October 2011

Folder Pane View Switcher

May be I am one of the few people who use the Folder Pane View Switcher feature in Thunderbird.The switcher appears on top of the folder list allows you to choose via left/right arrows: All Folder, Favorite Folders, Unread Folders, Recent Folders and Unified Folders). It is going away in the upcoming (November 8th) Thunderbird 8 as it was deemed to be “heavy and ugly” (Bug 667245). You can still switch your Folder Pane View via View > Folders and then choose the option you want, but having this at the top of the folder pane is more handy. Since…

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Restore Firefox Address Bar to Pre-Firefox 6

While we did post this back in July when this feature had landed on the nightly builds for Firefox 7, we felt it was worth posting again. We’ve also included the tweak to turn off the Domain Highlighting feature which was introduced in Firefox 6 as well. For those of you still on Firefox 5 or older or simply have not noticed the changes in how addresses are displayed in the address bar in Firefox 6 and 7, allow me to show you: Firefox 7 default behavior. http;// has been removed and only the domain name is in black (hence…

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Add-ons Won’t Install TBird 10 Daily (2011-10-17)

There was an issue (on Windows for sure) with the Thunderbird 10 Daily build from 2011-10-17, where add-ons would not install. Dragging an add-on file into the add-ons manager or using the Install From File option would not work. Plus the add-ons manager was acting a little odd as seemed to be randomly disabling add-ons even though I had Add-on compatibility checking disabled. Updating (Help > About Daily) to today’s (2011-10-18) Thunderbird 10 Daily should solve this issue.

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Firefox 3.6 Support Ending Early 2012

Support for Firefox 3.6 may will end when Firefox 10 is released on January 31, 2012 or Firefox 11 on March 13, 2012. So how did Mozilla arrive at this time frame? Well, it is 12-weeks from the initial release of the Firefox ESR on November 8th (8.0) or December 20th (9.0). Now, you are asking what is Firefox ESR? Firefox Extended Support Release is as of now, more of proposal. The purpose of Firefox ESR is to address issues that have come up for certain groups such as small & medium business, enterprise, academic, and government with the current…

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Hide Menu Bar in Thunderbird 9

For those who want more screen space, Thunderbird 9 (scheduled for release on December 20th) will give you the ability on Windows to hide the Menu Bar (File, Edit, View) like you can now in Firefox. Just like in Firefox, you can press the ALT key or F10 to temporarily display the Menu Bar. To permanently restore, press ALT then go to View > Toolbars > Menu Bar. Alternatively, if you still have the Mail Toolbar enabled, you can right-click and select Menu Bar as well. If you want to try to Thunderbird 9 Earlybird or 8 Beta,they can be…

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Integrating Lightning & Google Calendar

Update 10/17/2011: I have updated the links for both Lightning and Provider for Google Calendar add-ons. Also added the note about needing to know the version of Thunderbird in order to choose the correct version of Lightning. I started using Gmail (words I never thought I’d say) earlier this year because I needed a Gmail account to use with the Android Marketplace. Plus my college uses the Gmail system for their email and calendar. In the past couple months I started using the Google Calendar as well. In the past I have looked at and even tried using Mozilla Lightning…

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Changes to Firefox for Android UI

Mozilla has announced they will be moving away from using XUL (eXtensible User interface Language, an XML grammar used by Mozilla to define user interfaces for Firefox and Thunderbird) in favor of using Android’s own Native user interface. The main reasoning behind this will be to improve Firefox’s performance on Android devices, which unlike your typical desktop/laptop PC, don’t have as much memory or processing power. By switching to the Android UI, Firefox users should see faster start-up and less memory (Firefox has gotten a bad reputation in the past for being a memory hog with the desktop versions) consumption….

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Release Recap Updates

We are now a couple months into Mozilla’s new Rapid Release process where new versions are scheduled for release every six-weeks. As such I’ve decided to change the frequency in which the Release Recaps are posted. In a given 6-week period, 2 weekly updates contain new information, while the other 4 updates are just ‘place holder’ posts with no new information. So, effective from this point forward the Release Recaps will only be posted the Saturdays prior to and after the releases. So, the next release date is November 8th, therefore the next Release Recaps will be on November 5th…

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Noscript firefox security extension goes mobile

Noscript has been released for Android and Maemo builds, giving users of these two mobile operating systems access to a web browser security feature comparable to that available to desktop computer users… “  Noscript firefox security extension goes mobile- The Inquirer ↑Go get it↓

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Firefox Release Recap: October 15, 2011

Just Released None Schedule this Coming Week None Future Releases Firefox 3.6.24 – November 8th Firefox 8 Final Release – November 8th Firefox 8 for Mobile Final Release – November 8th Firefox 9 Beta (9.0b1) – November 8th* Firefox 10 Aurora (10.0a2) – November 8th* Firefox 9 Final Release – December 20th Firefox 9 for Mobile Final Release – December 20th Firefox 10 Beta (10.0b1) – December 20th* Firefox 11 Aurora (10.0a2) – December 20th* * As part of the new Rapid Release Schedule, dates listed for Aurora and Beta builds reflect when the code merge is set to begin….

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