Recently in Firefox Category

Firefox Plugins To Make Things Easier

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By Michele Neylon on March 29, 2009 8:43 PM | 5 Comments

I use Firefox both in work and at home, so I'm used to using it on both OSX and Linux (Ubuntu). Since so much of what I do is either centred around email or web based systems, my usage of my browser and a few other tools, is quite important to me. Things that make my life that little bit easier are always welcome.

So which addons do I currently have installed:

  • Google toolbar - shows a site's pagerank and gives you access to a few other handy little tools
  • Zemanta - a handy tool for bloggers which allows you to easily access images and links based on your post's content. You can also use it to easily link to products on Amazon
  • Mozbar - direct access to the Seomoz tools
  • Delicious - probably the addon I use most. I spend a lot of my time bookmarking sites, so doing it via a web service like Delicious makes sense
  • Alexa sparky - gives you access to Alexa data on any site you're viewing
  • Ebay toolbar - if you use ebay as much as I do then this makes it a lot easier to track your current bids (I was trying the AIR desktop, but it was annoying)
  • Blacknight domain search - allows you to search for available domains directly from within Firefox

Which Firefox tools / addons are you using?


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Rating: 5/5 (1 votes cast)

Cross Browser Testing Makes Sense

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By Michele Neylon on December 16, 2008 10:15 PM | 38 Comments
Trying to get sites to display identically across multiple browsers and multiple operating systems is awkward. This site probably doesn't display particularly well on all browsers, but I'm not a professional web designer / developer, so you'll have to excuse me. It's also not a corporate / business website trying to sell products or services to the public.

Screenclick, however, is a business website.

Earlier this evening I decided to visit it on my Mac using Firefox. Apart from the really annoying splash page, which doesn't do anything useful, the main page does not load correctly in Firefox 3 on the Mac:
screenclick-firefox-mac.png

Now if you open the same page in Safari you seem something totally different:
screenclick-safari.pngWhy?

Seemingly somebody decided to use Microsoft's Silverlight, but didn't bother to do a simple plugin check that would either prompt the user to install the plugin or gracefully degrade.

I won't be able to view their site on my Linux desktop either, as Silverlight isn't available for Linux (there is a port, but last time I checked there wasn't a native Debian / Ubuntu version available)

UPDATE: I've now moved to my Ubuntu Linux desktop and this is what I get:

The wonderfully helpful splash page (do they honestly expect me to continue browsing after seeing that?)

screenclick ubuntu linux

and the inner page (for some odd reason it's actually telling me that I need Silverlight now, whereas it wasn't on my Mac!)

screenclick-ubuntu-mainpage.png


PS: For a slightly different view on the Screenclick site check out Hugh's post

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Promos and Cool Stuff

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By Michele Neylon on September 15, 2008 12:21 PM | 2 Comments
blacknight-logo_160x110_black_back.gif
Cool stuff is great and discounts are even better, so I thought I'd share two little things with you:

  1. We're offering a discount on .com transfers from now until the end of the month. If you've got a bunch of .com domains with another provider then now is an excellent time to move them
  2. The Firefox domain search plugin has been updated - thanks to Ciaran from Weeno Media!
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Rating: 3.7/5 (3 votes cast)

Fixing Firefox 3's Annoying Autocomplete

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By Michele Neylon on August 18, 2008 12:58 AM
Mozilla Firefox Icon

Image via Wikipedia

When I was playing around with Firefox 3 several months ago one of the biggest annoyances for me was the "autocomplete".

As you type a URL Firefox suggests links from your browser history.

While that might be useful the way they've implemented it is incredibly obtrusive and, therefore, really really annoying.

As I mentioned previously I couldn't upgrade to Firefox 3 as my main browser for a number of silly reasons. Since then those issues have been resolved, so I've started using FF3 on my home desktop.

So what about the annoying auto-complete?

Well it's easy enough to disable if you know how.

Luckily somebody out there did!

Like so many Firefox settings it can be configured via the advanced configuration menu, which now comes with a health warning!

In your location (address) bar simply type "about:config" (no quotes).
The variable / setting you need to change is found under:

browser.urlbar.maxRichResults
I've set mine to "1", as I really don't need more. I can always change it later if I really want to.

Restart Firefox and finally sanity is restored!

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Rating: 2.8/5 (6 votes cast)

Purge Internet Explorer 6 From The Desktop?

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By Michele Neylon on July 4, 2008 12:52 AM | 8 Comments
savethedevelopers-logo.gif
I know from talking to web designers and developers that Internet Explorer 6 gives them lots of headaches. While it may not be the only cause of heartache it's a clear and tangible one.

Of course there have been plenty of "upgrade to firefox" type campaigns in the past, but most seemed to ignore a simple fact. Many corporate users can't simply upgrade browsers without their IT department's "ok".

Be that as it may if you can get more people away from Internet Explorer 6, then your web designers and developers might thank you.

Have a look at the campaign over on Save The Developers (via)
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Downgrading From Firefox 3 to Firefox 2

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By Michele Neylon on June 18, 2008 10:35 AM | 10 Comments
TYPO3

Image via Wikipedia

Although I only upgraded my Mac's browser to Firefox 3 this morning I will be downgrading it shortly

Why?

Practicalities.

Several web applications I use on a regular basis break badly in Firefox 3, which renders them unusable (typo3) or not as usable as I would like (Movable Type).

I know the guys in Movable Type will fix the issues, though they were waiting on a stable Firefox release before they made any crazy changes.

I've no idea how long it will be before the Typo3 team fix the UI issues on their end.

Unfortunately in both cases the issues arise from Javascript rendering issues ie. the browser engine has changed how it handles it

Ah well!
Zemanta Pixie
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Firefox Websites Unavailable - FTP Still Working

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By Michele Neylon on June 17, 2008 7:51 PM | 3 Comments
Mozilla Firefox

Image via Wikipedia

Today sees the official release of Firefox 3

Ubuntu users seem to have been granted the privilege of downloading the new release since this morning for some odd reason!

The guys behind Firefox are also trying for a Guinness record for the most downloads in a 24 hour period.

Inevitably their web servers have crashed under the load and are now displaying an error message:

Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

I guess that was to be expected, however their FTP servers are still working fine!

If you want to grab the new version of Firefox via FTP you can get it here


Zemanta Pixie
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Testing Zemanta On MovableType With Swiftweasel

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By Michele Neylon on May 21, 2008 12:25 AM
Movable Type devient Open Source

Image by N'ayez pas peur!! La Fabrique de Blogs via Flickr

I enjoy playing around with new "toys", so I was delighted to get an email earlier this evening from one of the Zemanta team earlier this evening to let me know that they'd added support for Movable Type.

The concept behind Zemanta is intriguing. It's a browser plugin that integrates with serveral of the more popular blogging platforms via your browser. Once you've composed a blog post of 300 characters or more it will make suggestions for images, links and other content.

As they describe it themselves:

Have your browser understand what you are blogging about and suggest pictures, links, articles and tags to make your posts more vibrant. We are making blogging fun again.

The images are pulled from a variety of sources, but they assure users that they are all copyright cleared ie. you won't be getting any nastygrams from people's legal teams asking you to remove them!

Although the people at Zemanta only officially support Firefox I'm working away quite happily using the plugin on Swiftweasel, which is a derivative.



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Ubuntu Upgrade - Relatively Painless

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By Michele Neylon on April 28, 2008 12:17 AM
ubuntulogo.png
I upgraded my home desktop's Ubuntu install earlier today.

It was a relatively painless exercise, though I was trying to do it unattended, which naturally enough didn't work due to a few custom configs I had.

I'm used to Ubuntu upgrades wreaking havoc on my graphics settings, but this time everything seems to be working as before.

It's interesting to see that the Ubuntu developers opted for the beta release of Firefox rather than a stable one.

Of course I've only had the new install up and running for a couple of hours so far, so there maybe issues and new features that I haven't spotted yet. No news is good news!
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Dilbert.com Needs A New Webmaster

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By Michele Neylon on April 20, 2008 1:46 AM | 2 Comments
A new look and feel was unveiled for Dilbert.com

You'd think that people would be delighted, but the opposite is the case.

Why?

Well whoever is responsible for the screwup that is the new site seems to be living in the past.

The new Flash animations are simple Flash. There's no reason why they wouldn't work in most browsers on most platforms, but if you visit the animation section using Linux you get a lovely message:

Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows XP Media Center 2005, Mac OSX 10.3 or Mac OSX 10.4 is required to view this page

So you grab yourself a copy of the UserAgent Switcher extension for Firefox and "spoof" a "supported" browser. And of course the entire thing then works fine.

Doh!

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