Archive for the ‘Firefox Facts’ Category
September 1st, 2010
Why read something now, when you can simply save it for later? I am always running across neat articles or reviews I want to read more in-depth, but I don’t have the time. That is where a service and add-on like Read it Later comes in handy.
The add-on in question will save pages for you to read later with just one click. When you have the time to check it out, you can access your Read it Later list from any computer or phone. As you save things, it syncs it to your profile on the Read it Later website.
Some of the features of the Firefox add-on include:
- Save pages to a reading list to read when you have time.
- Offline reading mode lets you read the items you’ve saved for later on the plane, train, or anywhere without an internet connection.
- Sync your list to all of your computers, at work or home.
- Sync your list to Read It Later apps for iPhone, iPod, iPad, Android and more.
- After reading, bookmark pages on your preferred bookmarking service or share them with friends.
- Click to Save Mode lets you quickly batch a reading list just by clicking on interesting links.
- Text view strips away images, ads, and layout from articles and presents them in an easy to consume way.
Personally, I have been using Instapaper, for some time, to get this same task done. However, Read it Later does offer a little more functionality – so I might have to switch my “reading list/bookmark saver” down the road.
You an lean more about the Read it Later service at readitlaterlist.com and you can pick up the Read it Later add-on from the Firefox Add-ons website.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 31st, 2010
With Firefox 4 being right around the corner, are all of your favorite add-ons and themes going to make the cut? In my own opinion, I think that the drastic changes in both the backend of Firefox and the visual frontend will lead to a lot broken add-ons and favorite themes. Hopefully though, this will not be the case once Firefox 4 is ready for the general public at large.
Add-ons Compatible with Firefox 4 – First, lets take a look at the Firefox extensions. Doing a quick search on Firefox’s Add-ons website I found 1,000 add-ons that claim to be compatible with Firefox 4.0. That might sound like a lot – and it might cover all the basic bases, but Firefox currently has at least 10 times that amount in all. So this means that possibly only 1 in ever 10 add-ons might be compatible.
Themes Compatible with Firefox 4 – So, what about Firefox themes? Currently there are 412 themes for Firefox (or 694 if you count the ones that are un-reviewed). So how many Firefox themes are compatible with Firefox 4 right now? There are 29 themes that are ready for Firefox 4.
How Can I Get Involved?
So, how can you make sure your favorite theme or add-on is compatible with Firefox 4? The best way would be to visit that theme’s profile on the Firefox Add-ons website – and then either find the official site for the add-on or search for the “E-mail your question” link on the profile page:
Contact the add-on or theme author and let them know you would like to continue to use their wonderful work once Firefox 4 rolls out.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 31st, 2010
With Firefox 4 being right around the corner, are all of your favorite add-ons and themes going to make the cut? In my own opinion, I think that the drastic changes in both the backend of Firefox and the visual frontend will lead to a lot broken add-ons and favorite themes. Hopefully though, this will not be the case once Firefox 4 is ready for the general public at large.
Add-ons Compatible with Firefox 4 – First, lets take a look at the Firefox extensions. Doing a quick search on Firefox’s Add-ons website I found 1,000 add-ons that claim to be compatible with Firefox 4.0. That might sound like a lot – and it might cover all the basic bases, but Firefox currently has at least 10 times that amount in all. So this means that possibly only 1 in ever 10 add-ons might be compatible.
Themes Compatible with Firefox 4 – So, what about Firefox themes? Currently there are 412 themes for Firefox (or 694 if you count the ones that are un-reviewed). So how many Firefox themes are compatible with Firefox 4 right now? There are 29 themes that are ready for Firefox 4.
How Can I Get Involved?
So, how can you make sure your favorite theme or add-on is compatible with Firefox 4? The best way would be to visit that theme’s profile on the Firefox Add-ons website – and then either find the official site for the add-on or search for the “E-mail your question” link on the profile page:
Contact the add-on or theme author and let them know you would like to continue to use their wonderful work once Firefox 4 rolls out.
Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!
© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 28th, 2010
I have a quick and easy tutorial you can all do (as long as you are on Facebook, that is). I have started up my own fan page for Firefox Facts and my other projects – and here is how you can make sure you do not miss any of the awesome tips, links, videos or anything else I post there for you.
Step #1
The first thing you have to do is go log into Facebook – and visit this link (I don’t yet have enough fans to have a personal short URL yet).
http://www.facebook.com/MitchProjects
Step #2
Next, you will want to click the “Like” button at the top of the page.
Step #3
Enjoy! This Facebook Fan Page is not for me – it is for you. So if you have any questions, comments or just want to say, “Hey there!” please feel free. Also the fan page is still a work in progress, so if there is something you would like to see there (such as a certain application or ability) let me know and I will try to make it happen.
For the last four years, I have absolutely enjoyed providing the over 7,000 subscribers of Firefox Facts with the best Firefox add-ons, the coolest themes, the neatest hacks and more. This is just one more place we socialize, connect and make this resource even better. Thanks for the future, “Like” and hope you stop in and say, “Hi!” too.
Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!
© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 26th, 2010
Need a quick way to go back to web pages you have already visited? The TidyFox add-on for Firefox will help you get the job done, and will also organize your visited pages into subpages too.
Once installed, TidyFox adds two new menu bar buttons. One is to go back and visit your most visited websites and the other is to visit your most recently visited websites.
As you can see from the picture above, each webpage in the TidyFox menu is organized by the URL. So, if you visited my about page on Firefox Facts, you would see it listed under www.firefoxfacts.com. So, as you can see the add-on does what it set out to do, bravo!
Now, as for the bad side of things – I found two annoyances. One thing was that it picked up on Google ads for some reason, giving me a chance go to visit doubleclick.net. There should be some sort of filtering in place for this I would say. Also, when you click on the “Most Visited” text or the “Last Visited” text in the menus you are taken to a weird page that has little to nothing to do with Firefox. The least they could do is link to Firefox Facts. (Just kidding!) I would like to see a more useful use of this link, if it is going to be a link at all.
Give it a shot, and let me know what you think. You can learn more about the TidyFox extension at tidyfox.com and pick it up to use at the Firefox Add-ons website.
Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!
© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 25th, 2010
Did you know that Opera already has a Tab Candy-like feature? No? Neither did the anybody else apparently.
Who would have guessed, the Opera browser has yet again jumped on the, “but we did that first!” claims against Firefox. For those who might have not followed the history between the two browsers – Firefox gained a lot of free press, for having tabs in its browser. Of course, Opera had done this before – and they made a big stink about the fact that they did it first. Now Opera is at it again, this time saying that they had Tab Candy before Tab Candy was cool. Here is what Haavard Moen from Opera had to say…
There has been a lot of focus on grouping of tabs in browsers lately as a new and wonderful way to manage tabs, but did you know that you have actually been able to group tabs in Opera for many years already?
You can check out more about the debate over at The Register and Haavard’s Opera blog. My thoughts on the issue are simple. Opera needs to pay less attention to saying, “hey, we did it first!” and maybe a little more attention to saying, “hey, we did it best”. Right now first doesn’t mean a whole lot, because people will always head towards the better execution of any idea.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 24th, 2010
I thought I would start the week off with helping you make Firefox faster. Now, there are no about:config tweaks or any other “under the hood” changes that need to be made. Instead, we are going to save time by speeding up repetitive tasks. FastestFox might be the best add-on for Firefox for getting this done.
You can get faster downloads, see definitions, auto-load the next page, improve your searching and a whole lot more. FastestFox’s job is to dramatically enhance your productivity.
Here are some of the features in brief:
Wikipedia Sidebar: Here, you get a handy list of “related articles” on the left side of Wikipedia.
Popup Bubble: The popup bubble appears when you highlight some text on a webpage. It will take you to the Wikipedia page for that word if there is one, and if there is not – then it goes a quick Google search for you.
Enhanced Awesomebar: This feature adds Google search results when you type keywords into the Firefox Awesomebar (otherwise known as the address bar).
Qlauncher: This feature gives you an easy way to visit your favorite webpages. To start it up, hit Ctrl + Spacebar. Once it is up, you just hit the corresponding key to launch the webpage you wish to visit.
As you can see, FastestFox gives you a lot of productivity tools all wrapped up in one handy Firefox add-on. To learn more about FastestFox, be sure to check out smarterfox.com. To pick up the FastestFox add-on, visit the Firefox Add-ons website.
Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!
© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 21st, 2010
Want to make Firefox look a little more like Facebook? I have a Firefox theme for you that takes its inspiration from the social networking juggernaut. The Facebook theme for Firefox actually does a pretty good job at giving you a Facebook looking browser – but still seems unique enough to not be called a carbon copy.
You can pick up the Facebook theme for Firefox from the Firefox Add-ons website. To learn more about the theme author, be sure to check out thechillroom.com.
Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!
© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 20th, 2010
Now, most of the time, when I see Firefox asking if I want to save my tabs for the next time Firefox starts, I quickly click through whatever I have to do to turn this extra warning off. However, I was thinking the other day, I wonder how I could toggle this interesting Firefox feature on or off again?
In the Firefox menu toolbar, click Tools and the select Options. Next, under the Startup section you want to check the drop down menu next to where it says, “When Firefox starts:”.
Click the drop down menu, and then select, “Show my Windows and Tabs from Last Time”. Once you do that, click the OK button at the bottom of the screen and you should be set. To turn it off, you can just go from the previously mentioned setting to one of the other two. The other two options are to show your home page or show a blank page.
Want Firefox to ask you if you want this option each time? If so, go back into the menu toolbar, go to Options and then the Tabs section. You can go in here and check the box for “Warn me when closing multiple tabs”.
There you have it. Now, for this to work – you will need to make sure your saving your browser history between sessions too. Hope that helps you either turn back on this feature, or maybe even turn it off as well.
Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!
© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 19th, 2010
Want to give Facebook a more minimalist look and feel? If so, I have found the perfect Greasemonkey script for you to install and use. The simply named, Minimalist Facebook userscript removes several annoying (and space wasting) features of the Facebook website.
After installing this user script, here are the elements that were changed or removed on the Facebook website:
- unnecessary right column gone
- feed column and comment boxes extended
- chat info on left column gone
- chat dock is partly transparent
It is a big improvement. I like the wider content area – seems to make things easier to read. You can pick up the Minimalist Facebook userscript for Greasemonkey on DeviantArt or UserScripts.org.
Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!
© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!