Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on February 15, 2008 by CyberNet.

Fun Friday

Signs of Life is a website I recently stumbled across and it’s an ongoing community project where people can submit photos of signs that “transcend their objectivity to reveal our humanity.” In their “Frequently Asked Questions” section they explain that the signs can have a funny spelling, a grammatical error, another meaning, or it could simply be the existence of the sign itself that makes it worth submitting. After flipping through a few of the submitted photos, I thought several of them were worth sharing. Today’s Fun Friday is collection of photos I found from the Signs of Life site. I highly recommend going to their site to look through more of them if you have a spare minute, they’re all pretty funny.

–Explosives–

Found in Parks, Canada. Use Caution when hiking! (Note: In case you’re wondering, explosives are used to trigger avalanches in this area, hence the sign)

The sign reads: Danger: Explosives on the mountain. Unexploded Warheads or Avalauncher Projectiles may be found in the target area.  Unexploded Warheads or Projectiles may be distorted.  If you find a Warhead or Projectile do the following:

1. Do not touch or disturb.
2. Mark the location at a distance of 3-4 metres
3. Immediately report location to the Warden Service

–Good Dog!–

Found in North Vancouver

–Separation of Church and State–

Actual street signs found in Redlands, California

–Elderly Crossing–

This sign is actually found in the Cayman Islands. Here it’s Deer Crossing signs. There it’s Elderly Crossing signs!

–Those coconuts are dangerous!–

Found in none other than Hawaii!

–Only in Texas–

–A Hot Dog is There to Help!–

–Animals could eat you!–

Found at the Knoxville Zoo

–Trash does not belong in the toilet–

Visit the Iron Furnace in Illinois and this is what you’ll find.

–Danger!–

Not your typical warning sign.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on October 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

The other day Netscape took the plunge and provided a completely reworked version of their browser. The new Netscape 9 is based on the Firefox 2 browser, and therefore has some really nice features such as inline spell checking. It kicks things up a notch by including several features you won’t find in Firefox, well, not by default that is.

Most of the features in Netscape 9 aren’t really innovations, and really only demonstrate how well the Netscape developers are able to integrate existing Firefox extensions into the browser. So it really poses the question “why would you want to install Netscape?” Honestly, I have no idea. By using Firefox you are guaranteed to be among the first to get security patches, the same ones Netscape users may have to wait awhile for until they are ported over.

We didn’t write a review of Netscape 9 because we covered it pretty in-depth when the first Beta was released. Since then there has been hardly any changes, and so we thought this time around it would be better to show where you can download many of Netscape’s best features for Firefox.

Note: All screenshots have been taken in Firefox 2 using the Netscape theme.

–Netscape 9 Theme (Download)–

Inevitably one of the first things that we have to do is grab the Netscape 9 theme. It is available for Firefox as the Netstripe theme, and you’ll quickly see the resemblance. In fact, the theme was actually posted by the Netscape team. Hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

Click to Enlarge

One of the major differences is that in Netscape the Stop and Reload buttons are combined, but in this theme it just hides the Stop button when it’s not needed. It will show up when a site is loading though, and will appear immediately to the right of the Reload button. We’ll show you how to circumvent this problem later on.

–URL Correction (Download)–

Netscape 9 monitors the URL that you type into the Address Bar with your fat fingers just waiting for you to make a stupid mistake. If you misspell something it will automatically correct it, and if you so desire it can show a confirmation before it does so. This feature was essentially yanked straight from the URL Fixer extension for Firefox.

An example of where this works is if you type in cybernetnews.con into the Address Bar it will automatically change it to cybernetnews.com:

–Link Pad (Download)–

This is one of the more unique features that Netscape 9 does have. It provides a quick way for you to save a link to a website without actually having to store it in your bookmarks. It’s a nice feature, but I have “junk” folder in my bookmarks that serves this very purpose.

There is a Firefox extension, however, that does virtually the same thing as Link Pad plus some. It’s called ScrapBook, and with it you can “bookmark” sites. ScrapBook also lets you add notes to sites.

–Sidebar Mini Browser (Download)–

This feature doesn’t have an exact counterpart, but the Firefox alternative is a little bit better. In Netscape you can show full navigation controls (forward, back, stop, etc…) in the sidebar so that you can truly browse a website from there. In Firefox you can open sites in the sidebar, but navigating around can be a little bit of a pain.

To conquer that issue we turn to the Split Browser extension. With it you can “split” a window as many times as you would like, which can lead to some pretty crazy collages. It also lets you tile tabs, which is one of the reasons I think it is better than Netscape’s offering. And since this doesn’t use the sidebar to display the secondary site you can still have your bookmarks, or other things open there.

–Restart the Browser (Download)–

Ahh, it’s amazing what a difference the simplest things can make. The “Restart Navigator” option that was added to the File Menu in Netscape is really nice because it keeps all of your current tabs intact after a restart, but likewise there is an extension to do it in Firefox.

–Resizeable Textarea (Download)–

Don’t you just hate when you’re commenting on a site or in a forum and it only has a small box to type your reply? That’s one of the reason I added the expand/contract option to our comment box below, but what about sites that don’t have such a feature?

In Netscape 9 all you have to do is grab the corner of a text box and drag it until it’s as big as you want it to be. And Firefox users, yep, there’s an extension for that as well called Resizeable Textarea:

–Tab History (Download)–

Picture this, you’re doing a search on Google and you open one of the search results in a new tab. When you try to hit the back button it does nothing, which is expected because the search result was the first thing to be opened in that tab, so there is no history associated with it.

That’s all in the past now (no pun intended)! The Tab History extension will let you retain the history of any parent tab. In this example screenshot I was on our site, and opened the “Live Search 411″ link in a new tab. You’ll notice that it retained the history of the originating tab:

–OPML Support (Download)–

OPML files are commonly known as the primary way for importing and exporting RSS feeds from a feed reader. Seeing that Firefox supports Livemarks (a.k.a. RSS feeds in your bookmarks) it would only seem natural to be able to import and export items to/from your bookmarks, right?

OPML Support is an extension that will do just that, and it lets you choose whether to just do Livemarks, bookmarks, or both.

–Combined Stop/Reload Button (Download)–

This extension works wonderful with any theme, and is needed if you want to mimic how the Netscape 9 theme works. Once installed the Stop button will only be shown when a website is loading, and the Reload button will show the rest of the time. It works perfectly as you can see here while our site was loading:

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on February 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

Free for All Friday

There are several different things that you can do to keep your computer safe from viruses, hackers, and other privacy issues.  One of the most essential forms of protection is an Anti-Virus, however you don’t have to stop there. Any extra layer of protection that you can add makes you computer that much safer. One of those extra layers that you can add is called BufferZone, a product of Trustware.

BufferZone is another solution to Internet Security and works by creating a virtual environment for you to run some of the most vulnerable applications like web browsers, P2P, and Instant Message programs.  A virtual environment means that your Internet downloads work in quarantine (like a compartment), never impacting your computer.  Think of it as a computer within a computer.

They offer three different versions; one that’s free (which I’ll be reviewing), BufferZone Pro which is offered for a 30-day trial or for $29.95, and an Enterprise edition. The free version will probably be suitable for any typical Internet user and does all of the important, essential functions like keeping your PC safe from viruses, adware, and the like.

Any program that is running the virtual BufferZone can never attack your PC.  If there’s hidden code within files like an Office document, or a screen saver file, you’re completely protected. If you’re one of those that downloads a lot from the Internet, this could save you a lot of hassle.

Downloading the free version is simple.  It’s an 8.7 MB download, and the installation process is real quick. After you’ve installed the program, you’ll have to re-start your computer.  Following installation, BufferZone creates a virtual environment to run applications. When your computer re-starts, you’ll be taken through a quick tutorial which guides you through the process (pictured below- click to enlarge).

To indicate to the user that something is running in BufferZone, it will have a red border around it (pictured below).  For example, if you download a program, it will place the file in the “virtual” directory specified by BufferZone.  When you double click to open the download, you’ll see a red border around the program or file icon.  This tells you the download is running in Buffer Zone.While it may appear that your hard disk was modified with the new download, it wasn’t.  New programs will not modify anything on your hard disk or on your system.  They are all simulated in virtual mode.

Now, you may be wondering what you’d do if you didn’t want to open a program within the BufferZone.  They’ve made it very easy to do. All you have to do to release something out of BufferZone and onto your computer is right click, and select “Release from BufferZone.”

Another important feature is the capability to uninstall programs from within the BufferZone.  On the BufferZone Management Screen that can be accessed via the system tray icon, you can completely empty the BufferZone which will clean the BufferZone registry, and virtual files.

There are a few limitations that you might come across with the free version.  First of all, if you’re using the virtual environment to run a web browser, you are limited to a single protection. You can choose from:

• Internet Explorer
• Firefox
• Maxthon
• Opera
• Avant
• Download-Accelerator

You’ll also notice that access to the “policy” and “firewall” sections are only available to users of the Pro version.

In order to use buffer zone, you’ll need to have Windows XP installed with Service Pack 2 or later.  You’ll also need Pentium 3 or higher, 300 MHz, 20 MB of hard drive space, and 128 MB of RAM.  This was tested on Windows XP, so Vista compatibility is unknown.

The best indicator that a program is running in the BufferZone is the red border around the application’s icon, and window.  Another sure indicator is the .virtual extension you’ll find after every file that relates to the program that you downloaded and installed. You’ll always know whether or not a program is running within BufferZone.

Overall I was really impressed with BufferZone, especially because it’s simple and easy for just about anybody to understand.  You can never have too many layers of protection in place to keep the contents of your computer safe. More details, and the downloads of BufferZone from Trustware can be found here.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on June 25, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Firefox 3 (review) has been out for just barely over a week now and it has been downloaded over 19 million times according to Spread Firefox. Many of you requested that we assemble a tweaks guide just like we did with Firefox 2, and so that’s exactly what we’ve got in store for you today.

Before we get started with our guide we would like to mention is that we also have a Firefox 3 extension in the works that will be ready for all of you eager testers next week. We’re not going to say too much about it right now other than it’s something that can greatly enhance your productivity. So keep your eyes peeled for more information early next week!

–Table of Contents–

To make the guide a little easier for you to navigate we’ve created a table of contents that highlights all of the tips and tricks covered in this article:

1. How to use About:Config
2. Session Restore Saving Frequency
3. Don’t Search Bookmarks or History in the Address Bar
4. Increase the Number of Results in the Address Bar
5. Use Bookmark Tags for Better Address Bar Placement
6. Get a Firefox 2 Style Address Bar
7. Manage Search Keywords
8. Enable Advanced Color Profile Support
9. Get the Firefox 3 Theme used on a Different OS
10. Smaller Back Button (Remove the “Keyhole” design)
11. Supercharge the Smart Bookmarks
12. Change Default Applications
13. Change Page Zoom to Text Zoom
14. Get Notified when a Website Redirects You
15. Disable Antivirus Scanning
16. Some Oldies, but Goodies
17. Overview

–How to use About:Config–

If you’ve been following our site you’re probably already familiar with how the about:config works in Firefox, but since several of these tips utilize the about:config screen I figured it wouldn’t hurt to provide a crash course. So before we dive into the tweaks glance through to make sure you know how to make the adjustments, or just reference this section when you need it.

1. Start Firefox.
2. Type about:config into the address bar and press Enter. When you’re presented with the warning screen click the I’ll be careful, I promise button:
   
3. You should see a long list of hidden settings that look meaningless and confusingly complicated:
   
4. Now comes the fun part of actually modifying and/or creating new values:
   • If I tell you that the key already exists then you can type the name of the preference in the Filter box, and it will instantly show only the matching results. Once you find the preference you’re looking for just double-click on it to change the value.
   • If I tell you that the key does not exist you will need to create a new value manually. Don’t be intimidated… it’s not as difficult as it sounds. Just right-click on any entry on the about:config screen, go to the New menu, and choose either string, integer, or boolean depending on what I tell you.
     
5. You may need to restart your browser for some of the options to take effect.
6. Wanna go back to the way something was before you tweaked it? Any of the preferences can be reset to their default values in the event that something doesn’t work the way you expected it to. This can be done by right-clicking on the particular option in about:config, and selecting Reset. Values that have been changed at one point or another will appear in bold text, and once they have been reset they should no longer be bold.

–Session Restore Saving Frequency–

Whenever Firefox crashes it will try to restore all of your open tabs to the way they were. This has come in handy several times for me before, but sometimes I notice that it isn’t able to restore all of my tabs for me.

That’s because Firefox, by default, only saves the session restore data every 10 seconds, but you can configure that time interval to whatever you would like.

• Name: browser.sessionstore.interval
• Preference Needs to be Created: No
• Preference Type: Integer
• Default Value: 10000
• Possible values:
  • The number of milliseconds between session restore saving. For example, entering in 1000 would cause the session restore data to be saved every 1 second, whereas a value of 20000 would make it happen every 20 seconds.

–Don’t Search Bookmarks or History in the Address Bar–

One of the big complaints that I’ve heard with the new address bar is that it includes results from your bookmarks and browsing history, instead of just the website addresses you’ve typed into it. While I’m glad to see that the address bar includes bookmarks and history, I know that this can add some unwanted “noise” to the results for some people.

• Name: browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped
• Preference Needs to be Created: No
• Preference Type: Boolean
• Default Value: False
• Possible values:
  • True – Will only search addresses you’ve entered into the address bar, and will not search your bookmarks or history.
  • False – Will search addresses you’ve typed in, bookmarks, and history

–Increase the Number of Results in the Address Bar–

By default the address bar will always show 12 results in the drop-down menu, which is probably more than enough for most people. If you prefer to see more (or fewer) results you can alter how many items can be displayed with the following setting:

• Name: browser.urlbar.maxRichResults
• Preference Needs to be Created: No
• Preference Type: Integer
• Default Value: 12
• Possible values:
  • The number of results you would like to appear in the address bar drop-down menu.

–Use Bookmark Tags for Better Address Bar Placement–

Tagging bookmarks is one of those things that I wasn’t sure I’d use when I first played around with it in early versions of Firefox 3, but since the address bar also includes results from your bookmarks it can come in handy. To demonstrate what I mean I created a fresh profile in Firefox 3. Then I visited our homepage, bookmarked and tagged it with “cybernet,” and then went to Yahoo.com and tagged that with “cybernet” as well.

I visited Yahoo a few more times to make sure that I had visited it more than “cybernetnews.com,” and then when you search from the address bar you’ll notice that it also searches your tags:

Since I had visited Yahoo.com more than CyberNetNews.com the Yahoo result showed up as first, and the point of this experiment is to show that you can use the tag system to help manipulate what results show up for certain keywords. If I hadn’t added the “cybernet” tag to the Yahoo.com bookmark it would have never shown up here.

–Get a Firefox 2 Style Address Bar–

I understand that some of you don’t like the new address bar at all, and there’s an extension available for reverting back to the default Firefox 2 address bar behavior. The layout is more compact, the Go button will always be visible, and only addresses that you type into the address bar are included in the results.

This extension is still experimental, which means you’ll need to login to the Mozilla site before being able to install it. If you don’t have a login you can use a generic one that I’ve created over at Mozilla:

• Username: firefox@cybernetnews.com
• Password: cybernetnews

Note: If someone decides to be funny and change the password just let us know. Since we have full control over the email address we can change the password back at anytime.

Thanks to Jann for the tip!

–Manage Search Keywords–

We’ve shown you how to add keywords for pretty much any website, but Mozilla wanted to make it a little easier to add keywords to the sites in the search box. To do this just click the arrow in the search box that is used to display a listing of all your search engines. Then choose the Manage Search Engines option. From here you can manage all of the keywords that are used for the search engines:

–Enable Advanced Color Profile Support–

Those of you that are photo enthusiasts might enjoy the fact that Firefox has advanced color profile capabilities. It’s not enabled by default because it can cause a 10-15% performance hit for the browser, but if image quality is that important to you this might be something you want to enable. Here’s a great comparison between Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 (with the color profile turned on):

• Name: gfx.color_management.enabled
• Preference Needs to be Created: No
• Preference Type: Boolean
• Default Value: False
• Possible values:
  • True – Enables color profile support so that the colors appear richer
  • False – Disables color profile support so that you have better performance

[via dria & Lifehacker]

–Get the Firefox 3 Theme used on a Different OS–

Don’t like the default theme that’s included with Firefox 3? There is an abundance of other themes available, but as you’re probably aware Firefox 3 ships with customized themes based upon the operating system that you’re using. The good news is that you can grab the default Mac or Windows themes no matter which operating system you’re using.

–Smaller Back Button (Remove the “Keyhole” design)–

Mozilla wanted to make an aspect of their browser stand out from the crowd, and they did so by super-sizing the back button in the browser with a “keyhole” design. That button single handedly makes the navigation toolbar taller than it needs to be, but luckily there’s a quick fix without having to scrap the theme all together.

To remedy this go to View -> Toolbars -> Customize, and check the Use Small Icons box. You should see the back button shrink down to the size of the forward button, just like in the screenshot above.

–Supercharge the Smart Bookmarks–

Firefox 3 includes advanced bookmarking capabilities known as Smart Bookmarks, and they are similar to the automatic playlists that media players, such as iTunes, can generate for you. These Smart Bookmarks can show you things like your most visited sites, recent bookmarks, and even the most visited pages for a specific domain. Here’s a rather comprehensive set of instructions as to how you can create your own Smart Bookmarks.

–Change Default Applications–

Firefox has a nice configuration tool for selecting the default applications for certain types of URL’s and media. And when I refer to “applications” I don’t just mean the programs you have installed on your computer… it also includes web applications such as Gmail and 30Boxes.

If you pull up the preferences for Firefox you should see an Applications tab, and from there you can configure the default applications. Although it’s not there by default Gmail can be configured for mailto links.

–Change Page Zoom to Text Zoom–

Firefox 3 introduced a new type of zooming that scales everything on the page, including the style, images, and text. That way when you zoom in or out it’s a little more like taking a magnifying glass to the whole site, but some people still prefer the old method where Firefox only adjusted the size of the text when zooming. You can re-enable the text-only zoom by going to View -> Zoom, and selecting the Zoom Text Only option.

–Get Notified when a Website Redirects You–

Some websites redirect users from one address to another, and it often happens so quickly that it can be difficult to catch. This could be a bad thing because the site could try to redirect you to a malicious or inappropriate site, but you can setup Firefox 3 to alert you when things like this happen. To enable this feature open up the Firefox preferences, switch to the Advanced -> General tab, and then check the box labeled Warn me when web sites try to redirect or reload the page. Then whenever a site tries to redirect you from one page to another you should see a warning bar like this one:

–Disable Antivirus Scanning–

For Windows users when Firefox 3 finishes downloading a file it will initiate a virus scan using any antivirus application that the user has installed on the computer. If you download a lot of files (especially large files) this can become a bottleneck for you as you wait for each file to be scanned, especially when many antivirus applications will automatically scan all incoming files. That means each file you download might get scanned twice.

By jumping into the about:config you can enable or disable this setting at your leisure:

• Name: browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone
• Preference Needs to be Created: No
• Preference Type: Boolean
• Default Value: True
• Possible values:
  • True – Scans each download with the installed antivirus application
  • False – Does not scan each download with the installed antivirus application

Thanks to xpgeek for the tip!

–Some Oldies, but Goodies–

Most of the stuff that we’ve covered today we’ve never written about before, but we didn’t want to leave out those tips and tricks from the days of Firefox 2 that still work. So here are some of our favorite tweaks from our Firefox 2 configuration guide:

• Change the minimum width of the tabs
• Configure when/if the close button should appear on tabs
• Eliminate JavaScript popups
• Enable inline spell checking in all text fields
• Increase the maximum number of connections
• Open search box results in new tabs
• Lower the amount of physical memory used by Firefox

Thanks for the tips Max!

–Overview–

We’ve included a lot of great Firefox 3 tricks here, but there are a lot more that have yet to be discovered. As we come across other great tips we’ll be posting them to the site just like we have been over the last few years. Plus we’re sure that many of you have plenty of your own tips, and hopefully you’ll take the time to share them with us in the comments!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on October 19, 2006 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

Both Mozilla and Microsoft will both be releasing their new web browsers in the coming weeks (IE 7 was just released yesterday but won’t be available as an Automatic Update for a few weeks) and the thing we have to prepare for the most is incompatible websites. I have experienced some problematic sites in both Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7 but there are only a handful from the ones that I visit.

This problem can often be fixed on your end by adjusting the user agent to match a browser that works with the site. It is really easy to adjust the user agent string in Firefox 2 and pretty easy to do in Internet Explorer 7, although IE users will have to download a small utility that Microsoft offers.

–Firefox 2 Users (changing the user agent to Firefox 1.5)–

1. Start Firefox.
2. In the Address Bar type about:config and press Enter.
3. Find the option that is named general.useragent.extra.firefox and double-click on it.
   
4. You will now be prompted with the window to change the value of the user agent. Instead of having it say Firefox/2.0 you might want to change it to Firefox/1.5 or Firefox/1.5.0.7 to make the websites think that you are using a version of Firefox from the 1.5 branch.

   

5. Restart Firefox.

–Internet Explorer 7 Users (changing the user agent to IE 6)–

Microsoft has put together this quick utility that you can download (I provided a direct link with no WGA validation needed) and install which will let you change the user agent in IE 7 to match the one in IE 6. That means any site that you visit will think that you’re still using IE 6 and will render the page accordingly.

After you install the program you will see a shortcut on your desktop and if you execute it you should be prompted with a window similar to this one:

As you can see in the screenshot you’ll be given the choice to only change the settings or to change the settings and email Microsoft about the compatibility problem. They are doing this because they are afraid that webmasters will not be adjusting their sites to ensure that they work properly with IE 7.

–Overview–

I know all of us would rather now have to deal with these hassles but they seem inevitable each time a new browser is released. Many sites that appear not to work actually work just fine but they haven’t been updated to officially support the browser. So probably for the next few months it may not be a terrible idea to use these settings until the webmasters actually realize that a new browser has been released and fix what is necessary.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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