New update to running multiple Internet Explorers
Posted by jerothe in 
Way back in 2005 a guy by the name of Joe Maddalone figured out how to run multiple versions of Internet Explorer simultaneously in Windows by using a select set of files. Since the release of Windows Vista, there have been some issues with running more than one Internet Explorer, but tonight I found a new solution. read more
My Firefox is bouncing up and down
Right after I got up and running on my laptop, and online, my Firefox windows on certain sites were bouncing up and down. Most sites actually, by about 5 pixels or so, constantly. After about 2 minutes I could feel my eyes strain, so this was the first thing I needed to fix when getting my new laptop settled. read more
Firefox 1.0.6 and some of the new features
Soon after Firefox 1.0.5 came out, version 1.0.6 followed. I guess there were some complaints that 1.0.5 broke some of the API. features, and the support for extensions got wacky. So, if Firefox didn’t already tell you to update, now is the time to do it, especially since broken extensions, in my opinion, would affect that many more people.
Go to Mozilla’s homepage to download your copy now.
Firefox’s Password Manager
Until about two weeks ago, I had real issues deleting my cookies. As far as I understood it, from a novice perspective, those small cookies were storing information like my passwords, which I have a hard time remembering. Especially since as of late, I have tried to make a point of making them harder to guess, which makes them that much harder for me to remember.
Firefox’s Password Manager is a little built is feature of the browser that will store all of your password’s, much like Robofill, or any other myriad of auto form filling softwares. Except, you don’t need a separate program, this comes with Firefox. It will auto fill the most recent password used, and if you don’t like that choice, you can then begin to type a different username, and Firefox will autofill the correct password.
Where is all of this information stored, you ask? Well that is easy. Let’s walk through how to access the password manager and how to set up a “Master Password” that will prompt on pages where you need
Step 1: Go to the Tools Menu and Select Options.
Step 2: Choose Privacy from the options, the one that looks like a little lock.
Step 3: In the middle area, you should see Saved Passwords, below Saved Form Information and above Download Manager History. Click the plus sign next to Saved Passwords and then choose View Saved Passwords.
At this point you can view your passwords. If you click the button Show Passwords, Firefox then will ask you for the Master Password in order to display then in another column to the right of Username. If you choose cancel, it just returns you to the same screen.
A Master Password, that is what we talked about before. To set that up, get back to your Saved Passwords area with the little plus button by clicking the close button. Then click the button that says Change Master Password.
This will give you a dialog box that allows you to type in your old password, and then type in a new password and confirm it. Firefox also has a little rating system that will give you a graphical rating on how good your password is, or in orders words, hard to guess.
If you don’t already have a password, I am actually not sure what happens here. I assume the button says Set Master Password. I know I only did it recently, but I have a very short memory.
From here on out, to use or display your passwords, you will only need to remember one password, your Master. Now you can surf to sites, add those passwords on your first visit, and then tell Firefox when it prompts you to “Remember the password for future use“. When you do this, it adds it to your list with some encryption and never again will you have to try to remember it.
There is talk that the next version will have support to integrate with other password security systems like Keychain on Mac OS X, and also allow you to import passwords from other programs / browsers. Good ol Mozilla, they are always thinking.
Firefox Google Search Shortcut
If you haven’t noticed, there is a little search box in the upper right of Firefox with a little G next to it. Most people know that this searches Google, and if you didn’t know, now you do.
But, countless times during the day, I would either use my quick one click button bookmarks I have setup in Firefox to visit Google’s site, or I would type it in really quick manually. It’s pretty short right? Well after typing it 20 times a day, that is a few min tues you could save with one keypress shortcut.
To get up to that search box without your mouse, all you have to press is this;
Ctrl + E or Ctrl + K
Both of these shortcuts will put your cursor in the search box, highlight any current text for deletion that is already there, and all you do is type and hit enter and you are at Google’s search results!
Now, there are other great one click searches in that box too, like Amazon and Ebay, which I will visit every once in awhile. I haven’t figured out the keypress to bring down the select menu to change which site you search, but those options are there too if you want to explore with your mouse.
But who wants to do that when we have such great keyboard shortcuts? Not me that is for sure.
Firefox 1.0.5 came out today
Real quick. Firefox 1.0.5 came out today. Nothing of real note for me, since I am just the “pretty” guy in making things look nice, I don’t have to worry too much in terms of knowing exactly what some of these security flaws are that they keep patching. All that I know, is there is a new release, like a drone, I upgrade, and I am more secure from malicious software or other scamming techniques that could harm me or my computer.
Go to Mozilla’s homepage to download your copy now.
Firefox Extensions Part 5
Jeeze, I am becoming a real freak about these. But like everything I am sure it will wear off, and last night may have been the high point as I downloaded about 20 new extensions from a list of about 300. There isn’t anywhere else to go from here I would guess.
miniT – Tab Organizer
Since I wrote about this in May, this has been bugging me. Here is the browser that I am attached at the hip to, and anytime I say, “Gee, I wish Firefox did this…” I go out and look for an extension that does exactly that. But there wasn’t an updated version of mimiT that worked with Firefox 1.0.4, or at least I thought.
Version 0.5 is now out, and has been out for a little while I think. You have to watch the extensions pages at Mozilla, sometimes you can come across the outdated versions and the only difference is the version number of the extension. Normally Mozilla keeps these updated for you once you install them, but that is the trick, installing them even if they aren’t compatible.
So, enough rambling. This extension lets me drag my browser windows! Finally. Easy to use, and helps manage my information when researching. I love it. Notice the screenshot below. It gives you a nice little purple arrow to show you where you are going to drop your tab in your new arrangement. Supposedly this should be in Firefox version 1.1, and you can test it out on the developer release entitled Deer Park.
Rating : 10 of 10
Like I said, works perfect, I love it. I hope it continues to work in future version of Firefox, or they do incorporate it into the main release.
Firefox Extensions Part 4
I know you all tire of my reviews of all of the Firefox extensions, but here is another couple ones that may blow your mind.
Fangs – Firefox Screen Reader Emulator
The other day at work, we came across a site that had a browser (Fast Browser) that would give you a little animated helper dude that acted as a screen reader. But the guy didn’t seem to read things on a webpage with any sort of order or choice, so I figured, hey, Firefox has to have extensions for this. Sure enough,
they did.
Called Fangs in response to the wildly common and popular screen reader JAWS, this is a useful extension to understand a webpage
from a user who doesn’t have a common person’s luxuries. For those who are deaf or blind, screen readers can allow them to navigate a website by their choice of heading or links, as well as turn the text on the screen into understandable braille characters on a refreshable Braille device.
Rating : 9 of 10
I didn’t give this a perfect rating solely because I haven’t used it that extensively. But from what I can tell, for free it does a lot of the basic and advanced features that JAWS will do specifically for web pages. Fangs will highlight headers and lists in different colors, and basically it looks like one big page of text. It will also give you helpful information on how disabled users see the links and the headers in your page. It will list them out, giving you information on their choices of navigation, and how much that makes sense when it is just text.
FoxyVoice – Firefox Audible Screen Reader Extension
Read in a monotone voice, this will give you a true idea of what a webpage is like for those who do cannot see. Foxyvoice is a extension that is simple to use, with a small icon in the lower right toolbar, one click will turn the screen reader on at any point in time.
Rating : 9 of 10
Again, I haven’t used this extensively in development. My one questions is how accurate it is to audible readers. My understanding was that other readers will actually read the HTML code out loud as well, and Foxyvoice does not. I believe you can install an SDK voice kit into Windows to give you additional voices as well to break away from the computerized voice that is the default.
Duplicate Tab
This is a simple extension that will make a new tabbed browser window with the exact same address of a website that you are currently on.
Rating : 10 of 10
Does exactly what it says it is going to do, duplicates a tab. The only problem is when you use it in conjunction with the Web Developer Toolbar because the shortcut for a new duplicate tab is shift+ctrl+T and that is also the shortcut option for toggling the Developer Toolbar. So, all we need to do is set the options > keys in the Toolbar to something else.
Web Developer Toolbar
What an amazing tool! I love this thing. Here is a screenshot of just one section of the tools available;
So many options. You can use something as simple as a one click button to view a webpage’s source, to something as complicated as outlining all of your block elements in a red border color to see how they are reacting. This is so useful for developing CSS sites. You have validation options for CSS and XHTML as well as standards for other types of internet ready devices like palm pilots and phones with the WCAG standards checking built in.
There are one click options to clear the cache, one click options to view a webpage in a different resolution, and you have complete control over the settings with an options button as well. This will let you set shortcuts, the screen sizes you want to test, and even the testing colors for borders and stuff.
Rating : 10 of 10
I think this is my new favorite extension. I don’t see how much of a use it would be for a non web-developer, but I use this in developing and just everyday use for view source and clearing my cache. A must if you are seriously into saving time in testing.
IE View
Self explanitory, this is a option that will be added on install to your right click menu options. It is a one click to open the page you are currently viewing in an IE browser window.
Rating : 10 of 10
Simple and straight to the point, this is helpful when previewing a website during development.
Firefox Extensions Part 3
I read today that there is somewhere around 400 extensions for Firefox now available. Pretty amazing. I continue to come across really useful extensions, making me fall in love with Firefox all the time and hating Microsoft more for not allowing me, the user, the most important person, do what I need with my own browsing experience.
Google Preview – Thumbnails in your google searches
Simple and straight forward, this extension gives you the power to see a small version of what a website looks like before you actually visit. Kind of like searching for images where you get a small thumbnail view first, here you get a small thumbnail of the homepage for your search results. Check out the screenshot I took below. I searched for “Really cool computer cases” and this is what my screen looks like;
Rating : 10 of 10
Cool just because. But seriously, I like to see whether I am visiting a crappy designed site, or a reputable site with good information. Funny how things like that can even be read into at a small scale.
Firefox Extensions Part 2
Last month I discovered how many extensions are available for Mozilla Firefox. Today I went looking again and here is a list of some more that I found. Granted, there a A TON! But these are ones that I found useful for my processes, or could be useful for people I know.
The ones I couldn’t get working
Dictionary Search
This basically would give you a right click option to look up any word on a webpage that you don’t understand. I don’t think this works in the most recent releases of Firefox. It didn’t give me the options in my right click menu that the website said it would, demonstrated in the screenshot it gave. But at least it didn’t give me an error message in the extension installer box. So maybe I did something wrong.
miniT – Tab Organizer
For about a month now I have been periodically checking to for a newer release of the miniT extension. Today I found a more recent version, previously I was only able to find a version that worked with Firefox .8 and prior (Version 0.3). I did find a miniT version that should work with 1.0, but when I tired to install it, the extensions manager said it wasn’t compatible (Version 0.4).
Basically, the idea behind this extension is that you can drag and drop your open tabs into a certain order so when you are cycling back and forth through them with shortcuts, you can go back and forth between certain pages easily, no matter what order you opened them.
The ones I did get working, mostly.
Firefox Calendar
I knew about this extension for a long time, as it is developed by Mozilla directly I believe. But I didn’t really know how to install and work extensions until recently so I gave this another shot. It is a really useful calendar system very similar to the calendar in Microsoft Outlook. Adding a calendar to Firefox just streamlines your tasks that much more.
Rating : 8 of 10
Mostly because it seems cool, if I had a day to day use. Even though I probably don’t, that doesn’t mean I won’t in the future.
Foxytunes
This is one of the top 15 extensions downloaded for Firefox, or so I read. It is basically a music controller you can use in your browser and puts all of the player controls in the footer bar in the lower right of the browser.
Rating : 3 of 10
If someone figures this extension out, let me know. I didn’t get it. I started my Windows Media Player and tried to control music through the browser, but all the extension seemed to do was slow my response time in my browsing, and the controls were even worse in response time. And the controls I tried, didn’t work. But that is five minutes of evaluation, and it seems to have a heavy following. So try it out for yourself. There seem to be shortcuts to hit without having to control your music with mouse clicks, so that is cool too.
Quicknote
The Quick note extension will give you the ability to leave yourself stickies through your browser. With a ton of customizable options, including number of stickies up to four, this is a cool little extension.
Rating : 6 of 10
This is another extension that seems cool, and even though I don’t have a use for it, I know people in the office that may, so it is good to try it out.
Duplicate Tab
Simple, and straight to the point, this little extension gives you the option to copy the address of your current window into a new browser tabbed window with one shortcut Ctrl + Shift + T
Rating : 10 of 10
New Browser Version – Firefox 1.0.4 Released
Last week two large security holes were exposed in Firefox 1.0.3 publicly. Who knows how long they had been there.
But like always, the mozilla team responded quickly with a new version to fix those problems in version 1.0.4.
The Microsoft loyalists have used this opportunity to point out how IE is better than Firefox because now it is “unsafe”, or was briefly. But the fact of the matter is, the new release came out within a matter of weeks, not months or years. The browser is so much better for those creative personalities who like to be able to customize everything and make it their own, and the fact of the matter is, more people are getting it for this reason.
I have seen usage statistics at somewhere around 25%. Now, granted, there have been other browsers that had a largely following and crashed. Time will tell if Firefox will do the same. But there would not be so many security flaws being discovered if hackers didn’t think that the browser was widespread enough to spend their time trying to find holes.
Face it. Firefox is going to be around for at least another year, if not forever.
The Opera 8.0 Challenge
Frequently I read DSLReports, and this is where I think I first heard about “1 Million Download Challenge” issued by Opera’s CEO, Jon S. von Tetzchner.
I haven’t used Opera predominantly for about a year and a half, but I still try to keep abreast on the latest version of browsers, and download them. I must have missed version 8.0, and what better opportunity then to download it after I heard this story.
Basically, this funny techie business owner (John) was going to swim the ocean, from Norway where Opera is developed, to the USA if there were 1 million downloads of the newest version of Opera, version 8.0 in a 48 hour period.
Well, it happened. Now, this was a claim that he made while standing around a water cooler, that type of jesting situation. So even though he didn’t have to do anything, they made a huge funny event out of it, sending John into a raft into the ocean, only to have the raft start to sink and they had to save him.
It made pretty good press though, which is what Opera needs right now since Firefox came out of nowhere in the last year and is kicking their butt. If you want, you can read the full article at <a href=”http://www.opera.com/swim/” title=”This link will open in a new window” target=”_blank”>Opera’s website which is very amusing, as well as see the photos of the boss, in the water floudering around.
Here’s a sample…
