Articles by ElGuru

Change Update Reminder Frequency

Depending on how you have your Firefox setup to handle updates (Firefox Button > Options > Advanced > Update), you will be prompted when there is an update for Firefox. You have the option of doing the update then or to have Firefox remind you later. The problem with later is it is 24-hours later which still may not be a good time to stop what you are doing to shut down Firefox (albeit the update only takes a couple minutes to install).  You can change the frequency of the reminder by changing the value for ‘later’ via an about:config tweak. Keep…

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Thunderbird 15 UI and Other Changes

Thunderbird 15 is coming out this Tuesday, August 21st and there are a couple User Interface (UI) changes as part of the new Australis UI. The tabs have been redesigned to look like well tabs (similar to what you see in Google Chrome). There has been some other small refinements in appearance of the UI as well. Also, when you are customizing your toolbars, there is no longer an option for ‘small icons’. Note: The ‘small icons’ change currently only affects Windows builds. Linux builds still had the ‘small icons’ option (have not heard about Mac users). Interestingly though, looking on my Windows 7…

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JAVA Plugin Update/Blocking

Users should ensure sure they have the most recent versions of Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and Java Developers Kit (JDK) plugins (note not all users may be using these plug-ins). Due to an increasingly exploited voluntarily found in the older versions of JRE and JDK plugins Mozilla is actively blocking outdated versions of these plugins. This vulnerability—present in the older versions of the JDK and JRE—is actively being exploited, and is a potential risk to users. To mitigate this risk, we have added affected versions of the Java plugin (Version 6 Update 32 and below as well as Version 7…

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Firefox 14.0.1 Released

Mozilla has released Firefox 14.0.1 for Windows, Mac and Linux desktop users as well as Android users on Tuesday, July 17th, 2012. Note: there was not a Firefox 14.0.0 release. Users will prompted to update within the next 72-hours or can manually update via Help > About Firefox or can download and install from the getfirefox.com site. New stuff in Firefox 14.0.1 includes: Google searches now utilize HTTPS Full screen support for Mac OS X Lion implemented Plugins can now be configured to only load on click (requires an about:config change) The Awesome Bar now auto-completes typed URLs For information about Firefox 14.0.1 see the release notes:…

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Thunderbird 14 Update Released

Mozilla has released an update to Thunderbird on Tuesday, July 17th, 2012 for Windows, Mac and Linux. Thunderbird 14 includes Various fixes and performance improvements as well as security fixes. Users will prompted to update within the next 72-hours or can manually update via Help > About Thunderbird or can download and install Thunderbird from here. There is one known issue in regards to issues with RSS feeds, see the release notes for more information. Lighting Users: upon first run of Thunderbird 14, an add-on compatibility check with be done. At that time you will be prompted to update from…

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No Future Thunderbird Development

Mozilla announced on July 6th they will longer be doing new development (feature) with Thunderbird, instead they will just continue to provide  security and stability updates. To be honest, I really don’t know of anything else I would want Thunderbird to be able to do than what it can right now. After all, it is marketed as an email client. The only exception would be an integrated calendar but the Lightning or (better) EarlyLight add-ons take care of that. I have never really care to use Thunderbird for RSS feeds or even as a news reader (not that my ISP offers access to newgroups anymore). I certainly had…

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Waterfox a 64-Bit Windows “Firefox”

ALERT: As of version 15 released on August 29th, Waterfox now comes with bloatware and will attempt to install said bloatware without your knowledge or permission. Read more: Waterfox 15 & AVG. Linux and Mac users have enjoyed having a 64-bit versions of Firefox available to them for nearly the past two years. However, for us Windows users, Mozilla has been teasing us and/or dragging their feet with 64-Bit Firefox. As a point of clarification I should say that there has been since Firefox 4 (may be even further back) 64-bit Windows builds on the Nightly Developmental channel. These are not official releases and have never made…

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Fix Grub Loader in Mint 13

I recently added Mint 13 to my former Vista Machine which now also runs Windows 7. Mint seemed to have installed fine and I was able to run the MDN ProfileManager for Firefox (still having issues getting it to work for Thunderbird, but not that big of a deal). Everything seemed fine until one night my wireless internet adapter was giving me troubles on my main Windows 7 machine. Since Linux does not support most wireless adapters I was going to boot into Windows on the other machine and see if I could get the adapter to work on that…

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EarlyLight

Tired of having to update Lightning every six-weeks (especially those of us who are using the Beta and/or Earlybird/Aurora builds of Thunderbird) when the channel merge hits? EarlyLight is the solution. EarlyLight is developed by rkent and is an unofficial build of Lightning that supports both Beta and Earlybird/Aurora builds of Thunderbird as well as the current release version on all operating systems. No more having to download a different version of Lightning for each Thunderbird channel. Note: EarlyLight currently does NOT support Daily Thunderbird Builds. Before you install EarlyLight, a couple things to keep in mind: If you are using Google Calendar(s)…

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Forcing Add-ons To Work

Mozilla made some changes to way add-ons were deemed ‘compatible’ back in Firefox 10.If an add-on is hosted on AMO and met certain criteria (see below) then the compatibility would automatically be ‘bumped up’ to the next Firefox version. Because of this, the Addon Compatibly Reporter can no longer be used to force add-ons to work (though it can still be used to “report” compatibly status). Brain King, the author of the Add-on Compatibility Reporter extentions explains: Compatible By Default does not enable all extensions. The types not enabled include the following: Add-ons marked to work with a Firefox version less than 4.0 Add-ons with binary components Add-ons explicitly marked…

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