May 2006

Keeping Your Firefox Updated

Firefox is ever changing, there are lots of updates to the browser itself and depending on which extensions you use those can have frequent updates as well. Firefox by default wants to install ALL these updates automatically for you. Not a good idea, I prefer to have some control and know what I am installing so if there is a problem I can have something to work with. First thing we will want to do is to disable the automatic installation of Firefox updates. To do this: From the Tools Menu, select ‘Options…’ On top of the Options Window click…

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The Year of the Suns ~ Part 3

What one word could describe The Suns this year? How about ‘drama’! They pulled off a win on Monday against The Clippers in Game 7. Tonight, they lead the game…until the 3rd quarter then things started falling apart. Missed shot (especially 3-pointers) after shot by the Suns but the Mavericks kept scoring and took the lead. At one point the Mavericks had a 9 point lead. With minutes left the ‘drama’ unfolded… a couple 3-pointers including one from Nash, the Suns took the lead only to lose it again with 4.8 seconds remaining. At the last second, or more like…

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silicon.com Interview with Mitchell Baker

Mitchell Baker Talks to silicon.com About Mozilla in the Enterprise silicon.com has an interview with Mitchell Baker, which focuses on the limited success of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird in the enterprise market to date. The Mozilla Corporation President attributes some of the lack of success to a reliance on proprietary technologies within some businesses. She singles out intranets that only work with Microsoft Internet Explorer as a particular problem. However, she claims that the fact that Firefox is open-source does not on its own hold back adoption in large organisations. [complete article] I have to say this quote describes…

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The Year of the Suns ~ Part 2

The last couple nights have been ‘do-or-die’ for three of the match-ups in the NBA Conference Semi-Finals. Last night, the Detroit Pistons knocked out the Cleveland Cavilers to advance to the Conference Finals. This series with the Miami Heat will begin Tuesday in Detroit. Meanwhile on the Western Conference there are two big games tonight, San Antonio Spurs and the Dallas Mavericks as well as the Los Angeles Clippers and our Phoenix Suns. Now recall last year the Suns made it to the conference finals after defeating the Mavericks in six games only to be stopped by the Spurs in…

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R.I.P. BlueFrog

Blue Frog/Security is no more. For your safety UNINSTALL the extension(s) as well as the application. An alert reader on Go Firefox!, posted me a link to this Wired News Article: Under Attack, Spam Fighter Folds. Also check out: BlueSecurity, BlueFrog & BlueFreaks That Love Them: Blue Security Surrenders… Spammers Win.

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Firefox 2.0 Feature Preview: Inline Spellcheck

Robert Strong created the SpellBound Spellchecker for Firefox and Mozilla Suite (now known as Sea Monkey) extension which enabled users to have a web based spell checker. He also part of the development team for Firefox 2.0. When Firefox 1.5 came out Robert created a ‘developmental version’ of SpellBound which was an inline or spell as you type of spell checker. The inline spellcheck is suppose to be one of the new features in FF 2.0. I’ve had an opportunity to try it out. Right now it is only working for pages that have a text-area fields such as Yahoo!Mail….

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Firefox 2.0 Feature Preview: Session Management

The next new feature for Firefox 2.0 is Session Management. First thing I noticed is this is NOT quite the same as the session management features available in Tab Mix Plus, Session Manager or SessionSaver. If anything it is more similar to Crash Recovery. So…what’s the difference? Well, Session Management like these above mentioned extensions will recover your browser (tabs & windows) session exactly as it was in the event the browser crashes. However, unlike the above (Crash Recovery excluded) it does not recover your browser if you accidentally (or intentionally) close it. That is what I liked about Session…

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Firefox 2.0 Feature Preview: New search engine infrastructure and UI

Continuing my previews of some the new features with FF 2.0, I will now take look at the ‘New search engine infrastructure and UI’. Firefox 2.0 will come preloaded with six popular search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Amazon.com, Answers.com, Creative Commons and eBay). You can easily add more and remove search engines. Click the arrow next to the magnifying glass will display all the installed search engines and give you the option to ‘Manage Search Engines…’ Click Image For Larger View New FF 2.0 Search Engine UI The Manage Search Engine List allows you to re-order your search engines, add more…

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A New Milestone for FF 2.0

On May 13th Bon Echo Alpha 2 was released. Now I am sure you are asking “Oh humble Guru what the heck is Bon Echo?”. Bon Echo is the project name for FF 2.0, named after the park in Ontario, Canada. I have yet to play with this release yet but do look forward to doing so tomorrow. Some of the new features in this release include (click links below to see Blog entries): Links default to opening in new tabs, not new windows New user interface for Add-Ons (extensions & themes) Close buttons now appear on every tab, and…

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Firefox 2.0 Feature Preview: Add-ons UI

On my May 1st entry: Excellent Move Mr. Schroepfer!, I listed some of new features for FF 2.0, including Extension/Themes UI (user interface) change. This new feature is part of the Bon Echo Alpha 2 milestone release. No more separate interfaces for extensions and themes. Instead there is a new Add-ons UI where the management of extensions and themes are integrated together into one simplified interface. Click Image For Larger View New FF 2.0 Add-Ons UI Some changes to this interface include listing installed extensions and themes in alphabetical order instead of the order they were installed in. Note: Adblock…

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