Archive for the ‘Firefox Facts’ Category
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.
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© 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.
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© 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.
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© 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.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 17th, 2010
Use the chat feature on Facebook? One thing that it really lacks is a way to keep a history of who you talked to and what was said. Thankfully though, this add-on – Facebook Chat History Manager – will give you a way to simply browse through your previous Facebook chats.
All the content you wish to browse through is saved locally, and you can browse through your Facebook chat history anytime online or offline. How about your message security? Here is what the developer has to say.
Your messages are securely stored and only person passed the security check can view saved messages.Note that all messages are stored in your client, this application won’t store your chat history on server.
The only downside I see to this, is when you are installing – the add-on looks for your Facebook ID number, rather than your user name. That might confuse some users. Other than that, it is a great start to a very interesting extension.
You can pick up the Facebook Chat History Manager from the Firefox Add-ons website.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 16th, 2010
Amplify is a very cool Firefox add-on that will let you clip and share things from news to images and videos (just about anything you find on the web). It fully support auto-posting to Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, WordPress, Posterous and more.
You can clip things, post them by email, add them to your blog or even share them on a micro blogging service. The choice really is up to you.
Now, there are a lot of places that promise to make your blogging and social networking life easier – and yes, Amplify does that too. However, here are a few features that might set it apart from the rest of he pack.
- Amplify any URL or specific parts of a page you want to discuss.
- Easily clip, share and spark conversation about any specific Tweets on twitter.com.
- Everything you Amplify goes on your personal, fully searchable Amplog.
- All you need is a Twitter or Facebook account to sign in.
- Immediately connect with your friends from around the web to see what they’re Amplifying.
- Works directly from Google Reader.
You can learn more about Amplify over at Amplify.com, or pick up the Firefox add-on for it over at the Firefox Add-ons website.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 13th, 2010
I have a very simple question for you this Friday. Do you still use the home button in Firefox, or have you eliminated it to save yourself a little more browsing room? According to a recent study on the navigational hot spots within Firefox, Home is still ranks 37.6% as far as the most popular interface features go.
So leave your thoughts in the comments. Is the home button still relevant in your day to day browsing, or have you ditched it?
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 13th, 2010
Have the need to rotate your tabs? No, I do not mean to turn them upside down. Tab Rotator, an add-on for Firefox, will automatically switch between the open tabs in your browser after a certain amount of time.
There is your functionality in a nutshell. Now, I can not really think of why you might want to rotate the active tab after X number of minutes, but I am sure this will come in handy for somebody out there.
The interface is pretty simple, and setting up your rotation time can be done like so:
You can pick up this odd, but maybe helpful add-on from the Firefox Add-ons website. Go ahead, if you like this thing – let me know in the comments how exactly you are using it.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 10th, 2010
Looking for a darker Firefox theme, that has some aspects of the new Firefox 4.0 look built inside? If so, check out NightShade. This slick dark theme is almost a perfect representation of how a great dark theme should look.
In the creator’s own words – this theme came about to be an updated version of the popular RulerDark theme. So if you have seen it before, this is probably where you saw it last. However, it appears the creator of RulerDark stopped updating it – so the new creator found a perfect place to step in and take over a great looking Firefox theme.
To learn more about the development of NightShade, be sure to check out the official website. To download the theme and use it to decorate your browser, head on over to the Firefox Add-ons website.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
August 9th, 2010
This is a handy browsing trick I just learned about recently. Usually in my Firefox browser, I have the menu bar hidden, to save on screen real estate. However, there comes a time (every so often) when I need to get it back. Rather than un-hiding it, getting what I need, then hiding it again – I have found a much quicker way to bring the menu bar back for just a minute.
Let me start first with the steps you will need to take to hide the menu bar in the first place. You will want to right-click on the navigation toolbar, then uncheck the menu bar.
Menu Bar Recovery Secret
Now that the menu bar is out of the way, I can share with you my resent keyboard shortcut I found. To pull the menu bar back up for a few seconds, all you have to do is hit the Alt key on the keyboard. To hide it again, click anywhere else on the screen.
There you have it. Now you can hide your menu bar and bring it back whenever you need it. Have another interface tweaking tip to share?
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!