Ferret to copy all the cookies flying through the air. Finally, Graham cloned those cookies into his browser – in easy point-and-click fashion – with a home-grown tool called Hamster.

The attack can hijack sessions in almost any cookie-based web application and Graham has tested it successfully against popular webmail programs like Google’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. He stressed that since the program just uses cookies, he only needs an IP address and usernames and passwords aren’t required.

In front of everyone at the convention Graham demonstrated how he could intercept the cookies from a person sending an email. He had someone creat a Gmail account, and in no time at all Graham had intercepted the cookies therefore enabling him to send an email disguised as the victim. As mentioned in the above quote, there were no usernames or passwords needed.

–Secure Yourself–

One of the easiest things that you can do to secure yourself from such an easy attack is to use https:// instead of http:// whenever it is available. Some services like Gmail offer this alternative, and using it encrypts your session using SSL so that these types of attacks don’t happen.

Firefox users (with Greasemonkey), Internet Explorer users (with IE7 Pro or Turnabout), and Opera users can use a script such as this one that is setup to automatically replace the http:// with https:// anytime that you visit Gmail. That way you never have to think about doing it yourself.

You should also try not to visit sites that use sensitive information while connected to a public hotspot, but I think we all know that by now.

Source: TG Daily [via Slashdot]

Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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