Jun 04

CyberNotes: Make Firefox 3 More Like Safari

Posted in: CyberNotes, Firefox 3, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on July 09, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

arrow Mac Mac only arrow
Making one browser look like another has been a trend for ages. More often than not users like the functionality of a browser, but don’t exactly like how it looks on the particular operating system. That’s how I am with Firefox on just about any operating system I use it on, and that’s despite the fact that they’ve redesigned Firefox 3 to take on characteristics of the various operating systems.

In the past we’ve already shown you how you can make Firefox fit in a little better with Windows Vista, and that’s especially true if you install this extension which gives Firefox 3 the Aero glass effect. Today, however, we’re going to jump to the other side of the pond and show you how to make Firefox 3 take on a look that’s more in line with Mac OS X’s Safari browser. We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeve that should get the job done.

–The Theme–

Firefox 3 does include a new theme for Mac OS X that fits in well with the operating system, but it still doesn’t look like Safari. So the first thing that we need to take care of is finding a near-perfect replica of the Safari theme, and we’re in luck because there happens to be one that’s already compatible with Firefox 3. It’s called GrApple Yummy, and it’s as close to Safari as it gets:

CyberNet.jpg

You might recall us having written about this theme before, and it’s important to note that it has a nearly identical twin brother called GrApple Delicious. We won’t bore you with all of the minor differences again, but it’s safe to say that GrApple Yummy is the theme that’s the most Safari like for Firefox 3.

Okay, we’re off to a good start… now let’s move on.

–The Address Bar–

Safari uses the Address Bar to show users how much time a page has until it finishes loading, and it actually looks pretty nice, too. To get this feature all you need to do is install the Fission Firefox extension and you’ll be ready to go.

This is what the Address Bar will look like while loading a page once you have Fission installed:

firefox fission.jpg

–The Status Bar–

Personally I would go crazy in a day’s time if I didn’t have the Status Bar in my browser, but for some odd reason Safari has decided to disable it by default. For the sake of consistency… if you want to ditch the Status Bar just pull up the View menu and uncheck the Status Bar option.

–Resizable Text Areas–

In Safari you can resize text areas, such as the comment box we have located below, simply by grabbing onto the corner of the box and dragging it to the size you desire. Firefox 3 users can enjoy the same experience with the Resizeable Textarea extension.

firefox resizeable textarea.jpg

–Find as you Type–

Safari has a rather slick find-as-you-type feature where it grays out the background as you shuffle around the page looking for specific words. The current selection is not only highlighted in green, but it also bounces up and down to really help it keep you’re attention.

It takes a little bit of work, but as we’ve previously outlined it’s very much possible to get a search feature just like this in Firefox. We also put together a video demonstration in case you want to see it in action.

find as you type.jpg

–Stop / Reload Button–

Once you install the Stop or Reload extension you will notice that a button is missing on your navigation bar. Don’t worry, the stop button will be visible whenever a page is loading, otherwise it will serve as the refresh button. Clever, huh?

stop reload.jpg

–Overview–

Now if you followed through on a lot of the stuff in this article you should find that it’s difficult to distinguish the two browsers when glancing at them. Here, see for yourself:

firefox 3 safari.jpg

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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May 25

CyberNotes: CyberSearch Firefox Extension

Posted in: CyberNotes, Firefox 3, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Google, Newly Released, Reviews, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, videos

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

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

cybersearch.pngYesterday we announced the new Firefox extension that we launched called CyberSearch (our homepage for CyberSearch). It is based on the original version of AwesomeSearch (now called Searchery), and the reason I decided to create the extension was because I saw how it could make me more productive. Hopefully what I’ve come up with can be useful for you as well.

What is CyberSearch? It lets you perform various types of Google searches right from the address bar in Firefox 3. As you’re typing the extension will send your query to Google, grab the results, and then display them along side the history results that Firefox normally shows.

To make the extension even better we’ve supercharged it with a completely customizable keyword system. If you’re familiar with the built-in Firefox keywords understanding how to use these will be second nature for you. The video demonstration below will help put these in perspective, and show just how powerful they make the extension!

–Video Demonstration–

The best way to demonstrate how CyberSearch works is using a video, and so that’s what we’ve got for you. There are also a bunch of screenshots after the video.

–Features–

  • Supports Multiple Google Services
    You can perform searches and assign keywords to any of the following Google services: Web, Local, Videos, Blogs, News, Books, Images, and Patents.
  • Customizable Keywords
    Pick and choose the keywords that you can remember! You can have one keyword for doing a Google Web search, another for Google News search, and so on. The possibilities are endless!
  • Restrict Searches to a Site
    Using the keyword system you’ll be able to restrict a particular search to a certain site. For example, you can create one keyword that will only return results from Wikipedia while a different keyword will only show results from CyberNet News. Want results from multiple sites using just one keyword? No problem, just separate them by commas!
    Note: This feature is only available for Google Web, Blog, and Image searches.
  • Custom Icons
    Assign any icon to be shown next to the search results for a keyword.
  • Change the Appearance
    You can choose a customized background color for results that are retrieved from Google. That way you’ll know at a glance what’s coming from your history, and what’s coming from the extension.
  • Retrieve Multiple Pages of Results
    A customizable “keyword” is available so that you can even retrieve multiple pages of search results. Checkout the video for more information on how this works.
  • Hide Results when Using a Keyword
    You can optionally have Firefox hide the history results from the address bar when it recognizes that you’ve entered in a keyword. That way you see only the search results when using a keyword.
  • Doesn’t Interfere with Existing Firefox Keywords
    If you already have existing Firefox keywords setup this extension will not interfere with them. Our keyword system is completely separate from the one that is built-in to Firefox.

Here are some screenshots from the configuration section of the extension:

(Click to Enlarge)
cybersearch options 1.png cybersearch options 2.png cybersearch options 3.png cybersearch options 4.png

One thing that we placed throughout the preferences are the small question marks, and you can hover over them at any point to have a feature explained to you.

–Supported Google Services–

Eight different Google services are supported in CyberSearch, and we’re sure you want to know what the results look like in the address bar for each of them. Here’s a screenshot for each of the different types of Google searches that we support:

  • Web Search – Your typical Google search. Opening a result will take you directly the site.
    cybersearch web.png
  • Local Search – Find the address and phone number for any business in seconds! Opening a result will take you to a Google Map that shows where the place is located.
    cybersearch local.png
  • Video Search – Search Google Video and Youtube. Opening a result will take you to that video.
    cybersearch video.png
  • Blog Search – Find blog articles that have been written. Opening a result will take you directly to the article.
    cybersearch blog.png
  • News Search – Pull up news items. Opening a result will take you directly to the article.
    cybersearch news.png
  • Book Search – Find books. Opening a result will take you to the Google Book page for that particular selection.
    cybersearch books.png
  • Image Search – Searches for images, but isn’t all that useful since there is no image preview. Opening a result will take you directly to the image.
    cybersearch image.png
  • Patent Search – Search for patents. Opening a result will take you to the Google Patent page for that particular selection.
    cybersearch patent.png

–Installing CyberSearch–

Like what you see? Then go ahead and download the CyberSearch extension from Mozilla. 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.

–Overview–

Hopefully this extension will be as useful to you as it has been for us over the last week. If you have any questions or recommendations feel free to drop them off in the comments, but as it stands right now this does just about everything we’d like it to. Our initial focus will be on fixing any bugs that people find.

Regarding CyberSearch for other countries: At this time CyberSearch only supports the use of Google.com. We are looking into expanding this extension to support Google services in other countries. We’ve researched this a little bit, and we don’t believe Google’s API permits the use of the varying country’s Google search engine (eg. google.co.uk).

Download the CyberSearch Extension

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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May 02

CyberSearch 0.9.6 Update

Posted in: Firefox 3, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on July 07, 2008 by CyberNet.

cybersearch logo 096.jpgLast week we released the CyberSearch Firefox extension, and I can’t believe all of the great feedback we’ve received. Dozens of different sites have written about the extension already, and we’ve received over 2,100 downloads. If you like to follow stats as much as I do then you can head on over to CyberSearch’s statistics page that I’ve made publicly viewable. There you can see a pretty graph of the downloads, and it looks like they’ll periodically update how many active daily users there are. Right now there isn’t much data, but as the extension continues to grow it might be interesting to see things like what operating systems people are running it on.

We’ve already gotten over 60 emails with questions regarding bugs, compatibility issues, and recommendations to make the add-on even better. CyberSearch 0.9.6 addresses all of the bug reports that we’ve gotten up until now, and we appreciate everyone who has sent in quirks they’ve found. If you get a spare moment please stop by the review page and leave your thoughts on the add-on. Hopefully we’ll be able to get out of the experimental stage soon!

Also in this release we’ve incorporated the functionality that the Edit Middle extension offered, and part of the reason we decided to do so was because of a compatibility issue with it. What does this feature do? In Firefox 3 when you edit any text in the address bar it won’t show search results unless your cursor is at the end of the text. For example, if you type “cybernnet” into the address bar and go back to remove an “n” Firefox 3 wouldn’t show any results in the drop-down menu. With the Edit Middle extension (and now with CyberSearch) modifying any text in the address bar will trigger the drop-down menu to appear with matching results.

As far as the bug fixes go here’s a list of the most notable ones this release addresses:

  • Pressing the down arrow to select a result now works. This was a problem for those choosing not to have Google results intermingled with the history results.
  • The “unending” loading icon that some people were experiencing has been fixed.
  • There was a compatibility problem with some extensions, such as GooglePreview. CyberSearch should now play nice with all of the extensions. P.S. This wasn’t entirely the fault of our extension, but it was an easy fix.
  • If you choose to show history results even when a keyword is recognized the extension will now ignore the keyword for history results, too. I think this makes more sense, but I might make it an optional thing in a future release.

Download CyberSearch 0.9.6
CyberSearch Homepage

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Apr 18

New Features I’ve Found in Firefox 3 so far

Posted in: Firefox 3, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on February 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

For the last few weeks I’ve made Firefox 3 nightly releases my primary browser because my extensions all work well with it. I always like to get a sneak peek at what is coming, and there are always so many things that change that it can be hard to keep track of them all. I find that the people who see the new features gradually appear will notice them the most, which is why I want to jump on the Firefox 3 bandwagon early on. I did the same thing with Firefox 2 pre-release versions, and each time a new feature worth noting appeared in the nightly releases I made sure to relay the information onto our readers.

So far I have noticed two new things in Firefox 3 that will probably be overlooked by anyone who just tinkers around with it. Even though these features aren’t anything to die over I thought it might please some people who were afraid that Mozilla has not begun to implement new things in the browser. Actually, Mozilla has been working very hard on implementing Firefox’s graphics engine, called Cairo, that will not only load pages faster but it will also do things like scale images much better. I’m sure this is something a lot of Firefox users will probably take for granted when Firefox 3 is released later this year.

So what are the two new features that I found? Like I said, these aren’t exactly ground-breaking but I like them. First off I noticed a new setting in the Options that will let a user choose whether or not they are notified when a site tries to automatically reload or redirect the user. By default this is disabled, but I’ve now had it enabled for well over a week and I really like it.

Redirect FF3 Option

Then when a site tries to redirect or reload the page Firefox will notify you with a little bar at the top similar to what’s seen when a popup window is blocked:

Redirect FF3

So it is just something small right now, but it does make you notice when you’re being redirected. However, I’m hoping that they will implement a feature similar to the popup blocker where you can permanently allow certain sites. I still have this feature enabled, but it can get annoying if you constantly click on links in emails you receive at a Gmail address…which redirects you each time you click on a link. I’m sure there is a large list of sites this would get annoying at, which is why they need to let users choose which sites to permanently allow.

The other feature that I noticed is when you click in a textbox to enter the path to a file on your computer it will automatically popup with the Open dialog box. Here is an example of how it works when composing a message in Gmail:

Gmail FF3

It kinda sounds like a stupid feature and really simple since you can just click the Browse button, but I like this. Well, I’m not even sure if this is a feature because I couldn’t find any info on it, so for all I know it could be some kind of bug. The reason I’m questioning whether it is a bug or not is because some fields let you enter in either a file on your computer or a URL to an existing file. With this you can’t actually paste in a URL since the Open dialog box opens immediately.

That’s all I’ve found since my last updates on the Firefox 3 graphics engine. I’ll continue to keep you posted as new things get included in the nightly builds. Oh yeah, and according the latest meeting notes for Firefox 3 it looks as though Places will be back in by the next Alpha release planned for the middle of March. It hasn’t made its way back into the nightlies yet, but I expect that it will within the next week or two.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Apr 09

Foxmarks Beta for Firefox 3

Posted in: Firefox 3, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Pre-Release, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on March 12, 2008 by CyberNet.

foxmarks beta With the release of Firefox 3 Beta 4 the other day it is good to see how many extension developers have been providing updates to prepare the launch of the Firefox 3 browser. The extensions that need the most love and care are those that deal with bookmarks, and that’s because the backend of the bookmarking system in Firefox 3 has been significantly changed.

One of the extensions that I’ve been waiting the longest for is Foxmarks (review). It’s useful because it runs in the background of Firefox, and it will synchronize your bookmarks with a remote server. That way you can access your bookmarks from any computer, or sync them with other Firefox installations. And they have a mobile interface for quick access even on your cellphone or PDA.

Foxmarks is currently testing a version of the extension that is compatible with the pre-release versions of the Firefox 3 browser, but there’s a catch. You have to sign up to be part of the Beta program (must be a registered user), and according to them there is a list of people waiting to get in. If you do sign up to be part of the Beta program be prepared to submit any bugs that you find.

And as their blog points out testers may find that there are issues while using the extension:

There hasn’t been a single report of Foxmarks crashing Firefox beta 4 yet; that version was only released yesterday, but we’ve been impressed by how the quality of Firefox keeps marching forward with each release. Beta 4 may well be stable enough for general use with Foxmarks. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

There are also reports of occasional performance problems — sometimes sync under Firefox 3 is really fast, and sometimes it’s quite slow. Surprisingly, this variability occurs on the same computer with the same bookmarks within the same session. We’re not sure what might account for the difference yet, but we’re looking into it.

So if you feel like living on the bleeding edge there’s no better combination than downloading Firefox 3 Beta 4, and then signing up to be part of the Foxmarks Beta program. :)

Foxmarks Beta
Kudos to Leland for the heads up!

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Mar 22

That Firefox 3 Bug “Rumor”

Posted in: Firefox 3, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on November 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

Firefox Bug Mozilla has been taking some heat the past few days because of a post by Computer World’s Gregg Keizer. In it he quoted the latest Firefox 3 Meeting notes saying that 80% of the Firefox 3 bugs will not get fixed by the time the browser is released.

It is true that Mozilla, in one of their plans, had said that they would leave 80% of the bugs in the browser, but there was nothing set in stone. Their meeting notes were essentially a brainstorming session where they were tossing ideas around. One of the disadvantages of operating an open source organization is that they can’t really discuss ideas without the public being clued in. The Quality Assurance leader, Asa Dotzler, called Keizer’s claim “simply horseshit.” He said that they have “already fixed over 11,000 bugs and features in Firefox 3 and now we’re discussing how to handle the remaining 700 issues.“

The truth of the matter is that they can’t possibly fix every single bug that is found before they release the next version of Firefox, otherwise it would never get released. The subsequent releases of Firefox are what’s supposed to fine tune the browser.

The meeting notes have since been edited, and the guilty section has been removed. I’ve copied the missing sections below so that you can see what was said, particularly in “proposal 2″:

Beta 2 criteria, proposal 1

  • Should go in for beta 2:
    • Bugs likely to cause regressions — it is better to land risky patches for beta 2 than later!
    • Bugs that prevent many users from browsing the web on a daily basis
    • Security issues
    • Top crashers
  • Can go in for beta 2:
    • Memory leaks
    • Performance issues
    • Major regressions from Firefox 2
    • Functionality in support of a P1 PRD item (?)

Beta 2 criteria, proposal 2
[…]

  • Should go in for beta 2:
    • The 10% most important blockers
    • Anything risky (likely to cause regressions) among the next 10% most important blockers
  • Should go in for beta 3:
    • The next 10% most important blockers
  • Should be cut from Firefox 3:
    • New features that have not gone in yet.
    • Any patch with too much risk of regressions to go in at the beginning of the beta 2 cycle (because there will never be a safer time to land them)
    • The rest of the “blockers” (80% ?)

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Mar 21

Half of Firefox Extensions Not Compatible with 3.1

Posted in: Firefox 3, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on November 28, 2008 by CyberNet.

firefox 31 addons.jpg

Mozilla is on the verge of releasing Firefox 3.1 Beta 2, and it’s quite possible that in the next month or two the final version will be pushed out the door. A major new release like this means that some of your favorite extensions might not be working, and Mozilla doesn’t want that to happen. With over 1 billion extension downloads they are now reaching out to developers asking them to update their extensions for the upcoming release.

Being an extension developer myself I’ve tried to keep CyberSearch up-to-date and functional with all nightly releases of Firefox 3.1. In fact we just updated the extension over the weekend (version 1.0.7) to fix yet another change Mozilla made in the nightly builds rendering our extension inoperable.

Mozilla has assembled a compatibility chart that looks at all of their extensions, and determines how many of them are not yet compatible with Firefox 3.1. I’m not, however, quite sure about the accuracy of the chart. If you view the detailed report you can see a list of all the extensions and what version of Firefox they currently work with. CyberSearch isn’t even on that list.

This is a two-way street though. Developers need to start prepping for Firefox 3.1, and at the same time Mozilla needs to get better about approving new releases. CyberSearch 1.0.7 was just approved this week after about 2 months of submitting different updates, and so it looks like Mozilla has some catching up to do. Just make sure you check the homepage of your favorite extensions, because they may already have a Firefox 3.1-compatible release.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Feb 23

Firefox 3 Beta 3 Coming with a Big New Feature

Posted in: Features, Firefox 3, Pre-Release, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 30, 2008 by CyberNet.

Firefox 3 Windows Theme Mozilla just announced that they are planning on having the first Release Candidate build of Firefox 3 Beta 3 coming this Monday, and although no word on a release date was announced it can probably be expected about a week after that.

The new Beta will be the first release to start showing off the new Windows themes that they’ve been working on, but as it stands right now the Vista-specific theme is not available. Vista users will see the same theme as XP users, which I’ve captured in the screenshot above. I definitely don’t like how that theme looks on Vista, and I don’t think it would look all that much better on XP. As other people have iterated before the theme has a plastic-like look to it that makes it feel like a toy.

And no, the theme is not the “big new feature.” Just the other night Mozilla rolled out a new section to the Add-ons manager for finding extensions without ever going to the add-ons site:

Firefox 3 Add-ons Search

It only shows a handful of results, and then provides a link to the add-ons site to view the remaining extensions. I’m guessing that Mozilla is doing this in hopes of getting the add-ons to gain traction with new Firefox users.

That’s about all the new stuff that users will see in Firefox 3 Beta 3 since the last Beta was released, plus a bunch of bug fixes. After Beta 3 there will be another “quick” release of Beta 4, and then they will be moving on to the Release Candidate stage. You know what that means don’t you? Mozilla might be able to pull off a release in the first quarter of 2008 like they have been anticipating.

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Feb 22

Firefox 3 to Make Users More Aware of Domain Name

Posted in: Firefox 3, Freeware, Mozilla, Software, Today's Chili

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

Mozilla added two nice new features in Firefox 3 nightlies that should help protect users from phishing attacks. The first feature will be familiar to those of you using the LocationBar2 extension, and it was actually added by the same person who developed the extension. The goal of this feature is to make the domain and subdomains in the URL stand out a little more. Here’s what the URL now looks like when you visit an article on our site:

Firefox 3 URL

As soon as you hover your mouse over the Address Bar all of the text turns to the standard black. This will hopefully make people more aware of the sites they are visiting, and I think that a feature like this should be in every browser. Although I am still a little skeptical whether emphasis should be placed on the subdomain since a lot of fake addresses look like paypal.phishingdomain.com.

This feature isn’t exactly like the LocationBar2 extension though, because it does not make the URL navigatable by clicking on different segments. It would have been cool to have this put in Firefox as well, but that is probably a bit much since they want to focus on simplicity.

The second thing that they implemented is an automatic URL-decoding technique to display a more readable address. For example, Firefox 3 will now take a URL like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%43%68%69%63%61%67%6F

and transform it into this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago

Both of those point to the same page, but the first one is encoded a little differently. The second URL is obviously a lot more readable and understandable than the first one, which is why both Internet Explorer and Opera are already setup to "decode" all URL’s that are like the first one. This becomes important when users are subjected to phishing attacks that use complicated URL’s to try and confuse the individual.
Source: The Burning Edge

On a slightly related note Opera Watch recently pointed out a shortcut for the Opera browser which navigates up a folder/directory in the current URL. You can either press Ctrl+Backspace or using a mouse gesture you can hold down the right-click button, and then drag your mouse up and to the left. Doing this would take you from here:

http://cybernetnews.com/fun-opera-user-facts/

to here:

http://cybernetnews.com/2007/07/07/

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Jan 29

Extend Firefox 3 Winners

Posted in: Firefox 3, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

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

extend firefox.jpgMozilla has announced the winners of the Extend Firefox 3 add-on contest. This is where extension developers submitted their add-ons to try and win prizes like a MacBook Air, and the winners definitely deserved it. I did submit our CyberSearch extension to see if it’d win, but it looks like it didn’t make the cut. :(

What extensions did scoop up the win? Here they are sorted by category:

Best New Add-ons

Best New Add-ons Runners Up

  • Webchunks – Firefox implementation of the Internet Explorer Webslices feature, plus more!
  • Badges on Favicons – Add informational badges to the tab favicons.
  • Devo – A command launcher for Firefox.
  • Close ‘N Forget – Close the current tab and forget about the visit.
  • Callout – Makes the notification services of the Operating System available for web pages and Greasemonkey scripts.
  • Reasy – An RSVP reader.

Best Updated Add-ons

Best Music Add-on

  • Fire.fm – Direct access to the Last.fm music library.

Congrats to all of the winners! There are some other extensions I believe deserved to win, such as Foxmarks in the “best updated” category, but there’s not much any of us could have done since a panel of judges was designated to make the decision.

If you’ve tried out any of the extensions mentioned above let us know which ones you think deserved the win, and which of your favorites should have taken home the crown.

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