Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on August 20, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Before a Firefox extension has a chance to become unbelievably popular it has to go through an experimental phase to make sure it’s worthy of being added to Mozilla’s extension site. This process can sometimes take months, and so today we wanted to show you some of the best experimental Firefox extensions that you probably don’t know about.

Since each of these extensions are still in the experimental phase you’ll need to have a free Mozilla account before being able to download them. Believe me though, there are some handy add-ons here that are worth going through the extra hassle.

P.S. If you get a “file hash” error message when trying to download any of the extensions checkout this guide on tips to solve the problem.

–MyBookmarks (Homepage)–

MyBookmarks creates a homepage out of all the bookmarks located in your Bookmarks Menu. Just type about:mybookmarks into the address bar, and it will traverse through your folders grabbing each bookmark displaying the results on a central page. It also sticks each site’s icon next to the results making it easy to find your favorite sites.

The color scheme might not appeal to everyone, but that’s not a problem. Just pull up the options, and using a little CSS magic you can customize the look of the entire page. Additional information on skinning the MyBookmarks can be found here.

–Get File Size (Homepage)–

How many times have you wondered how big a file is before you start downloading it? With this extension you just right-click on the URL of the file, select the option to get the file size, and then you’ll receive a popup letting you know just how big the download is.

–Find in Tabs (Homepage)–

Being able to find text on a page is nice, but being able to find text in any of your open tabs is even nicer! With this extension a new “Find in Tabs” button is added to the find bar. Once pressed it will pull up a listing of search results from each of the tabs that you have open. Clicking on one of the results not only takes you to that particular tab, but also focuses on the area where the match was found.

–Text Area Resizer & Mover (Homepage)–

We’ve seen extensions that let you resize text boxes before, but none of them are like this. Just right-click and drag to dynamically resize any text box, or double-(left)-click and drag on any text box to move it around. If you choose to double-click in a text field it will remain “locked” and movable until you double-click in it again.

The screenshot below demonstrates how you can do things like move a comment box up alongside an article so that it’s easy to pull out quotes. Then as you scroll on the page the text field actually moves with you.

–ErrorZilla Plus (Homepage)–

There are plenty of extensions out there that provide powerful “address not found” or “404 error” pages. Typically they just let you bring up the cache for a particular page, but this one is a bit different. ErrorZilla Plus also lets you customize a list of proxies, which you can then use to try and view the site. This is especially helpful for viewing sites that may be blocked for one reason or another.

–Google Redesigned (Homepage)–

The great people over at Globex Designs have taken the time to compile their two custom styles for Gmail and Google Calendar into one simple extension. A dark skin has never looked so darn good!

–GrandCentral Click to Call (Homepage)–

Do you use Google’s GrandCentral service? If so this extension makes it a lot easier to dial phone numbers that you come across in the browser. Just click on a phone number, and let the extension do the rest of the work!

The developer’s homepage has a lot more information about the extension.

–Noise (Homepage)–

I’m not a big fan of sounds while I’m surfing the Internet, but I know some people like them. If you happen to be one of those people this extension will let you add and customize the sounds used throughout the browser. Get audio alerts for when a popup is blocked, a download has completed, and much more.

–CyberSearch (Homepage)–

And the last one of the day is our own concoction. CyberSearch lets you view Google search results from the web, images, videos, local/maps, and more right in the Firefox 3 address bar. Be sure to checkout the options where you can customize the keywords used to drill down search results to a particular site or Google service.

–Overview–

There you have it! I have to say that there are a lot of great Firefox extensions that can’t wait to get out of the experimental phase, but in the meantime they’d love for you to take them for a spin. Let us know in the comments about any Firefox extensions you use that haven’t broken out of the experimental stage yet.

Update: You might have noticed that a few of the extensions are no longer experimental. It looks like some of them didn’t spend much time in the Sandbox.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Mozilla really seemed to step up the game in 2006 when it came to Firefox. With the new release of Firefox 2 they even went as far as to air commercials on television that were created by Firefox fans! It has been an amazing journey following Firefox throughout 2006 and I went through all of our Firefox stories (totaling more than 240) to pick out our favorites. Here they are in chronological order (the top of each list being the most recent):

Firefox 1.5 Related:

• Download Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1 And 1.5.0.9
• Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.8 Released
• Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.7 Released
• Firefox 1.5.0.6 Has Been Released
• Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.5 Available For Download
• Mozilla Thunderbird & Firefox 1.5.0.4 Released Today
• Firefox 1.5.0.3 Released With The Security Patch
• Did Mozilla Fix The Memory Leaks With Firefox 1.5.0.2?
• Firefox 1.5.0.1 Has Officially Been Released For Download

Firefox 2 Related:

• Where Does Firefox 2 Stand on Vista Compatibility
• Download Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1 And 1.5.0.9
• Make Firefox 2 Show Tabs With Your OS Theme
• CyberNet’s Updated Guide On Firefox 2 Tweaks
• Firefox 2 Is Now *Officially* Released And Has A Redesigned Homepage
• Paul Thurrott Says Firefox 2 Is A Dud
• How To Change User Agents In IE 7 And Firefox 2
• Mozilla Fixes 2300 Bugs In Firefox 2.0 So Far
• CyberNet’s Extensive Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 Review

Firefox 3 Related:

• Firefox 3 Produces Wonderful Anti-Aliased Corners
• Latest Firefox 3 Nightly Passes The Acid 2 Test
• Download The Newly Released Firefox 3 Alpha 1
• Firefox 3 To Have Advanced Microsummaries
• Mozilla Starts Brainstorming Features For Firefox 3 And Beyond

General Firefox:

• Trimming Down Firefox For The Holiday Season
• Firefox Gets Its Television Debut
• 200 Firefox Extensions Installed At One Time!
• Firefox Crop Circle Now On Google Maps
• Minimizing Firefox Memory Leaks
• What Would Happen If Microsoft Owned Firefox?
• Mozilla’s World Firefox Day Participants Acknowledged
• What Are Your Favorite Firefox Extensions
• Mozilla Firefox Add-ons Page Gets A Nice Facelift
• Creating A “Sandbox” To Test Firefox Extensions
• Crushing Those JavaScript Pop-ups In Firefox
• Topics Mozilla Covered In The Meeting With Microsoft
• Firefox Easter Egg – The Book Of Mozilla
• The Funniest Firefox Extensions
• Using Keyword Searches In Firefox And Opera
• Greasemonkey Scripts That Save You Time
• How To Make Firefox Look Like IE
• Mozilla Switches From “I’m Feeling Lucky” To “Browse By Name”
• 10 Great Firefox Extensions For Tabbed Browsing
• 10 Privacy And Security Extensions For Firefox
• How To Upgrade Your Portable Firefox
• Firefox Hits 200 Million Downloads
• A Look Back At Firefox (Phoenix) 0.1
• Compatibility Issues When Testing Firefox
• How To Customize Firefox’s Toolbars
• Tweak Firefox’s Password Saver Without An Extension
• What You Need To Know To Be A Firefox Nightly Tester
• Firefox Becomes The First Third-Party Program On Google’s Homepage
• Reducing Your Memory Usage In Firefox
• This May Help Your Firefox Memory Leak

I was inspired to do this post from the Firefox Extension Guru who just wrote an article reviewing what has happened with Firefox in the past year. There are a number of significant details that he included that I don’t think I even knew about. I don’t want to spoil the article but I do want to point out that towards the end there is some information on future releases that includes Firefox 2, 3, and 4! If you like his post as much as I do make sure you Digg it!

So as the year comes to an end I would like to congratulate Mozilla on the hard work and dedication that has surely paid off. Firefox’s market share continues to rise and I can’t wait to see what 2007 brings!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

The latest hourly build of Firefox 2 now has the new theme implemented for the tabs as well. Here is a comparison of the Firefox 2 Beta 1 theme to the most current one available:

Firefox 2 Beta 1 (click image to enlarge):

 Most current build (click image to enlarge):

In both images from left to right: background tab, hovering over a background tab with a mouse, current tab. You can definitely see that the new theme definitely makes the current tab stand out. The ”red X” also fits in a little better with the whole Web 2.0 thing since it has the glossy effect to it. 

I have also put together a portable version of the hourly build which has the new theme it. All you have to do is download the Firefox Portable file. Then you unzip the file and browse for the file FirefoxPortable.exe. Just execute that file and you will be running Firefox 2 with the new Visual Refresh theme! The profile is kept with the FirefoxPortable folder so you don’t have to worry about messing up your other profile and the uninstallation process is simple…just delete the folder!

Remember, if you don’t like the new theme then you can always get the old one back by going here. I really like it and I noticed that they changed the color of the door on the house that is located next to the address bar. When the new buttons were implemented before the door was blue. Minor detail.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on April 02, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

One of the things that I’ve always enjoyed in Safari 3 is the inline search interface, and just the other day I thought I would peruse around the Internet trying to find a way to do the same thing in Firefox. Why is searching special in Safari? Because it dims the background of the page that you’re on, and highlights the matching results as you type. The result that you currently have highlighted bounces up and down to catch your eye, and the whole experience is overall visually appealing.

When searching around for an extension I didn’t come up empty handed. I found one called XUL/Migemo that did exactly what I was looking for, but the problem was that the extension does a few other things that I don’t really need (nor wanted). After a little more searching I came across this post in the MozillaZine forums which talks about how you can set it up yourself. After testing it I can verify that it does work on both Firefox 2 and Firefox 3.

Note: There is a video demonstration at the end of the article that shows what the end result looks like.

–Setup–

The setup process consists of three pretty easy steps. You’ll have it done in just a minute or two:

1. Download this package that I’ve assembled which includes the four files you’ll need.
2. There are three JavaScript files (userChrome, SafariHighlight.uc, and ucjs_findbar.uc) that need to be placed in your profile’s chrome folder. Use this table to find your browser’s profile:
   

   Operating System	Profile folder location(s)
   Windows 95/98/Me	C:\Windows\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ C:\Windows\Profiles\<user name>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
   Windows NT 4.x	C:\Winnt\Profiles\<user name>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
   Windows 2000 and XP	C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
   Windows Vista	C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
   Unix	~/.mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/
   Mac OS X	~/Library/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/ ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/

   After you’ve found the profile folder just copy the three JavaScript files (userChrome, SafariHighlight.uc, and ucjs_findbar.uc) into the chrome folder located within your profile. If the UserChrome file already exists you may want to back it up before overwriting it.

3. Now you’ll need to install the extension which I’ve included in the download from the first step (here’s its homepage in case you’re curious). I’ve cleverly named the extension DragMeIntoFirefox because that’s exactly what you need to do… drag the file into the Firefox window. Then proceed with installing it, and restart the browser when it’s done. If you don’t want to drag the extension into the Firefox window just go to File -> Open File and browse for the extension.

–Using the New Search Feature–

When you go to perform a search for the first time you may not think that it’s working, but I’m confident that you’ve followed the three steps accurately. The reason why you may not be seeing the dimmed background and nice highlighting is that you need to click the Highlight All button on the Find bar. Immediately after doing that you’ll see the effects go into play.

Alternatively you can just hit the Next button (or the keyboard shortcut Control+G) to go to the next result. After pressing that the Highlight All feature will automatically be enabled. Those of you with the automatic find-as-you-type enabled will want to use the Control+G keyboard shortcut to move on to the next result if you want to see the special effects.

–Demonstration–

Is it worth the work? I think it’s a really nice feature to have, but you be the judge:

–Overview–

So that’s how you can get a Safari-styled search interface in Firefox 2 or Firefox 3. After setting this up I have fallen in love with it, but it would be nice if this was bundled into its own extension.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Tutorial Thursday

Back in July (my how the time flies) we demonstrated a way that would keep your Spam folder clear in Gmail. Every time Google labeled an email as “Spam” it would be sent straight to your trash. That is a good solution for some people but sometimes it is nice to go flip through the messages before you dump them to make sure you haven’t missed the $1,000,000 you’ve inherited from your second cousin’s aunt’s nephew-in-law who lives in Norway. Yes, you know those emails.

Firefox users can optionally hide the Spam count by installing the CustomizeGoogle extension but there isn’t anything else that I really use in that extension so it isn’t worth me installing it. This fix can easily be applied to both Opera and Firefox though without installing a single thing.

Firefox users:

1. Locate and open the userContent.css in your Firefox profile directory. The file is in the  Chrome folder inside your profile. If the file does not exist you will have to make it (see here for more details). Another alternative would be to download and use the Stylish Firefox extension which makes it easy to add custom CSS for websites.
2. Copy the following text and paste it into the userContent.css file:
   @-moz-document url-prefix(http://mail.google.com),url-prefix(https://mail.google.com)
{#ds_spam b {visibility: hidden;}
#ds_spam b::before {content: "Spam"font-weight: normal;visibility: visible;}}
3. Save that file and pull up Gmail in Firefox…the Spam counter is all gone!

Opera users:

1. Right-click and save this file to your computer.
2. Press F12 and choose “Edit site preferences” from the context menu.
3. Select the Display tab and in the “My style sheet” section choose the file that you just saved.
4. Press OK to save your changes and reload Gmail to see that your Spam counter is all gone!

That is one thing I have always loved about Opera and that is how you can easily add custom stylesheets for websites without having to install anything. There is so much that you can do with creating your own stylesheets to make your web browsing experience a lot better. Hopefully this will just tip the iceberg for you and maybe you’ll start to think up some of your own stylesheets that you can create or maybe you’ll find some nifty ones at userstyles.org.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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