February 8th, 2010
For years now, I have been highlighting the best Firefox add-ons out there for you all to check out and use, if needed. However, not often do I go that extra mile to help you replace an add-on that I don’t think is that handy to have. Amazingly enough, ImTranslator is an add-on that have enjoyed a lot of popularity (3,875,310 downloads to be exact) however I think there is a better solution out there, that doesn’t even need an add-on for Firefox to be used.
One of the reasons I do not like ImTranslator is it looks junky. It is riddled with advertisements, such I understand is great for when it comes to making money – however, I don’t think they serve a purpose inside of a Firefox add-on. Now, let us move on to what I think you should use instead.
What Replaces ImTranslator?
Just bookmark the Google Translate web site. I have been using Google Translate for many years to help translate text and it has never let me down. While the translations are not perfect (no translation tool ever is) it does the closest job, from what I have seen. To use it, all you have to do is copy and paste the text you wish to translate, select what language it is in, what language you want to translate to, and then hit the button labeled, “Translate”.
By using Google Translate instead of ImTranslator, you not only save clutter from your Firefox add-on installs, but you also gain access to one of the best free translation tools out there today. Using the tools they provide, you can also get a bookmarklet that does a one-click translation of any web site into the language you wish to read.
So, let me know what you think. Is Google Translate a suitable replacement for ImTranslator or do you think ImTranslator is still a better translating solution?
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
February 6th, 2010
Editor’s note: On Feb 5, Mozilla Labs released new Weave Sync APIs and resources for developers. For more details, check out Ragavan Srinivasan’s blog announcement, reposted below.
Last week we announced that the Weave Sync add-on for Firefox is now generally available to seamlessly bridge your desktop and mobile Firefox experiences.
Using this free browser add-on from Mozilla Labs, you can use secure mechanisms to access all of your personal data (including your bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history, and open browser tabs) across all of your supported devices, making your Web experience instantly more personal and useful. And all of your data is encrypted end-to-end to help ensure your privacy.
This week we’re launching the first set of developer resources including Weave Sync & User APIs, documentation, and Python & Javascript client libraries — to increase the number of places where you can securely access, and have your personal data readily available to you, independent of whether or not Firefox is available.
This first set of APIs focuses on enabling Weave clients to provide user’s access to their stored data from other devices and environments.
Future APIs will provide third-party web sites and applications the ability to request permission and obtain explicit access only to specific user data to augment a users’ Web experience, e.g. providing personalized recommendations based upon a user’s bookmarks or search history.
We’re also releasing a number of early prototypes and sample code that have been developed alongside the Weave APIs, including:
- Web-based Weave client: A complete Weave data viewer implemented in Javascript.
- iPhone Weave client: A complete Weave data viewer on the iPhone, including support for a Firefox-like URL bar as a standalone application.
- commandline Weave client: Command-line application and library written in Python.
- WebOS Weave client: A complete Weave data viewer for Palm’s WebOS.
How to Get Involved
- Dive into the Weave Services Developer Resource site
- Post your design and early prototypes to Weave developers discussion group
- Join us in #labs on irc.mozilla.org
We’ve also tried to anticipate your questions, and have posted an FAQ .
– Ragavan Srinivasan and Mike Hanson, on behalf of the Weave team
February 5th, 2010
Firefox Personas, the lightweight themes for the Firefox browser, are still pretty new to the Mozilla user base our there.
With that in mind, I thought it might be handy to guide you through the process when it comes to adding a new Persona theme to your browser, removing a Persona theme from your browser, and how to chance through Persona themes – once you have several saved to your system.
How Do You Install a Firefox Persona?
If you are using Firefox 3.6 or above, the options for Personas should be built into the browser. Here is how you can grab your own Firefox Persona to use in Firefox.
Go to the Personas page on the Firefox Add-ons web site or the Personas Gallery.
Next, browser around the web site until you find a Persona you would like to use in your own Firefox browser. Notice that as you hover over the thumbnail previews, your Firefox browser will change to show you what that Persona would look like.
Click on the Persona you would like to use, and go check out the official page for that specific Persona. For example, here is the page for the Superman logo Persona shown above:
To install that specific Persona for Firefox, click the orange, “Wear this Persona” button.
Once you do so, the Persona will be installed – and you will get a message come up in the browser telling you it has been installed, and giving you the option to undo or go to your manage themes settings.
You are now done. Your new Persona for Firefox has been installed and is ready to decorate your browser till you change it again.
How Can You Uninstall a Firefox Persona?
Uninstalling Firefox Personas is as easy as installing them. From Firefox’s Menu Bar, select Tools and then Add-ons. Once that comes up, you want to go to the “Themes” tab. Both Firefox themes and Personas will now be displayed here.
Click on the Firefox Persona you wish to uninstall, and click the “Uninstall” button. You will be asked to verify the uninstall, and then it will be gone for good. You can also switch to a different Persona you have downloaded by clicking on that Persona from this screen, and selecting “Use Theme”.
Get More Personas Help: Other Personas Tips, Articles and Tutorials!
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
February 5th, 2010
Editor’s note: Today, the GNOME Foundation announced a $10,000 grant from Mozilla to advance accessibility. See the full press release for full details. Included below is an excerpt from the release:
The GNOME Foundation and Mozilla are committed to open source, open standards, and open formats. Both organizations and their contributors contribute to numerous projects to ensure an open Web and open desktop platform for all users. Part of that effort is working hard to ensure users with physical disabilities are able to make use of a free desktop and Web browser.
“The GNOME Foundation’s commitment to accessibility improves the desktop and Internet experience for millions of people, and Mozilla is proud to support this work,” said Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation.
February 4th, 2010
I love any add-on or web site service that helps me organize my day to day life and duties. Being somewhat of an organizational nut, I do have to say one of my favorite Firefox add-ons out there is ReminderFox. This add-on for Firefox remembers things, so you don’t have to.
Once installed, you can setup ReminderFox to keep track of all your important dates and events. It could remember your birthdays, your anniversaries, when your bills are due and so much more. The possibilities are really endless. The best thing about it is it is running right from the browser, so there is no need to run a separate calendar application.
If you are looking for a good way to simplify your to do list, or just remember key dates – ReminderFox is your little personal organizer living in your browser.
You can download the ReminderFox add-on from the Firefox Add-ons web site.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
February 3rd, 2010
For those of you who don’t keep a miniature English teacher on your desktop to help you with your writing woes, there is After the Deadline. Now, I have already told you before about the great bookmarklet they provide to help you with your spelling and grammar errors, but now they have a Firefox extension too.
After the Deadline bring a smart, contextual spelling and grammar checker to the Firefox browser. Once installed, all you have to do is click on the check icon displayed on text areas of web forms to check your grammar and your spelling. Click it one more time to finish your proofreading.
You can see it in action here:
I just can not highly suggest using this add-on for Firefox enough. You can pick up the After the Deadline Firefox add-on on the Firefox Add-ons web site.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
February 2nd, 2010
Sure, there might only be six people in the world using the Opera browser, however you do have to admit those six people have a pretty nice looking theme for that browser of choice. Would you like to give Firefox the look and feel of Opera 10? If so, read on.
Both the Operetta and Operetta Advance themes for Firefox will give you that Opera look and feel you have been looking for. The main difference between the two themes is that Operetta has the tab bar in the usual location (under the bookmarks) and Operetta Advance will move the tab bar to the top of the browser (on top of the menu). So you have two choices to work with, depending on where you want the tabs bar.
Here is what Operetta looks like in action.
For comparison’s sake, here is the Operetta Advance theme.
Both themes give a great looking interface, without having to switch to the Opera browser to use it. You can pick up both the Operetta and Operetta Advance themes (Windows only, for both themes) on the Firefox Add-ons web site.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
February 2nd, 2010
In the past 5 months, as a Firefox extension, Test Pilot attracted more than 12,000 active daily users to help testing our products. Over 7000 people sent their test data back to Mozilla. We have conducted 3 studies, including Tab Open/Close study, A Week in the Life of a Browser- Bookmarks study and Accounts and Passwords study. All things we leaned from our users will directly help to inform your next version of Firefox and related services. You are also welcome to download our sanitized, anonymous and aggregated data samples for your own research.
The New Study
Today, we will introduce a new study that aims to learn more on how people uses menu items while browsing. Here is what Alex Faaborg, the principal designer for Firefox thinks about this study:
“Ever since Mosaic 1.0 Web browsers have had a menu bar.
However, this menu bar has always illogically followed the design of a standard desktop publishing application, containing top level commands like File and Edit, even though these commands are not always directly applicable to the primary functionality of a Web browser,which is generally not limited to document creation and editing. To streamline the Firefox user interface, and to match the overall interactive design of Windows 7, the Firefox UX team is exploring collapsing the menu bar into a single “application button” when Firefox is running on modern versions of Windows.
This change will help simplify Firefox, both visually and interactively, and will also leverage external consistency with other applications that the user regularly uses alongside Firefox. However, we currently haven’t decided on the exact contents of the menu that the application button will display to the user. ”
Join the study
The goal for this study is to answer these three questions:
* Which menu items are the most commonly used?
* Which menu items are the least commonly used?
* How long do users spend exploring the menu bar contents before selecting each particular menu item? (collecting this data now will aid us in later determining if the new design makes users more efficient and effective)
We are planning to roll out this study on the first week of February, and it will last about 5 days. For everyone who is interested in this study, you will be able to see your own usage data visualized on your computer, before you submit the data. We WON’T record any personal information, such as history items. Instead, we will only count the interactions with fixed standard menu items that used across different platforms. You can also choose not to submit the data at the end or leave the study if you are not comfortable with it.
So buckle up, join us in the new study from Test Pilot!
For more detail about this study, please read the full study introduction!
February 1st, 2010
The way you use your web browser is a very personalized experience. From the way you click links, to even the way you scroll down a web page, everybody has their own way of doing things. To add a few more page scrolling tweaks to the Firefox browser, give the Smooth Wheel add-on a shot.
Smooth Wheel adds several more configurable preferences to your mouse wheel’s performance in Firefox. Here is a little ‘bit more about the extension from the developer:
Smooth Wheel offers an enhanced and configurable version of the built in smooth-scroll. It uses some unique algorithms for smoothness and adaptive behavior (scrolls fast or slow by trying to anticipate the intention of the user). Allows to read long web pages easily. You can actually read WHILE scrolling. Kind of like the credits at the end of a movie, but controlled by scrolling the mouse wheel. Works with text-boxes and drop-down boxes too.
Here is a video tutorial, so you can see the add-on in action too:
Overall, this add-on might be the best scroll enhancing one I have used to date. If you want to tweak the way your browser scrolls down a web page, head over to the Firefox Add-ons web site, and pick up Smooth Wheel.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
January 30th, 2010
We’re pleased to announce that Firefox is now available for Nokia’s Maemo platform. Starting today, Nokia N900 owners can enjoy many of the same Firefox features they know and love on the desktop on their mobile device.
Bringing Firefox to mobile devices is the next step toward fulfilling Mozilla’s mission of providing one Web that everyone can access, regardless of device or location. Secure, powerful, and customizable, Firefox is the most modern mobile Web browser available and is optimized for a mobile experience. Key design principles are at the heart of the mobile browsing experience including minimal typing, seamless synchronization with desktop Firefox and the ability to take your Firefox with you, to name a few.
Firefox for mobile is packed with your favorite features, including:
- Awesome Bar – Go to your favorite sites in just a couple of keystrokes with intelligent and personalized searching
- Weave Sync – Sync your Firefox tabs, history, bookmarks and passwords between your desktop and mobile device for a seamless browsing experience
- Add-ons – Customize your Firefox by adding small pieces of functionality, like games and news readers, that help make the mobile Web browser your own
- Location-Aware Browsing – Get maps and information relevant to your location
- Tabbed browsing – View open tabs as thumbnails to easily identify and select the Web page you’d like to go to next
- Safe Browsing – Get an Instant Web Site ID and easily access and edit security settings
- Available in more than 30 languages and counting
Firefox is the first mobile Web browser to support add-ons. With add-ons, you can customize your Firefox by adding features that help make your browser your own. Add-ons like AdBlock Plus, URL Fixer, TwitterBar, language translators, and geo guides become especially handy when you’re out and about on your mobile device. You can both discover and install add-ons directly from your Nokia N900. There are currently more than 40 Firefox add-ons available for mobile and the number is growing every day.
We strongly recommend that you install the YouTube Enabler add-on from within the Add-ons Manager. Tap on the install button, restart Firefox, and you’re all set to watch YouTube videos.
Just as Firefox does for the desktop, Firefox for mobile provides a platform for developers to create rich applications. Developers can use the latest Web technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to improve, modify and customize the browser. Visit the Develop for mobile page to learn more.
Firefox is currently supported on Nokia’s Maemo5 platform and is available for download on the Nokia N900. Users can download and learn more by visiting Firefox.com/mobile. Visit the FAQ for more information.
This is an exciting entrance into the mobile ecosystem and Firefox for Maemo5 is just the beginning – look out for lots more to come from Firefox for mobile this year.