Hasta La Gadget!

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

Mozilla finally seems to be making good progress on getting user interface items implemented into the Firefox 3 nightly builds. Last week they were able to get an early version of the new download manager incorporated into the browser. I didn’t think that it was all that bad, but then again I am a person who has their download history automatically cleared. When I was reading in the Firefox Builds Forum earlier I even noticed that some people were against the new download manager.

Towards the end of last week Mozilla had also implemented a smooth tab scrolling system that adds a little eye candy for those of you who often have dozens of tabs open. I put together a video demonstration of the feature so that you can see what it’s like.

Mozilla has now added one of the first visual pieces for Places into Firefox 3 nightlies, with the hope of shipping the next milestone prior to September 18th. The new bookmark system now supports tagging capabilities so that organizing your bookmarks will be a little easier. Right now you utilize this feature by double-clicking on the star located in the address bar or by pressing Ctrl+D on your keyboard. You’ll then be presented with a menu where you can enter the name of the bookmark, choose a folder to place it in, and add any tags that you want. Here are some things you should know about how it works:

• There are three folders by default: Bookmarks Menu puts the bookmarks in the drop-menu and in the sidebar, Bookmarks Toolbar puts the bookmarks in the toolbar, and All Bookmarks is the default location and doesn’t show up anywhere except for searches right now.
• There is no structure yet for viewing tagged bookmarks, and items not placed in a folder can only be found by performing a search in the sidebar.
• Multiple tags can be separated by commas, and existing tags can be seen by pressing the drop-down menu button next to the tag box.

So there is still quite a bit of work that needs to be done on the new system before it is ready for fulltime use, but it’s coming along quite nicely. I put together a quick 28-second video that shows you how the new system works:

There is no doubt that Mozilla needs to tidy up the interface for the new bookmarking system, but the important part is that they make it functional first. I’m excited to see what else the new Places will bring, and hopefully Mozilla sticks with their plan to create an easy-to-use API for the new bookmarking system. That way interaction with online services, such as Del.icio.us, will virtually be a painless process.

Source: Mozilla Links & Firefox Builds Forum
Thanks for the tip Oropher!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on June 03, 2008 by CyberNet.

Mozilla is hard at work getting ready for the launch of Firefox 3, and another Release Candidate is scheduled to be available tomorrow. They are still planning for a June launch of the next major milestone, and there is a lot of hype and anticipation surrounding the release. One thing you don’t want to forget about is the Flock browser that is based upon Firefox!

The Flock team is working equally as hard to make sure that they update their browser with all of the Firefox 3 goodness as soon as possible. As you might recall it took them quite awhile to update their browser to Firefox 2 after its release, but it appears that they won’t be making that same mistake again. Here’s a snippet that I took from a post on the Flock blog yesterday:

Within the coming weeks Flock will release it’s first beta of Flock 2.0, which incorporates the Mozilla technology that powers Firefox 3. So get ready to have all of the latest performance (memory management), security and feature enhancements found in the latest Firefox 3 release along with the unique user experience innovations only delivered by the Flock browser.

The first thought that popped into my head was that the nightly builds of Flock must already have the Firefox 3 integration if a Beta will be available in the coming weeks. Sure enough! I downloaded the nightly build (targeted towards developers only), and as you can see from the screenshot it is definitely based on Firefox 3:

Note the oversized location bar new to Firefox 3:

(Click to Enlarge)

The about screen verifies my findings, and a little snooping around will reveal some other new features that have only been introduced in Firefox 3. The most significant enhancement that I noticed would have to be the performance though. Immediately after starting up Flock it was using 66MB of memory which is a little on the high side, but it barely crawled above 100MB even after opening a dozen different tabs. Closing all of the tabs brought the memory usage back down to 82MB. This is like half the amount that the current version of Flock uses for me!

Kudos to the Flock team for jumping on the Firefox 3 bandwagon so quickly because it’s really going to pay off in the long run. I am very much anticipating the release of Flock 2.0 Beta in the coming weeks after they’ve had some time to polish-up the nightly builds, but if you’re feeling ambitious go ahead and try the latest nightly build of Flock 2.0.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on June 16, 2008 by CyberNet.

(Click to Enlarge)

About two weeks ago we gave you a heads up that Flock 2.0 Beta was coming, and there was a lot of excitement surrounding the release since it’s based on Firefox 3.0. With that you get all of the Firefox 3 goodness including performance enhancements, advanced bookmarking, new address bar, and much more.

The Flock team has done a tremendous job of integrating Firefox 3 with all of the social features we’ve come to know and love in Flock. A good example of that is with the new bookmarking system which you can access by pressing the star located to the left of the address bar. You’ll notice that it looks incredibly similar to Firefox 3’s bookmarking system, but it also has the section dedicated to the online bookmarking services Del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia:

The most important improvements come in the way of performance, and that is largely due to the better memory management that Firefox 3 has brings to the table. Personally I opened up over a dozen tabs in the new Flock 2.0 Beta, and it just barely broke 100MB of memory usage on Windows. That’s definitely not too shabby, but they wanted to point out that it will likely still use more memory than Firefox 3:

As you probably already know, Flock has a number of powerful features built on top of the Firefox architecture that allow you to have a truly unique browsing experience. These features come with a price, and that price is a slightly larger memory footprint. Comparing Flock to Firefox with no extensions installed is like comparing apples with oranges. In order to enjoy any advanced functionality in Firefox you need to install extensions, unlike Flock which has lots of advanced features built right in. Firefox extensions will increase both the memory footprint, and the risk of memory leaks over time. That said, all of the memory improvements in Firefox 3 (including many memory leak fixes and much better memory management ‘housekeeping’ practices) apply to Flock 2, so you should experience notably improved browsing performance with Flock 2 than you’ve experienced in prior versions.

Here’s some more information that Flock has posted in regards to enhancements for the new version:

• Performance – Better memory management
• Security – Anti-virus integration, secure add-on updates, and more
• User Interface – Media Bar has some new features
• Favorites – New interface for managing and creating bookmarks
• New Flock-specific Features – Manually refresh your feesd

If you’re a social media addict then I highly recommend you take Flock 2.0 for a spin. I’m not sure if I’ll use this over Firefox 3, but I’ll definitely give it a real shot now that the performance isn’t unbearable.

Flock 2.0 Beta [via Download Squad]

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on May 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

Since the release of Firefox 3 is right around the corner it comes as no surprise that Mozilla is trying to rally the troops community. Back in 2006 they celebrated World Firefox Day by getting people to invite their friends to try Firefox, and right about the time Firefox 2 launched Mozilla gave the much deserved acknowledgements. This is just one of the several campaigns Mozilla has come up with to help spread the Firefox browser, and it’s obvious that they know how to harness the power of the people.

This year they are doing things a little differently, and they are hoping to set a Guinness World Record for the number of downloads in 24 hours. As I sit here writing this they have over 125,000 people who have pledged to download Firefox 3 in the first 24 hours, which Mozilla says will happen sometime in June 2008. It shouldn’t be hard for them to crush the record… mostly because the record is currently non-existent. They are shooting for 5 million downloads, which is possible since Firefox 2 received 1.6 million downloads on the first day back in 2006. But they will essentially be making it in the record books no matter what.

If you are participating there is one thing you should know if you want your download to count. You actually have to download the full installation, and the download must complete. Updating the browser will not count towards the record, but then again they probably won’t release the automatic update on the first day. They’ll be using a cookie system to try and weed out any duplicate downloads.

You can help spread the word about the Download Day by placing any of these banners on your own site, or in the signature section of your emails. Oh, and there will be a certificate the you can print on Download Day to commemorate the event.

Firefox World Record Homepage
Thanks to Natmaster and Max for the tips!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on April 27, 2008 by CyberNet.

Back in October 2007 we previewed a new feature in Firefox 3 called Smart Bookmarks. Firefox 3 has a more advanced bookmarking system, and keeps tabs (no pun intended) on the sites that you visit the most. When those two things collide they form what has come to be known as Smart Bookmarks.

Since the feature’s initial launch the number of Smart Bookmarks has been trimmed down a bit. They initially started with six, but have now dwindled down to the ones I put in bold:

• Recently bookmarked pages
• Recently visited bookmarked pages
• Most visited bookmarked pages
• Recently used tags
• Most used tags
• Most visited pages

The question is how do you get these bookmarks back once they have been deleted? I expected that Mozilla would incorporate some sort of option into the Bookmarks Organizer, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead you need to dive into the about:config to get the Smart Bookmarks back:

Updated on May 19, 2008 to reflect Firefox 3 RC1 changes.

1. In the Firefox Address Bar type about:config and press Enter.
2. Find the option that is named browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion.
3. Change the value to 0 by double-clicking on it.
4. Restart Firefox, and you should see the Smart Bookmarks folder located on the Bookmarks Toolbar.

Now you’re back in business! I’m very anxious to see if someone creates an extension that lets you customize the Smart Bookmarks, and possibly even let you assemble your own based on visit frequency, date, keywords, and more.

[via Mozillazine]
Thanks to Jason for the tip!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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