Posts Tagged ‘Firefox’
Google Chrome – The New Look of Future Browsing?
Could Google’s attempt at an internet browser be a huge success, or just a flop? Google released Google Chrome on September 2nd and they are making some pretty big claims about their new browser. I’ll start first with the mechanics behind the browser.
Chrome uses a different method behind it’s tab system. Instead of opening each tab under the same process, and lagging the computer as well as consuming memory, some of which cannot be reused until you restart, Chrome opens each tab in a new process. In this way, if one tab goes faulty, the whole browser doesn’t crash, just the tab. If you prefer to use tabs over windows, this is the browser for you. If you prefer to use windows over tabs, this is the browser for you. It’s unique drag and drop design allows you to separate tabs into windows, and windows back into tabs again. This is all done at a quick speed, and there is no lag time involved.
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Scour – The Social Networking Search Engine With A Bonus
Out of the top 5 most visited websites in the world, three of them are search engines. All of them show results for the same keyword differently though, based on different techniques to show you what they think is the most relevant to your search. But what if you could see the results from those three websites in one place? Scour is the answer. Scour takes the results from the search engines and displays them when you search, giving you the “perfect” search. What separates Scour from other sites like Dogpile are the social networking aspects of it. Scour lets users rate and comment websites, and the ratings are factored into future searches. Scour also gives users points for searching, rating, and commenting. After reaching a certain amount of points (like 6,500), you can get $25 bucks in cash sent to you via Paypal or a prepaid Visa card.
The great thing about Scour is how you can earn money for searching exactly like you used to with Google, and the results are better too. Scour makes money by sponsored links like Google does, but instead of keeping all the money to themselves, they want to say thanks to their loyal users with a little cash present.
For Firefox users: If you would like to make Scour your default search engine in the URL bar, type in “about:config”, search for “keyword” in the filter bar, then change the “keyword.URL” value to “http://scour.com/search/web/” without the quotes. Have fun with Scour!
Fasterfox Hacked to Work With Firefox 3.6
I’m sure anyone who has used Firefox 2 remembers Fasterfox, an addon that increased your connection speed to servers on the net. However, the addon creator still has not updated the addon to work with Firefox 3. Someone designed a modified version of Fasterfox to work with Firefox 3 however, so Fasterfox is back for the masses. If you are worried there is a virus in the addon, you can view the virus scan results. The addon is completely unchanged other than being compatible with the greatest version of Firefox yet, and here is a download link for it:
Update: I modified the file to work with version 3.6.* of Firefox.
To install the addon, just drap the xpi file (the only file) onto any part of the Firefox window, then you will see the normal addon installation steps.
Keep Your Bookmarks In Sync Across All Your Computers
Have you ever wanted to find that one site or another, only to realize that the link is stored on your other computer? Foxmarks, currently for Firefox and IE, makes it easy to syncronize your bookmarks. If you save a couple bookmarks on Computer A, then save a couple on Computer B later, Computer A and B will both have the same bookmarks. Foxmarks works in the background, going as unnoticed as possible.
Maybe you only want to have some of your bookmarks on your work or school computer, while keeping others saved only on your home computer. With Foxmarks, you can create profiles that will only have certain bookmarks saved on them. One of the recommendations of the profiles system is keeping a shortlist of bookmarks for your phone/PDA, and there are plenty of other uses, too.
What if you can’t install Firefox at work? Foxmarks saves the day again, because you can view all of your bookmarks on their website.
Are you ready to download Foxmarks yet? Here are some download links:
It’s a Big Week for Browsers, The Launch of Opera 9.50
Shortly before the launch of Firefox 3.0, Opera had a launch of its own. Version 9.50 of the venerable browser signified a turn in Opera’s interface. An almost complete overhaul of Opera’s tab interface, as well as many separate new features of its own.
Being a long time Opera user, (though now throughly devoted to Firefox), it was interesting to see the changes over time. I must admit, version 9.50 continues Opera’s long tradition of pioneering in terms of browser tabs. Their new tab interface is sleek, intuative, and best of all, it works. Adding a new tab button to the right of your open tabs, as well as the ability to recover closed tabs simply by clicking on the trash can icon, Opera proves that, though it may be the little guy, it is still capable of innovation. In addition to the new tab interface, it added a Quick Find Bar, almost identical to Mozilla Firefox’s “Awesome Bar”. The new version also adds a new browser engine, making it twice as fast as Opera version 9.2 when it comes to rendering Javascript and HTML, as well as third party plug-ins. It also considerably accelerates Opera’s start up time, which was not slow to begin with. Likewise the new version added Opera Link, which synchronizes your bookmarks with your Mobile Phone. This allows you to take your bookmarks anywhere. It also revamped the Toolbar system, giving more customization options to the user, and virtually eliminating the accidental opening of the toolbar. (That was a major problem during my use of version 9.2).
All in all, the new version of Opera is fast, sleek, and an overall improvement on an already excellent browser. If you’re a fan of Opera, I whole heartedly encourage you go ahead and download the 9.50. Personally, I’m going to stick to Firefox 3.0.
Results of Download Day 08
Download Day took place on June 17th, 2008. Throughout the 24 hour period there were an average of over 8 MILLION downloads. According to Mozilla those 8 million downloads in a single day is more than the total amount of Firefox downloads in history. Although the number of participants in this event is very outstanding, was the actual 7.14 mb of data worth the download? An inside look of the brand new Firefox 3 shows that everything they previewed in the beta and on the website came through remarkably well. The features are near perfect and a huge upgrade from it’s child Firefox 2. Firefox 3 is a breakthrough in browsers, this time clearly outdoing Internet Explorer and other browsers such as Opera. Firefox is moving up the charts, and the people can thank Mozilla for that.
There are very many helpful and amazing features that, after a few days of testing, have proved to be essential to my Firefox experience. First is the new toolbar, nicknamed the Awesome Bar. Basically, you type in a keyword, and it gives you all possible results in a drop down menu that are relevant to that keyword. It becomes increasingly helpful when you can’t simply remember the website you visited yesterday, but you do of course remember the actual content the website contained. I love this toolbar because it is too confusing to bookmark every single site you go across that you wish to view daily. This tool is a great toolbar (no pun intended) that helps keep your bars clutter free and your day just a bit less hectic! This amazing feature is probably the most helpful, but there are many others that deserve a mention. The second most useful tool added to Firefox 3 is the advanced malware protection. This protection is a huge step up from Firefox 2, letting there be a smart list of possible internet attacks being updated every second! This is another step in the direction of perfect protection. This time around Firefox 3 delivers a killing blow with a full screen message blocking possibly dangerous websites that can infest your computer. The virus defense Firefox 3 offers works with your anti-virus program as well! It lets the program know when your downloading something, and automatically scans the file, making sure there is nothing harmful contained within it! I for one am ecstatic about this improvement to the already wonderful browser. The new security measures Mozilla has taken to ensure our safety is a very important part to our internet lives. A few other minor updates that are worth noting are the One click bookmark (which allows faster bookmarking of sites if you are in a hurry), Integrated parental controls, and Full screen zoom and navigation. These provide for an all around better Firefox experience.
I have used Firefox for many years now, and from many of my friends whose first experience with Firefox is Firefox 3, their opinion of the web browser is void of criticism and critique. Firefox again does not disappoint the public, and held true to their word. I want to thank Mozilla and specifically the creators of Firefox for this wonderful, versatile browser!
MeasureIt Measures Stuff In Firefox
Web developers know that finding exact measurements of anything that isn’t an image can be a pain. MeasureIt attempts to make life easier by putting a button in the bottom-left corner of Firefox’s window. Clicking on the button will put a semi-transparent white layer over the webpage (I don’t know why honestly), and lets you click and drag a portion of the screen to see its exact measurements. The addon isn’t perfect though, as you can’t select particular elements of a page like Colorzilla (an excellent color picker for Firefox) does.
All-in-all, MeasureIt gets the job done quick and pretty easily, so head over the the MeasureIt download page. At the time of this writing it works for any edition of Firefox from 1.0 to 3.0.
Firefox Looking to Set World Record
For those of you that are completely in the dark, Firefox is a Mozilla-made web browser that is completely customizable. Firefox is used by 15% of all internet users around the world. That may not seem like many people comparatively to the 78% of people that use Internet Explorer, but considering that IE is the default browser on all Microsoft PC’s, Firefox is a very popular choice. Firefox has been around for years, and now, they are finally releasing Firefox 3, which has better virus and malware protection. It features easier password management, full page zoom via keyboard shortcuts, and also scrollable tabs! There are many new updates, and they all bring exciting news to die-hard Firefox fans.
With all of that being said, Spread Firefox is trying to set a world record. If you have noticed the affiliate on the right side of the blog, you would have seen (and hopefully clicked on) it. Sometime during June Firefox 3 will be released, and it is their intent that within 24 hours of the release time, it will reach the most downloaded software in history. All you have to do is download Firefox 3 on that day in June, and you will contribute to the record. Mozilla is making this easy for you to remember by sending you an email on the day of release.
Mozilla has worked very hard on Firefox, and their many other sophisticated projects like Thunderbird. The least you could do would be to contribute a few minutes of your time downloading this fantastic web browser.
Make Firefox Aesthetically Pleasing With Addons
Firefox is the best web browser on the internet. But even with it’s pleasing looks, there are 3 addons that will make Firefox the envy of all your buddies.
CuteMenus – Crystal SVG: The menus in Firefox are good, but there’s just something
missing. Icons! Cutemenus adds icons to all of the menus in Firefox, even ones that aren’t in Firefox by default. New features include adding icons to toolbars, removing the toolbar dividers (this feature makes Firefox look amazingly better), and removing the “Go’ button from the url and search bar. So if you are looking to make the menus easier to recognize and faster to look through, adding icons with Cutemenus will do the job.
Colorful Tabs: This addon is really self explanatory. After installing the addon, all of your tabs will be different colors. Look through the options, however, and you’ll see that there is much more than meets the eye. Firstly, you can choose to color the tabs by URL or by random. It’s also possible to assign certain colors to certain websites (like this one, for instance). You could also put an image as the background of the tabs if you felt like it.
Menu Editor: After installing a few extra addons, your right-click menu is going to get very cluttered very 
fast. Menu Editor’s goal is to clean up your right-click menu (and all of the other menus in Firefox). Just open up Menu Editor, choose the menu you want to edit, then uncheck anything you don’t want on that menu. You can also add a separator or two to sort stuff even better. If all those extra options you’re never going to touch anyways are annoying you, Menu Editor is the perfect addon to simplify those menus.