chuyeow.wtf

Firefox nightly builds add a combined Stop/Go/Refresh button to the Location Bar

2010-09-20T14:22:13+00:00

In an effort to streamline Firefox's UI, the latest Firefox nightly builds have moved the Stop/Refresh button into the right corner of the Location Bar. I like this move even if the Firefox developers are simply copying design ideas from other browsers (in this case, I believe Safari was first).

When you're typing in the Location Bar, a green Go button is shown:

That switches to a red Stop button when the page is loading:

The thin line you see in the location bar is a progress indicator that indicates how much of the current web page has loaded - I don't like the way it looks and I think it'll probably change in future.

When the page has fully loaded, it changes to a Refresh button:

This leaves a minimalist and compact toolbar:

I should actually remove the Home button - I don't ever use it.

To try out the new stuff coming in Firefox, download a Firefox nightly build</a> now.

Stop and Reload buttons merged in Firefox

2010-01-14T18:41:53+00:00

A minor UI improvement to Firefox has been made to Firefox and it's currently only available on nightly builds of Firefox: the Stop and Reload buttons have been merged into a single button. This change should make it into Firefox 3.6.

While a page is loading, the button acts as a Stop button:
</a>

When it's done loading, it becomes a Reload button.
</a>

I'm always up for 1 less unnecessary button. I think this feature is copied from Safari (I might be wrong).

Firefox quick tip: view images in a new tab quickly

2009-11-25T19:13:21+00:00

A mini-tip on viewing images quickly in a new tab in Firefox. Useful for web devs who want to look at the URL of an image quickly.

As an example, here's the Youtube webpage</a> of the owner of Maru the Cat</a>:

To open the thumbnail image of Maru in a new tab, right-click the image, and then middle-click the View Image item from the context menu:

It should open up in a new tab:

You can also do the same for background images (middle-click View Background Image from the right-click context menu).

One reason Firefox 3 is going to be awesome - Auto-completion in the Location Bar

2008-03-22T22:55:59+00:00

After seriously giving Firefox 3 Beta 4</a> a try due to Safari 3.1 breaking the Shift key in Gmail</a> (update: as kindly pointed out by some of my readers in the comments</a>, it was Gmail that was broken, not Safari 3.1, doh), I've converted to using Firefox 3 Beta 4 as my primary browser. Before, I was using Firefox 2 as my main web browser, with a Safari window open for Gmail (because I tend to have around 50 tabs open in Firefox 2, and having Gmail among those tabs just kills Firefox 2's performance). So yes, I was using Safari 3 as a "Gmail browser", so to speak (in case you'd thought I'd defected from Firefox despite my history</a>).
Anyway, enough with all that self-indulgent background - I'm writing this today to rave about how cool this one particular feature, auto-completion in the Location Bar (or the Address Bar, you know, where you type in URLs), in Firefox 3 is. Yes, you probably have already read</a> about it</a> and all the other neat new features and changes in Firefox 3, but I'd love to single out this one because it was the one thing I noticed that made browsing so much better when switching from Firefox 2.
So what is it? First, a screenshot of it in action:
</div>


Yup, typing into the Location Bar brings up a list of matched webpages from your browsing history. You can see from the screenshot that I entered "javascript" and it brought up not just URLs that started with "javascript" (which is the current Firefox 2 behavior), it also brought up URLs that contained "javascript" anywhere and even pages with titles containing "javascript".
What's the big deal? Well, one of the worst ("worst" being a relative adjective, relative to my opinion) things that can happen while looking for a page you once visited is forgetting its URL. If I'm lucky I can find it by bringing up the History sidebar in Firefox 2 and searching for it by some keyword or dredging through my browsing history.
In Firefox 3, I just need to type in some keywords related to the page and most likely it'd come up! Here's how I start posting a new blog entry to this very blog:
</div>


No need to type "blog.c" and then selecting the correct page from the dropdown while remembering that the new post page is "post-new.php". Less typing, no need to remember URLs. Just page titles and website names. If that isn't useful for you, "you're doing it wrong". What's more, Firefox 3 uses adaptive learning to keep an eye of what you've typed and what you select. After some time Firefox will learn from your choices and provide better suggestions in the autocomplete list. Sweet.
If you haven't tried out Firefox 3 yet, go grab the latest beta</a>. And then come back to this blog to get Firefox 2 and 3 running at the same time</a>. I'm quite sure you'll thank me for it (because this is not the only great feature in Firefox).
Update: Phil Wilson</a> pointed to this extension for Firefox 2</a> that has the same auto-completion functionality.

Try the new Mac OS X UI for Firefox 3

2007-11-20T18:13:36+00:00

The Firefox 3 developers have been working on a visual refresh</a> that integrates more tightly into the OS, and the Mac OS X version is looking pretty sweet. Well, public opinion varies greatly - from people who feel that it's a rip off of Safari</a> to those who really like the Brushed Metal look (myself included).
</div>


Well, if you wanna check out the proposed Mac OS X Firefox 3 UI for yourself, grab yourself a copy of Firefox 3 Beta 1</a> and go get the Proto theme</a>.

Firefox 3, Beta

2007-11-20T17:23:57+00:00

Firefox 3 Beta 1</a> is out! Check out the pretty sweet list of changes</a>.
</div>


If you want to try it, you'll probably want to run Firefox 3 and Firefox 2 at the same time</a>. Only this time you should remember to rename Firefox 3 so that it doesn't override your install of Firefox 2.
I'd blogged about some of the changes previously if you care for some screenshots of some of the new features (Mozilla Links covers a good number of new Firefox 3 changes</a> too):

Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.</a></li>
supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates.</a></li>
Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.</a></li>
Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.</a></li> </ul>

What's new in Firefox 3: Pasting text into search bar to be 100% less annoying

2007-09-27T00:12:19+00:00

Now if you're a regular user of Firefox, you've probably already had the opportunity to be dismayed by how you cannot copy and paste text with newlines into the search bar. All you end up with is the first line of text. I just end up typing in the search terms myself or copy and paste line by line.
Try it for yourself with the text here:
First line.
Second line.</blockquote>
Well, all that is gonna go away in Firefox 3, which replaces newlines with spaces</a>. Small change perhaps, but definitely needed in this fanboy's opinion.
Oh and it works for the Address bar too, only the newlines get removed instead of getting replaced with spaces. Could be useful for multi-line URLs which appear quite often in emails!

What's new in Firefox 3: Download Resume

2007-09-18T18:08:21+00:00

This is not exactly a new change to Firefox 3's nightly builds</a> since the bugs have been setting in my browser tab bar for about a week but I figured I'd write about them anyway since it's quite a nice improvement.
What's new? Download Resume</a> - now you can pause and resume your downloads in the Firefox Download Manager. Implemented by a Summer of Code</a> student, this brings Firefox's Download Manager up to speed with Safari (which has a really nice download resume feature that leaves .download</code> files that you can just double-click to resume the download).
</div> You'll notice the insane speeds (986GB/s) I'm getting too in that last screenshot. Nope it's not a feature, it's a bug</a>. And a known one</a> that's probably fixed if you have a recent nightly. For Firefox 1.5 or 2 users, don't despair, extensions like DownThemAll!</a> allow you to resume downloads. If you use an external download manager, you'd probably be more interested in FlashGot</a>.
"Open in Tabs" fixed in Firefox 3, at last 2007-09-13T19:33:42+00:00 The last time I blogged about Firefox's "Open in Tabs" behavior</a> was 3 years ago in September 2004. Open in Tabs is quite a cool bookmark feature where you can open a folder of bookmarks. Unfortunately, some of us </a>felt that there it had a flawed implementation. Here's how you can see it for yourself: Here, try this in a new Firefox window. Open up 4 tabs. Make sure that there’s nothing in these tabs that you want to remember to come back to later, especially the last 2. Now try using "Open in Tabs" on a bookmark folder with just 2 bookmarks. What just happened? Firefox has closed the last 2 tabs and loaded the first 2 tabs with the first 2 bookmarks. Well, actually this is not so bad for the first 2 tabs, because you can use the "Back" button to go back to your page should you want to, but the tabs that were closed are lost.</blockquote> It was then rather unfortunate that this bug</a> was closed as WONTFIX. I was thus surprised to see a patch for a similar bug</a> land in the Firefox 3 trunk about a week ago (I haven't had time to blog about it until now!) This change in Firefox 3 means that "Open in Tabs" is no longer a destructive proposition - a "use existing tabs and append" strategy is employed. Here's how it looks like graphically (which I expect would be easier to understand compared to aforementioned "use existing tabs and append" strategy). Let's start with 4 tabs, with the Google, Ruby on Rails, Facebook and jQuery websites loaded: </div> I have a bookmark folder with 2 bookmarks (to the Firebug and Prototype websites) in them: </div> If I click on "Open in Tabs" in Firefox 3, I end up with this: </div> Notice how the Back button is enabled on the Firebug tab (allowing us to go back to the Google webpage), and the Prototype bookmark is loaded in a new tab after the Firebug one. Small little tweak you may say, but it's all these small usability tweaks (like the recent Password Manager improvement</a>) that promise to make Firefox 3 a much better browser. Smarter (and less-annoying) Password Manager in Firefox 3 2007-09-07T20:02:05+00:00 This is really nice: trunk builds of Firefox 3 since 1 Sept 2007 have a smarter Password Manager that asks you whether you want to save your passwords in a non-modal way. (The relevant enhancement ticket is replace modal pre-submit save password dialog with post-submit bar</a> for those of you who want to read the bug report.) Anyway, in simpler words (and some screenshots to follow), what this means is that whenever you login to a site that requires your password, Firefox will no longer wait for you to tell it whether it should remember your password. I bet this looks familiar: </div> Its usability is lacking because of 2 things: if I entered the wrong password told Firefox to remember my password, I'd have to go to the Password Manager</a> to delete it, and</li> Firefox doesn't submit your login until you tell it what to do with your password, annoying for 2 reasons: Sometimes I'm not sure if I entered the right password - but I'd be pretty sure of that if I get to the next page (i.e. if my login request was submitted).</li> It's just plain faster if Firefox submitted the login and asked about my password together/later - blocking the submit is just a waste of time (i.e. a non-modal dialog would make more sense).</li> </ol> </li> </ul> So, especially since I've used used Firefox for 156 hours at work since a month and a half ago</a> (my most used application apparently), it's pretty cool to find out that Firefox 3 will come with a non-modal "Remember my password" dialog. Here's what it looks like: </div> The dialog appears on top right after Firefox submits the login form. One more thing to look forward to in Firefox 3! How to have Firefox 3 and Firefox 2 running at the same time 2007-08-20T20:06:50+00:00 Firefox 3</a>, or Gran Paradiso, is really shaping up with some pretty cool</a> new</a> features</a> being implemented in the recent months. That's not including the cool FUEL</a> (Firefox User Extension Library) JavaScript library that promises to make extension development a bajillion times more productive, Places</a> for data storage, and the use of Cairo</a> for graphics. The problem with playing around with Firefox 3 is (by default) you can't run both Firefox 2 and 3 at the same time since they both insist on using the same profile and insist on running only 1 copy of Firefox at any one time. Want to get in on checking out the new features but still want good old Firefox 2? Here's how: First, you should create a new profile</a> just for testing Firefox 3. You should do this to keep your precious Firefox profile safe from any problems in Firefox 3. Otherwise, Firefox 3 will use your current Firefox 2 profile by default. You can create a new profile easily with the Profile Manager, which you can access by running: /path/to/firefox -profilemanager -no-remote</code></pre> (Thanks to Jeff</a> for pointing out</a> that there is no need to close Firefox first before creating a new profile.) </div> Create a new profile (I gave it an obvious name, 'minefield', which is the codename of the current Firefox trunk). If you get confused, the official Firefox website has more detailed instructions on how to create a new profile</a>. </li> Now, you should already have one of the Firefox nightly builds. If not, you can download the latest nightly build from the Firefox nightly build directory</a>. You can start up Firefox 2 normally (just so you can see Firefox 2 and 3 running side by side). For Firefox 3, we're going to start it differently.</li> We're gonna run Firefox 3 using our newly created profile. I'd written earlier on how you can run two Firefox profiles at the same time</a>, and you can still do the same with Firefox 3: /path/to/firefox3 -P minefield -no-remote &</code></pre> The 'minefield' in the command is the name of the profile we created earlier. Windows users should leave out the '&' (on UNIX-based systems, this just runs Minefield in the background so that you can exit your terminal). </li> Firefox 3 should start up with your new clean profile! </div> That's the Firefox 3 (Minefield) icon living right next to my Firefox 2 icon in my dock (yeah, I use a Mac). </li> </ul> Andy Croll</a> (who works at Bezurk</a> too) has written a convenient little AppleScript</a> so you don't have to repeat these steps. Just so I can put up another screenshot (as if I needed to prove that this really works), here's Firefox 2 and one of the recent Firefox 3 nightly builds running side by side: Have fun! I think I'll get back to watching the development of the trunk (now that it's getting more exciting) like I used</a> to</a> in the build</a> up</a> to</a> Firefox 1 and 2. I may even make some posts! Growl integration in Firefox 3 2007-05-05T18:39:28+00:00 Some of the latest Firefox 3 aka Minefield</a> trunk builds include Growl</a> integration! This is probably a non-event for anyone other than Mac users, but hey Growl notifications without needing to install an extension</a>? Pretty nice. </div> Get a nightly here: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/</a> To test Firefox 3 nightlies without possibly messing up your existing profile (preferences, extensions, what have you), use the Profile Manager</a> to create a new profile just for testing. Way less stupid then trying to load up 48 tabs from your current profile in Firefox 3 and then seeing most of the extensions fail to work (which was what I tried to do, once). Source: Bug 362685 â€“ Growl Integration for Mac OS X (nsIAlertsService)</a> Firefox Recommendation #1: Clearing download history automatically 2007-05-05T18:02:09+00:00 It's been ages (well, almost 2 years, but that's a lifetime in Internet time) since Firefox Secrets</a> was published and I figured I should probably live up to being the "Firefox book" guy (in Singapore). I'm gonna start posting Firefox tips and pointers at least twice a week (hopefully I don't run out of material!) And instead of using the word "tip", I'll call em "recommendations" instead, seeing as Robert Accettura</a> already has an excellent Firefox Tips</a> thing going on his blog</a>. Today's recommendation: get Firefox to clear the list of downloaded items in the download manager to keep your Firefox speedy. You've probably read about how cleaning up your download history</a> can help speed up Firefox (on Of Zen and Computing</a> or on Mac OS X Hints</a>), but do you really want to remember to clear up your download history manually? </div> Unsatisfied with a manual solution, I went looking for an about:config preference (not familiar with about:config? Enter 'about:config' into your Firefox address bar and hit Enter - read more</a>). Sure enough, there is a browser.download.manager.retention preference when I used 'download.manager' as a filter: </div> But what value should I set it to? The default value is 2 but there's no clue what another value would do. There's only one place to find out: the about:config entries page in the MozillaZine Knowledge Base</a>. Search for retention and there you go: When to remove downloaded files' entries from the Download Manager 0: Upon successful download 1: When the browser exits 2 (default): Manually</blockquote> Set it to 0 or 1, whichever behavior you prefer. I like 0 since I use the Download Statusbar extension</a> and never get to see the Download Manager. That's it for today's tip (and a pretty low-key tip at that)! Google Reader, so pretty... 2007-04-29T20:34:25+00:00 Today being RSS feed backlog-clearing day, I came across Jon Hicks' Google Reader Theme</a>, installed the Stylish extension for Firefox</a>, added his user style for Google Reader</a> to Stylish, and have been wow-ed ever since. Here's a rough idea how it looks (click the thumbnail for a bigger picture): </a></div> If you're a Google Reader user like me</a>, you'd probably like Jon's theme. I don't have to say that it does look very much better than the original Google Reader theme (oops, I said it). Amazing what a talented designer can do with user style sheets. Thunderbird 2.0 and Gmail integration 2007-04-29T15:56:08+00:00 I haven't been following Thunderbird development like I used</a> to</a> so I was presently surprised to see how far Thunderbird has come when I tried a beta of Thunderbird 2 a while back (of course, Thunderbird 2 has been released</a> for over a week, but I'm still clearing a backlog of blog drafts). One of the things I noticed was how Gmail POP integration is baked right in when creating a new accounts: </div> Step 2: tell Thunderbird your Gmail ID. </div> Step 3: there isn't really a step 3, just confirm your Gmail settings. </div> How's that for time-saving? Gone are the days of looking for POP client configuration documentation on Gmail</a>. My only gripe is that there isn't a similar wizard interface for Gmail for your domain</a>. Oh and there're tons of other nice features in Thunderbird 2</a>: Advanced Folder Views lets you configure "Favorite Folders" and has a view for unread folders as well, tags (a la Gmail labels or GTD organization) and of course, a well-tuned Saved Searches feature (which has been there since version 0.9). I'm back to using Thunderbird again after a brief fling with Apple Mail</a>, for no particular reason actually. Well, actually, I did reinstall Mac OS X Tiger (it got really crappy in terms of performance - must be the tons of software I was installing) and found it much less work to get a satisfactorily working email client with Thunderbird than with Apple Mail. Firefox tips sharing session at WebSG meetup 2007-03-03T03:07:20+00:00 Kevin</a> has uploaded a video of my session</a> on Google Video - it's kinda grainy and really soft.</ins> I was at the 2nd WebSG</a> (Web Standards Group Singapore) meetup (read about the recap of the meetup</a>) on Wednesday (28 Feb 2007) where I hosted a short session on some Firefox tips. It's all thanks the urgings and encouragement of Lucian</a> (the organizer) that I finally got down to publicly sharing my Firefox knowledge ever since I wrote Firefox Secrets</a>. </div> I was asked to blog about this (since I didn't have any presentation slides), so here it is, for those of you who missed anything in my mumbling or frantic keystrokes. Keyboard shortcuts you should know</h3> Note: Mac users should replace Ctrl with the Cmd key for any of the keystrokes listed below. Ctrl-L puts your cursor in the address bar, Ctrl-K puts your cursor in the search bar.</li> Ctrl-T opens a new tab and puts your cursor in the address bar, but</li> I forgot to mention this during the session, but I personally prefer using Ctrl-L or Ctrl-K, typing in the new URL or search query, and hitting Alt-Enter open the new page or search result in a new tab - it just feels more accessible than Ctrl-T. Most people I observe still use Ctrl-T though.</li> Ctrl-Shift-T re-opens closed tabs. Keep hitting it to reopen more closed tabs in your history. This is a big time saver. Newly built into Firefox 2.0.</li> Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab brings you to the next and previous tab. If you're having trouble remembering both, just remember that the usual convention is a Shift does the reverse. So all you need is to remember Ctrl-Tab, and adding a Shift modifier does the reverse (i.e. goes to the previous tab instead of the next).</li> Ctrl-F brings up the Find bar, and you can start typing in whatever you want to find on the page and in any input fields. Use Ctrl-G and Ctrl-Shift-G to go to the next and previous occurences respectively. The Find bar is good, but...</li> I forgot to mention (as Zul</a> mentioned to me after) during the session that Quick Find is much better. Just hit / and start typing as you would for the normal Find bar, and the Quick Find bar will go away after several seconds. Much better in most cases than the Find bar which likes to stick around until you close it. And why is this important? Because the Find bar takes up screen real estate, especially for those of us using wide screens.</li> </ul> Getting rid of the close button on all tabs</h3> I've been told how annoying Firefox 2.0 is when it insists on putting a close button on each tab. </div> Accidental closing of tabs when you try to select them is one big complaint. Well, you can turn it off and go back to the good olde Firefox 1.5 days of a single close button on the extreme right of the tab bar. Enter about:config in your address bar, filter for browser.tabs.closeButtons, double click on the preference entry that shows up, and change the value from the default of 1, to 3. If you don't want the close button on the right of the tab bar, enter a value of 2 (this assumes you're going to close tabs with either Ctrl-W or middle-clicking on the tab - this is my prefered setup). Backing up your profile</h3> MozBackup</a> is all you ever need if you use Windows exclusively. This neat little (Windows-only) application backs up your profile into a single file - all you need is to use a very simple wizard. And of course, you can restore your profile just as easily. I loved this when I was still using Windows. Like I said, people using other operating systems can easily DIY - just read Mozilla's official documentation on Firefox profiles</a>. You're probably using either Mac OS X or some Linux distro - you can do this without any hand-holding ;) What about backing up extensions?</h4> Some people asked me during and after my session about backing up extensions. FEBE</a> is one extension you can look at unless you use a Mac (I tried the beta version that supports Mac OS X, but gave up when I couldn't get it to use the correct binaries for zipping and unzipping.) My personal take on backing up extensions: don't back them up. I prefer to dump a list of extensions (I use the Extension List Dumper extension</a>) that I have installed and just re-install them again. This is no big chore for me now since I have significantly fewer extensions installed than back in the day. I just like starting clean, after having had bad experiences with restoring extensions from backup before. Still, if you really want to back up your extensions, I say just go ahead and see if it works (MozBackup and FEBE should work). Profiles and "why is my Firefox so damn slow?"</h3> This is one thing I had planned to mention but I got kinda threw off kilter when the slowness of the wireless internet connection made me worried about quitting Firefox (didn't want to quit Firefox, load up another profile, only to find that it'd take another 5 mins to get my demo tabs loaded again). Anyway, some questions I often get is, "why is my Firefox so slow?" and "why does Firefox use up so much RAM/CPU?" The first thing I suspect is a busted profile. Whenever I experience intolerable slowness in my Firefox setup, I dump and restore my profile into a newly created profile, minus all the tab history information (and of course, never restoring backed up extensions). Sometimes I even start clean new profiles, importing only bookmarks. You'll very likely notice immediately that Firefox is back to its old speediness. And if anything happens, you still have your old profile with you. I'm not that certain of what exactly causes Firefox to get too slow over time, but my suspicions lie with: Firefox saving browsing history in all the bazillion tabs you have open - that's a lot of data to be carrying around</li> broken/bad extensions</li> a busted profile </li> </ol> Profile management for productivity</h3> Firefox hides its Profile Manager from you. You can access it by passing the -profilemanager switch to your Firefox executable. For Windows users, it's actually --profilemanager. </div> The Profile Manager is really handy for people who need to remove distractions. For me, I setup different profiles for work and for play so I don't become distracted the "play" tabs I have open while I'm working (I'm beginning to like the Tab Groups extension for segregating tabs</a> more though). Also really handy for setting up clean profiles for running user demos (I setup a WebSG profile for my presentation and installed specific extensions I wanted to talk about) - don't really want to have your naughty browser history showing up in some autocomplete heh. Some extensions I dig</h3> I also demoed some extensions that I find essential. Download Statusbar</a> for unobtrusive downloads.</li> All-in-One Gestures</a> for easily accessible Back and Forward gestures when you happen to have your hand on the mouse. Like I said, I don't use any of the other gestures because they all require memorization (I use too much of my memory storing keyboard shortcuts).</li> Super DragAndGo</a> for drag and drop searching. Great time saver when you are doing online research.</li> Web Developer toolbar</a> for its convenient Disable Cache, browser resizing, and HTML validation shortcut (Ctrl-Shift-A).</li> UrlParams</a> for easy viewing and editing of GET or POST parameters.</li> And of course, Firebug</a> - godsend for web developers, web designers, and especially AJAX developers like us</a>.</li> </ul> Oh, and Mousepose</a> was the application I used to get my keystrokes to show up on the screen. It's simple yet extremely helpful for presentations, though I probably should have used the mouse spotlight feature more. Oh well, I did just buy the license for it a few hours before the meetup - goes to show how unprepared I was heh. It's late and I'll blog more on the event and the people I met another day. Tab Groups for Firefox: best extension since sliced bread... er, tabbed browsing 2007-03-02T02:00:09+00:00 I saw a Lifehacker blog post</a> today in my RSS reader on this Firefox extension</a>, took one look at the screenshot, and went "Woooooow, give me some of that". Aforementioned Firefox extension: Tab Groups extension for Firefox</a>. As its name suggests, it allows you to group your tabs in, er, groups. Forget the verbiage, just look at the screenshot: </div> This extension is a godsend for those of us who usually have a bazillion tabs open in Firefox (personally I keep it under a bazillion tabs so all those tabs don't slow Firefox down - I usually start killing tabs once I hit 30). By allowing you to group your tabs into logical groups, such as one group for work, one for play, and one for your many Gmail accounts, it brings some order to the "tab hell", which usually happens when you have to scroll or Ctrl/Cmd-Tab through more than 20 tabs to find the tab you want. Some people may use an Expose-style extension to show thumbnails of all their tabs at once, Showcase</a> is one example - those are quite nifty as well though I've always found them to be unmanageably slow when there are too many tabs, which kinda defeats the purpose. Anyway, coming back to Tab Groups extension... This is an extension that's going to be absolutely necessary for those of us who like having many tabs open at once. For those of you who are less tab-crazy, or even, god forbid, surf in single tab mode, I'd expect you'd be much less excited about Tab Groups. Tab Groups is pretty much early release software (the author considers it pre-alpha), but it's very much already usable at this stage. You can create groups, rename them, and start dragging tabs into whichever tab group they belong. There are several features that are missing but almost definitely planned for future releases. For one thing, you can't move tab groups around, but I'm sure that'll be baked in soon enough. Also, the tab selector (the dropdown list of tabs thingie on the extreme right of your tab bar) stops working if tab is in another group. Another thing is the Ctrl/Cmd-Shift-T to reopen closed tabs currently reopens tabs in a new tab group. All small inconveniences (that would be soon be removed once Tab Group history gets baked in) for a very nice extension. Via Lifehacker</a> via CyberNet News</a>. Running two Firefox profiles simultaneously 2007-03-01T19:41:28+00:00 At yesterday's WebSG meetup</a>, someone asked me how you can have 2 different user sessions in Firefox, and I was unable to answer as I never had the need for 2 different user sessions (though I imagine it'd be nice for testing certain types of interactive web applications). Anyway, I found the answer today after some Googling - Lifehacker's "Manage multiple Firefox profiles" article</a>. Basically, once you have started Firefox in a profile that you want, you can start another profile by passing the '-no-remote' switch together with the name of the profile you want to start with the '-P' switch: /path/to/firefox -P profile_name -no-remote</code></pre> It does mean you need 2 different profiles though, for the 2 different user sessions. Oh well. IMAP-IDLE plugin for Apple Mail 2007-02-25T02:08:40+00:00 Yup I switched to Apple Mail from Thunderbird a few months back, primary reason being back then I was barely able to run my developer applications on 512MB of RAM (Apple Mail runs lighter than Thunderbird, unfortunately). It's comforting to find that there is an IMAP-IDLE plugin for Apple Mail</a> (Thunderbird got its IDLE support way back in 2004</a>.) What's IDLE? Well, quoting myself: Simply put, IDLE is a command that allows IMAP email servers to transmit updates to the client in real time. This saves the client from having to continuously poll the server to achieve the effect of new mail appearing immediately. All in all, an exceptionally useful command that saves Thunderbird the work of polling IMAP servers continuously.</blockquote> So anyway, it's really simple to install and use (just simple checkboxes for enabling IDLE for your IMAP accounts). </div> Remember to configure Mail to stop polling these mail accounts every X minutes or so now. Enjoy the geeky feeling of knowing you've just saved several CPU cycles and a few kilobytes of bandwidth. Essential Firebug video for web developers 2007-01-28T14:41:45+00:00 If you're doing web development or design of any sort, you have to check out Joe Hewitt's talk on Firebug at Yahoo!</a> - download the movie or watch it online, just make sure you watch it. If you aren't already using Firebug</a>, this will convince you. If you are, you'll probably find some gems in there that you didn't know before. I didn't know that you could log events to elements on the fly, or press the up and down arrow keys to adjust numerical values (such as margins and paddings), or edit the values in the box model layout diagram, or hover over variable names to see a tooltip of their values in the JavaScript debugger, or conditional breakpoints. Now if only it were able to detect JavaScript syntax errors that cause an entire JS file to be ignored by the browser. Firefox Secrets on Google Book Search 2006-12-19T10:16:35+00:00 A GoogleAlert</a> (not the Google Alert</a>) email arrived in my inbox today alerting me to the Firefox Secrets entry on Google Book Search</a> (that's a book I wrote, for the uninitiated). It's listed as a limited preview so only the first few pages of each chapter are available. If you're interested in previewing a Firefox book circa 2005 (virtually the Mesozoic ages in the tech world), just maybe, check it out</a>. My Linux snob shirt 2006-12-04T12:52:25+00:00 All I got for my birthday was this t-shirt: </div> In case the image doesn't load at some point or is too small, here's what it says: Two hours of broadband to ftp the Linux Package, 15 cents. CDs to burn the files, $1.00. The knowledge that nothing on your computer is from Microsoft, PRICELESS. There are some operating systems that you don't need money to buy. For everyone else, there's Windows. </blockquote> Ironically, I'm now a Mac OS X snob, but the t-shirt still kicks arse. And no, I'm not one of those Microsoft haters without a cause - it's just a t-shirt. (Actually I got more than the t-shirt, but I wanted to start the entry with "All I got was this t-shirt".) Firefox "ad" in the Singapore MRT 2006-11-16T20:18:57+00:00 I saw a familiar furry animal on one of the ads near the entrance of City Hall MRT</acronym> and did a double take when I realized it was actually a firefox! I had no real choice but to snap a grainy photo and post it here. </div> Well, the ad actually labelled it as a "Red Panda</a>", but we all know that red pandas are also called firefoxes. Firefox 2 - it's out 2006-10-25T01:42:05+00:00 Even though Firefox 2 is slated to be released later today, the release builds have already made it into the Mozilla Firefox release directory</a>. The impatient (like me) can go get it</a> right now. </div> Oh, and a must have extension for those who want to enjoy the 2.0 release: Nightly Test Tools</a>. Despite it's geeky sounding, "why the hell would I need that?" name, it is essential for preventing your transition from Firefox 1.5 (or lower, god forbid) to Firefox 2.0 from becoming an exercise in frustration caused by extensions being disabled if the authors have not updated them for Firefox 2.0. With Nightly Tester Tools, you can "Make compatible" any "outdated" extensions to force them to be usable in Firefox 2.0. Granted, this doesn't always work (if, say, an extension uses functionality that no longer exists in Firefox 2.0), but for most of the extensions I've had to "make compatible" so far function just fine. </div> Oh and while you're there playing with your extensions (Firefox extensions you sicko), you'll probably find that you no longer need extensions that save and restore your browsing session (such as SessionSaver or the functionality that comes with Tab Mix Plus) and certain feed subscription extensions (such as Feed Your Reader) - these already come built into Firefox 2.0. When Firefox extensions annoy 2006-07-02T13:40:09+00:00 Firefox extensions are a good thing (since sliced bread and embedded ActiveX controls...), in fact some of them are my most compelling reasons for using and loving Firefox. Anyway, so with that World Cup thing that's going on I installed an extension called FootieFox</a> that tracks any goals being scored in real-time and pops up a small little notification message. All fine and dandy, great unobtrusive little widget. Well, right until "FootieFox Education Day", when the extension started showing a banner that overlaid everything else on the screen, blinding up in obnoxious slowness, sitting there for a few seconds, and blinding down painfully with no way to dismiss it except to wait. </div> I promptly uninstalled the extension. (Great extension, but that "I'm gonna block out everything else so you have to read me" banner thing annoyed me.) The first Firefox ads are out 2006-04-13T01:34:33+00:00 Firefox Flicks</a> has just put up 3 of the first ads that have been submitted to the Firefox ads competition. Check them out.</a> Drama queen was my favorite of the three, though they are all surprisingly very good quality ads. Tabbed-browsing enhancements for Firefox in latest build 2006-01-24T21:21:33+00:00 Bug 308396 - UE fixes for tabbed browsing</a> landed in the 2005-01-21 (Trunk) build of Firefox</a>, bringing with it "tabbed browsing usability enhancements" (and I quote Ben Goodger from the bug page). One fix that I really like is the one related to moving focus after a tab is closed. Right now, if a link opens in a new tab and gains focus, and you close that new tab, you are taken to the right-most tab you have opened. The fix makes it much friendlier by taking you back to the "parent" tab that opened that link. Hurray! Another change is the addition of big "X"s (crosses) on the right of each tab which you can click to close tabs. Something like this: </div> Well, rather nice for people with only 2-button mice or using specific OS ports of Firefox (I'm thinking some flavors Linux desktop environments, but I'm not sure), since they can now close tabs in a single-click (instead of right-click -> Close Tab). Personally, I prefer to middle-click tabs to close them or hit Ctrl-W, and the additional close widgets are just unnecessary clutter (so it's a good thing this can be turned off via about:config at the moment). Anyway, if you're using a 3-button mouse and are closing tabs with right-click tab -> Close Tab, stop doing that! Middle-click the tab. Middle-clicking is (or should be) the new "close me" in any environment that involves tabs - think IntelliJ IDEA and editors like PSPad</a>. If we could just get other applications to follow this "new convention" (think Eclipse IDE, EditPlus). How does one get in touch with the Firefox Add-ons people? 2006-01-23T10:24:41+00:00 An update: I've actually deleted the existing extension on the Firefox Add-ons site and added a new one per Patrick's suggestion below, and it is now available there</a>. And yeah, I didn't put any of the changes you guys requested in there besides getting it to work for Firefox 1.5...</ins> I've seen your emails and comments about updating the Unread Tabs</a> extension for Firefox 1.5, and I apologize if I haven't responded to your email personally. Anyway, yes, the fix is extremely simple, and in fact I did try to fix it once and upload it onto the Firefox Add-ons site</a> a long time ago last year when the extra character in the GUID was brought to my attention (to explain this a bit - each extension has its own GUID which is universally unique 32-character string, and somehow I screwed it up by inserting a GUID with 33 characters). Well, the problem is, in the developer section of the Firefox Add-ons site</a>, the "Add New Version" function enforces the rule that a new version of an extension should have the same GUID, which is perfectly fine and expected. So I've been trying to find a way to get in touch with the guys over at Firefox Add-ons to workaround this and to see what implications this may have, but can't find any form of contact information at the site (and no, I'm not gonna email the mozilla.org webmaster to bug him unless no one really knows how to reach the Firefox Add-ons guys). Anyone has any clue? Or maybe I should just email the mozilla.org webmaster... Whatever the result of that, here's an updated Unread Tabs for Firefox 1.5 with a new GUID: Install Unread Tabs</a> | Download Unread Tabs</a> An extension for a bigger Back button in Firefox 2005-07-30T22:08:57+00:00 Phil Wilson</a> has quietly created an extension</a> that gives you a bigger Back button in Firefox</a>. It's charmingly named "Fitts' Back Button" too. </div> I'd blogged about this previously</a> and this is in fact in Firefox Secrets</a> (on page 191, with due credit given, of course). Plugging Firefox Secrets 2005-07-30T21:01:39+00:00 So here it is, the inevitable "author plugs his new book" blog post. In the last months of 2004 and early months of 2005, I was spending a good number of my evenings after work writing what was to become (and now is) Firefox Secrets</a>. "Writing" being a broad term used when tasked to churn out a software book - I'd say that almost 50% of the time was spent fiddling with Firefox, tracking elusive things down, verifying that things I intend to say actually work, and taking screenshots. For those of you who were regular readers, you know how I love to put up screenshots in blog posts, but I tell ya, it kinda gets old after awhile. (Thankfully, MWSnap</a> is an amazing screen capture tool that's freeware to boot.) </div> I'd like to thank SitePoint</a> for approaching me with this offer to write a book on Firefox, considering my (non-)experience in book-writing. The content of the book was initially intended to be geared towards the non-technical Firefox user (as proposed by SitePoint), but we (SitePoint actually) decided to rebrand it as a "Secrets" book when they discovered that my submitted drafts weren't that much of a plain old technical manual but more of a "stuff you don't know" kinda book. Honestly, I never really warmed to the idea of writing another "blah how do I use Firefox" grimoire so the rebranding is for the best. So, what's in the book? Well, this table of contents</a> should give you an idea. SitePoint also included a nice little CD-ROM with Firefox, Thunderbird, and extensions and themes that I've mentioned in the book material. I tried my best to include everything for both new and experienced Firefox users, so there should probably be something in there that interests you. For those of you who want a preview of the book, check out the You Don't Know Jack About Firefox! article</a> over at SitePoint.com, or download the sample chapters</a> (PDF format, requires email address). Acknowledgements</h4> I've acknowledged these same people in the book, but it bears repeating here. I owe it all to SitePoint</a> for making the book come through, even though things weren't all that smooth-sailing. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to write about Firefox. Asa Dotzler</a>, for being an awesome technical reviewer for the book, thank you. Asa's reviews relieved me of several misconceptions, and I even picked up a few secrets from him (and yes - these secrets appear in the book). Dear blog readers, I admire you for tolerating with my absence and sticking around even when at times I seem to have died and left my blog in an owner-less limbo. Thanks for reading as always. Last but not least, the Firefox community: developers, evangelists, users, all of you. Firefox is the success it is today (and a wonderful browser to boot) because of you guys. Elsewhere, on Firefox Secrets</h4> I'll be keeping (and updating) a list of blogs, articles, and other miscellanous web stuff that talks about Firefox Secrets here. SitePoint Forums announcement: SitePoint's New Book, "Firefox Secrets"</a></li> Blog post: Firefox Secrets</a> - cheeaunblog</a></li> Blog post: SitePoint Lifts The Lid On Firefox Secrets</a> - Lockergnome</a></li> Blog post: Firefox Secrets</a> - Bernie Zimmermann</a></li> Blog post: Firefox book written by Singaporean</a> - Tomorrow.sg</a></li> Blog post: Firefox Secretes</a> (sic) - Zhang Yining</a></li> </ul> One-click delete in Gmail, thanks to GreaseMonkey 2005-04-25T19:45:49+00:00 Thanks to GreaseMonkey</a> and this nifty user script</a> from Anthony Lieuallen</a>, deleting emails in Gmail got much easier and less iffy (there were times when I selected "Add Star" when I really wanted to "Move to Trash"). </div> Oh yes, that's Trackback spam. What other neat GreaseMonkey stuff did I miss? What's up with Stop-Sign and Firefox? 2005-03-14T21:10:50+00:00 I was browsing the documentation</a> for the awesome Web Developer Toolbar extension</a> today and for some reason noticed a Google ad that was headlined "Get Mozilla Firefox". It probably caught my eye because Firefox ads on Google were new to me and I wondered if it wasn't some sort of sfx</a> initiative of some sort. I spotted the ad on this page</a> (will not necessarily appear for you, of course, since Google rotates ads - try surfing around the documentation pages if you're interested in seeing the ad for yourself). </div> Here is the ad itself (it's the bottom one). Er, www.stop-sign.com? </div> The ad brings you to this landing page</a> (incredibly small screenshot below) which apparently is part of an ad campaign of eAcceleration to promote its Stop-Sign product (which from what I understand is some sort of virus scanner cum spyware remover). </div> Well, they seem to be blatantly riding on the coat tails of the Firefox name. And they even offer Firefox (a firefox.exe file) for download which I just don't have the guts to try. And their message is ambiguously misleading enough, seeming to convey the idea that Firefox is a product of eAcceleration. If you are new to Firefox and eAcceleration, you will be offered a Stop-Sign computer protection package with the Firefox download. Please use it to make sure your computer is virus, spyware, and adware-free.</blockquote> Very scammy. I don't know if anything should (and could) be done about this, but this is surely an unpleasant and rather underhanded way of online advertising. Whether the authorities (er, Mozilla Foundation) should be alerted is something I'm not really sure of... The ones I read first in my long blogroll 2005-01-13T21:57:08+00:00 I have a long list of blogs/websites</a> (233 feeds at this moment) to read in my Bloglines</a> account. I don't have the time to read all of them nowadays (I used to), so I'm finding myself skimming through a select few blogs. Weirdly, even though bloggers like Scoble</a> make very interesting posts, I tend to not read them because he's just too damn prolific and I don't have the time to read all the posts. Hmm... Interesting... I was just about to check whether there was a way to keep a post unread in Bloglines and there is (there's a "Keep New" checkbox at the bottom of every feed item). Well, maybe this will get me reading Scoble again. As I was saying, I don't read every feed I subscribe to nowadays. (By the way, Bloglines only keeps 200 entries per feed before it stops keeping track of new ones.) What I do now is go through the list from top to bottom and check out the ones that I seem to be more interested in. It's interesting to see a pattern. I tend to give feeds with too many unread items a miss, resulting in a vicious cycle of them never getting read. Feeds with 30 new items a day, these I also tend to not read. I also read too many Mozilla-related blogs. Here's my list of "To Read" blogs (arranged in no particular order) whenever I'm short on time or just too plain lazy to read everything: Jon Hicks' hicksdesign</a> One of my favorite designers who also happens to be a mean programmer (at least from what I can tell from Jon's hacking of Textpattern, which powers his blog and portfolio). </li> Bernie Zimmermann</a> Mozilla blogger and Firefox GrayModern Theme author </li> Chris Pederick</a> Chris Pederick is the author of the Web Developer Tools Firefox extension, among other cool projects. </li> Forever Geek</a> Which I contribute to, but I'm on hiatus now. </li> Gadgetopia</a> Lots of neat posts and links on technology </li> Gentoo Linux News</a> Not a blog, but I love Gentoo! </li> Gravatar blog</a> I think Gravatars are pretty sweet, this keeps me in the loop of what Tom Werner's up to. </li> Life At Ngee Ann</a> This is a fellow Singaporean's blog, quite humorous. "Ngee Ann" refers to Ngee Ann polytechnic, a local academic institution. </li> life in mono</a> Fellow Singaporean Adrianna</a>'s a cool techie Mac evangelist. </li> adot's notblog*</a> Asa Dotzler's blog. Mozilla stuff is always interesting. </li> cheeaunblog</a> Author of the famous Phoenity theme, who happens to live in Penang where I some relatives stay. Maybe we can meet up when I go there, huh, Chee Aun? </li> Neil's World</a> Neil Turner blogs stuff that I would blog myself if I could. Well, mostly. Mozilla and tech blog. </li> Photo Matt</a> Matthew Mullenweg's the lead developer of WordPress, and turned 21</a> not long ago. </li> philwilson.org</a> Phil Wilson blogs mostly on Firefox and the Semantic Web. </li> vantan.org: The Daily Weblog</a> Fellow Singaporean Vanessa Tan is a "devoted Netizen" who works in an environment unfriendly to Firefox. </li> The Burning Edge</a> Used to follow this religiously, but a little less now because of more infrequent posts and also because much of the work now is bug fixing since the Aviary branch landing. </li> </ul> Not too many A-list bloggers in that list, but that's probably because people like Simon Willison</a> and Doug Bowman</a> have been posting less of late. Give these blogs/sites a visit or two and let me know if you know of any related blog that I can add to my feed aggregator (yes, I'm still interested in more despite an unread list of hundreds). Seen elsewhere: Life without Firefox... 2004-12-30T15:23:42+00:00 A poem on Life without Firefox</a>, by Vanessa Tan, who has lost Firefox to her organization's software policy</a>. Mozilla Update website gets a facelift 2004-12-25T02:59:53+00:00 Mozilla Update</a> has gone through a facelift and now looks much better than before (and also, more importantly, it now looks and feels like the main mozilla.org site</a>). </div> I haven't seen any announcement on this yet on mozilla.org nor on MozillaZine</a> How would you feel if your organization forbade you from using Firefox? 2004-12-24T01:14:35+00:00 Remember I mentioned Vanessa Tan</a> who had an IE-only policy at work</a>? Now, the policy is official and an unbendable rule (my understanding was that Vanessa was able to use it somehow, before). Read her farewell to Firefox</a>. Much has been sacrificed in the name of security.</blockquote> Of course, that bit is debatable (because IE is intrinsically insecure, though Firefox is not without its problems, as its security has been called into question</a> recently). I shan't go there. But please, don't bring up the point of security via obscurity (because I believe there is no way you can prove it is true until Firefox is as widely-used as IE). Back to the blog title: how would you feel if your organization refused you the freedom of using your preferred browser (assuming that it isn't IE that you dig)? Would you take it lying down, or would you take reactive action? Remember this is different from an IT policy that, for example, forbids you from installing unlicensed software or software that is particularly vulnerable to security risks (I'm tempted to say IE here). Firefox is neither unlicensed software, nor is it as vulnerable to security risks as the software you are (hypothetically) being forced to use (IE). I know I wouldn't be happy. You might as well take away my Internet connection (which just may happen at work, soon, but for other reasons). Unread tabs Firefox extension (otherwise known as the simplest extension ever) 2004-12-20T21:10:03+00:00 A request: if you intend to link to this entry, please link to https://chuyeow.wtf/mozilla/unreadtabs/</a> instead. As requested (by 2 people) in my previous entry</a>, here's the Unread Tabs extension for Firefox: Install Unread Tabs</a> | Download Unread Tabs</a> Also available from the Firefox Add-ons site</a>. This extension italicizes the title of tabs that you have not yet read so that you can keep track of what youï¿½ve read and what you havenï¿½t. </div> I claim no credit for the extension: CSS comes from the Change the style of tab markers</a> entry in the MozillaZine Knowledge Base</a>. Thanks to an anonymous commentor</a>, the CSS is just a single rule (rather than the 3 in the Knowledge Base entry linked to above): #content tab:not([selected]) { font-style: italic !important; }</div> This has to be the world's simplest extension with some boilerplate XUL, an empty stub JS file, and a single CSS rule. I simply stripped almost everything out of another extension that I was working on (I've hit a snag on that one though) and did some run-of-the-mill search and replace. Making unread tabs obvious in Firefox 2004-12-20T00:05:32+00:00 Update: as requested: Unread Tabs extension</a></ins> Saw this tip over at the MozillaZine Knowledge Base</a>: Change the style of tab markers</a>. Adding those CSS rules to your userChrome.css file will italicize the titles of tabs that you haven't read. </div> Very useful for keeping track of what you've read and what you haven't (also helps prevent you from accidentally closing an unread tab). Firefox NYT ad, some disappointment 2004-12-17T15:58:05+00:00 Update: Daryl responds</a>, and so does Rob Davis</a>, both from the Spreadfirefox team. Please do send an email to nytadcorrections@gmail.com</a> should you believe your name listing to be in error or if it's not there.</ins> So the Firefox NYT ad has gone out</a>. Great-looking ad, great work everyone at sfx</acronym>. Ooh so here's my name: </div> I must, however, express my dismay at how the exercise was handled. No communication with the donors as promised</a> (we were supposed to get an email prior to the release of the ad), and no one will answer my comments on sfx</a> nor my emails. After significant pimping</a> and whoring</a>, I think I got 13 donations, but no one at sfx has yet to reply to my emails when I requested that they run a check for me on whether I was a "Community Champion" (who get their names underlined, among other things that they may or may not get as promised</a>). Surely it counts for something, insignificant as my efforts were in the greater picture. Is there a lack of communication somewhere? I'd say so, and not just because I wasn't replied to, but because there weren't much in terms of updates on when the ad would have been released. There also wasn't a draft of the ad put up for review, meaning some people had their names reversed or they simply weren't there. Commendable, of course, that they offer to do this</a>: We will incorporate all requests for corrections we receive and, where we are responsible for the error, we will send out free, corrected posters of the ad autographed by some members of the Firefox development team. As appropriate we will also issue credits or refunds on a case by case basis.</blockquote> Still, great ad, I can't imagine how much of a nightmare it must have been to get the names in there, and go Firefox</a>! Awesome work, awesome fund-raising campaign for an awesome Web browser. Homer Simpson uses tabbed browsing 2004-12-14T20:08:35+00:00 I just watched the latest episode of The Simpsons and guess what? Homer uses a web browser with tabbed browsing! </a></div> It could be the Mozilla Suite, Firefox, Opera, or <insert browser that supports tabbed browsing here>, but it sure ain't Internet Explorer. Since someone commented</a> about my media player, I'd like to point out that I use Media Player Classic, which happens to be an Open Source product. It's Sourceforge project page is at http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/, but you'd do better to check out Neil Turner’s writeup</a> instead. I hate Windows Media Player for its bloatedness, clunkiness and its tendency to be totally unhelpful or even go bust when required codecs aren't there.</ins> An author, I am trying to be 2004-12-10T00:01:12+00:00 I've always kinda loved writing. Writing fictional stories was fun up to secondary school - thanks to my fascination with (medieval) fantasy fiction and gamebooks. Argumentative essays were not my forte though - I got a B3 in 'A'-level General Paper. So anyway, enough of trying to write a "charming" little backstory (which wasn't really going anywhere, considering the state of mind I'm in). These few months you'll probably see a decreased frequency of posts on this blog, mostly due to my being on assignment writing a book - my very first one. Before you ask: yes, it's a technical book, and no, I'm not sure if I want to say what it's about just yet. It's too early. I'm going to miss blogging and nights where I don't have to think about <Insert book subject matter here>. Not that thinking about it is bad (because it is one of my main interests and I am writing a book on it), but I'm wondering how I'm going to keep up with late nights and the inexorable temptation to play one more hour of World of Warcraft (which still hasn't arrived, but will soon, with any luck). Stay tuned, don't go away. I'll still be blogging. Applying Fitt's Law to the Firefox Back button 2004-12-05T13:48:49+00:00 Phil Wilson</a> has a nice writeup on Enhancing Firefox GUI usability</a> where he points out one good thing about IE</acronym>: a bigger Back button. Of course, Phil isn't one to jibe at Firefox's back button. Rather he goes on to teach us how remedy this usability flaw by making the Back button bigger in Firefox, and this is possible thanks to the customizability of Firefox. All you need to do is to add a few lines to the userChrome.css file in your profile - Phil explains all</a>. (Trivia: you can combine the 2 CSS rules into a single "padding: 0 10px;"). Thunderbird 1.0RC is out 2004-12-02T23:31:58+00:00 Update: Thunderbird 1.0</a> is out. Get that instead.</ins> Asa Dotzler has the scoop</a>. Get it from the Mozilla Thunderbird release directory</a>. Noteworthy: much nicer icons, work offline UI for Windows, HTTP authentication for RSS feeds. Firefox avatars and a centralized forum avatar system 2004-11-20T10:22:58+00:00 rakaz</a>, maker of some very nice Firefox wallpapers</a>, also has a set of forum and IM avatars</a>. Very nice if you want to show your support for Firefox and perhaps get a few IE-using friends to ask you about your avatar. Anyway, that wasn't the reason I was looking for avatars. The reason was me coming across Tom Werner's</a> Gravatars</a> (or Globally Recognized Avatars). </div> Looks like a cool thing to implement on this weblog. There's a WordPress plugin</a>, but plugins don't work on the nightly I'm using so I'll probably wait until WordPress 1.3, or if I ever get my butt off to try to get a CVS version to work. (And yes, this is a concise, rushed entry because I've got my Half-Life 2. It's Half-Life 2 weekend!) Opera 7.60 Preview 3 for Windows 2004-11-13T15:22:37+00:00 Just posted a Opera 7.60 Preview 3 entry</a> at Forever Geek</a> (where I have posted too seldom these days). Firefox fans, don't be offended or surprised - I still love Firefox! But really, Opera seems to have had some improvements ever since our very own Asa Dotzler ranted about the horrible-ness of its UI.</a> Firefox 1.0. Yes, 1.0 is out! 2004-11-09T16:58:38+00:00 Update: OK it's official</a>.</ins> Go to Firefox 1.0 EN-US FTP release directory</a>. You can also get it via BitTorrent at http://bittorrent.mozilla.org:6969/ (thanks Michael</a>). </ins> mozilla.org</a> is down right now, so you can try getting from Firefox 1.0 EN-US FTP release directory</a> if the main Mozilla Firefox page doesn't load up for you. </div> News around the web and the, er, blogosphere: Firefox RTM - Take Back the Web</a> - a few words from Ben Goodger, Lead Engineer, Mozilla Firefox</li> MozillaZine.org</a></li> </ul> When it's officially released, you'll be able to get it at the usual place -> http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/</del> More later. Work now.</del> IE-only, no Firefox 2004-11-05T12:12:04+00:00 Vanessa Tan laments the no Firefox, IE-only policy</a> in her organization. How many of you work in organizations like hers? (Mine happens to practice freedom of choice.) Mozilla Thunderbird 0.9 released 2004-11-04T18:26:59+00:00 Mozilla Thunderbird 0.9</a> is out. Get it at the Thunderbird 0.9 release FTP folder</a>. If I have time later today, I'll probably write up on the new stuff. Firefox NYT ad campaign covered in local paper (and I'm in there too) 2004-11-01T23:44:30+00:00 Well, Streats</a> isn't exactly a high-profile paper (its parent company, Singapore Press Holdings, publishes The Straits Times which is in much greater circulation), but it does get around (and its website</a> does validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional, FWIW</acronym>). Anyway, here's the article: S'poreans back free browser</a>. I'm quoted in there saying (pessimistically): A few Singaporeans, myself included, have actually thought of doing the same (advertise) with a local paper, but prices are high and it would be a challenge considering the penetration of Firefox in Singapore.</blockquote> Of the (relatively) long reply I sent to Chris (the journalist) for the email interview, I can't say I wasn't a tad disappointed that that bit was published. But oh well, at least it got the word on Firefox out. Interestingly, someone from Singapore (I can tell from the IP) wrote a comment</a> saying my blog "sucks shit". Thanks Kathy I bet it does. And good day to you too m'am. Another guy wrote me an email coming in from the Streats article asking me to point out the influential bloggers in Singapore and South East Asia. (Yes we do</a> exist</a>!) </div> Christopher Lim (the journalist who interviewed me via email, and get this: via SMS</acronym>) wrote us Singapore donors an email asking our thoughts on the campaign</a> and why we made our donations. I am writing from Streats, the newspaper. Blake Ross from www.spreadfirefox.com passed me your emails after I explained that I'd like to run a story this coming Monday on Firefox's New York Times advertisement campaign, and am interested in interviewing donors from Singapore.</blockquote> The To: header of that email tells me there were 14 Singaporeans who donated to the cause. Not bad I'd think, considering our small population and tighter fists. Chris Henry, another Singaporean donor, wrote about the article too in his sfx blog</a>. Well, if any of you donors want to discuss more on "spreading Firefox" in Singapore, do join up at http://sg.firefoxsupport.com/</a> (it's not my site, in case you were wondering). Made it into Spread Firefox Weekly Roll Call Top 5 Climbers 2004-10-27T19:33:06+00:00 Thanks to everyone's kind donations to the Firefox New York Times ad effort</a>, I made it into the top 5 climbers (of the past week) on Spread Firefox</a>. </div> Once again, thank you for donating to the cause. (There's 100 points to be had per donation, and there were 12 made via my donation link.) I'm bowled over by the support for Firefox and more so by the support for me (or at least I'm glad that people are bugged enough by my constantly going on about donating to actually donate!) MileWideBack Firefox extension saves you from "complex hand-to-eye coordination" 2004-10-24T17:42:36+00:00 The MileWideBack extension</a> (update.mozilla.org listing</a>) for Firefox popped up recently on update.mozilla.org</a> and with a name like that I had to check it out. And whaddya know, it turns out to be yet another essential extension (as far as I'm concerned). The premise of MileWideBack is simple: you use the left-edge of the Firefox window to navigate back and forth in your tab history. This extension allows you to navigate back and forth without requiring complex hand-to-eye coordination.</blockquote> "Complex hand-to-eye coordination" may sound amusing at first, and while I can certainly hit the back and forward buttons without a thought, but if you think of it these buttons are really, really small compared to the vast wasteland that is your maximized browser window. Particularly for my case, where I like to "Use small icons" for the buttons in the Firefox toolbar to save on vertical screen real estate. </div> These little buttons take up really minimal space in the browser, as the screenshot below shows: </div> Fitt's Law</a> would suggest that it will take a long time ("long" in relative terms) for someone to find and hit those small buttons (but somehow I get by because I'm probably on the computer way too long for my own good). MileWideBack</a> in a sense throws Fitt's Law out the window by allowing you to navigate back and forth by simply "throwing" the mouse to the left and then right-, left- or middle-clicking. (I say Fitt's Law doesn't really apply because it takes constant time to move to the extreme left of the window when no aiming is needed.) You right-click to go back, left-click to go forward, and middle-click to reload the page. Neat little extension, isn't it? 6 more days to show your support for Firefox! 2004-10-24T16:52:00+00:00 Update 2: Mission accomplished! Spread Firefox</a> tells me I've got 1140 points which means 10 other people have donated via my donation link. Thanks for the show of support and, more importantly, for supporting and loving Firefox</a>!</ins> Update: 1 more person has donated via my donation link! Thank you, Ken Pratt</a>! 3 more to go!</ins> I wrote about it before</a> but I'll write it again now as the deadline nears (6 more days). Anyway, here goes... Show your support to Firefox if you love it by contributing to the expense of full-page Firefox ad that will be in The New York Times</a> (leftover donations will be safe-kept by the Mozilla foundation to fund the Firefox 1.0 launch campaign, a non-profit organization). Donations are tax-deductible in the US. $30 for a normal donation, $10 if you're a student. If you've ever thought of donating to the Mozilla cause before, now is the best time as ever to do so. And I'm throwing in 2 free WordPress weblog hosting accounts</a> (sponsored by ReviseMedia</a>) should you make a donation (just let me know</a> if you're going to do so). </div> I'm thankful to the 5</del> 6</ins> of you who've already donated due to my exhortations. If you do donate, and you feel general goodwill towards me (heh), I ask that you donate via my donation link</a>. If I manage to get 9 of you to do so, I'd get the faux title of "Community Champion" and get some extra perks (I really want the free Firefox t-shirt signed by the Firefox crew). Desktop namespace shortcut for Firefox 2004-10-23T16:04:12+00:00 There's a thread in the MozillaZine forums</a> that teaches you how to create a desktop shortcut for Firefox, replete with context menu options for accessing the Profile Manager and the Options UI. Pretty neat and convenient. Firefox screensaver 2004-10-23T15:59:47+00:00 Digital Media Minute has a Firefox screensaver for Windows</a> created with Flash. My name will be in The New York Times 2004-10-22T00:20:21+00:00 Update: 7</del> 6 days left to get your name in The New York Times! Thanks go to Ingoal</a>, Alexandre Juneau</a>, and one other anonymous reader for donating via my donation link</a> (and even more importantly, for donating at all).</ins> You've probably heard about the full-page Firefox ad that will be in The New York Times</a> and wholly funded by donations from the community. If you haven't, you probably don't read Slashdot</a>, c|net's news.com</a>, and I'd imagine a good number of news sites, in English or otherwise. Anyway, I was a little slow on the uptake myself, and have only just made my donation (of USD30) that goes towards a one of my favorite causes. If you're a student, you can get your name listed for just USD10. </div> If you'd like to make a donation, and if you go through my donation link</a>, I'd be branded a Community Champion and get some extra perks</a> (best of which is a free Firefox t-shirt signed by the Firefox crew). C'mon, be a part of Firefox users' ad in The New York Times!</a> By the way, would a US resident kindly inform me when the ad is taken out? I'd like to buy a copy of it for keepsakes. Would have to go hunting for a copy. Search Keys Firefox extension for the accessibility and the keyboard-loving 2004-10-16T02:57:28+00:00 Jesse Ruderman</a> has just rolled out the amazing Search Keys</a> Firefox extension that: lets you go to search results by pressing the number of the search result instead of clicking</blockquote> Its premise is simple, but it's so darn useful to people like me. I'm a keyboard- and keyboard shortcut-loving person, so this is another extension I've added to my must-install list (of extensions). I can imagine this does heaps for accessibility as well. It works in "Google, Google News, Google Groups, Google Desktop Search, del.icio.us, and Bugzilla" at this time (most important being the Google support of course). You can see the numbers next to the links in Google search results pages, and you can open the link you want in a new tab by pressing Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2 and so on. </div> It also works for del.icio.us</a> bookmark links. </div> A big pat on the back for Jesse</a>. mozpartying at the big 1.0 2004-10-13T22:53:30+00:00 Worldwide parties for the big one-point-zero releases of Firefox and Thunderbird are in the works at mozparty2</a>! Anyway want to organize a Singapore mozparty</a> ? (Before you ask why don't I do it, let me say that I'm not the "planner" kind of person.) Dreamhost hosting at $0.77/month 2004-10-11T15:40:28+00:00 Update: Well, I am getting 10% referral credit from this and DreamHost has confirmed that we can keep that. Thanks everyone for the referral credit! I have $44.62 right now from referrals and am wondering what to do with the extra money. Ideas anyone?</ins> It's true. Dreamhost</a> has real cheap hosting plans at USD0.77 per month. You have to pay for a year, but at USD9.24 with a free domain name, I'm surely not complaining. The first 777 customers to sign up for service with DreamHost using the promotional code "777" will pay just $0.77 for each month of hosting - for an entire YEAR! That's a $119.40 value - for just $9.24!</blockquote> I signed up almost immediately when I saw it (I put Daniel Glazman as my referrer because he recommended it first</a>). On referrals though, it does say this: Referral credit will not be provided to referers of customers who sign up for this promotional sale.</blockquote> Anyway, if you do sign up, do put my ID, chuyeow, as the referrer - I suppose referral credit will accrue later when one signs up for other plans, if I read their rewards page</a> correctly. Download.com asks, "When will you switch to Firefox?" 2004-10-06T22:04:19+00:00 </div> » Download.com</a> Via SpreadFirefox.com</a>. Tabbed browsing gets even better in Firefox 2004-10-02T15:01:40+00:00 This is perhaps my favorite bugfix/enhancement since... since they added the deletion of autocomplete results</a> way back in March 2004. Remember how hard it was to get links clicked in external applications to open in new tab? We tried setting the advanced.system.supportDDEExec preference to false (it worked spottily). We tried the Show Single Window</a> extension which worked for awhile until something broke in Firefox (this time, I didn't bother to find out which bug this was exactly) and clicked links started opening in new windows. Tabbrowser Extensions</a> worked, but there were times when it caused Firefox to break, and it isn't officially on u.m.o</a> (update.mozilla.org). Andy Mason</a> wrote a comment</a> recently to ask me how to get links from external applications to open in a new tab. I recommended Tabbrowser Preferences</a> (TBP) - worked for him. Interestingly, this all happened today, just when the tabbed browsing preferences UI in bug 172962 - Options for where to open URLs from other applications (reuse tab, new tab, new window)</a> that was mentioned in the TBP site</a> went into the daily build. That's right, there's now a Tabbed Browsing preferences section in Firefox options as of today's daily build (2004-10-01)</a> and this is how it looks like: </a></div> The first thing I did was uninstall the Single Window Extension to test it by selecting the radio boxes I highlighted in red and then going crazy with external application link-clicking. The verdict: it works beautifully! (Of course, I'm not an anal-retentive QA</acronym> engineer, so there could be cases where it doesn't work that I've missed - but it seems to hold out pretty well for all my needs so far.) It may not seem like much a deal, but those of us who have been struggling with this will fully appreciate and understand the magnitude of this bugfix. Especially when this is one of the most often asked questions in the MozillaZine forums</a>. I am so glad this is fixed. Another call to "fix" "Open in Tabs" in Firefox 2004-09-30T09:52:20+00:00 You may or may not have noticed this neat little "Open in Tabs" feature in Mozilla Firefox that lets you open bookmarks in a folder in tabs. Just to be clear, here's how it looks like: </div> And here it is again in the context menu when you right-click on a bookmark folder: </div> "Open in Tabs" is also featured in Why You Should Switch to Firefox</a>, the official "Why switch" (to Firefox) write-up. Well, this would be all fine and dandy and a plus point to the tab browsing paradigm of Firefox (and Opera, etc.), except for what appears to be a near fatal flaw in my eyes. Here, try this in a new Firefox window. Open up 4 tabs. Make sure that there's nothing in these tabs that you want to remember to come back to later, especially the last 2. Now try using "Open in Tabs" on a bookmark folder with just 2 bookmarks. What just happened? Firefox has closed the last 2 tabs and loaded the first 2 tabs with the first 2 bookmarks. Well, actually this is not so bad for the first 2 tabs, because you can use the "Back" button to go back to your page should you want to, but the tabs that were closed are lost. Destructive action without forewarning? I'd think so. Bug 258244- 'Open in tabs' command does not respect close multiple tabs warning</a>, reported by Thomas Rutter (who happens to be the forum admin for SitePoint Forums</a>), asks for this to be fixed by either displaying a warning first or opening the new tabs in addition to the current tabs. I'm not to sure about displaying a warning dialog myself, as Mike Connor feels too, but appending the new tabs to the existing ones seems like a damn fine solution. Sure, you can go to about:config and set the browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace preference to false. But even better would be that this was the default preference in the first place. Would have saved me a lot of cursing during those times I accidentally middle-clicked a bookmark folder. And it is easy to make those accidental middle-clicks when you're not thinking straight or not aiming properly (seriously - aren't guys notorious for not aiming properly in the toilet?). Bug 175124 - implement Chimera style opening tabs replace as necessary functionality</a> also suggests another (non-destructive) way of dealing with this problem. There are also several other (at least 10) bug reports on the same issue, mostly marked as WONTFIX, with Mike Connor or some other person saying that this is "by design". Personally, I still feel that appending the new tabs is still the best solution, because it is what's consistent with what you'd expect from middle-clicking - something opens in a new tab when you middle-click. Does anyone feel the same way or have a better solution in mind? Google - the XUL version 2004-09-25T01:57:19+00:00 Google has a XUL version of its search page at http://www.google.com/mozilla/google.xul</a>. Searching takes you to the "normal" HTML pages though. For the benefit of those of you not using Mozilla Firefox</a>, here's a screencap: </div> Seen at a comment at Blogzilla</a>. A furrier Firefox 2004-09-25T00:51:48+00:00 Via The Burning Edge</a>: If you check out the attachments in bug 260590 - Updated Images for Windows Installer and About/Credit windows</a>, you'd see that they've made the Firefox logo a little bit furrier. Here's the normal and the super-furry version placed side-by-side: </div> I like it! Mozilla Thunderbird - changing default email sort order 2004-09-16T09:05:02+00:00 Update: Trä pointed to</a> the relevant bug: Bug 86845 - Sort order for mail/news not configurable by default</a>.</ins> In reply to my offer of free Thunderbird technical support</a>, I've gotten a few queries from people asking how to get rid of certain annoyances they have with Thunderbird (out of the box), or whether these peeves have been "fixed". Some of these I did manage to resolve, the rest turned out to be also my own peeves with Thunderbird that I didn't realize I had until I was asked. One reader asked: Is there any hidden pref, or any way to make EVERY imap folder sort by Date with newest at the top, instead of the default which is newest at the bottom?</blockquote> Exactly the same problem I had (I have 7 IMAP email accounts in Thunderbird at work), exactly the same problem I had tried to solve a long while back (to no avail). I've checked Google, Bugzilla, and Thunderbird's pref.js but these didn't turn up anything useful. It can't be true that no one else finds this a problem. If you know that this can be changed somewhere or has already been logged into Bugzilla, let me know by leaving a nice little comment. Coincidentally, on the same day, a colleague asked me how to sort messages in a folder by thread and then by date. Which of course can be done by clicking on the "Thread" icon (click it again if the chronological order is not in the direction you want). But this also only applies to a single folder which is a pain in the ass if you have to do the same for each other folder. Link exchange between Firefox and Microsoft bloggers 2004-09-15T09:12:57+00:00 Asa Dotzler</a> of mozilla.org tells us</a> how he got a link exchange from Robert Scoble</a>, Microsoft's most popular blogger. ... Robert Scoble, agreed to add a Firefox button to his weblog if I would add a "I recommend installing XPSP2" link to my blog.</blockquote> Asa has already added the "I recommend installing XPSP2</a>" link to his blog. I wonder what Robert's CEO would have to say about this if he does add the Firefox button. Well, whatever happens, I recommend installing Firefox</a>, especially the freshly baked 1.0 Preview Release (grab the Windows installer</a> or a Windows zip package</a> - I assume other platform users will know what they are doing). Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 released 2004-09-14T22:09:32+00:00 Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8</a> is out. Time for you to upgrade my favorite email client or to convert if you haven't yet. Give it a quick whirl and if you meet any problems, I'll be your (free) technical support. Just drop me a note</a>. All the new features I've written about</a> one and a half months back are still there, except for Improved Quick Search. Alternate stylesheet UI is back in Firefox! 2004-09-11T13:07:30+00:00 Remember the big</a> debate </a>over the removal</a> of the alternate stylesheet UI? Well, the mozilla.org guys have had an Aviary meeting and approved the re-inserting of the alternate stylesheet UI back into Firefox 1.0. Check out Asa's re-opening</a> of the Re-insert Alternate Stylesheet UI bug report - bug 257859</a>: Setting nomination flag for PR</acronym> since we'll want to get this in before PR</acronym> if we add it back.</blockquote> Well, I'm glad it worked out this way. And even better, the new alternate stylesheet UI comes with improvements as well. The status bar UI looks almost the same, only the wording has been changed from "Basic" to the more understandable "Basic Page Style". </div> There is also now a "Page View" submenu under the "View" menu that includes a "No Style" option that removes CSS styling from the webpage. Amazingly, this now strips all styles, including styles applied in HTML style attributes and even font tags! Try that on a site that uses font tags like HPB</a>. (Before, the font tag styles will still be visible.) </div> On a somewhat related note, the "Work Offline" UI has been re-added</a> for Firefox Preview Release 1. The devs will be working to get it fully (or mostly) functional before the big one-point-oh as well. Thunderbird "Purge" button extension 2004-09-08T19:49:45+00:00 I have said before</a> that Mozilla Thunderbird</a> needs a "Purge" button equivalent to that in Outlook Express. In the time since, I have been using Thunderbird despite saying that I'd stay away until a "Purge" button is implemented</a>. Why? I guess because it didn't seem like a Purge button was going to be implemented anytime soon (and also because of increased security and protection from OE-targeted worms and viruses). A commentor reminded me about the existence of an extension that gives you a "Purge" button</a>. I say "reminded" because I'd seen this extension before in the MozillaZine forums</a> way back in the early months of this year. Somehow I forgot all about it since then and have been frantically right-clicking on each folder and selecting "Compact This folder". Which kinda sucked because that's a whole lot of clicking going on especially with multiple accounts. Now I can do the same with just 1 click (per folder). </div> And couple that with the Buttons! extension</a>, it's so much easier to get rid of junk mail. 2 clicks and junk mail is purged. These buttons really should be in Thunderbird itself. Mozilla in front in Google 2004-09-03T01:56:38+00:00 Mozilla.org</a> is on top when you Google for browser</a> and 1</a>. How neat is that? (Not that anybody's going to search for "1", but "browser" is pretty good.) Via Anne van Kesteren</a>. What does it take to get on Planet Mozilla? 2004-09-01T23:09:02+00:00 Planet Mozilla</a></li> mozillaZine feedHouse</a></li> Blogupdates</a></li> </ul> Which one of those should one read/subscribe to, what's the difference, and what's the criteria for getting onto Planet Mozilla? (Before you start to wonder whether these are angsty/whiny questions, let me say that they are not.) Wired Firefox, Tired Explorer 2004-08-28T01:44:27+00:00 Seen on Wired.com: Wired (Firefox) | Tired (Mozilla) | Expired (Explorer)</a> (via Steve Garrity</a>) No alternate stylesheet switcher in Firefox 1.0 2004-08-25T20:02:03+00:00 Bug 253722: remove alternate stylesheet UI</a> Daniel Glazman</a> couldn't believe it</a> and suggests that such incomplete features be enabled/disabled via a user option</a>. Yes, please. Join the discussion.</a> Looking for hosting 2004-08-22T05:08:55+00:00 I'm on the hunt for a good webhosting package. I'm having some problems (technical and political) with the current one on the dedicated server I'm sharing. If any of you have any recommendations, do let me know by leaving a comment or writing me</a>. These are my requirements: 500MB storage 25GB transfer (at least) Unlimited databases Unlimited subdomains Unlimited email accounts Multiple domains (on a single hosting plan) I'm thinking of getting a Virtual Private Server (VPS) solution and have been taking a look at some User Mode Linux (UML) hosting plans. In particular, Dinix</a> and VPS Colo</a> (I'm looking at their lowest priced plans) stand out after much searching and reading over at WebHostingTalk forums</a>. $35/month isn't something I can afford though. If anyone wants to share the plan with me (we can split it 50-50 or whatever), do let me know</a>. I'm a very nice trustworthy guy (honest!). UML</acronym> == root access. Mmmm... I can finally get the stuff (Subversion, PostgreSQL, mod_python) I want installed. The Official Gmail Notifier 2004-08-22T03:16:21+00:00 At first there was the Gmail Notifier extension</a> for Firefox. And there was the GMailCompose extension</a> for Firefox (made defunct by the WebMailCompose extension</a>). The first displayed an email notification message in Firefox. The second allowed you to have all mailto: links you click automatically send you to a page to compose the email in Gmail. There was also GTray</a>. And then there now is the official Gmail Notifier</a> from Google. Purely for Windows, it appears unobtrusively in your system tray when installed. New message notifications appear as a transclucent pane in the bottom right of your screen. (The icon does look a little cutesy doesn't it?) </div> There's not much more you can do with it. </div> It's nice to have an official tool from Google that does what all those other homegrown tools do. It's also interesting that Google seems to have incorporated the best of all these amazing tools in their app - mail notification and mailto: link manipulation. Thumbs up to the authors of those neat little tools! Google seems to be copying your ideas! McSearchPreview - a better GooglePreview? 2004-08-18T00:24:59+00:00 In response to Martey's comment</a> and my entry (I think), Carlo has updated the McSearchPreview webpage</a> to include an explanation of the Amazon affiliate codes mentioned below. When you use McSearchPreview and click on an Amazon result, you support me and the further development of the extension if you actually purchase a product.</blockquote> Support extension authors! </ins> Carlo Zottmann</a> wrote me about 2 weeks back to let me know about his McSearchPreview</a> extension for Firefox</a>. He wrote his first Firefox extension after using the GooglePreview extension</a> (which I wrote about</a>) and discovering that it lacked similar capabilities for other search engines that he uses. Attending a need is indeed excellent inspiration. McSearchPreview</a> adds preview thumbnails to search results for Google, MSN Search, Yahoo Search, A9 and AllTheWeb. Unlike GooglePreview, the thumbnails are retrieved from Alexa (by default - Thumbshots</a> can also be used as an alternative). This means a larger number of results will have preview images, since Thumbshots only has thumbnail images of pages that are in DMOZ</a> (in which very few pages would be listed). </div> McSearchPreview also adds an "Open in new window link" at the end of each search result - the actual usefulness of this feature is a little arguable since we are using a browser with tab browsing, after all. It also adds a "Site Info" link that takes you to the Alexa page for the search result's domain. It seems like an Amazon affiliate link but I'm not exactly sure if the author gets any benefit from it. Well, I'm fine with letting Carlo make a little profit from his neat extension, if any, but it would have been nice if he'd explained why there's (what appears to be) Amazon affiliate code in the "Site Info" links. Incidentally, the author of GooglePreview has removed Amazon affiliate code from version 0.3 of the extension. Anyway, this is a really nice extension and I'm using it in place of GooglePreview at the moment (more pretty thumbnails!). Thanks Carlo! IE blog joke/flamebait, and get XP SP2 via BitTorrent 2004-08-11T10:27:10+00:00 Tony Chor, the Group Program Manager for the IE team, writes</a>: We also came up with a very original idea – popup blocking.</blockquote> The idea was so ridiculous I knew it had to be a joke. And it was, when Tony later writes</a>: For the record, I was joking about our "innovation" around popup blocking.</blockquote> But not after several not entirely unexpected flames (I found the popup blocking innovation comment from a site flamed the blog post too) from people who didn't get it. Anyway, if you haven't seen this yet (it was on Slashdot - I don't read it though, perhaps you do), you can get Windows XP Service Pack 2 via BitTorrent at SP2Torrent.com</a>. Not from Microsoft (so it's not "official"), but you got to wonder why Microsoft doesn't embrace BitTorrent for distributing XP SP2 and do away with all that initial hoo-ha about staggered release schedules. Chee Aun has a good eye for UI bugs 2004-08-01T02:34:06+00:00 Chee Aun</a>, author of the Phoenity theme</a>, spotted several minor bugs in Firefox</a> while working on a new version of Phoenity. The things he finds are just amazing and come complete with bugfixes (where applicable). This guy should be in there fixing and improving the Firefox UI. RSS integration enabled in yesterday's Thunderbird nightly builds 2004-08-01T02:16:03+00:00 Yup it is here - bug 253490 - Turn on the new RSS extensions and add it to the installer</a>. It isn't completely working yet, but it is ready for testing. Works very much like the Forumzilla extension</a>. It even displays the webpage in full as specified in the <link> tags in the RSS feed like Forumzilla does, which isn't ideal. Atom feeds work fine though - only the <content> is shown in plain text format. Well, on to the screenshots. I'm not in the mood for too much writing today. Creating a new RSS account: </div> Management pane for an RSS account: </div> RSS account options: </div> RSS feed management dialog: </div> Adding a new RSS feed: </div> Message pane listing items in a RSS feed: </div> Grab the latest Thunderbird nightly build</a> for some first-hand action. The answer to the question 'How many of you use Internet Explorer?' 2004-07-27T23:10:14+00:00 ... is none, or at least as far as this gem of an incident goes</a> (it happened at BlogOn2004</a>). Well, at least bloggers are using non-IE browsers. I doubt this is so for the general population, but it's getting there. I'm not that anti-Microsoft. I'm just against broken browsers that don't get fixed. Especially when you have such a big market share (one could have said 'monopoly' a few years back), it becomes almost an obligation to fix whatever's broken. Preview Google search results with this extension 2004-07-25T22:21:41+00:00 A reader (who didn't leave his name, though from the email address it should be a Marc or Marc-Andre) wrote me an email to tell me about this Firefox extension, GooglePreview</a> that inserts previews of search results pages before each search result at Google</a>. Quite neat. </div> It also inserts product screenshots from Amazon if a search result points to Amazon and even a stock's trends (see the GooglePreview website</a> for screenshots). Thanks for the heads up Marc! Rory asked</a> how it works, so I took a quick look at the source of the XPI and found out how</a>.</ins> New features in Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 2004-07-24T16:13:54+00:00 Thunderbird 0.8 is shipping soon (July, according to the roadmap</a>) and test builds have just been announced</a>. Here's the rundown of the new features you can expect to see. RSS Integration</h4> That's right, RSS reading capability is going to be built into Thunderbird. This has not been turned on yet in the latest Thunderbird nightlies, though bugs are being reported (mostly by Scott, the Thunderbird lead) and fixed as can be seen from bugs 250963</a>, 251242</a>, 252496</a>, 252483</a> and 252391</a>. Apparently, it could look and function somewhat like Opera (see Opera RSS reader screenshot</a>) - just speculation though. The "core" bug is bug 225158 - Thunderbird should act as an RSS/Atom newsreader, too</a>. The roadmap promises this bug (or rather RFE</acronym>) will be fixed for Thunderbird 0.8. This promises to be a more typical news reader implementation than that that got into Firefox nightlies not too long ago (see RSS feed integration in Firefox</a>). Most of the code is based off the Forumzilla</a> extension, so if you want a preview of how it could look, grab and install Forumzilla</a>. Blocking remote images</h4> Remote images in emails will also be blocked by default (this can be changed by going Tools -> Options -> Advanced and unchecking "Block loading of remote images in mail messages."). This has 2 main uses: protecting your privacy just in case someone is looking over your shoulder (though one can only imagine what images are so private!), and preventing the remote request from being sent (thereby preventing spammers from being able to detect that your account is active). </div> Global Inbox for POP3 accounts</h4> There will also be a single global inbox that you can use for storing messages from multiple POP3 accounts. This will come as an alternative to the current way POP3 accounts are handled - each POP3 account has it's own inbox and folders. The Global Inbox option will be given to you when you setup a new POP3 account: </div> Get All Mail functionality</h4> And yes! The much missed "Get All Mail" functionality will be in Thunderbird 0.8. </div> This is sorely missed especially by people migrating from Outlook Express and Outlook where there is a "Send and Receive" button. Better quick search</h4> The quick search box gets a small facelift. There is now a dropdown that allows you to specify the fields to perform the search on. Very handy when you want to search text in the message body especially - no need to open up a separate dialog box. </div> Wrapping up</h4> Thunderbird 0.8 will also come with the usual bugfixes as well as Mozilla Suite Profile Migration and improved spell checker support. This is gearing up to be an excellent email client as more bugs get ironed out. I've switched. Have you? Show saved passwords option in Firefox 2004-07-18T20:35:26+00:00 Checked into yesterday's (2004-07-17) aviary (Firefox 1.0) branch: an option to show/display saved passwords</a>. To check it out, grab yesterday's (2004-07-17) nightly branch build</a>, go to Tools -> Options -> Privacy, and select the Saved Passwords option. </div> Click on View Saved Passwords to see the Password Manager and you'll see a Show Passwords button at the bottom right. That's new. </div> You get a confirmation dialog (supposedly because showing your passwords is an important event). I think the intended use of the confirmation dialog is to save you from inadvertently showing your passwords to someone looking over your shoulder. </div> And your passwords are then shown in the plain text glory (mine are "pinked out" in the screenshot below, of course). </div> Looking at my list of passwords, I am beginning to think I'm not a very secure person (identical passwords for different accounts, using the same passwords for long periods, and passwords shorter than 8 characters). Favicons and bookmarks now work properly in Firefox 2004-07-18T20:03:38+00:00 Checked into the Firefox aviary (codename for Firefox 1.0) branch: fixes for bugs 174265</a>, 173762</a>, and 228862</a>. All bugs with favicons and bookmarks: "Wrong favicons in bookmarks</a>", "Favicons are forgotten after shutdown</a>", and "Store icons in bookmarks.html</a>" respectively. All fixed by Vladimir Vukicevic</a> with some clever JavaScript that fetches the favicons from the URL of each bookmark. </div> Pretty! Split a webpage into 2 with this bookmarklet 2004-07-18T00:40:14+00:00 Cedric asked for Document-splitting in Web browsers</a> and promptly got it</a> (read the comment by Jeff Mesnil</a> in Cedric's blog entry). Jeff Mesnil</a> whipped up 2 bookmarklets</a> in the space of less than one and a half hours that allows you to split a browser into 2 frames. How does it do that? It loads the current URL in a frameset consisting of 2 frames (both showing the same URL). A simple, yet genius, idea. Here's a screenshot of a blog entry split vertically: </a> Notice how it could be useful when cross-referencing something on the same webpage, particularly if it's a long vertical-scrolling page. A perfect use case would be referring back to a long blog entry when making a comment. Here's the same page split horizontally. </a> There are probably lots of other use cases for a webpage splitter. Cedric's in particular is this: Just recently, I was reading an article that showed a figure at the top and which constantly referred to this figure in the rest of the article.</blockquote> Thanks Jeff</a> for writing the bookmarklets and Cedric</a> for thinking of it. Can't ditch IE because of Google PageRank? Now you can 2004-07-15T00:00:52+00:00 With the Google Pagerank extension</a>! This is a Firefox 0.9.x compatible extension that adds a Google PageRank</a> widget to the statusbar. it acts exactly as the real googlebar on IE: calculate a checksum, send a request to google.com (with the googlebar User-Agent string), and the reply contains the pagerank.</blockquote> </div> Grab it from installation section</a> or the author's website</a>. (Note: Firefox should prompt and say something to the effect that the installation has been blocked. You can trust this extension, so click on the "Edit Settings" button that appears and allow the installation.) It updates when you switch tabs (it could take a while depending on your Internet connection), in case you were going to ask. </div> Seen elsewhere: New features since Firefox 0.9 2004-07-13T22:09:43+00:00 Once again, Neil Turner</a> has the low-down on the new features in the next incarnation of Mozilla Firefox. Read More on new Firefox features</a> at his weblog</a>. Better UI for blocked popups in Firefox 2004-07-13T01:44:37+00:00 Another new feature (available in nightly builds</a> from today): a XP SP2-like yellow bar appears at the top of your Firefox window's viewport notifying you of blocked popups. Click on it and it gives you similar options on whether to allow the popup(s). Here's how it looks in Firefox: </div> And this is how it looks like in IE with XP SP2 (Release Candidate 2) installed: </div> </div> RSS feed integration in Firefox 2004-07-13T00:44:21+00:00 Recently added to the Firefox feature list: Live Bookmarks (or Livemarks). Livemarks weren't initially intended to make it into Firefox 1.0, as Ben Goodger commented</a> when he filed bug 244078</a>. It seems like they will make it anyway, and have already appeared in nightly branch builds</a> since 2004-07-08. Livemarks allow you to bookmark an RSS feed and these appear as bookmark folders, with individual items in the feed appearing as bookmarks. Just click on the "bookmark" and you will be taken to the page the item in the RSS feed is pointing to. </div> A lightning bolt icon appears on sites which have the <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://www.example.com/index.xml" /> bit in the <head> tags. All you got to do is to click on the icon and choose from the syndication formats available. </div> There's even a "Refresh Livemark" context menu option to keep your Livemarks up to date. </div> Not anything that would take me away from the current RSS aggregator I use</a>, but the integration with the bookmarking system is a very intuitive model that would fit into most people's conceptual model of RSS feeds and bookmarks. I mean, an RSS feed is as good as a bookmark you keep somewhere (only it feeds you live content). RSS feed -> bookmark folder, RSS feed item -> bookmark. Gels nicely for me. Get a nightly branch build</a> if you're interested to see it in action for yourself. "Switch to Firefox", better browser sites 2004-07-12T22:33:43+00:00 With the gaining popularity of Firefox</a> and alternative browsers ("alternative" meaning non-IE), I've noticed a sudden increase in the number of sites advocating specific browsers. People are obsessed with the new browser wars (this time, it's a "good" war) and rightly so if your browser is the one application you use 90% of the time on your computer. www.switch2firefox.com/switch/</a> seems to be a popular one recently. Hao2lian also has one</a> (and he's right - nobody knew about it</a>, or at least I didn't!). www.betterbrowser.org</a> recommends Firefox and Safari</a>. There was also the old giantfightingrobots.com page</a> which now appears to be defunct. Check out this Mozilla kicks ass!</a> page too. Someone even bought the getfirefox.com</a> domain as a shortcut URL for http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/</a>. Anybody seen anymore of these? New Find Toolbar for Mozilla Firefox 2004-07-09T01:53:58+00:00 The Burning Edge reports</a> on the new Find Toolbar for Mozilla Firefox that brings the much unknown Find As You Type feature to the fore, at least in terms of GUI presence. This feature has just been checked in into the branch builds of Firefox</a> (and as such is a little buggy). To bring up the Find Toolbar, you need to press Ctrl-F or / (and then start typing). </div> The "Find as you type" function is not new to Firefox and has been in there for a long time. You may not have realized it before. If you have a version (or build) of Firefox that you got hold of before today, you could just start typing the word (or words) that you want to find and Firefox will incrementally find and highlight the first instance of the word that matches what you type. Now you need to press Ctrl-F or / to bring up the Find As You Type functionality (and the new toolbar). Some people have already been screaming at inconvenience of the extra keystroke (or keystrokes if you use Ctrl-F) - I certainly don't like it because I'm what I'd like to call an entrenched user of Find As You Type. It's hard for me to adjust and seems painfully inconvenient. But the truth of it probably is that it's just 1 extra keystroke and should be something one can get used to. Especially if the benefit is increased visibility of the (amazing) Find As You Type feature (which, if I may add, was first seen on the Opera web browser</a>) - if more people knew of this productivity feature, I'm pretty sure they'd stick around with Firefox. If it will get more people using Firefox, I'm ready to compromise (or if not, there'd probably be an extension in the future which disables the new Find Toolbar). Also new in the Find Toolbar is a Highlight button that highlights all the matching text on the webpage. No complaints against this one. Great stuff. </div> My Firefox search article gets Slashdotted (by proxy) 2004-07-08T00:53:18+00:00 Forever Geek</a> was looking for articles</a> not a while back, and I thought, "what the heck" why don't I just ask Paul Scrivens</a> (Paul is the main Forever Geek guy) if he'd like to publish my old original Outsearch with Firefox article</a>. Even though he did say in his post that he didn't want articles that were published elsewhere before ;). Well, he did publish it and the Outsearch with Firefox article at Forever Geek</a> was Slashdotted</a>. Blogupdates gets a facelift 2004-07-03T01:56:55+00:00 Update: Oh no it seems that I was wrong about the timezone bug being fixed. This entry is still appearing at the top with with the time incorrectly stated (posted "5 hours 56 minutes ago" at this time).</ins> Blogupdates</a> from Henrik Gemal</a> is a Mozilla-related blog aggregator, and it has recently undergone a facelift and, more importantly for me, some reworking of the code. I say "more importantly for me" because for the past months (since my Mozilla category feed was added to Blogupdates), my entries were hogging top spot on Blogupdates because of a bug in the code that didn't properly take timezones into account. Embarassing because it would've appeard that I was a sad no-lifer who kept updating his blog entries to keep the top spot (of course I wasn't doing anything of this sort, though I am still a sad no-lifer). If anyone noticed this before, let it be known henceforth that my name is clear of guilt (or something like that, said in a self-righteous tone). Thanks for fixing this, Henrik! Anyway, if you're a Mozilla fan, Blogupdates</a> is one of the must-see pages, perhaps even better than the MozillaZine Feedhouse</a> because it notifies you which entries are new since you last visited. But it's really up to you to choose between them both (or you could read both), because there isn't a real difference between them both. Though Blogupdates</a> did exist way before the Mozillazine Feedhouse</a> did. Post in forums a lot? BBCode is for you 2004-07-01T01:02:34+00:00 Came across another neat Firefox</a> extension: BBCode</a>. BBCode adds a list of menu choices to the right-click context menu, allowing you to quickly add BBCode (explained in the phpBB BBCode guide</a>) to your posts (actually, the BBCode context menu appears in all textual input fields). One of the simplest of things it does is allow you to quickly bold, italicize, or format selected text. Just select "Bold" (or whatever formatting option you wish to use) from the context menu (right-click): </div> Bam! Your selected text is formatted: </div> Changing the color of the text also works as in most places, popping up a JavaScript dialog: </div> </div> But what's a real keeper, is what's found under the "Clipboard" sub-menu. With this, you can copy a piece of text you want to quote, or a URL to an image/webpage, and then have it formatted as quoted text, or as an URL in BBCode. If you post in BBCode, you'll know how much of a hassle this can sometimes grow to be. </div> With "https://chuyeow.wtf/" in my clipboard, BBCode formats it nicely so that I don't have to. </div> Excellent work by Jed Brown</a>, who also recently wrote GMailCompose</a>, which is another context menu extension that allows you to compose a reply in GMail when clicking on mailto: links. Mozilla Foundation to lead open plugin initiative 2004-07-01T00:32:31+00:00 The Mozilla Foundation just announced a new open browser plugin API effort</a> that will also consist of players like Apple, Macromedia, Opera and Sun Microsystems. The plugin API will be based off Netscape Plugin Application Program Interface (NPAPI), which is what Mozilla browsers (including Firefox) use at the moment, and will be released under an open source license. Notice how Microsoft isn't (yet?) involved - I wonder if they'd consider this a threat (which I hope not, because it's a very smart initiative that saves everyone from doing double work trying to make their plugins cross-platform and cross-browser). Don't confuse these plugins with extensions though - these plugins are things like the Flash plugin that allows you to play Flash and Shockwave files in your browser, and the Java plugin that lets you load applets. Maybe we'll finally have a Java plugin that isn't so iffy. Check out the Mozilla Plugins project</a> if you're interested in the technical details. FoxAmp Firefox extension integrates Winamp into browser 2004-06-28T06:06:24+00:00 More and more cool Mozilla Firefox</a> extensions seem to be popping up nowadays. FoxAmp</a> is a Firefox extension that integrates (to an extent) Winamp</a> into the Firefox browser. It adds several buttons into your statusbar, allowing you to play, stop, pause, and change tracks. </div> There isn't any indication of which track is being played (umm, beyond listening and recognizing it with your sense of hearing, that is), which I got around with the Lounge skin</a> that I'm currently using (it displays a small window for a short while indicating the track name when a new track is played). Still, a very cool tool added to my list of favorite extensions. Gmail Notifier extension for Firefox 2004-06-27T06:50:03+00:00 Doron</a> has written a Gmail Notifier</a> extension for Firefox. It adds a button to your toolbar that displays the number of unread emails you have in your Gmail account. Like how I have 0 new emails (I'm a lonely, lonely guy) in the screenshot below. </div> Neat work, and this is still early stages for Gmail Notifier. Doron has promised Gmail/Mozilla integration</a> and this (Gmail Notifier) seems to be part of that exciting project. Check back with Doron for more later - this should lead to something really neat. Firefox 0.9.1 coming 2004-06-25T10:14:09+00:00 Ben Goodger has announced that Firefox 0.9.1 will be out soon</a>. This will be a bugfix point release, mostly fixing Extension Manager bugs. Winstripe (the default theme) will also be updated. Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7 freshly roasted 2004-06-17T16:14:13+00:00 Mozilla Thunderbird</a> 0.7 has just been released. Go get it</a> (or go to the Thunderbird 0.7 release FTP directory</a> for the zip build). New and noteworthy is the inclusion of the extension and theme managers (derived from that in Firefox). This is also a static build so performance has significantly improved. Update: just saw this Promoting Mozilla Thunderbird page</a> pointed to on one of the TrackBack pings I received. Nice buttons.</ins> Mozilla Firefox 0.9 (One Tree Hill) is out 2004-06-16T02:02:06+00:00 Mozilla Firefox</a> 0.9 (code-named "One Tree Hill") has been released! Grab it from the main Firefox page</a>, or from the mozilla.org Firefox FTP directory</a> itself (where you can find the zip version, if you don't like the installer). You can also get the torrent</a>. Noteworthy in this release are: a new default theme, Winstripe (screenshot</a> courtesy of Neil Turner</a>), that replaces the old Qute</a> theme (a subject of much acrimony, as well as dislike and praise alike)</li> extension manager</li> theme manager</li> update notification for Firefox, extensions and themes</li> a far more complete browser migration tool that imports everything from bookmarks to cookies and autocomplete data from other browsers</li> a smaller file size (for the installer version only) of 4.7MB thanks to 7-zip</a> compression</li> ability to delete individual autocomplete results</a> (using Shift-Delete)</li> </ul> A Mozilla Update</a> site has also been launched and lists extensions and themes that implement the new extension and theme API for 0.9. This will be the "go to" site for extensions and themes in the future, being the "official" extension and theme website. Firefox 0.9 is a feature-complete release, meaning that the next release, 1.0, will not contain any new major features. Bug-fixing is the key activity between 0.9 and 1.0, as evident in the Mozilla Firefox Roadmap</a>. Interestingly, release 1.0 is code-named "Phoenix" - and so it shall be reborn. Seen elsewhere - Firefox 0.9 Tour 2004-06-10T01:43:35+00:00 Neil Turner</a> has a comprehensive article</a> that takes you through what's new in Firefox 0.9. I was going to do the exact same thing when the full 0.9 release arrives, but Neil has done an excellent job with his article and I just may forego that and just point you to his article instead (which is what I'm doing now). Neil also has posts frequently on Mozilla to his blog. Check out his Mozilla category archives</a>. Firefox profile directory to change again 2004-06-08T00:09:16+00:00 The profile directory for Firefox will be changed (for the last time) to Mozilla/Firefox/ (from Firefox/), as Ben Goodger announced at the MozillaZine forums</a>. This follows up on the last profile directory change from Phoenix/ to Firefox/</a>. This also seems to mean that the profile directory for the Mozilla suite will go into Mozilla/ while having a Firefox/ directory under that (i.e. Mozilla/Firefox/) for Firefox - a little weird. As usual, beware of inadvertently losing your profile</a> if you use Mozilla Backup</a> - be sure the check that it takes into account the directory change when migrating across nightly builds. Users of the Firefox 0.8 release, don't worry, because I'm sure Ben and his team will have a neat, transparent migration script for your profiles when Firefox 0.9 comes out. You probably wouldn't have to do a thing. Firefox 0.9 could be out in a week 2004-06-07T22:59:20+00:00 Ben Goodger (Firefox engineering lead) has announced</a> mozilla.org is targeting a 12th June or 14th June release date for Firefox 0.9. The Extension Manager will be fully enabled in this build, as will the new update mechanism for themes (and extensions, of course). When it's released, be prepared to see mozilla.org go down again (as was the case with the 0.8 release of Firefox) thanks to the Slashdot effect. Hoard your extensions and themes in advance (well, at least those extensions which are not yet 0.9-compatible). Remember that BitTorrent exists if the Mozilla.org servers go down. You have been forewarned. Mozilla recommended at Singapore's new antispam move 2004-05-26T14:17:21+00:00 So Singapore has taken a significant step against spam</a>. I'm not going to comment on the antispam move in this entry (if at all), but I thought it interesting to check out the "free trial of anti-spam software" as reported in the article</a> and found something interesting. The Singapore AntiSpam Resource Centre</a> has a list of recommended antispam software</a>, and in that list is none other than "Mozilla Browser" and a write-up on Mozilla Mail's Bayesian filtering system. </div> Nice. I just wrote in to tell them to include Mozilla Thunderbird</a> in that list, and also to possibly change "Mozilla Browser" to just "Mozilla" or "Mozilla Mail". Update: Well they've very promptly changed it to Mozilla Thunderbird. It has replaced the previous "Mozilla Browser" completely though.</ins> Firefox Extension Manager is here! Almost... 2004-05-26T03:24:01+00:00 Ben Goodger says in this thread</a>: Extension-Manager enabled builds should be available today on ftp.m.o [ftp.mozilla.org]. Please start using these and test the new EM, file bugs!</blockquote> "Today" being 24 May of course. The Extension Manager is partially functional now in branch builds (which you can get from the Mozilla Firefox nightly FTP site</a> - just look for dates ending with "-0.9"). Get one of these builds, either 2004-05-24-0.9</a> build or the very fresh 2004-05-25-10-0.9</a> build (of course, if there are later builds by the time you read this, you should get those instead). </div> Only extensions that have been updated</a> to work with the new Extensions API will be reflected in the Extension Manager (other extensions should install fine, but they won't be listed in the Extension Manager - they appear in Tools -> Options -> Themes as before). I tried out Content Holder</a> and ContextMenu Extensions</a> just to see how they work. </div> Turns out they install just fine in a download manager-like kind of way. And after a restart of Firefox, they show up just fine. </div> The "Checking for Updates" for extensions doesn't work correctly yet - it shows a "New Updates Available" notification whether or not there actually are any new updates. </div> Lots of functionality is not there of course, but it helps to know that things are moving</a> along</a> just fine. Go Team Firefox! Asa (Mozilla guy) meets Opera 2004-05-15T19:44:25+00:00 Asa</a> tried the recent Opera</a> 7.5 release and wrote about it</a> in his blog. I won't jump in and make a debate or express my opinion on his entry nor on the Opera die-hards' comments (in that same entry) because I'm too worn out to think. But I do think it is interesting to point out the debate for those of you who haven't seen one of these in the topic of browsers (as opposed to the PC/Mac and Windows/Linux debates). Asa posts an update</a> later in response to reader comments. PS. to Blogupdates</a> readers, you've probably already followed the goings on at Asa's weblog, but bear with me - this is for my non-Blogupdates readers. Oh and if I seem to be hogging the top spot in Blogupdates, it's not me constantly re-posting my entry or doing some silly stuff - I think it's a bug regarding non-GMT times in the Blogupdates script and have informed Henrik (Gemal) already. The official Firefox and Thunderbird build threads in RSS 2004-04-30T01:20:23+00:00 If you've been a good boy or girl, you would have been going to Mozillazine Forums</a> now and then to check out those "The Official Win32 build ... is out" threads posted daily by Peter(6)</a> (for Firefox) and Ale</a> (for Thunderbird). What exactly are in these threads? Well, they highlight the latest fixes, patches, bugs, regressions and related news (if any), among other things. A daily snapshot and report of the changes since the last official Win32 build, so to speak. Check out today's (2004-04-29) Firefox thread</a> and Thunderbird thread</a> and you'll see what I mean. Very, very useful, and all credit goes to Peter(6) for his hard work and also to Ale who followed in Peter(6)'s footsteps by doing the same for Thunderbird. </div> When Jacob XP asked yesterday in this thread</a> whether an RSS feed for these official builds threads could be created, I had a feeling that tommorrow (which is today), there will be such an RSS feed. Such was my belief in the spirit of the community. And true enough, there is such an RSS feed for the official builds thread</a> already in existence way before I logged into Mozillazine Forums today. This is possible thanks to Jay (aka Jayfromtaiwan), who's going to manually update an RSS feed with summaries of these official build threads, you have another excellent source just to keep track of all these great forum posts that appear daily. Now we have an alternative to the just as excellent The Burning Edge</a>, and more importantly (to me), a quick way to find out the latest Thunderbird</a> checkins, changes and regressions. Jay is also a custom builder as well, so do check out his Mozilla build site</a> for custom builds of Firefox, Thunderbird, and the occasional Mozilla suite. Custom builds are unofficial builds created by good people, and will include things like processor-specific optimizations (such as SSE2 support for Pentium 4), optional components (such as the DOM Inspector and SVG support), and patches that haven't made (or may not make) it into the official builds. Outsearch with Firefox 2004-04-23T17:57:56+00:00 This is a mini-article I wrote for the SitePoint Community Crier</a> after a fellow staff member requested that I write some helpful tips for "next week's Crier". It's just been published in Issue 64</a> and I'm simpy reproducing it here. The SitePoint Community Crier is the newsletter of SitePoint Forums</a>, and is put together by the Community Team lead by Saara Ord (Saz249</a>). They do amazing work and I must say probably the most work among all the Teams (Programming, Design, Hosting, and Grow) just by producing the Crier alone. If you are not already subscribed, show them a bit of support by giving the Crier a go (subscribe at Newsletters page</a>). I'll probably be writing more mini-articles for Firefox for the Crier, so if you have any suggestions on what I should cover, do write me</a> or leave a comment. An even better idea would be to submit your own article to the Crier staff for publication - if you're already a member of SitePoint Forums, just contact Saz249</a>, or you can write me and I'll set you up. Now, on to the article... Outfox, Outsearch with Firefox</h3> Searching from address bar</h4> Did you know that if you entered a search term into the address bar (where you'd normally enter a URL), Firefox does a "I'm Feeling Lucky" search on Google? If you don't know what that means, try clicking the "I'm Feeling Lucky" search on Google</a> the next time you're there - basically, it takes you to the very first search result. Granted, not many people would consider that very useful. I'd prefer to have it perform a normal Google search instead, as I'm sure quite a number of you would too. Not to fear, because with Firefox, you have control! Let's see how you can make Firefox perform a standard Google search from the address bar: Type in about:config in your Firefox address bar. It should open a page like this (click for a larger image): </a></div> </li> In the "Filter" textbox, enter "keyword.URL". You should then see the keyword.URL preference with the value "http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q=". This is what makes it perform a "I'm Feeling Lucky" search.</li> All we got to do, is to double-click that preference, and enter "http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=" in the textbox of the dialog that comes up. </div> </li> Hit "OK", and you're done! Try it out.</li> </ol> If Google doesn't quite float your boat, you can use other search engines as well. Use "http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=" for a Yahoo! search, "http://imdb.com/find?q=" for a IMDB</a> search, "http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=" for a Dictionary.com</a> search, and so on. You just have to make sure that the search string of your search facility accepts a query string that takes in your keyword(s). Custom keywords</h4> This is an amazingly powerful feature in Firefox. With custom keywords, you can load up a webpage using with your assigned keyword. For example, I can go to the SitePoint.com website by typing "sp" into the address bar. To achieve that, all I had to do was to create a bookmark for SitePoint.com (http://sitepoint.com/) and add the keyword "sp". "That's it?", you say. Well, we're getting to it, the real power of custom keywords, that is. With custom keywords, I can Google search for the "best browser" by typing "g best browser" in the address bar, lookup the meaning of "promissory" on Dictionary.com by typing "d promissory", and lookup the Bugzilla</a> bug report for bug 75138</a> by typing "bug 75138". Let's work through how to do that with a Dictionary.com custom keyword search. Bookmark "http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s". "%s" is the placeholder that will be replaced by the word (or words) whose meaning you're looking up.</li> Give the bookmark a keyword as described above. I use "d".</li> Your bookmark properties should then look like this: </div> </li> Click "OK" and now typing "d estoppel" in the address bar will load the Dictionary.com entry for "estoppel".</li> </ol> Asa Dotzler</a> has a good write-up on how to use custom keywords</a>. Ben Goodger has also created a Firefox extension called SmartSearch</a> that adds a Smart Keyword menu in the context menu. Context menu search</h4> Another convenient feature that boosts your search productivity - searching from the right-click context menu. Select the words you want to search, right-click, then select Search Web for "keyword". This will perform a search for your keyword on Google. </div> Don't like Google? Go to about:config in your Firefox address bar as described in the "Searching from address bar" section and look for the browser.search.defaulturl preference (its value should be "http://www.google.com/search?lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q="). You know what to do! (Hint: read the "Searching from address bar" section.) Find as you type</h4> Now that you've got some search results, you may want to search for occurences of your keyword in a long page. The "Find as you type" function is your savior. Just start typing the word (or words) that you want to find. Firefox will incrementally find and highlight the first instance of the word that matches what you type. </div> Use F3 or Ctrl-G to do a "Find next". No need to use the mouse, no need for an extra "Find" dialog that gets in the way! This is one of my favorite Firefox features (this is also in Opera) and I often lapse into simply typing to search for stuff in the occasions when I have to use IE! Change the width of the search bar</h4> The default search bar width is rather small, probably big enough for 20 characters. You can fix this if it bothers you by changing the width by editing your userChrome.css. The userChrome.css file is located in the "chrome" directory in your profile directory. The Firefox Help site has a page explaining how to get to your userChrome.css</a>, if you're not familiar with where your profile folder is. Once you have your userChrome.css, put this bit in there to set the width of the search bar to 350 pixels: #search-container { -moz-box-flex: 350 !important; }</div> Upcoming search improvements in Firefox 0.9</h4> Firefox 0.9 will come with more features that will improve your search productivity. You'll be able to drag a bit of selected text into the search bar and perform a search on that text. Firefox 0.9 will also include an auto-complete delete feature where your autocomplete entries can be removed by doing a Shift-delete. Very useful for deleting something you don't want someone else to come across, without having to clear out your entire history ;) Another recently added feature is the ability to add smart keywords from form fields</a>. No more messing around with "%s" thingies and what not! These features have been available in nightly builds</a> for quite some time now, so grab yourself a copy if you want them now. The Burning Edge</a> maintains a watchlist of major bugfixes and regressions, and also links to custom builds (which are professionally packaged and come with processor-specific optimizations). Firefox extension manager sneak pre-preview 2004-04-22T03:15:42+00:00 Actually, just the extension manager menu item has been turned on, and a non-working dialog for updating extensions (hence the "pre-preview" - it is not a mistake). This can be seen in today's (2004-04-21) nightly builds - I was alerted to this by this CVS comment Ben Goodger gave on a checkin of his: turn on extension manager menu item (testing only!)</blockquote> Just a note before the screenshots: none of this really works yet! So don't go around asking why the extension manager doesn't work if you do get the 2004-04-21 nightly build</a>. An "Extensions" menu item has been added to the "Tools" menu: </div> Clicking on that menu item opens the extensions manager, which supposedly would list the installed extensions and allows you to uninstall or update your extensions. Clicking on "Update" brings up the update dialog, which of course doesn't work at this point. </div> Also available in the options (Tools -> Options) is a new "Software Update" section in the "Advanced" section. </div> Firefox will check for updates to your installed extensions via a web service (Ben Goodger has a weblog entry on this</a>). Good stuff that. Checking for updated extensions is a difficult task to keep up with when you've anything over 3 extensions installed (I have 9). And there's going to be checking for new Firefox versions as well, judging from the options. Don't suppose it will be too useful for those of us who are in tune with the developments (nightly build users included, of course), but I suppose something like this is so quite standard in most applications now, and probably trivial to implement. Good for "normal" users I guess. Nightly build followers and contributing developers will probably know by instinct that a milestone release has been released. If not news will probably spread like wildfire from sources like MozillaZine and, of course, weblogs. Not going to use that option, I guess. Update: Ben has just posted several screenshots of the Extension Manager</a>.</ins> New Thunderbird artwork checked in 2004-04-21T02:39:29+00:00 The Mozilla Visual Identity Team has completed the new artwork for Mozilla Thunderbird, as Steven Garrity (Mozilla Visual Identity Team leader) reports</a>. Jon Hicks describes the process behind the design</a> of the logo. Go check it out. Naturally, I'm disappointed by there not being a new default theme for Thunderbird as I'd previously thought</a> had been hinted at. But still, it is a great-looking logo, isn't it? It doesn't look like the mythical Thunderbird in Native American art that Jon Hicks pointed to in his post to me though. That would have looked cooler and made for a less demure bird - it is a thunderbird after all ;). </div> The new logo is included as the application icon in today's (2004-04-20) nightly build.Looks pretty nice as a 32 x 32 icon. </div> The smaller 16 x 16 version, however, doesn't seem to scale well and you can't really tell that it's a bird (with a resolution of 1024 x 768). On a brighter note, the about dialog looks just awesome. </div> Firefox search now works in textboxes and textareas 2004-04-18T00:38:56+00:00 The Burning Edge</a> points out</a> that you can now search in textboxes and textareas in a webpage when you do a "Find in this page" search. The corresponding bug is bug 58305</a> and this enhancement appears in builds on and since 2004-04-16. I sorely missed this, especially so because IE does have this feature - some sites use textareas to display code. </div> As pointed out in this comment</a>, this works for both the "Find in this page" function (accessible via Ctrl-F or Edit -> Find in this page...) and the "Find as you type feature</a>". But with "Find as you type", the text found is not highlighted due to bug 134586</a> - selection in text field is invisible when it doesn't have focus. This will probably be fixed by the time Firefox 1.0 is released. Thunderbird to get new branding! 2004-04-17T19:26:55+00:00 Looks like Thunderbird is up for a design update with new branding like what happened with the renaming of Firebird to Firefox. Check out the teaser at hicksdesign</a>. Also spotted on that page: You’re in luck. The same folks that made the pinstripe theme for OS X are working on a new theme [for Win32] right now….</blockquote> Getting Firefox nightlies? Be careful when using Mozilla Backup 2004-04-17T02:22:58+00:00 Mozilla Backup</a> is an excellent, excellent tool for making backups of your Mozilla, Firefox and Thunderbird profiles. Something that should be included in those applications in some similar form or incarnation. That said, I just lost my latest Firefox profile from today's Windows XP clean-up-the-junk-by-reformatting operation, even after I remembered to backup my profile immediately before the reformat. Why? Well, not through any fault of Mozilla Backup. Not because Firefox was acting up. Two hints for you to make some intelligent guesswork, if you're so inclined. One, the Firefox profile folder has been changed in recent nightlies to "Firefox" instead of "Phoenix"</a>. Two, I was using Mozilla Backup 1.3a. OK probably a bonus hint is in order: Mozilla Backup 1.3a predates the change in the location of the profile folder. Dead giveaway, and I didn't see that one coming. Mozilla Backup 1.3a backed up my profile in the "Phoenix" folder, which unfortunately has been untouched since my use of nightlies after 2003-03-12 - it was the dud profile that was left behind after being imported into the current "Firefox" profile folder. An entire month of bookmarks all lost in digital oblivion. Ouch. At this point, I think it is prudent to state again that this is no fault of Mozilla Backup, more of a(n) (oxymoronic) reasonable folliness on my part. In fact, Pavel Cvrcek (the developer) has been keeping up with that profile folder change, as you'd be able to tell from recent Mozilla Backup nightlies. I love Mozilla Backup and I'll keep using it. Until the time comes, if it does come, that profiles can be imported/exported (or saved/restored) via a native browser UI. Bugs 22689</a> and 187564</a> had previously been filed in 1999 and 2003 respectively requesting for the same functionality. Interesting to see the initial comments that users would be able to backup profiles by saving their profile directories (and subsequently copying back into a new profile when restoring). Not something very nice for non-technical users of course, considering how getting to the profile folder itself could pose some problems. Not pointing any fingers though, because there is a different time and context when some of those comments were made. It is good to see that someone has been assigned to bug 187564</a>. Vote for those bugs if you think this is important to you too! Submit patches if you know how to help. New Firefox feature: add smart keywords from form fields. 2004-04-13T00:25:06+00:00 I haven't been getting nightly builds recently and I just did so when I noticed at The Burning Edge</a> that 2004-04-11 builds include this new "Add keyword for this search" feature. Now that is so useful because the old way</a> of doing this is so non-intuitive and difficult to explain to non-technical users (who really wants to do the "%s" thing other than people like us?). </div> I went in to Bonsai to check out the CVS checkins to the code and Ben Goodger had this CVS comment: provide a convenient way for adding smart keywords for web page searches by adding a context menu to form fields with HTTP-GET form actions.</blockquote> So it works only on GET form fields - I was wondering why it didn't work for just any textbox. This was checked in on 2004-04-09, so I may be a little behind, but it is too good a feature not to talk about. UI improvements are so crucial and so much more important to naive users (naive in the nice sense of the word) because all they ever think of Firefox is the interface. More please, and thank you! Firefox Extension Manager 2004-03-30T18:35:30+00:00 Looking at the recent checkins</a> to the Firefox source tree, you can see that Ben Goodger has checked in the initial files for the upcoming Extension Manager (see bug 170006</a>). The Extension Manager aims to provide for extension uninstallation (currently, you can only disable via the UI - you can, however, remove extensions manually</a>), extension updating, and (hopefully) some level of standardization of extension installation UI screens. Forcing extensions to have to provide a choice of whether to be installed to the profile folder or to the application folder is another thing I'd like to see (or at least warn the user that the extension will be installed to the profile folder). Probably wouldn't matter too much when you can easily uninstall extensions with the Extension Manager. Henrik Gemal reports</a> on the same thing, and points out ASCII art mock screens</a> and Ben Goodger's writeup on the new take on extensions</a>. Mozilla.org also has a section on Application extensions</a>, where the Extension Manager is described (some pages are empty at the moment). Interesting reading all. There are also plans for a Web Front End (see Ben's new take on extensions</a>), if you were wondering how updating extensions was to be done. The Web Front End will also be the central link and information repository for compatible and verified extensions (much like what Extension Room</a> is now) - a partial solution to the malicious XPIs problem</a> perhaps? Default Thunderbird theme icons and usability 2004-03-27T16:24:07+00:00 allen</a> has an excellent and constructive evaluation on the usability of the default Thunderbird</a> theme (Qute) icons in this thread at MozillaZine forums</a>. </div> Interestingly enough, I've used Thunderbird since before the current default theme was instituted and never noticed the usability flaws of some of the icons before I read allen's post. I tend to read the text labels, rather than decipher the meaning of an icon. Nevertheless, I can see fully how the icons are confusing and don't convey the true intention of their actions - a new user could be slightly addled without the assistance of text labels. Well, it all goes to show how little benefit I've derived from the HCI</acronym> module I'm taking this semester. Note: No Qute theme-bashing, please (and none ever intended) - Qute is actually a theme that I really like, in fact. Malicious XPIs run executable binaries 2004-03-27T15:50:38+00:00 Flexer</a> recently posted his encounter</a> with a website that tried to get him to install a malicious XPI</acronym> (Firefox extension). Upon the user clicking "Install", the install.js (the script that performs the actual installation) tries to execute the contained executable, which is xxxtoolbar, as Paradox52525</a> reports. Here's a snippet of the code in the install.js: var xpiSrc = "istinstall_netscape.exe"; initInstall("Adding a File", "addFile", "1.0.1.7", 1); f = getFolder("Temporary"); setPackageFolder(f); addFile(xpiSrc); execute(xpiSrc,"",false);</div> Arthur_Dent</a> breaks down exactly what the XPI and the contained executable does in his post</a>. Best solution, to me? Verified and digitally signed XPIs are allowed to run without hindrance. For unverified XPIs, warn the user that of that fact, and that the XPI will directly run executable code. Require an extra step of confirmation. That's what I think at the moment, but there are some pretty good ideas in that thread</a>. It'll be interesting to see how this is dealt with in the near future. Follow the discussion on MozillaZine forums</a>. Update: See relevant bug 238684</a>.</ins> Deletion of autocomplete results in Firefox, Mozilla 1.7b released 2004-03-19T17:36:34+00:00 Now here's a nice feature just checked into the Mozilla Firefox</a> source tree that everyone wants - deletion of autocomplete results (bug 171605</a>). There's always the odd occasion where you want to just remove a certain entry, but don't want to have to clear your browser history (and consequently lose everything else that you want to keep). How does it work? Just do a Shift-Delete when the autocomplete result you want is selected. </div> Another bugfix is the depiction of application-specific icons in the download manager - check out Ben Goodger's screenshot</a>. Spiffy. Get the latest nightly (2004-03-18)</a> to see these changes for yourself. In related news, Mozilla 1.7b has been released</a>. Noteworthy changes include the Password Manager, IMAP IDLE command support for Mail/News, and the return of the Talkback crash reporting utility (only in installer builds). This is also very encouraging: When compared to Mozilla 1.6, Mozilla 1.7 Beta is 7% faster at startup, is 8% faster at window open time, has 9% faster pageloading times, and is 5% smaller in binary size.</blockquote> Get Mozilla 1.7b</a>. Source: Bonsai query for mozilla/browser mozilla/toolkit mozilla/chrome in the past week</a> Junk filter improvements in Thunderbird weekly build + new Win32 installer 2004-03-14T00:32:26+00:00 Scott MacGregor</a> (lead engineer of Mozilla Thunderbird</a>) has recently announced the availability of the 2004-03-12 weekly build</a> with lots of new cool improvements. These improvements include an improved Junk Mail Algorithm, improved IDLE</a> command for IMAP, new smilies (emoticons), and several UI improvements and sundry bugfixes. Another interesting development is the availability of a Win32 installer</a> for Thunderbird. Improvements and patches to the Junk Mail algorithm allow it to produce the same message scores as SpamBayes</a> (another Bayesian spam filter - so good it is often used as a benchmark). What does this mumbo-jumbo mean? It means Thunderbird is now better at classifying your email as spam (or not) correctly. Scott highly recommends anyone trying out the new junk mail filter to first clear out the training file and retrain it. For that purpose, a new button for clearing the training data has been added (bug 237151</a>) for convenience (previously, we had to delete the training.dat file manually). </div> Thunderbird's new IDLE support for IMAP (bug 141369</a>) also sees many improvements and bugfixes. Simply put, IDLE is a command that allows IMAP email servers to transmit updates to the client in real time. This saves the client from having to continuously poll the server to achieve the effect of new mail appearing immediately. All in all, an exceptionally useful command that saves Thunderbird the work of polling IMAP servers continuously. New emoticons (bug 237045</a>) are also included in this build, and the artwork comes from Stephen Horlander of the Pinstripe theme</a> fame. Very nice, compared to the old ones which were terribly dated (I had emoticons turned off because I didn't like them). </div> The new Win32 installer is an early attempt at rolling out the Mozilla Thunderbird installer targetted for the 0.6 milestone release (as stated in the Mozilla Thunderbird roadmap</a>). I tried it out and it was fully functional, but there are several nitty gritty issues to be sorted out. Running the installer presents you with this screen: </div> A little messed up, but this is an early test build after all. Scott is mostly leveraging off the work put into Firefox's Win32 installer. You next get to choose a standard or custom install. </div> Selecting custom allows you to add additional extensions - at this moment, Scott has only bundled in the Offline extension</a>. Plans are in store to bundle other extensions as well, including the DOM Inspector. Unfortunately (at least to me), the installer silently places shortcut icons on the desktop, in the start menu, and in the quick launch bar. The installer should have asked first. (I see someone else has already whined</a> about</a> this) I think with sufficient well-founded feedback, the Thunderbird team will come around to getting that feature into the installer. Get the Thunderbird 2004-03-12 build</a> or the test Win32 installer build</a> to try out these new improvements and changes. Firefox profiles are now in "Firefox" folder 2004-03-12T14:48:19+00:00 A while back, I mentioned that Firefox profiles will be migrated over from the old "Phoenix" directory to a "Firefox" directory</a>. Ben Goodger (Firefox lead engineer) postponed the migration</a> from last Friday to yesterday, and the latest nightly builds</a> now include this change (see bug 203077</a>). If you are using an official nightly</a> (or an unofficial nightly - see the MozillaZine Firefox Builds forum</a>), you will be prompted with this screen when starting the new build if you have more than 1 profile: </div> Select the profile you want, and your settings and preferences will be imported: </div> At this time, it appears that the saved form information is not imported. Can anyone verify this? Firefox mail integration UI just checked in 2004-03-09T00:40:27+00:00 The Burning Edge reports</a> that the latest Mozilla Firefox</a> nightly builds (2004-03-07) contain the Mail Integration UI newly checked-in by Ben Goodger (bug 214893</a>). It adds a mail toolbar button that allows you to read your mail and newsgroups or send the current link to someone. A Ctrl-M shortcut key has also been added to allow quick access to composing a new e-mail. See the mail toolbar button in action with the screenshot below. </div> The number of unread emails is retrieved from the registry (for the Windows version), the same key that allows Windows to display "You have X new messages" at the WinXP logon screen. If you grab a nightly build, you have to go through a few steps to get it to appear. Go to the View menu -> Toolbars -> Customize. Drag and drop the Mail icon to any place you like on a toolbar. Link Toolbar for Firefox 2004-03-06T08:46:52+00:00 I can't believe I missed this Link Toolbar extension</a> all this time. It adds a small site navigation widget in your statusbar that allows you to make use of any <link>s that a webpage may have. Opera has it, so does Mozilla. But this extension probably places it in the best and most logical section of the browser screen - in the statusbar. It doesn't reduce your viewport like the one for Opera does (it appears as a toolbar). I've been wanting something like this ever since I used it on Mozilla. Here's a screenshot: </div> And another with the More widget in action, displaying the alternate RSS format for a website: </div> Switching to Firefox to get easier 2004-03-05T13:55:03+00:00 In a move that will aid users migrating to Firefox</a> from other browsers, Firefox 0.9 will feature a long-awaited import feature that allows you to import your browser settings and bookmarks from your current browser. Windows users can now import bookmarks, history, saved passwords, cookies, form history, and preferences from IE, Netscape, Mozilla and Opera. Mac users will be able to import from Netscape, Mozilla, Safari, IE/Mac and Camino. Linux users can migrate from Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, Galeon and Epiphany. This is definitely good news because it significantly lowers the entry barrier and also reduces the cost to users who intend to switch. To get an early look in at what the import feature, try a nightly build (check out The Burning Edge</a>). Current support on Mac extends only to Netscape and Mozilla, and on Linux, Netscape, Mozilla and Opera. The Windows version supports all browsers that I've listed above. The Firefox team is working on importers for the other browsers and they will be coming online soon. Firefox profiles will no longer be in "Phoenix" folder 2004-03-05T13:39:04+00:00 Ben Goodger</a> (lead engineer of Mozilla Firefox) has announced</a> that Firefox profiles will now be stored in a "Firefox" directory instead of the current "Phoenix" (Phoenix was the name of Firefox even before it was called Firebird) directory. This will be activated in nightly builds starting from tommorrow</del> next week Thursday</ins>. This change will be in the 0.9 release of Firefox and the migration engine will automatically migrate all Firefox-related data (bookmarks, userChrome.css, preferences, etc.) to the new folder. There will be no auto-migration of extensions (as far as I know), so there is the hassle of reinstalling your extensions (if you installed them to the profile folder). Hopefully, the Firefox team is considering, or is already at work, implementing migration of extensions as well. Well, we'll see what's really in store when the other major extension related feature, the extension uninstaller, is implemented. Migrating multiple profiles doesn't sound like fun either: Alternatively you can import one profile, run Firefox with the profile manager and delete the profile (but make sure NOT to delete the files) then run Firefox again and import the other profile. Run Firefox with the profile manager and create a new profile in the same location as the deleted one and all the settings in it will be picked up.</blockquote> I do not know if this are only temporary measures for nightly build users, or are going to be the same for Firefox 0.9. But I am pretty sure Ben and the team will be making migration as hassle-free as possible, within the limits of what's possible and what's not. Anime version of the Firefox logo 2004-02-22T14:58:28+00:00 Jesse Ruderman</a> points out this cute(?) anime version</a> of the Firefox logo</a>. Via Jesse Ruderman</a> via noririty</a> Firefox Download Manager extension 2004-02-21T01:41:45+00:00 Came across this Download Manager extension</a> for Firefox</a> in the MozillaZine forums</a>. It saves some screen real-estate by compacting out unused whitespace and looks better. Whether the interface is more intuitive is up for contention. </div> Backing up your IMAP email in Mozilla Thunderbird 2004-02-20T20:09:33+00:00 Henrik Gemal has written up a clever tutorial on how to backup IMAP mail using Mozilla Thunderbird</a>. Follow that up with the corresponding tutorial on restoring IMAP emails</a>. Now those of you who're still using POP3 to get your email no longer can say "IMAP sucks because it doesn't allow me save my emails and I have to delete them otherwise my inbox will be full". In related news, Omar Shahine</a>, who co-designed Microsoft Entourage, says in his blog entry on IMAP, Thunderbird, and mail clients</a> that: Thunderbird is an almost perfect IMAP client for Windows. If you use IMAP, this is the product for you.</blockquote> Mozilla Europe website launched 2004-02-17T20:44:33+00:00 Mozilla Europe</a>, a non-profit organization that was recently founded by several European Netscapees and Mozilla contributors, has just launched its website</a>. Read the press release</a>. Some would say the website design has a certain Communist theme to it - I wonder if it's not because of the judicious use of red and stars. Very nice, nonetheless. My only complaint would be the accessibility links which appear when you roll over them. Somewhere below the navigation bar, there are 3 links: "skip to Navigation", "skip to Search" and "switch language", which are hidden by applying a white color to the text, but become black when hovered. Confusing to a normal user to say the least. At least it confused me a bit when for a moment I thought the site just managed to produce a Peek-a-boo IE6 bug</a>. But of course not, this is Gecko we're talking about ;). Back on topic, I don't see the point of providing accessibility links in this manner since it appears for users who don't need them when they least expect it. Try Mark Pilgrim's advice</a>. Not to take anything away from the designer(s) though - they have done an excellent job. Update: The designer of the Mozilla Europe website, Sam Latchman</a>, has made clear several things in his comment</a>. Most importantly, "display:none" does not pass muster on many screen readers as proven on css-discuss</a>. </ins> Firebird? Firefox? How about Firegoat? 2004-02-13T00:09:22+00:00 Firesomething</a> is an extension that changes the "fox" (or "bird" if you're using Firebird) into something else. Something else which can be whatever you want. </div> Check out the concise feature list: Features: Polymorphs fire animals.</blockquote> More on Mozilla - Mozilla Backup, BT tracker, updated TBE 2004-02-11T00:21:12+00:00 Ah Mozilla is buzzing (bzzz!) all over the World Wide Web. More news from yours truly, this time on some tidbits that I found to be useful to the common Mozilla Suite/Firefox/Thunderbird user. So, in no particular order: Pavel Cvrcek has released Mozilla Backup 1.2.2</a>. This release "only adds support for Mozilla Firefox 0.8 and Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5". If you haven't heard of Mozilla Backup before, you would be pleased to find it a spiffy tool for backing up and restoring Mozilla profiles (including Firefox and Thunderbird). It works very well from my own experience with it. Unfortunately, it's only available on Windows. (Reported by MozillaZine</a>)</li> Patrick Ryan posted in a comment to The Burning Edge</a> to point out the pryan.org Mozilla BitTorrent tracker</a>, which he kindly set up. Patrick Ryan is the guy who provides free hosting space for unofficial builds. The unofficial Firefox builds are at http://pryan.org/firefox/</a>, and the unofficial Thunderbird builds are at http://pryan.org/thunderbird/</a>. As always, the best place to keep up to date with the unofficial builds are The Burning Edge</a>, the MozillaZine Firefox builds forum</a>, and the MozillaZine Thunderbird builds forum</a>.</li> And finally, users of Tabbrowser Extensions</a> (TBE) for Firefox would be glad to know that Piro Date (the author of TBE) has updated it the extension so that it works with Firefox 0.8. See his post in his forum</a>. I'm happy to report that it seems noticeably faster as well - TBE used to slow down Firefox a lot.</li> </ul> Firebird is now Firefox, milestone 0.8 released 2004-02-10T01:50:08+00:00 It's been posted all over by now, even Slashdotted</a> (mozilla.org was down for quite awhile earlier), Neowin-ed</a>, blogged a thousand times over. Yes, Mozilla Firebird is now known as Mozilla Firefox</bstrong></a>. With the 0.8 Milestone release of the lightweight Gecko-based browser formerly known as Phoenix (now also formerly known as Mozilla Firebird), the Mozilla Foundation has come up with a name which shouldn't run into any legal tussles like the old Phoenix and Firebird names seemed to attract (well, the Firebird name wasn't exactly a legal tussle, more like an act of brotherhood among fellow Open Source developers). Ben Goodger (Firefox Engineering Lead) wrote about the rebranding</a> of Firebird to Firefox. Steven Garrity</a> was drafted in as the new Visual Design Coordinator who developed the new Firefox icon you see below (together with the rest his team). Jon Hicks implemented it (meaning he did the computer graphic design work), as he describes in his journal entry</a>. Yes links galore and more to come. </div> The rebranding also entailed some new spiffy icons, decals and ads which you can find in the Mozilla Firefox ad webpage</a>. If you had a Firebird button or ad, it's time to update them! For my case, I had an 80 x 15 pixel Firebird blog button, but the new Firefox one is 94 x 15 pixel large, which was totally out of whack with the rest of the buttons. Photoshop to the rescue... </div> So what's new in Firefox 0.8? I won't repeat what's already been written, so you can refer to the Firefox What's New section</a> and Jesse Ruderman's listing of new features and bugfixes</a>. In particular, one nasty regression that wasn't fixed was the "Installing 2 extensions without restarting re-launches extension-installer for previous installed extensions" regression. Hell, one of the biggest flaws of Firebird was it's poor extension management. Extensions often break a Firebird installation, like Tab Browser Extensions (Firefox 0.8 doesn't seem to work with TBE, so I got this patched TBE extension</a> which you can get as well)</del>. Piro Date (author of TBE) has updated TBE and it works with Firefox 0.8. See his post in his forum</a>.</ins> And removing extensions</a> has to be done manually (and tediously). Thankfully this will be addressed in Firefox 0.9 where an extension uninstaller is planned. As for zip builds (as opposed to installer builds) for Windows, there isn't an official one yet, though Ben Goodger says he'll have one by the week</a>. Unofficial builds are also being released, and the best place to get them is to check out the Firefox builds forum at MozillaZine.org</a>. jesus_x has a zip build which was highlighted at MozillaNews</a>. More links: Press Release</a></li> Mozilla Foundation's registration of Firefox as a trademark</a></li> Steven Garrity speaks on the process of rebranding Firebird in Branding Mozilla: Towards 1.0</a></li> Mozilla Firefox - Brand Name FAQ</a></li> </ul> Mozilla Firebird out next Monday 2004-02-03T18:35:05+00:00 Ben Goodger posted this in the Orkut Mozilla Firebird community</a>: It's Monday February 9 now. This is the first time I've been confident enough to give a date. This release is going to be the best Firebird yet.</blockquote> See Ben Goodger's reply in forum thread at Orkut</a> if you're an Orkut member. Sorry for posting to a closed forum. This piece of news was also made known in the MozillaZine forums in this thread entitled FAQ: When is 0.8 coming out?</a>. Cheers! </ins> Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 test builds are available 2004-02-02T16:21:48+00:00 Hot off the mozillazine forums</a>: Scott MacGregor has announced that the first set of 0.5 test builds are now available for Win32</a>. Expect Milestone 0.5 to be released within the week or the next as per this announcement by Scott on the updated roadmap and 0.5 plans</a>. Grab the test builds</a>. My Thunderbird build 20040201 2004-02-02T03:15:40+00:00 Just for fun, I built Mozilla Thunderbird</a> from the latest sources using Microsoft Visual C++ .NET 2003. Optimized for Pentium 4, Pentium M, Celeron 1.7GHz+ and Athlon64 with SSE2. I stripped out most of the stuff I don't need, and added compiler optimizations /G7 (optimize for processors listed above) and /Oxs (full optimization, optimize for size). Download it: thunderbird-win32-20040201-Oxs-G7-SSE2.zip</a> Here's my .mozconfig: export MOZ_THUNDERBIRD=1 mk_add_options MOZ_THUNDERBIRD=1 ac_add_options --disable-accessibility ac_add_options --disable-activex ac_add_options --disable-activex-scripting ac_add_options --disable-auto-deps ac_add_options --disable-crypto ac_add_options --disable-debug ac_add_options --disable-freetype2 ac_add_options --disable-installer ac_add_options --disable-jsd ac_add_options --disable-ldap ac_add_options --disable-mathml ac_add_options --disable-necko-disk-cache ac_add_options --disable-oji ac_add_options --disable-profilesharing ac_add_options --disable-tests ac_add_options --disable-xprint ac_add_options --enable-extensions=wallet,xmlextras ac_add_options -enable-image-decoders=bmp,jpeg,gif,icon,png ac_add_options --enable-necko-protocols=http,file,jar,viewsource,res,data ac_add_options --enable-optimize='-Oxs -G7 -arch:SSE2' ac_add_options --enable-strip </div> There is no native RSS reader panel in Firebird 0.8 - phew! 2004-01-31T02:39:01+00:00 I just read Matt Haughey's blog entry on RSS native parsing in the next Firebird</a>. I was checking out the nightly builds of Firebird 0.8 betas (windows and linux, mac) and they've got an rss button and panel that parses RSS, with titles linking to the main window.</blockquote> Gasp! The first thing I thought was how could I have missed something like this? When rationality took over, I began to feel pretty sure that Matt Haughey had made an honest mistake - there is not going to be a native RSS reader panel in Firebird 0.8 (or any future releases for that matter). I did some Googling and satisfied myself with some answers. Firstly, there is no mention of a RSS reader in the Firebird Roadmap</a> - even the phrase RSS didn't turn up. Secondly, there exists a Firebird extension, RSS Reader Panel, which looks</a> very similar to Matt's screenshot</a>. Thirdly, I trusted myself to know if there was something like this coming up in my beloved Mozilla Firebird. Thankfully enough. An RSS reader sidepanel included by default would be widely protested by many (including yours truly) I would surmise. Bloat is one thing, having something like that in a web browser that promises to trim off the fat surely goes against it's standing principles. Update: I forgot to add the reason why Matt Haughey could be experiencing this. It is entirely possible that he had previously installed the RSS Reader panel extension into his Firebird profile and summarily forgotten about such a fact. And yeah I wanted to contact him about it, but comments aren't allowed and I can't find an email address anywhere. If anyone knows how I can contact him please let me know ASAP.</ins> Update 2: Nevermind I found his email address.</ins> Update 3: I got through to Matt and he has made amendments to his blog entry. Yay!</ins> Firebird 0.8 on the horizon 2004-01-30T00:22:30+00:00 Mozilla Firebird 0.8 is almost ready to be shipped, thanks to Jesse Ruderman for pointing out</a> that small detail in the latest mozilla.org staff minutes</a>. Expect it Friday (today!) or Monday. Jesse Ruderman has listed the new features and major bugfixes over at this entry</a> in his blog. Nothing much there you won't be unfamiliar with if you've been using nighty builds like me. A good Mozilla Firebird nightly build 2003-12-09T00:07:24+00:00 Finally a Mozilla Firebird nightly (2003-12-07)</a> with most severe regressions fixed (severity as determined by Jesse Ruderman</a>). Builds since 2003-11-21 do not work with Tabbrowser Extensions</a> (the fault is with TBE</acronym>, not Firebird), so I'd given up on nightlies since. But this major regression-free build had me coming back and searching for a fix to this incompatibility. And guess what? There is a fix, provided kindly by me4get</a> at the Mozillazine forums</a>. The related thread is entitled Updated TBE for Mozilla/5.0 (Gecko/20031121)</a> and you can install the updated TBE by clicking here</a>. I'm using scragz's optimized builds</a> - fast and works great! Source: The Burning Edge</a> Mozilla Thunderbird 0.4 - new features, upgrading, and more 2003-12-07T17:24:49+00:00 Mozilla Thunderbird 0.4</a> was released yesterday in quick succession to the two 0.4 release candidates. It's all good, and worthy of a point release. If the servers are too slow for you, you may want to try the Thunderbird 0.4 (Win32) torrent</a>, or the Thunderbird 0.4 (Linux) torrent</a>. New look for the default theme The default theme has a new, improved look. Two thumbs up on the move to make Thunderbird look prettier, because aesthetics really do matter. The very idea of themes in the first place centres around the very need of end users to personalize their applications, or to by association, appear to be as cool as how their applications look. </div> The new icons are functional and easily understandable. In particular, unread, replied, and forwarded emails are indicated with different icons on the message envelope icon, something that was missing before. Mark messages read after x seconds option There's a new option to prevent messages from being marked as 'read' immediately after it is previewed. This was sorely missing before, and annoyed the hell out of me. What I did then was to re-mark it as 'unread', but that was hardly satisfactory. You can set this option by going to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> General Settings. </div> Mark button Also related to the last feature is the debut of the new Mark button that you can add to the toolbar. Nothing amazing, but another feature that would be appreciated by converting users of other email clients like Outlook Express, where marking messages read or unread appears as a toolbar button. To add the new Mark button, right-click anywhere on the toolbar and click Customize. Simply drag and drop the Mark icon to where you want it to appear. </div> Improved new message alert (Windows only) Windows users have a more sensible new message alert which displays the full account name instead of the username. Why sensible? Because most users are going to have multiple email accounts, and more likely than not more than 1 of them would have the same username. I for one have 2 accounts with the same username 'redemption'. Telling me that 'redemption has 4 new messages' doesn't really help. </div> The response of the alert notification has also been improved - in the 0.3 release, my experience was that the alert appears after a significant delay, despite the messages already in my inbox for a few minutes. I don't like going to my inbox to see no new messages when I was promised some. Copy-and-paste images functionality for Windows users (Windows only) Windows users have it good here again: the Windows version allows images to be copied and pasted directly into the mail composer (HTML mode only). Very useful for sending screenshots or those funny/cute/gross image attachments to friends and colleagues. </div> Such OS-specific functionality is good, because it develops a comfortable feel for the application. Windows users are spoilt with copy-n-paste everywhere (think Microsoft Office, Outlook) - having this in Thunderbird puts these users in a comfort zone with an application. This is probably why many users don't take to Java graphical applications which don't allow copy-n-paste, and have an uncomfortable, distinct look from what they have come to expect. (Note: copy-n-paste is possible in Java applications, and JDK 1.4.2 introduced the Windows XP Look and Feel) That covers most of the new features in Mozilla Thunderbird 0.4. I left out the new Palm Sync Address book conduit extension because I don't have a Palm, and that POP Accounts now support aging on the server because I only have IMAP accounts at the moment. Fixing problems in your upgrade If you are having problems with your upgrade, it is probably due to a faulty extension or theme. One problem I encountered was with the Smoke theme</a>. Read more about this bug</a> at the Mozillazine forums. What you can do is to use Mozilla Backup</a> to backup your profile, create a new one, and restore that backed up profile into the new one. The official word, though, is this: Find your profile directory. There should be a sub directory called chrome. Remove everything in chrome. This will not affect your mail data or preferences. You will then need to re-install the 0.4 compatible version of any themes/extensions you want.</blockquote> Mozilla Thunderbird Features Summary David Tenser (of Firebird Help</a>. fame) has written a Mozilla Thunderbird Features Summary</a>, for which he is requesting feedback (leave a comment on the TalkBack page</a> at Mozillazine). 101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that IE cannot 2003-11-14T01:21:02+00:00 101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that IE cannot</a>. Enough said. Mozilla and IE in 1 application 2003-11-14T00:01:20+00:00 Vasanth Dharmaraj</a> has implemented an application that runs Mozilla and IE, for the convenience of having only to run 1 application to check how your websites render in these 2 web browsers. Read the initial entry</a> (with screenshot) and the entry on how to get it</a>. I haven't tried it, simply because it requires the .NET Runtime to be installed - I've run out of harddisk space on my laptop. It really sucks when your 80GB</acronym> harddisk goes offline - my desktop computer just died for no reason a while back and my anime store, not to mention my CD-writer, are now inaccessible to me. Thunderbird - why it needs a "purge" button/shortcut 2003-11-02T21:15:04+00:00 I have a confession to make: I've stayed away from using Thunderbird</a> for my desktop email client despite my apparent Mozilla advocacy. The reason: I couldn't for the life of me find a "purge" button to expunge emails marked as deleted for my IMAP accounts. I still use Outlook Express and even recently tried out Outlook 2003 to see what the fuss was all about. Well, yeah Outlook 2003 looks pretty</a> in a WinXP-ish sort of way, and the 3-pane layout really does give you bigger logical screen real estate to manage and read emails. Too bad I still can't figure out why it doesn't work with my university and primary IMAP</acronym> email accounts. It works for one other IMAP account, which leaves me really puzzled because the account settings were all imported from Outlook Express. I even tried following special instructions for accessing those accounts on Outlook, to no avail. Anyway, back to Thunderbird. One thing I always missed in Thunderbird ever since those days when it was still called Minotaur is the "Purge" button in Outlook Express, which expunges emails marked as deleted. I wasn't the only one, apparently, from this thread</a> at the MozillaZine forums. From a usability point of view, I find a 1-click access to a "purge" button highly convenient, and "Compact this folder" doesn't exactly convey the impression that something is going to be deleted (or more correctly, "expunged" as in the IMAP</acronym> RFC</acronym>. Well, the good news is, someone has already submitted a bug report to add an expunge button to Thunderbird here. Until then, I'd probably be using Outlook Express on Windows, or until I get some insidious Outlook Express worm or virus, whichever happens first. New IE smells like Mozilla 2003-10-27T08:55:58+00:00 Something looks awfully familiar in these screenshots (1</a>, 2</a>) in the version of IE that will supposedly ship with the next Windows (codenamed "Longhorn"). This after a build of Longhorn was leaked to the public. So it seems they finally decided to institute a popup blocker</a>. And emulate Mozilla extensions with their IE Addons</a>. Hmm... This is good news in the sense that Mozilla had it right all along. Source: Longhorn PDC Build 4051 Leaked</a> Branding Mozilla, IE considered harmful 2003-10-24T03:48:52+00:00 This article, Internet Explorer Considered Harmful</a>, is a good read for those of you still using IE</acronym>. Granted, the rhetoric is somewhat biased against IE</acronym> from the start, but those are some cold hard facts. Of course, there are more reasons</a> to use a browser other than IE</acronym>. Also, this article entitled Branding Mozilla: Towards Mozilla 2.0</a> has been going round the blogosphere and I thought to link it for the benefit of those of you who haven't seen it yet, and for myself for archival purposes. That's the tyranny of tabbed browsing</a> for you when using a browser which supports tabbed browsing. Anyway, the article is a very coherent piece on how the Mozilla project</a> should brand (or rather, re-brand) its products and projects. I agree that the Mozilla lizard is a good identity, but I find that it lacks impact outside the developer world. Probably because of the play with the word "Godzilla" in "Mozilla" - having a lizard as an icon just doesn't seem serious enough. Of course, geeks always have a sense of humor, but in this instance, I think it could be hurting the Mozilla project's credibility to a certain extent among low-tech end users. Comparing Mozilla Firebird with other browsers 2003-10-15T15:56:02+00:00 I don't think this page</a> existed before today's major releases</a>. Interesting to see Mozilla 1.5 in the comparison chart. I haven't used the web browser in the Mozilla suite since Phoenix 0.4 and it surprises me that it doesn't have configurable toolbars and the bookmark panel already. Anyway, gimmicky as that chart may seem, there really is no reason to use IE</acronym> in this day and age unless you're forced to, either by circumstances at work or just because you were born a masochistic Microsoft crony, or because some of the following reasons: You've never heard of Mozilla Firebird</a> - "The Best Browser, Bar None". Yes it may sound corny and somewhat unbelievable, but take my word for it - it's true.</li> You think it's cool and "in" to use IE</acronym> because everyone you know is using it - hint: it's not cool, it's definitely not "in", and you're probably mixing with the wrong people. Unless, of course, you're one of the following people: Microsoft employees, politicians, lawyers, masochists.</li> You like getting those popup or pop-under ads because you actually click them. Maybe you find them exciting. Like how you find any new advertisements with David Beckham in it exciting :p. Popup blocking</a>? No thanks, I like my popups fast and pornographic.</li> You find that having many IE</acronym> windows open makes you look busy. Your boss sometimes looks over your shoulder.</li> You prefer obscure error messages when the JavaScript for a website has errors. Who needs a JavaScript console that actually spews out helpful error messages? In fact, you must think fellow web developers wusses when they use Venkman - the JavaScript debugger for Mozilla-based browsers</a> to debug their JavaScript</a>. I'll just use my extreme debugging skillz of being able to guess what is wrong by looking at every line of code, thank you.</li> You welcome websites which install a new toolbar for you, or set your homepage to their site without asking you. You believe that is the Ultimate user experience a website can provide. Anything</a> which deprives you of that experience should never ever be installed on your system. Non-invasive surfing is an alien concept to you.</li> You think tabbed-browsing </a>is just some kind of weird anti-Microsoft "web-browsing paradigm" that actually makes you lose productivity instead of gain any. Why would I want tabbed browsing for anyway? One webpage, one new window is your philosophy. After all, I have lots of RAM</acronym>.</li> You haven't heard of "find as you type</a>". Ctrl-F, type in search term, click "Find next" is all you know, and you're reluctant to try any of that new-fangled stuff that oh they say would speed up your searching.</li> You enjoy getting Windows updates (that is, if you use Windows). Getting the latest security patches for IE</acronym> vulnerabilities makes you feel like a geek superior.</li> You are a new computer user and don't know how to install programs - your son/daughter showed you how to use IE</acronym> the first time you got on the Internet.</li> </ul> Anyone reading this has any other reasons please to speak up so I can add to this list :). Beta version of Mozilla website 2003-10-15T15:24:23+00:00 Have you seen the beta version</a> of the new Mozilla</a> website? It's pretty! It's tableless! If you hover over the form elements at the top right, you'll notice that they take advantage of the :focus pseudo-class that works in Mozilla browsers (it doesn't work in IE</acronym>). And the mini-tabs for the navigation bar at the top are neat too. Ah finally a nice-looking face for the Mozilla Foundation - something I can show converts-to-be without having to hide the ugly-as-my-mug website. Although the current one is pretty decent, but it isn't really that sleek. Great job Mozilla.org webmaster, whoever you are! Update: I found out soon after posting that the person behind the redesign was none other than Dave Shea</a>, that guy whose blog mezzoblue</a> is one of my favorite reads (thanks to Kyrah</a> for pointing that out too). Dave has made some entries on his thoughts behind his mozilla.org redesign here</a> and here</a>. Mozilla Firebird 0.7 released! 2003-10-15T11:04:51+00:00 Mozilla Firebird 0.7</a> has been released! Just a quick entry because I'm at school right now. Thunderbird 0.3</a> has also been released and so too Mozilla 1.5</a>. I think as I'm writing this they're updating the website. Update: I just had to post this even when I was on campus - I was actually visiting the releases directory</a> now and then while doing my work because I knew it was going to be released soon. I'm such a nerd ;) Mozilla Backup for Firebird and Thunderbird 2003-10-06T03:43:54+00:00 Pavel Cvrcek's Mozilla Backup</a> utility (the 1.1 Beta2 version) now supports backing up and restoring of Firebird and Thunderbird profiles. It was disappointing to find that it worked only for the Mozilla suite when I last tried it. Anyhow, it works absolutely fine and it's a great tool. Now if only there were a Linux version so I can bring my finely-tuned Firebird profile into my Linux box. Source: MozillaZine</a> XUL periodic table 2003-08-31T08:35:27+00:00 Alice Corbin has compiled XUL Periodic Table</a> (requires a Mozilla browser) with all the widgets available in Mozilla XUL. Excellent reference, especially because the source is available at the click of the 'Source' tab. Keep this close at hand whenever you're writing a Mozilla application - you'll thank her for it. Mozilla Links newsletter 2003-08-30T08:15:25+00:00 The "Mozilla Links newsletter":http://newsletter.mozdev.org/ is coming soon - 1st issue to be released on September 2, 2003. The Mozilla Links newsletter is a biweekly publication covering topics about the Mozilla open source project, the Mozilla Foundation, other Mozilla independent projects, marketing, and mostly anything related to the Mozilla project.</blockquote> Looking forward to a good read of the latest Mozilla-related news, tips, and "mozdev.org":http://mozdev.org/ projects. Subscribe by sending an email to newsletter-request@mozilla.org</a> with 'subscribe' in the subject line. New blog on Mozilla Firebird nightlies 2003-08-13T05:18:24+00:00 Jesse Ruderman</a> has started The Burning Edge</a>, a blog that helps Mozilla Firebird users "decide which nightlies to use". Finally a convenient way to find out what's in those nightly builds. I was so glad to see this, that I got the most recent nightly immediately: New feature: Style Switcher in status bar on pages with alternate stylesheets </blockquote> Screenshot of the Style Switcher in action: Discussion on the alternate stylesheet switcher in MozillaZine</a>. Quick-list of chrome URLs for Mozilla 2003-08-12T12:40:11+00:00 Jesse Ruderman</a> has made a summary of chrome:// URL</acronym>s in his blog entry on Chrome URLs in Mozilla and Mozilla Firebird</a>. Unfortunately they aren't hyperlinked, so I've reproduced them to open in a new window here. Bookmark manager</a></li> Bookmark panel</a></li> Download panel</a></li> JavaScript console</a></li> Preferences</a></li> Privacy preferences</a></li> </ul> Marketing Mozilla Firebird 2003-08-08T05:45:44+00:00 I came across this page written by Blake Ross (Mozilla Firebird originator) on "marketing Mozilla Firebird (Marketing Firebird)":http://www.blakeross.com/firebird/marketing.html. It encourages Firebird users and advocates alike to promote Firebird via word of mouth (like the way Kazaa has grown), and through active promotion on your website. "Make it your goal to convert five friends, coworkers, family members or other acquaintances to Firebird" </div> Linking to the official "Why You Should Switch to the Mozilla Firebird browser":http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/why/ page is one way. Saying things like "Stop popup ads with Firebird." is better. Web developers will appreciate it's better CSS model (IE 6 for windows is a klutz with CSS). Power users will appreciate tabbed-browsing (no more Right-click -> Open in a New window). Go on, promote Firebird if you love it. I do, and I've made 2 converts that I know of, and hopefully more from my entries here and at "Ensight":http://ensight.org/. Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 released 2003-07-29T11:07:25+00:00 Mozilla Firebird</a> 0.6.1 has been released. People who have been staying away because of the auto-complete crash bug, or have been annoyed like I was (but still stuck to Firebird for it's redeeming qualities) will be pleased to know that bug has been eliminated. "The Best Browser, Bar None"</div> Other than that, the other bug-fix of note is a fix for the DOM security restriction bug which broke certain bookmarklets. And there's a snazzy new icon too. This is after all a maintenance, bug-fix release - the next major release, 0.7, will be out in the time of Mozilla 1.5 final's release date, and will feature upgrades to the download and password manager systems. Note: If you'd bookmarked the Firebird website as http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firebird/</a>, it seems to be time to update it. The 'front' page is http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/</a>, and that old page is now intended as a developer resource. Mozilla Thunderbird 0.1 2003-07-29T04:21:37+00:00 Mozilla Thunderbird</a> is now available as it's very first milestone release</a>. For those of you who have been dubious of getting builds, this milestone release should be something you would feel comfortable trying out. Installation on any platform (currently only binaries for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X are available) involves only unarchiving the binary archive and running the executable - no messing with the registry for Windows users. Uninstallation is as simple as deleting the Thunderbird directory, and your profile</a> directory too if you don't wish to keep it. If you haven't yet, try it, if not for it's coolness factor, then for it's Bayesian spam filter</a>. Mozilla - easy search 2003-07-13T13:52:12+00:00 This tidbit of a tip came up at mozKit</a> today. The Mozilla browser and Firebird have this nifty function where you can select a piece of text and you can do a "Web Search for..." it in the context menu (right-click). Great time-saver for people who search often like me. Funny enough, I do recall myself wanting to always make use of that function when I noticed it quite a while back, but always forget and instinctively type into the Search bar on top. Must make sure to use it from now on. Also, in the context menu there is a "View selection source" option that allows you to view the HTML source of your selected text/image/etc. - pretty nifty, pretty useful for web developers who want to check out their HTML source and not have to search through the entire clutter of code. Sites that block Mozilla browsers - user agent switcher 2003-06-07T15:05:53+00:00 A quick update on the last post. It seems I may seem to have made Mozilla browsers seem disadvantageous in an IE-centric world. Well, you can always get past those sites that reject non-IE browsers with the User Agent Switcher extension</a> that allows you to spoof your user agent as IE (or Netscape, or IE Mac). Gotta love those extensions. Sites that block Mozilla browsers 2003-06-07T15:04:44+00:00 mmj at SitePoint Forums</a> has pointed out a link to a page that lists websites entitled 'Sites that make Mozilla sad</a>'. Those sites apparently aren't too interested in the Mozilla/Netscape user population, catering only to Internet Explorer users *gasp*. www.kingfisher.com</a> has this to say: To view the full Kingfisher plc site, please install a new-generation browser, such as Internet Explorer 5, or Netscape 4.x. These can be downloaded free of charge from Microsoft or Netscape. A more basic text-based version of the site will also be made available shortly for those with older or incompatible browsers. </blockquote> Another site, pointed out by mmj, To protect you from certain usability and/or security issues we currently do not support Opera, Mozilla, earlier versions of Netscape or IE. If your preferred browser is not supported, we recommend that you consider co-installing a supported version. </blockquote> Usability and security issus? :rolleyes: Thunderbird email client - quick update 2003-06-06T15:04:12+00:00 Just a quick update - I've since been using Thunderbird and was pretty surprised to notice that it seems to integrate with FireBird on its own. I got an email notification with a small notice box popping up at the bottom-right corner of the screen, like how it is with MSN messenger. Thunderbird was not running at the time - it does make you wonder if this can be stopped, since I didn't ask for email-polling explicitly. Nevertheless, I'd have to say that is pretty cool ;). Thunderbird email client 2003-06-06T15:03:47+00:00 Just got the June 3rd build</a> of Thunderbird</a> for Windows. I must say it is really looking good. It's fast (loads in a split second - much faster that Outlook Express), plus it does have a Firebird</a>-feel to it that is strangely appealing. It also allows importing of address books and mail accounts from Outlook Express, Outlook and Eudora (only tested importing from Outlook Express, and it works perfectly). Now that Firebird</a> is my browser of choice, I'm really looking forward to an email client that has a similar appeal, and Thunderbird will be a big player in the email client scene in the near future as I foresee it. XUL article at SitePoint (Part 3) & 'Creating XPCOM Components' ebook 2003-06-06T15:03:16+00:00 The 3rd and final installation in Harry Fuecks' introductory article, Introducing XUL - The 'Net's Biggest Secret: Part 3</a> has been published on SitePoint</a>. Nice wrap-up with excellent links to interesting projects like MozBlog</a> (allows blog updating in Mozilla over XML-RPC) and the Luxor XUL SWT</a> for Eclipse</a> that will bring XUL into that very IDE. Stay tuned (I will). An ebook on creating XPCOM components, Creating XPCOM Components</a> has been released. Only for C++ developers though. Mozilla tips and tricks 2003-06-06T15:02:22+00:00 I started a thread entitled Mozilla tips and tricks</a> over at SitePoint Forums</a> in hope of getting people to post their favorite extensions and tips, as well as possibly promote Mozilla (I'm a FireBird</a> addict). Other than those I'd found, a member posted a link to http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/</a> which seems to have a very wide collection of links to extensions. Check it out. Oh yes if you're using Mozilla or FireBird now, you can see XUL in action just by right-clicking the toolbar (where the 'forward', 'backward', 'refresh' buttons are) and choose 'Customize...'.

chuyeow.wtf

Firefox nightly builds add a combined Stop/Go/Refresh button to the Location Bar

Stop and Reload buttons merged in Firefox

Firefox quick tip: view images in a new tab quickly

One reason Firefox 3 is going to be awesome - Auto-completion in the Location Bar

Try the new Mac OS X UI for Firefox 3

Firefox 3, Beta

What's new in Firefox 3: Pasting text into search bar to be 100% less annoying

What's new in Firefox 3: Download Resume

"Open in Tabs" fixed in Firefox 3, at last

Smarter (and less-annoying) Password Manager in Firefox 3

How to have Firefox 3 and Firefox 2 running at the same time

Growl integration in Firefox 3

Firefox Recommendation #1: Clearing download history automatically

Google Reader, so pretty...

Thunderbird 2.0 and Gmail integration

Firefox tips sharing session at WebSG meetup

Keyboard shortcuts you should know</h3> Note: Mac users should replace Ctrl with the Cmd key for any of the keystrokes listed below.</p>

Getting rid of the close button on all tabs</h3> I've been told how annoying Firefox 2.0 is when it insists on putting a close button on each tab.</p>

Profile management for productivity</h3> Firefox hides its Profile Manager from you. You can access it by passing the -profilemanager</strong> switch to your Firefox executable. For Windows users, it's actually --profilemanager</strong>.</p>

Tab Groups for Firefox: best extension since sliced bread... er, tabbed browsing

Running two Firefox profiles simultaneously

IMAP-IDLE plugin for Apple Mail

Essential Firebug video for web developers

Firefox Secrets on Google Book Search

My Linux snob shirt

Firefox "ad" in the Singapore MRT

Firefox 2 - it's out

When Firefox extensions annoy

The first Firefox ads are out

Tabbed-browsing enhancements for Firefox in latest build

How does one get in touch with the Firefox Add-ons people?

An extension for a bigger Back button in Firefox

Plugging Firefox Secrets

One-click delete in Gmail, thanks to GreaseMonkey

What's up with Stop-Sign and Firefox?

The ones I read first in my long blogroll

Seen elsewhere: Life without Firefox...

Mozilla Update website gets a facelift

How would you feel if your organization forbade you from using Firefox?

Unread tabs Firefox extension (otherwise known as the simplest extension ever)

Making unread tabs obvious in Firefox

Firefox NYT ad, some disappointment

Homer Simpson uses tabbed browsing

An author, I am trying to be

Applying Fitt's Law to the Firefox Back button

Thunderbird 1.0RC is out

Firefox avatars and a centralized forum avatar system

Opera 7.60 Preview 3 for Windows

Firefox 1.0. Yes, 1.0 is out!

IE-only, no Firefox

Mozilla Thunderbird 0.9 released

Firefox NYT ad campaign covered in local paper (and I'm in there too)

Made it into Spread Firefox Weekly Roll Call Top 5 Climbers

MileWideBack Firefox extension saves you from "complex hand-to-eye coordination"

6 more days to show your support for Firefox!

Desktop namespace shortcut for Firefox

Firefox screensaver

My name will be in The New York Times

Search Keys Firefox extension for the accessibility and the keyboard-loving

mozpartying at the big 1.0

Dreamhost hosting at $0.77/month

Download.com asks, "When will you switch to Firefox?"

Tabbed browsing gets even better in Firefox

Another call to "fix" "Open in Tabs" in Firefox

Google - the XUL version

A furrier Firefox

Mozilla Thunderbird - changing default email sort order

Link exchange between Firefox and Microsoft bloggers

Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 released

Alternate stylesheet UI is back in Firefox!

Thunderbird "Purge" button extension

Mozilla in front in Google

What does it take to get on Planet Mozilla?

Wired Firefox, Tired Explorer

No alternate stylesheet switcher in Firefox 1.0

Looking for hosting

The Official Gmail Notifier

McSearchPreview - a better GooglePreview?

IE blog joke/flamebait, and get XP SP2 via BitTorrent

Wrapping up</h4>
Thunderbird 0.8 will also come with the usual bugfixes as well as Mozilla Suite Profile Migration and improved spell checker support. This is gearing up to be an excellent email client as more bugs get ironed out. I've switched. Have you?</p>