Hasta La Gadget!

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

Web Browser Wednesday

Are you one of those people who like to conserve every square inch of screen space when it’s possible? If so we have a treat for you today! We’re going to demonstrate how you can become the ultimate Firefox minimalist with the help of some extensions and themes. If you implement everything that we have listed below you’ll wonder where half of your browser has gone. You might also go cross-eyed… don’t say we didn’t warn you.

–Themes–

The first major step that a minimalist Firefox user takes is often in changing their theme. By choosing a more compact theme you can eliminate nearly any and all spacing found throughout Firefox, and the end result can save a lot of area in your browser.

The screenshot to the right shows the Classic Compact Firefox theme laid overtop of the classic theme. The double-ended arrows indicate how much space you save by simply applying this theme. There are a few other themes (like miniFox) that are similar, but Classic Compact is really the one that has won the hearts of minimalists around the globe.

–Toolbars & Menus–

There is a lot of “fat” that lies within the toolbars and menus in Firefox. The themes aim to take some pounds off the toolbars, but there are some extensions that can take the minimalist design to a whole new level:

• Searchbar Autosizer [Homepage]
  Keep the browser’s search box small when it’s not being used. This will let you have a really small search box that expands as you type. That means your Address Bar gets even more room!
• Faviconize Tab [Homepage]
  You’ll be able to double-click on a tab and have it collapsed down to only it’s icon. Now you won’t feel like such a pig when you have 40 different tabs open.
  
• Personal Menu [Homepage]
  How often do you really use those menus (File, Edit, etc…) anyway? If it’s not very often you can stuff them into a single icon by using this extension. All of the menus will still be accessible, but they will just take an extra click to get to them.
• Smart Bookmarks Bar [Homepage]
  If you’re not ready to give up your Bookmarks Bar then maybe this extension will help keep things a little more tidy. By default it will only show the icons for the sites located on the Bookmarks Bar, and then when you hover over them it will expand to show the name as well.
  

–Status Bar–

I wouldn’t say that the Status Bar is the hugest space consumer, but hey, we’re trying to scrounge up every pixel that’s possible. Right? So we’ve got a few specialized styles and one extension that can clean up your Status Bar a little bit.

• Mouseover for Clutter [Homepage] Requires Stylish
  This will hide the excessive number of icons that you probably have in the Firefox Status Bar, but they will reappear each time you hover over the bar. That way you’re not really losing any functionality, unless of course one of those icons also serves as some sort of notifier (such as a new mail notifier).
• Autohide Status Bar [Homepage] Requires Stylish
  Get the Status Bar completely out of the way with this style. Once installed it will create an area that is just one pixel in height, and when you hover over that it will show the Status Bar.
• autoHideStatusbar [Homepage]
  This is an extension that’s similar to how the previous style operates, except that it goes one step further. With this extension you can set it so that when you hover over hyperlinks it will show the Status Bar, which means you can still see where the links point to. The Status Bar can also be shown when the page is loading so that you can monitor the progress.
  Note: This extension is currently experimental, and you’ll need to login to your Mozilla account before downloading it.

–Overview–

I think you have a pretty good set of tools to work with so that you can be well on your way to becoming a Firefox minimalist. I’m sure many of you have trimmed down your Firefox in one way or another, and I would love to hear how you’ve managed to conserve space in Firefox! Shoot us a comment below with your thoughts.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 24, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

Windows only
One of the things that I’ve always done on my Windows computers is have them show all of the hidden files. Some people think I’m crazy because this adds a lot more clutter, but it always seemed as though I frequently had to access files there were otherwise hidden. Sure I liked when some files were out-of-sight because I only ever mess with a handful of them, but the hassle of going into the Windows Explorer options every time I needed to see some hidden files just wasn’t worth it.

After a little research I had come across an article on the PCWorld forum that outlined how I could create a shortcut that would enable or disable hidden files on the fly. If the setting is enabled it would disable it when run, and vice versa. It’s one shortcut that serves as an on/off switch for hidden files. Here’s how you do it:

1. Open up Notepad and paste in the following text:
   Set sh = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
theKey = "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Hidden"
setHidden = sh.RegRead(theKey)
If setHidden = 1 Then
setHidden = 0
MsgBox "System and hidden files will no longer appear in Explorer.",64,"Hidden File Exchange"
Else
setHidden = 1
MsgBox "System and hidden files will appear in Explorer.",64,"Hidden File Exchange"
End If
sh.RegWrite theKey,setHidden,"REG_DWORD"
Set sh = Nothing
2. Save the file with any name you want, but make sure to designate the extension to be “.vbs”:
   
3. Run the file that you just saved. Give it a few seconds to take affect, but you should see the results without even having to restart Windows Explorer.
4. If you want you can place this script file anywhere you’d like on your computer, and then you can create a shortcut to it by right-clicking on the file. I recommend placing a shortcut to the file in the Windows Explorer Favorites for fast access from the Favorites menu.

Compatibility: I’ve verified that this works on Windows XP, but it only works on Vista when User Account Control (UAC) is disabled. This is because it needs access to the registry, and Vista doesn’t allow that unless it is run as an administrator. Since it is a VBS file the “Run as Administrator” option does not appear when right-clicking on the file.

By default the script will prompt you with the current setting for the hidden files each time you run the script. That way you know whether you are turning them on or off. If you don’t want to see the prompts just remove the following two lines that I’ve highlighted in the code:

Now you are all set with a shortcut that can enable or disable hidden files in Windows Explorer. This should help reduce the clutter you see on a regular basis by keeping the hidden files out-of-sight when they’re not needed, and then pulling them up when you need to make a change. How convenient is that?

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on November 23, 2009 by CyberNet.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

Google Chrome OS
This was a pretty big week for Google, and in the middle of it was their announcement that they were open sourcing the Chrome OS already. They are doing this so that they can start working with partners, the open source community, and developers prior to the launch late next year. Running the new OS isn’t exactly a point-and-click operation, but some sites have already posted instructions as to how you can have it up and running in a virtual machine with very little work.

Gmail Creator Thinks Email Will Last Forever
The creator of Gmail, Paul Buchheit, was interviewed by TechCrunch with the topic of whether email was ready to die. They talked about whether something like Google Wave would be enough to kill it. In a nutshell he said that email is not going to fall off the face of the Earth… well, at least not “until robots kill us all.”  

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 Beta’s Available
Both Beta versions of Adobe’s flagship frameworks sport multi-touch gestures, which will be an important addition as Windows 7 touch-screen machines increase in popularity. They are also both significantly better in performance, or they are at least in the quick checks that I’ve performed.

–News in Brief–

Google Calendar Testing “Sneak Preview”
Google Calendar users will be able to enjoy a Labs feature (being rolled out) letting you preview whether an appointment you’re creating conflicts with something else on your schedule.

Windows 8 Expected in 2012
Looking at Microsoft’s roadmap it appears as though they will try to stick to a three-year release cycle for Windows 8.

Office 2010 Mobile Beta Available
Microsoft has posted the mobile version of Office 2010 Beta for anyone running Windows Mobile 6.5.

eBay Completes Skype Sale at $2.75 Billion Valuation
eBay has sold off a majority (70%) of their ownership of the Skype software company.

Automatic Captions in YouTube
Google has employed an automatic speech recognition system on YouTube videos so that users can get closed captioning on nearly all uploads.

Remember the Milk Gadget for Google Calendar
Remember the Milk (RTM) users can enable a sidebar gadget in Google Calendar for easy task management.

Internet Explorer 9 Announced
At PDC Microsoft unveiled some of the things that should be expected from IE9, including hardware acceleration.

Mininova Breaks 10 Billion Torrent Downloads
The popular BitTorrent search engine hits the huge 10 billion download milestone.

Silverlight 4 Beta Released
The new version of Silverlight includes huge performance gains as well as support for the Chrome browser.

Explore Images with Google Image Swirl
Google showed off a new way to search for images this week called Google Image Swirl. It tries to group images according to the subject of the photo.

Ubuntu One Music Store
Canonical is working on a music store for their Ubuntu operating system that could compete with iTunes.

Templates Available in Google Sites
Anyone looking to create a quick website can find refuge in the new templates offered by Google Sites.

A New Look for Google Translate
Google Translate can now translate your text as-you-type, and provides phonetic pronunciations for people who can speak languages like Chinese but don’t know how to read/write them.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Use Aruna to Share Files  
Finding a good way to share files with friends can be difficult because of limitations many of them impose, but GoAruna knocks off most of those barriers. You can upload an unlimited number of files as long as each one is under 100MB in size. They can then be shared with anyone that you want through a simple URL. You can even manage the files you’ve uploaded through a convenient interface.  

Listen to Entire Music Albums with Lala
There aren’t many sites out there that will let you legally listen to entire songs or albums, but Lala is one of them. The catch? You can only listen to each song once. That is a pretty big limitation, but what’s nice is that this gives you the chance to preview entire albums before you decide whether there’s just a few songs you want to pickup.

Office 2010 “Quick Steps” Feature
One of the new features in Office 2010 Beta is the ability to add “Quick Steps” in Outlook. These are essentially easy-to-create macros that make managing your emails that much better. They can be used to forward/send email, archive emails to a certain folder, and a lot more.

–Tips in Brief–

How to Run Google Chrome OS from a USB Drive
This is a guide showing you how you can run Chrome OS on your PC using a USB drive.

Grep on Windows
Search multiple files on Windows using the same popular format found in Unix/Linux.

iTunes in your Mac Menubar
Mac users can control most aspects of iTunes right from the Menubar with this free app.

Foobar2000 v1.0 Beta Available
It’s been over 7 years in development, but version 1.0 of Foobar2000 is on the horizon with features like Windows Media streaming support.

Add 50 Pidgin Plugins with One Download
Grab all of the most popular Pidgin plugins without having to hunt them down one-by-one.

MinimizeToTray for Firefox
The new version of this popular extension now supports Firefox 3.0 and beyond.

FastStone Image Viewer 4.0
The update to this image viewer includes performance improvements, Windows 7 compatibility, and more.

Find “Secret” Messages in Website Headers
This isn’t all that useful, but can definitely be fun!

Extensive Ubuntu 9.10 Review
Ars Technica provides an in-depth review of the latest Ubuntu 9.10 operating system.

Convert FLV Video to AVI
Convert your favorite Flash videos to a format that is more device-friendly.

Seesmic Desktop for Windows
This is one of the first Twitter clients for Windows that doesn’t use Adobe AIR, and the interface fits in better with other aspects of the operating system.

mmKeys.dll Makes iTunes Work with Multimedia Keyboards
This DLL will address compatibility issues between iTunes and multimedia keyboards.

Sumatra PDF Reader 1.0
Sumatra still keeps things lean in terms of it’s PDF capabilities despite hitting the big 1.0 milestone.

Monitor a Website for Changes
Get notified when the content on a website changes.

MyPorts Gives You Detailed Info on Open Ports
See what ports are currently being used on your computer, and which applications have them open.

–Downloads–

• Adobe Air 2.0.0.10760 ^Beta [Mirror]
• Digsby Build 73 ^Beta [Mirror]
• FastStone Image Viewer 4.0 [Mirror]
• FeedDemon 3.0.0.45 [Mirror]
• Firefox 3.6 ^{Beta 3} [Mirror]
• Flash Player 10.1.51.45 ^Beta [Mirror]
• Google Chrome 4.0.249.4 ^Beta [Mirror]
• Google Desktop 5.9.911.3589 [Mirror]
• Google Earth 5.1.3509 ^Beta [Mirror]
• Google SketchUp 7.1.6087 [Mirror]
• Growl 2.0 [Mirror]
• MediaMonkey 3.2.0.1294 [Mirror]
• Miranda 0.8.10 [Mirror]
• Mozilla Camino 2.0 [Mirror]
• Opera 10.10 [Mirror]
• Paint.NET 3.5.1 [Mirror]
• PDF-XChange Viewer 2.0.42.9 [Mirror]
• PeaZip 2.8.0 [Mirror]
• RSS Bandit 1.9.0.972 [Mirror]
• Screenshot Captor 2.76.01 [Mirror]
• Silverlight 4.0.41108 ^Beta [Mirror]
• Sumatra PDF 1.0 [Mirror]
• VirtualBox 3.0.12.54655 [Mirror]
• WindowBlinds 7.0 [Mirror]
• uTorrent 2.1.17350 ^Beta [Mirror]

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on September 24, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Google Chrome has taken the browser market by storm ever since its release a few weeks ago. The only complaint that I’ve really heard about the browser is that it doesn’t support add-ons like Firefox does, but Google has already said that a future version will be covering those bases. It’s already been downloaded over 2 million times, and that number is destined to grow very rapidly once developers are able to create add-ons for it.

If you’ve decided to stick it out with Chrome then we’ve got a few tips and tricks for you that we’ve come across over the last few weeks.

–Keyboard Shortcuts–

Keyboard shortcuts can really help make you more productive when using a web browser, and as expected Google Chrome has plenty of them for you to learn. A full list of keyboard shortcuts can be found here, but these are a few handy ones:

• Ctrl+[1-8]: Switches to the tab in that position on your tab bar
• Shift+Esc: Opens the browser’s task manager
• Ctrl+Shift+N: Opens an incognito window that can be used for private browsing

–About Pages–

Google Chrome has several different “about” pages that can be used to access various information. For example, entering about:memory in the address bar will show you a list of running browsers along with how much memory each one is using.

One of the really interesting pages is about:stats that will show you a list of timers and counters used by the browser. It tracks things like how long it takes (in milliseconds) for your browser window to close, the load time of Google Gears, and more. Google OS has a more comprehensive list of the “about” pages available in Google Chrome.

–More Address Bar Results–

Not seeing enough results in the address bar? The browser should probably offer some simple configuration option for users to adjust this, but it doesn’t. Instead you need to modify the desktop shortcut in order to get more results. Once you open up the properties of the shortcut you’ll want to place this on the end of the “target” field:

-omnibox-popup-count=10

The How-to Geek has more detailed instructions on how to do this.

–Change the User Agent–

Doing something as simple as changing the user agent should be a no-brainer in Chrome, but Google wanted to make it a challenge. As Digital Inspiration points out it is very much possible to do, but will require that you use a HEX editor to modify a DLL.

–Backup & Restore a Profile–

Backing up your Google Chrome profile can easily be done by digging into some folders on your computer, but there’s an easier solution. The free Google Chrome Profile Backup app will let you backup and restore Google Chrome profiles as much as you want. It even comes with a nice profile manager so that storing several different profiles is a painless process.

–Portable Google Chrome–

Take the browser with you on a USB drive by downloading this special package that has been put together by a third-party. All of your settings will be stored within a single folder so that you don’t need to worry about your browsing history getting left behind on a different computer.

–Run Google Chrome on Mac or Linux–

I’m sure you’re aware that Google has yet to release a version of Chrome that runs on an operating system other than Windows. CrossOver, the creators of Wine, have taken it upon themselves to bring over the Windows version to other operating systems. There are still some quirks to using this method, like not being able to auto-update the browser, but it works pretty well.

–Make Firefox Look Like Google Chrome–

Do you like the looks of Google Chrome, but don’t want to give up some of your favorite Firefox extensions? This Google Chrome theme for Firefox looks great on all operating systems, and might be just enough for those of you who like Chrome’s appearance.

–Overview–

About 4% of our readers are using Google Chrome, and so I’m sure you’ve come up with your own tips and tricks to make the browser even better. Feel free to share your own tips in the comments, and also let us know what’s keeping you using Chrome.

Thanks to everyone who sent in tips!

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!

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