Hasta La Gadget!

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

I know that a lot of our readers are stat freaks, and if you’re one of those people you’re absolutely going to love the Greasemonkey script that we have for you today!  What the Google Reader Subscribers Count script does is show the number of feed subscribers that each website has. The numbers show up in a very small bar in the bottom-right corner of the browser for every site that has feeds available.

We have multiple RSS feeds for our site, and as you can see above when that happens it separates the stats for each one by a plus sign. The first one listed in the example is our main feed, and then the others are for individual categories on the site. What makes this even better is that each number is hyperlinked to the respective feed so that they can quickly be added to your Google Reader subscriptions.

The first thing that probably came to your mind is all of the requests this is going to make to the sites you frequently visit. Don’t worry, the developer has already thought about that problem and figured out the best way around it. The script will cache the subscriber count for 24 hours before retrieving fresh data, which also eases the slightly extra burden on your bandwidth.

Google Reader Subscribers Count (requires Greasemonkey)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 18, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

It’s been a year and a half since Mozilla shipped Firefox 3 Alpha 1, and what we saw initially wasn’t very breathtaking. For this first milestone release Mozilla focused on backend improvements that would, in the long run, make the browser a better competitor in a world that is largely dominated by Internet Explorer. Fast forward to the final release of Firefox 3 yesterday and we’ve got ourselves a rich browser that I believe Firefox users will embrace with open arms.

Firefox 3 has its sights set on Internet Explorer as it comes barreling through with over 15,000 updates. There have been enhancements to performance, stability, rendering, security, bookmarking, and much more that makes this the best version of Firefox yet. For the first time we’re going to list out all of Firefox 3′s best features for those of you who are jumping on the bandwagon for the very first time, and we’ll even take a brief look at the browser’s performance.

–Table of Contents–

In this article we’re focusing on several different aspects of the Firefox 3 browser, and we thought it might be easier for you to navigate if you had a table of contents. Here are the main topics that we’re going to cover:

1. Themes
2. Performance
3. Security
4. Usability
5. Developers
6. Conclusion

–Themes–

One of the most frequently discussed aspects of Firefox 3 is the fact that it ships with a handful of different themes that are all customized to the operating system you’re using. They’ve got one for Vista, Linux (varies depending on distribution used), Mac, and Windows XP. Each one focuses on trying to make the browser appear as though it was designed specifically for that operating system. There is, of course, some debate as to whether Mozilla succeeded in doing so.

Firefox 3 themes, from top to bottom: Vista, Linux, Mac, XP

The theme changes go beyond just a few changed icons, too. As you can tell in the screenshot above there are some rather drastic differences between each of the themes. A good example of that is the address bar and search box which have rounded corners on some operating systems, and don’t on others.

As you begin to dive a little deeper you’ll notice that the OS-specific skinning impacts more than the browser’s main window. Everything from the settings to managing bookmarks have all been designed to fit in with the general appearance of your operating system.

–Performance–

We’re not going to dive deep into the performance realm today because that’s something we plan on exploring more in the future. One thing that we can say is that the performance hasn’t changed much since our last extensive test, especially in the memory usage department. Firefox 3 still knocks the socks off of the competitors when it comes to minimizing the amount of memory it uses.

But you know darn well that we won’t move on without giving you some sort of benchmarks. We decided to see how Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, and Safari 3.1 do on the SunSpider JavaScript test. We left Internet Explorer out of this because it is pretty much the only one not claiming that it has significant JavaScript speed improvements. Here are the results from the three browsers running on Windows XP (a smaller number is better):

1. Firefox 3: 3057.6ms (results)
2. Safari 3.1: 3464.0ms (results)
3. Opera 9.5: 4440.0ms (results)

What’s interesting is that on Apple’s Safari site they say that “it executes JavaScript up to 4.5 times faster than Firefox 2 and up to 5 times faster than Opera 9.” While that may have been true at one point, I think they’ll need to be updating their facts. Although you know darn well that they won’t admit defeat to Firefox 3.

–Security–

Security is normally one of the main ways that people try to “sell” Firefox to their friends and family. They talk about how vulnerable you could be if you’re not using Firefox, and it looks like this will continue to be a selling point even in Firefox 3. Take a look at some of the new security features it brings to the table:

• Enhanced Web Forgery Protection: Firefox will try and block any sites that are infested with malware (example site), or are trying to compromise your confidential information through a phishing attack (example site).
• Antivirus Integration: After you download a file Firefox 3 will automatically scan it using any antivirus software that you have installed on your computer.
• Vista Parental Controls: I wish Mozilla got around to integrating with Vista’s parental controls a little better, because the only thing Firefox 3 will honor are any download restrictions that have been established. That’s nice and all, but website blocking is something most parents are probably concerned about more.

–Usability–

While Firefox 3 has a lot of improvements that are constantly working behind the scenes, there are also some great things that you’ll want to start taking advantage of right away. Here are the main features that you surely don’t want to miss:

• Enhanced Address Bar (a.k.a. Awesome Bar): The address bar has received one of the biggest overhauls, and it now uses an intelligent algorithm to determine which results you’re likely looking for. It uses a combination of the recency and frequency of your visits to figure out what belongs at the top of the list.
  
• Better Download Management: The download manager in Firefox was revamped a bit, but what’s more important is that in the Status Bar of the browser you can now keep an eye on how much longer your downloads have. Plus you can resume your downloads after you’ve restart the browser.
  
• “Remember My Password” isn’t so annoying: I absolutely hate when a browser asks you if you want it to remember your password before you even have a chance to see if what you entered was correct. I use different passwords on different sites, and now with Firefox 3 it will popup with an information bar along the top of the browser asking if I want it to remember my password. What’s nice about that is it doesn’t interrupt the page from loading, which means you can actually see whether the login credentials you used were correct before having Firefox store that information in its database.
  
• Simplified Bookmarking: Bookmarking a page is now as simple as clicking on the star located in the address bar. If you click the star a second time it will let you edit details such as the name of the bookmark, the location, and even any tags that you think will help find it in the future.
  
• Smart Bookmarks: The Smart Bookmarks are kind of like the automatically generated music playlists that applications like iTunes create. These special bookmarks can show a listing of your most visited sites, places you recently bookmarked, and more. We’ve even put together instructions on how to create your own Smart Bookmarks in Firefox 3.
  
• Full Page Zoom: By default when you go to zoom in and out on a website it will now zoom the entire page instead of just increasing or decreasing the size of the text. This is more like what the other mainstream browsers do, but you can always go back to the old way of “zooming” only the text if you want.
  

–Developers–

There are also some great things that developers of websites and extensions alike will want to take advantage of. Here are some of my favorites:

• Offline support: Firefox has the ability to take a website offline so that users can still interact with it even when not connected to the Internet.
• Web-based protocol handlers: We’ve already shown you how Firefox can integrate with online services (here and here), and hopefully there will be more web applications looking to take advantage of this feature.
• Animated PNG graphics: Could this be the thing that drives animated GIF’s into the grave?
• Several new XUL elements for extension creators: Now add things like date and time pickers to your extensions.
• And much more!

–Conclusion–

Firefox 3 is undoubtedly a next generation browser, and I’m anxious to see how well this version can compete against the other top-dogs out there. Let us know in the comments what you think of it, what your favorite features are, and when/if you plan on making the leap to Firefox 3.

P.S. Keep an eye out for next Wednesday’s CyberNotes as we show you some tweaks that can help make the browser even better.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on November 07, 2006 by CyberNet.

Mozilla just released Firefox 1.5.0.8 but it apparently does not have the built-in upgrader for users switching to Firefox 2 (I tried to do an update after the upgrade and it said no updates were available). I was expecting Mozilla to place that feature in this release so that people would be prompted to complete the upgrade to the new Firefox but they apparently decided not to do it. It is still very easy for people to upgrade because they just have to download Firefox 2 and install it. The installation process will automatically upgrade your current installation without any problems but it does take a few extra steps compared to Firefox doing it all for you.

Firefox 1.5.0.8 also has some security fixes integrated and Mozilla will continue to release security updates until April 24, 2007 for the Firefox 1.5 branch. They do recommend that you upgrade to Firefox 2 for the best security though.

If you would like to download Firefox 1.5.0.8 you can go here or just use this downloader:

I do wish that people would be prompted to upgrade to Firefox 2 just because there are a lot of people I know who never go check for updates themselves. If they see that an update is available without having to go download and install it then they would definitely be more willing to go through with it. Maybe they just haven’t initiated the major upgrades?

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Web Browser Wednesday

It’s been well over a year since we’ve jotted down some excellent tab-related Firefox extensions, and so we thought that it was time to do another round. Since the last article there have been numerous milestones, including the release of Firefox 2. As you can imagine between then and now a lot of new extensions have made their way out the door.

Almost all of the extensions we’re going to mention in this article have never been highlighted before on our site, and a few of them have not even become popular enough to hit the mainstream Mozilla Add-ons site. So we’re pretty confident that there are at least a handful of the extensions that you haven’t heard of.

–Installing Sandbox Extensions–

Some of the extensions are located in the Mozilla Sandbox, which is essentially a holding room until they become popular. To access the Sandbox you need to have a Mozilla account, but if you really don’t feel like creating one here is a generic username and password you can use:

Username: bugmenot@mailinator.com
Password: bugmenot

We’ll make sure to label all of the extensions below that are still located in the Sandbox.

–Multiple Tab Handler (Homepage)–

One feature that I’ve always wanted in any browser is the ability to manage multiple tabs similar to how I manage files and folders on my computer. Opera comes close with their window manager panel, but it’s not as natural as I would like it to be.

This extension is about as good as it gets, and once installed you’ll be able to Ctrl+Click on tabs to simultaneously select them. Then you can duplicate, reload, bookmark, close, or move the selected tabs to a new window. The only other thing I would like to see in this is the ability to reorder all of the selected tabs.

–Tab Scope (Homepage)–

This is a killer extension that I’ve quickly fallen in love with. Ever since we wrote about this several months ago I’ve become more and more accustomed to using it. At first glance it may look like any ordinary tab preview, but underneath the slick appearance lies some powerful controls.

First off, Tab Scope provides real-time previews of websites. For example, if you’re uploading some images to a site you can watch the progress bar move from within the preview.

The thumbnail preview is also fully navigatable. You can use the forward, back, and refresh buttons located at the top to move throughout the site, or you can click on links. You can also scroll up and down on the website if your mouse has a scroll wheel.

–Ctrl Tab (Homepage)–

This extension is located in the Sandbox. Read the instructions at the beginning of the article on how to download it.

There are all kinds of extensions out there that try to bring the Alt-Tab feature to Firefox. By default in Firefox pressing Ctrl+Tab will cycle through all of your open tabs, but there is no interface for it. This extension not only adds an interface, but adds a pretty slick one if I may say so myself. As you use the Ctrl+Tab key combination you’ll see a popup located at the bottom that shuffles through your open windows. Take a look at the sweet reflections, too:

–Fancy Numbered Tabs (Homepage)–

This is a rather new extension that provides an extremely simple, yet useful feature. It replaces the red “X” close button on the first 8 tabs with a number corresponding to their position. This makes it easier for you to utilize Firefox’s built in tab switch feature: using CTRL+[1-8] you can switch to the respective tab.

[via Firefox Facts]

–Separate Tabs (Homepage)–

Don’t confuse this extension with the Separe extension, because they are similar in name and appearance but differ in how they work. This extension automatically sorts your tabs according to the domain name:

One of the things that I noticed is that new tabs are automatically added to the end of the list, and when the site finishes loading it is sorted. If a site hangs up and never gets to finish loading it will probably never get sorted.

–Tree Style Tab (Homepage)–

This extension is located in the Sandbox. Read the instructions at the beginning of the article on how to download it.

Tree Style Tab is a unique extension that not only lets you orient the tab bar vertically, but it also lets you treat the tabs almost like folders. As seen to the right you can nest the tabs within each other, and there is an expand/collapse button available for easy control. When collapsed a number is shown next to the close button representing how many child tabs there are.

By default Tree Style Tab will automatically nest new tabs that are opened from the parent site, but you can also drag and drop tabs onto each other for manual nesting.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on October 10, 2006 by CyberNet.

It has been a little while since I have taken a look to see what Firefox 3 (codenamed Gran Paradiso and also known as Minefield) is up to. I didn’t expect it to be much different than Firefox 2 but there were a few features, such as Places, that had gotten pushed back for the release of Firefox 3. In a matter of a few minutes I had the latest nightly build up and running.

I was shocked to see essentially no difference between version 2 and version 3. You may ask yourself “what about the Places bookmark system?” That has actually been pulled out of Firefox 3 for the time being because they just implemented the new theme. For that reason they removed Places until they could get it adjusted to match the rest of Firefox.

As far as the Acid 2 web standard compliance goes it looks like it gets a little better with Firefox 3. Hey, at least the face has eyes now!

I’ll probably be making the switch over to Firefox 3 pre-Alpha about a month after Firefox 2 gets released (I need to have some stability in my life, and a month’s worth should be enough ). I love testing new browsers mostly for the sheer excitement. I’ve been using Firefox 2 since around January as my primary browser and there were a few bumps along the way but it was always my default browser.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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