Lunascape is the first multilingual, triple engine browser developed in Japan. It combines the four main web browsers – Internet Explorer, FireFox, Chrome, and Safari. This mean that it supports the three layout engines, or rendering engines, that are used to create the four browsers listed above: Trident (Internet Explorer), Gecko (FireFox), and WebKit (Chrome/Safari). Currently, it only works on Windows.

One thing that I really liked about the browser is how customizable it is. When installing it, I am able to choose the default layout engine, or rendering engine that I want to use.

This doesn’t mean that I can’t quickly change to the other engines. In the lower-left hand corner, there is a globe icon that allows me to change the browser for that web page I am viewing.

You can even associate a web page with a specific layout engine, even if it’s not the default. This is especially useful when you need to test a web site/blog on various browsers.

You can even use Lunascape as a portable browser instead of having it installed on your system.

Lunascape allows you to import bookmarks from Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and various others. I found it a little strange that it didn’t allow you to import bookmarks from Safari or Chrome, since Webkit is one of the inbuilt layout engines.

Lunascape comes preset with four different skins – Default, Cool, Silver, and Simple. They are equivalent to the four browsers that Lunascape has. If you don’t like any of those, you can change the web skin to the 190 different web skins that were created by users. Users can also create their own skin and upload it into the skin library that Lunascape has online. There are some great skins in the library, so don’t forget to check it out.

The plugin library is not as vast. There is only one plugin available: Twitter plugin. This allows you to have the Twitter tool in the Lunascape browser. There should be more plugins available, or allow users to use the plugins from the other browsers. Looking in the Lunascape forum, it seems that users will have the capability of using Internet Explorer and FireFox plugins in Lunascape in the next release (currently in beta). Additionally, users are also able to register add-ons that they created for the browser.

Lunascape has a great built-in RSS Reader that allows you to add a single RSS feed or import an OPML file.

There is also a RSS Ticker that scrolls at the top of the browser with your RSS feeds.

It doesn’t seem that the RSS Reader and the RSS Ticker are associated with one another, which is a bad flaw. The best way to handle this is to allow you to pick and choose which feeds in your RSS Reader you want to be in the RSS Ticker. This will eliminate the redundancy of having to add an RSS feed to two different places, and not be overwhelmed with too many items scrolling at the top of the browser. A good thing is, the RSS settings are easily customizable and allows for the ease of subscribing to RSS podcasts.

In Lunscape, you are able to search different search engines, including Google, Yahoo, Ask, Technorati, Ebay, and Amazon. This is great because you don’t need to have more than one toolbar to search the different search engines.

Lunascape has various bookmarklet that have been taken from the three layout engines that you are able to use and customize to the way you want. They are sectioned off by Trident, Gecko, and Webkit, so you know where the bookmarklet came from. It gives you the capability of customizing the browser even more than you already can.

Overall, I have to say that Lunascape is a browser that web developers should use. There are a couple of issues with the browser, but nothing that takes away its customizability and usefulness.

Lunascape

Lunascape – The World’s First Triple Engine Browser originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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If you have a web site or blog, you probably rely on web analytics to understand about your visitors. It provides a way for you to know

1. How they found your site
2. The items on your site they find interesting and
3. Location information about your visitors.

The best known and most widely used web analytics tool is Google Analytics. There are over 80 reports that can be accessed to track and analyze the health of your web site/blog. Additionally, it also has an ad hoc reporting function that allows you to further tailor these 80 reports, or create your own from scratch. There are other tasks that allow you to monitor vistors’ paths on your site/blog, monitor your AdWords, group similar visits together, etc. What if you were able to extend the functions that Google Analytics offer? There is a Firefox add-on that will allow you to do that. It’s called the Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension.

What does it do?

Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension enhances Google Analytics by using a variety of GreaseMonkey user scripts. The add-on uses user scripts created by different developers into one area. It gives Google Analytics some of the user-friendly and additional features that are missing.

What do I need to do before I start using it?

The first thing you need is to go to the FireFox add-on page, and install GreaseMonkey. After GreaseMonkey is up and running, install the Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension add-on.

How do I personalize it?

After installing Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension and GreaseMonkey, go to Tools->Add-Ons->Better Google Analytics Firefox. Press the Preference button.  There are three tabs: General, Reports, and Other.

What do I do in the General tab?

Go to the General tab. There are three options: automatically entering Google Analytics; automatically expanding the sub-navigation items; and increase the text boxes.

• If you want to automatically enter Google Analytics whenever the button is displayed, then check the check box next to this option.
• If you want to have all the sub-navigation expand automatically, then check the check box.
• If you want to increase the text boxes, then check this check box.

What do I do in the Reports tab?

In the Reports tab, it provides you additional report features that will make the Google Analytics’ reports area, more powerful. It adds search functionality, export capabilities, full-screen reader, profile enhancements, table sorting, and social media metrics. If you want to select one or all of the options, check the check boxes next to them.

What do I do the in the Other tab?

In the Other tab, it allows additional features to other areas of Google Analytics. It provides two Google Analytics Conversion University functionalities: “Expand All” button and the time. Also, it has a URL builder override for the “utm_nooverride” url variable.

What did I think?

I really love this Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension. It gives extra functionality to Google Analytics that makes it more user friendly and easier to navigate. Before I found this add-on, I was using the basic functions that Google Analytics had to offer because I didn’t really understand how to use it. With this add-on, I am using it more, using more reports, and even the goals/funnel features. If you have never use it, and you have a web site and/or blog, install it.

How do I get more information?

• To learn more about Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension, please visit: http://erikvold.com/tools/firefox/betterga/index.cfm
• To learn more about GreaseMonkey, please visit: http://www.greasespot.net/

Firefox Extension Adds Functionality to Google Analytics originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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By itself, Greasemonkey does essentially nothing. At least, nothing that you as a user would notice. To really use it, you download Greasemonkey scripts which all have some special purpose. For example, right now I’m writing this from a browser with Greasemonkey installed, and I’m using scripts to enhance YouTube, Facebook, and Google Images.

The Greasemonkey website describes the general function pretty well -

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function.
Hundreds of scripts are already available for free. And if you’re the tinkerer sort, you can also write your own.

I should note that some other browsers support these scripts, but often in a limited fashion. Opera can run some Greasemonkey scripts, and Safari has Creammonkey to achieve a similar end.

Installation

You can download the Firefox extension from the Greasespot homepge. It will install normally just like any other Firefox addon, and you’ll likely have to restart your browser. Once it’s back open, you should see a Greasemonkey icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Adding Scripts

Once installed, you can begin adding in scripts. The scripts will not require a browser restart, but if you’ve already got the page open that the script is meant to act on (such as YouTube), you may need to refresh the page. To get an idea of the type of changes Greasemonkey can do, here’s a comparison of the same YouTube video page with and without the YouTube Enhancer script.

First the normal YouTube play screen…

And now with Greamonkey enhancements…

As you can see, this gives you a LOT more options in terms of video quality and control. This is just one of MANY great user scripts available from userscripts.org.

Recommended Scripts

No Greasemonkey article would be complete without a list of some of the most useful user scripts. Here I’ve listed some of the ones I’ve found to be particularly helpful.

• YouTube Enhancer – Demonstrated above, adds new video controls and download option to YouTube.
• TinyURL Decoder – Shows you what’s behind those TinyURL redirects so you’ll never get Rickrolled again.
• Textarea Resize – Allows for a larger text area in websites that only provide a small text box.
• Folders4Gmail – Allows you to organize your GMail labels into a category hierarchy so you can use “sub-labels”.
• YouTube Cleaner – Removes some of the extra cruft from YouTube (like comments) that you may not want. Can be easily enabled/disabled.
• Pre-Fill Comments – If you frequently comment on blogs like MakeTechEasier, you can use this script to automatically fill in your name/email/URL.

And many, many more.

Do you have any Greasemonkey scripts you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments!

How to Enhance Your Browser with Greasemonkey originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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The truth of fact is, Ubuntu does not update its repositories for newer version of software packages, with the exception of security fixes, until the next release of Ubuntu. For example, the default version of Firefox for Ubuntu Jaunty is Firefox 3.0 and it won’t be upgraded to Firefox 3.5 at least until Ubuntu 9.10. In most cases, especially when it comes to browsers and various Web application, it is always better to upgrade to the newest version due to the new features and security improvement. This is where Ubuntuzilla comes into play.

Ubuntuzilla is a python script that checks your system for Mozilla software (Firefox, Thunderbird, or Seamonkey) and update them to the latest version released from Mozilla server. It also comes with an update checker that periodically performs automatic checks and updates to keep your system up-to-date with possible changes in the Mozilla website and release servers.

Install Ubuntuzilla

Download the deb file to your desktop. (64-bit users go to this site and download the ubuntuzilla-x.x.x-0ubuntu1-amd64.deb package.)

Double click on the deb file to load the graphical installer. Click on the Install Package to install it in your system.

Running Ubuntuzilla

Once you have finished the installation, close all instance of your Firefox (if you are using Thunderbird or SeaMonkey, close them as well).

Open up a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and type

ubuntuzilla.py

It will now prompt you a series of questions:

The first question is to ask if you want to upgrade to the latest version of Firefox. No doubt, the answer is ‘y‘.

Next step is to choose the language for your Firefox.

It will then proceed to download and install the latest stable build of Firefox in your system.

At the end of the installation, it will ask you if you want to schedule a periodical check of the latest release of the software.

Remove Firefox

For some reasons that you are not happy with the latest release of Firefox and wanted to switch back to the previous version, you can easily remove the latest build by running the following command in the terminal:

ubuntuzilla.py -a remove -p firefox

Firefox 3.0 will be restored in your system.

How to Easily Upgrade your Firefox to 3.5 (and future version) in Ubuntu originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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1. Foxmarks/Xmarks

Type: Browser Extension (Firefox, IE, Safari)

Saves: Bookmarks, Passwords

Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) is a browser extension that allows you to synchronize bookmarks from several locations so that they can follow you anywhere. It used to be a Firefox-only extension, but now has extend its reach to Internet Explorer and Safari. The website has a type of content search where you can see reviews and ratings for many web sites based on the users of the Xmarks extension. With the Xmarks extension installed, you’ll also notice some new icons next to your Google search results indicating ratings and reviews for some of the sites in your search results.

Xmarks also includes an option to sync your saved passwords, so that you can keep the passwords saved in one browser and share them to all the others where you installed Xmarks.

To install the Xmarks extension, go to http://download.xmarks.com/download and choose the appropriate plugin for your browser.

2. delicious

Type: Browser Extension (Firefox, Internet Explorer 8, Safari, Chrome)

Saves: Bookmarks

Any topic on web bookmark services will always eventually lead to http://delicious.com/ (previously known as del.icio.us). This site has been around for a while and has always been a great place to store and share your bookmarks. Delicious also allows you to tag your bookmarks with keywords, so that you can search your (or other people’s) bookmarks based on tags. From the website you can search with those tags to see what bookmarks others have submitted on that topic.

The browser extension for Firefox can be found here.

The browser extension for IE8 can be found here

The browser extension for Safari can be found here

For Google Chrome, go to the delicious site and drag the bookmarklet to the bookmark bar.

3. Mozilla Weave

Type: Browser Extension (Firefox)

Saves: Bookmarks, browsing history, saved passwords and tabs

Finally, there’s Mozilla Weave. This is a much more ambitious project than just saving your bookmarks online. Weave is intended to let you keep a complete browser “experience” from one computer to the next. It saves much more info online so that you can access things like your browsing history and tabs along with bookmarks and passwords when roaming to a different Firefox installation. Keeping things like your browser history saved online would make it a lot easier to access that page-you-were-on-yesterday-but-can’t-quite-remember-the-name, or pull up that news article you just saw but isn’t on the site’s front page anymore.

Weave appears to be a very useful tool, but unfortunately it seems to require Firefox 3.5, which is still in development. If you’re really excited to try out Weave but don’t want to wait until 3.5 is officially released as stable, you can get information on download and installation at the Mozilla Labs website.

There are some other options out there that I chose not to include in this article for various reasons such as platform portability or concerns about data privacy. If you’re using a bookmark sync program/extension to manage your bookmarks, I’d like to hear about your experiences in the comments below.

Three Easy Ways to Synchronize Your Bookmarks Across Various Browsers originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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Here is a simple trick to default your search to Google.com, regardless of which country you are in.

On your browser’s URL bar, if you typed in google.com, it will redirect to your country local domains (such as google.fr or google.ch).

To search on Google.com, you just have to type in http://www.google.com/ncr and google.com will automatically appear. For your info, the ‘ncr’ refers to No Country Redirect.

A good thing about this is that you don’t have to type in ‘google.com/ncr’ everytime you want to search in Google. The first time you go to google.com/ncr page, Google will set a cookie in your browser and make all your future searches default to google.com. This means that you only need to go to www.google.com/ncr once and you will be able to search Google.com right from your Firefox’s search bar (at the top right corner) at all time.

Get your Google local domain back

You just need to clear your cookie and your Google local domain will show up the next time you type in Google.com.

How To Default Your Search To Google.com In Firefox originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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5. How To Be More Efficient With Firefox Keywords

Bookmark Access

Often, it’s faster to send your computer instructions with the keyboard rather than with the mouse. This includes accessing your favorite websites. On my computer, for example, I’ve got a few different bookmarks for MakeTechEasier.com to access different parts of the site. If I want to log in to create a new post, I’ve got to grab the mouse, go into the Bookmarks menu, find the MTE submenu, find the section I want, and click the icon. While that’s not exactly rocket science, keywords can make that faster and easier.

Open your Bookmarks menu and pick something you use often. Right-click the icon and choose Properties. You’ll get a screen much like the one below. In the Keyword field you can enter whatever keyword you’d like to use to access that site.

From this point on, you can click in the address bar (or use Ctrl+L) and type in your keyword to be taken immediately to that site.

Keyword Searches

This is my favorite use for keywords. By default, Firefox includes a fair number of search engines in the box in the upper right corner, and even more available to be added from their website, but they can’t cover everything. There are several websites I search regularly and we can use the Keywords feature to do it better. The same method from above can be used to search your favorite sites. Above, we took an existing bookmark and edited the properties to include a keyword. This time, we’ll take a different approach.

In our example, I’m going to set up a keyword search for, you guessed it, MakeTechEasier.com. As you read this, you may notice the search box in the top right corner of our site. This box allows you to search for articles from within MakeTechEasier.com.

We’re going to use that box to create a custom search for this site. Right-click the blank space in the search box and choose Add a Keyword For This Search. You’ll get a dialog box where you choose the name and keyword. Since I’ve already got a keyword named mte I made this one mtes.

Now, wherever I am, I can click in my address bar (or use Crtl+L) and type mtes (search query) to find whatever I need on the site.

This works for all kinds of web sites. If you like movies you could make a keyword to search IMDb. If you download a lot of torrents, you can make a keyword to search your favorite torrent site. Keywords can be useful in many different ways to let you access just the information you want, right when you want it.

Do you have any other handy uses for this great feature? If so, let me know in the comments.

How To Be More Efficient With Firefox Keywords originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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Speedtile is a powerful web bookmarking site that allows you to organize your bookmarks with tile preview and sort them in different categories. It also comes with many other features such as bookmarks sharing and screenshots preview of bookmarked sites.

1. Easily bookmark with rich tile preview option

When you bookmark a site on Speedtile, it will immediately make a screenshot of the site and display it as an awesome glossy look tile. When you mouse over the tile, it will show a Vista-like glow which make it very intuitive to navigate around your pool of bookmarks. It also comes with an intelligent bookmarking solution that prevent you from bookmarking the same sites twice.

2. Share your favorite bookmarks with others

Each tile comes with a tool icon that allows you to share your bookmark. Shared bookmarks will have a ribbon added to the tile and the URL will be shown on a public site. Not all the bookmarks are shared by default. You have to manually select the tile that you want to share.

3. Get the screen shot of all the bookmarked sites

This the most interesting feature, speedtile actually takes a screen shot of a website and places it in the tile. The screenshot can also be viewed separately or be saved as an image. On the top right corner of the tile, click on the “zoom icon” to view the screen shot of the webpage.

4. Manage Bookmarks easily by organizing into categories

Speedtile allows you to create categories and sort your bookmarks to their respective category. You can move a bookmark from one category to another just by using “drag and drop” option.

5. Instantly bookmark with Firefox plug-in

Speedtile provides a handy Firefox plug-in for easy bookmarking in Firefox. Install the plug-in. Right click on the browser and select the option “Bookmark with speedtile “ whenever you wish to bookmark a site.

6. View tiles by order to locate bookmark

If you have plenty of bookmarks in a single category, you can easily sort the bookmarks with the “order by” option. Sorting options include last modification, most visited, sort by date and alphabetical order.

Conclusion

Considering that Speedtile is free to use and is available as an extension to Firefox, it could provide that alternative method to manage your bookmarks in style. What’s I find still missing in speedtile is the ability to import and export your bookmarks, which I believe the developers will include in the future.

If you have used Speedtile, share your experience with us in the comments.

Better Manage Your Oneline Bookmarking With SpeedTile originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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End the terrible thought of having to manually conduct every task that requires your attention on the web and “employ” the use of a more effective, time saving, accurate app.

How it works:

As soon as you’re able to get the hang of it, you can easily do more than just repeat a group of specified steps. You’ll be able to start scripting some very complex tasks in Firefox that will allow you to save immense amounts of time and sky rocket your productivity. This works by iMacros placing a library like function bar that goes in the left side of your screen.

Now you just have to click the ‘Record’ button on the ‘Rec’ tab of the iMacros sidebar, start doing some tasks you’d like to record in Firefox, click ‘Stop’, and now you’ve instantly just made a macro.

To tell iMacros to replay the task all you have to do is find your macro in the list, hit the play tab and click ‘Play’ to do the task in the macro.

Once you’ve created a macro in Firefox, you can go directly to the ‘Edit’ tab in the iMacros sidebar, select your recoreded steps from the list and choose the ‘Edit Macro’ option to view and edit its corresponding code. It’s fairly easy and simple  to pick up on the basics of the scripting language iMacros uses just by recording a macro and effectively viewing its source code. Here’s a quick step by step overview of the entire process.

Conclusion

This is an incredible Firefox extension that will allow you to save ample amounts of time with the click of a button. Leave all of those repetitive and annoyingly tedious tasks in the past and look forward to a more productive future with the use of iMacros.

If you’ve ever used or have found this app to be useful, please feel free to discuss it below and subscribe to our amazing feed for one of the best scoops on free apps!

Automate Your Browser Tasks With iMacros originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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Save images with Save Images?

Save Images is a Firefox add-on that allows you to save all the images on any web page at one go. This add-on not only has the potential to increase your productivity, but can also save you a whole lot of time while managing to keep your right-clicking finger intact.

There are several useful functions in Save Images, and the most notable one is that you can configure the size you’d like Save Images to store your every images. Other options include renaming images as they are being downloaded, and save the link if any image is not in place.

Step 1) Download Save Images. Once you’ve installed this add-on you can customize this extension by accessing the Tools menu.

Step 2) Now you have to choose which image selection format you’d like to customize. Save Images allows you to save every images in every tab from left to right or vice versa, or only save images in the current tab.

Step 3) Select the size limit of an image, the size you’d like all images to be saved in, and how you’d like Save Images to deal with duplicate pictures.

Step 4) Next you have to choose which folder you’d like your images saved to, and what name you want images saved as.

Step 5) As soon as steps 1-4 have been completed all you have to do is click OK at the bottom of your tab option window, and all of the images on the tab that you’re currently in will be saved to the folder you selected.

A small pop-up window will appear bottom-right of your browser letting you know how many images were instantly saved.

Step 6) Quickly and efficiently access all of the images you saved in the folder you selected on your desktop.

Conclusion

It is a repetitive and boring task to save every images in a web page, especially when there are tons of images in that page. With Save Images, you can save some efforts and time and put them in places where they can give you more productivity. If you feel like you can take advantage of this add-on, then you can download it here.

Please feel free to leave us a comment below; we love to hear from our readers!

How To Instantly Save Every Images On A Web Page originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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With this browser app compatible with Firefox and Internet Explorer, you can leave a comment on any page of the web you’d like and it can be viewed by anyone. iComment turns any page on the web into a discussion board or chat.

What is iComment?

The real use of iComment comes in when you arrive at a site that doesn’t have a built-in commenting system and you wish to leave a comment, this app allows you to create your own commenting system on that site and post a comment virtually anywhere. Your comments can be viewed by anyone if you choose to make them public. If they are private, then only other iComment users can view them.

How Do I Use this Tool?

You have to first download iComment, then choose a username and enter your email address so that you can be notified of following pertaining comments by other users.

As soon as you’ve downloaded and installed iComment, you can begin to leave all sorts of opinions on the webpage of your choice. The iComment button is located on the top right hand corner of your browser window.

You can also access the options menu by clicking the arrow pointing down next to the icon.

Comments are instantly displayed as small icons on the right hand side of the webpage. Every comment is associated with a specific element on the sites page; therefore you have to choose the text fragment or image that you are commenting about. For example, if you select an image to leave your opinion on, when your comment is viewed the image will be highlighted so that you’re able to relate the image with the comment.

By right-clicking on the picture you want and select the “Add Picture iComment” from the menu, you will be able to enter your text comment into the editor. The comment should instantly appear on the right side of the picture.

This is how the comment looks on the webpage with a reply:

Conclusion

iComment is an app that works with both Firefox and Internet Explorer and doesn’t require you to register with any site. Leave your opinions on any page of the web with the use of a simple button and revise them at a later time. Once you leave a comment you can choose to have follow-up replies sent to your iComment account or your email address. In my opinion iComment is a great tool that allows you to share your comments and thoughts anywhere on the web, this is your freedom of speech exercised on the web.

You turn next. What your comments?

Leave A Comment Anywhere On The Web originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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If you want to test out Firefox 3.1 beta 2 (or other versions) on your Ubuntu, but don’t want it to mess up your existing Firefox setting, you can easily do so by creating a new profile. Here is how you can do so.

Go to Firefox 3.1 beta 2 download page. Download the Linux package (firefox-3.1b2.tar.bz2) for your preferred language to your Home folder.

Unzip the downloaded file to your Home folder. You should see a Firefox folder.

Before we launch Firefox 3.1 beta 2, we need to create a new Firefox profile so that it won’t interfere and conflict with our current version of Firefox.

In the terminal,

cd ~/Firefox
./firefox --no-remote -P new_profile

You should see the Firefox profile manager. Select the new profile and rename it to a name that you can remember easily.

Click “Start Firefox“.

Firefox 3.1 beta 2 should now start with a new profile.

To make sure that it will start with this profile every time, we need to create a desktop entry where you can easily click to launch it.

On your desktop, right click the mouse and select Create Launcher.

Fill in the detail as shown in the screenshot below. Remember to change the USERNAME to your own username and the your_profile_name to your own newly set profile name. You can find the Firefox icon at the Firefox -> Icons folder.

Click to enlarge

Next, we are going to modify the entry for the current of Firefox so that it won’t boot up from this new profile.

Right click on the menu bar and select Edit Menus.

Navigate to the Firefox section (Application -> Internet -> Firefox) and select Properties.

In the  Add the following command

In the Command field, append the following code to then end:

--no-remote  -P default

If you have added Firefox shortcut to various places (such as the dock, panel etc), you need to change their entries as well, else they will start up with the new profile.

That’s it. You can now test out Firefox 3.1 and run your existing version of Firefox simultaneously without affecting the setting of each other.

How To Install Firefox 3.1 On Ubuntu Without Affecting The Default Setting originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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The best part is the simple and plain interface and the social aspect. The sheer number of users active on Flickr make the whole experience of photography very social and fun.

Flickr was one of the first websites to use web 2.0 elements in its design but it hasn’t really kept up with the rest of the web since then, especially the process of browsing photos in a set. Don’t you agree that it is plain annoying having to click a hundred times just to see all the pics in a set.

Don’t be sad though, my friend, Flickr Gallery Plus is a step in the right direction. This is a Firefox extension whose sole purpose in life is to make your Flickr photo browsing experience a better one.

To get started install the extension using the Tools -> Add-ons menu in Firefox.

I’m using the Debian version of Firefox, called Iceweasel and that is what I see in the image above. If you use Firefox, you should see an Add to Firefox button instead.

Once you have the extension loaded, you’ll see a small icon in the bottom right hand corner of the Firefox window. Flickr Gallery Plus sits in that corner quietly and only comes into the picture when you’re viewing a photo set on Flickr.

See the difference ?

As soon as you browse over to a photo set on Flickr, the Flickr Gallery Plus extension starts to pre-load all the pictures that are present in that set. It also rearranges the page to look like the picture above.

As you can see, the first thumbnail in the set has been selected and the preloaded bigger sized image is being shown on the left of the thumbnail view. Now, as you click on the next thumbnail, that image will be displayed in the same place. You can also use the right and left arrow keys to view your pictures. Nifty … don’t you think ?

Pressing on the Enter key or clicking on a picture will take you to the individual page of the picture using Flickr’s standard interface.

Another really cool feature of this extension is the slideshow mode. Just click on the “Start Slideshow” link right under the picture and you will be able to go through your complete set in a slideshow with nice fade-in/fade-out transition between images. The only problem is that it doesn’t do full screen slideshow … yet.

Don’t you think this is a much better and easier way to browse a Flickr set ? Let us know your thoughts on this extension in the comments.

Flickr Gallery Plus Makes Flickr Even More Fun To Use originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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1) Tab Mix Plus (TMP)

Tab Mix Plus is probably the best, if not, one of the best Firefox tabs extension around. It extends your tab function in many way that you never think is possible. With TMP, you can duplicate tabs, control tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, and many more useful features. In fact, if you take a look at the database of Firefox extension, some of the tab extensions have long been included as a feature in TMP.

Alternative to TMP: Tab kit

If you don’t like TMP for the reason that it conflicts with some other extension, a great alternative will be Tab Kit. Tab Kit is another extension that gives you a great deal of control over your tabs. It allows you to group your tabs according to domain or parent tab and arrange your tabs in multiple rows. You can also shift your tab bar to the top/left/right of the window and also copy/paste/duplicate group of tabs by dragging. Tab kit is not compatible with TMP.

2) TooManyTabs

TooManyTabs is an experimental Firefox addon. It allows you store up to over 50 tabs without cluttering up your tab bar. TooManyTabs uses an extra rows just below your bookmark bar to store the tabs. Whenever you move a tab to TooManyTabs, the memory is freed up and can be allocated for other use. This helps to prevent your Firefox from consuming too much memory from idling tabs.

3) Quick Drag

Quick Drag is an extension of the popular SuperDragAndGo extension. You can easily drag and drop any images, highlight texts or links within the browser to open them in new tab. When highlighted texts are dragged and dropped, it will perform a Web search with the selected text on a new tab. Dragging and dropping an image will save the image to your Desktop.

4) Tab Split Tab

Opera users will know that you can easily split the browser into vertical, horizontal, cascade tiles for viewing of multiple tabs concurrently. Tab Split Tab is an experimental addon that aims to fulfill the same window splitting task in Opera. At the moment, you can split your Firefox browser into two and view multiple sites in one page.

5) Morning Coffee

Morning coffee allows you to bookmark your frequently visit sites and open them all with one click. What is unique about this extension is that it allows you to choose which bookmarks to open on each day. There might be some sites that are updated weekly and you don’t want to visit them every day. By defining the day that you want to visit the sites, Morning Coffee adds the sites to the appropriate day and load them all up when that day arrives.

6) Tab Catalog

Tab catalog displays a thumbnail of all the tab on a canvas so that you can choose and load up the tab you want. This is useful when you have too many opened tab and can’t make out which is which. There are several ways to display the thumbnail canvas, either press Ctrl + tab, mouseover the Tab-Catalog button or press the view all tab button at the right of the tab bar.

Alternative to Tab Catalog: Firefox Showcase

Firefox showcase is another extension that displays a thumbnail of all the opened tab. You can choose to load the thumbnail in a new tab, or in a new window. Though functionally the same as Tab catalog, Firefox showcase does provide you with more configuration options to personalize your thumbnail, such as setting the size, thumbnail caching, thumbnail updating time etc.

7) Aging Tab

This extension make the inactive tab fade as time passes and at the same time highlight the active tab making it more distinguishable. Custom colors can be configured for the aged and active  tab.

Alternative to Aging Tab: Colorful Tab

Colorful Tabs paints each tab with different color and make them easy to distinguish. The latest version comes with a default black background that many come to hate. Luckily, one can easily switch off the background from the Preferences page.

8) Fish Eye Tab

If you open too many tabs at one time (more than 20), you will find that each of your tab become barely visible. What Fish Eye Tab does is to zoom and expand each tab to display the tab label as you mouseover it. Fish Eye Tab is activated only when the number of tabs exceed the width of the Firefox window.

9) FaviconizeTab

This extension replace the usual tab with the site favicon, thus reducing the width of the tab. With FaviconizeTab, you can squeeze more tabs into the tab bar without it looking messy and untidy.

10) Source Viewer Tab (for web developer)

This last one is actually my personal favorite. Being someone who did a lot of coding, I find it a chore to switch between windows just to view the source of a Web page. This Source Viewer Tab is able to open the source in a tab rather than in a new window.

There are plenty of other tab management extension in the Mozilla database. Which one did you use to manage your tab?

10 Firefox Extensions For Better Tab Management originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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1) Installing Add to Search Bar extension

Add to Search Bar is a Firefox extension that allows you to add any search engine to your search bar. Go to your favorite site. Right click on the Search box and select “Add to Search Bar“.

2) Create your own search engine via Mycroft Project 

Mycroft Project is a site created by the Mozdev team that hosts a collection of Sherlock and OpenSearch search engine. It also has a form generator that you can use it to create your own search engine.

• Go to http://mycroft.mozdev.org/submitos.html
• Fill in the form details
• If you are not sure what to put in the Search URL field, go to your favorite site and perform a search with the site’s search bar. On the address bar, copy the URL and replace your search term by {searchTerms}. Paste the result into the Search URL field. For example, when you search Make Tech Easier, you will get a URL something like this:

http://maketecheasier.com/about/search-result/?cx=012219648382774935931%3A71v9_lruh3c&cof=FORID%3A11&q=your-search-term

Replace your-search-term by {searchTerms} and you get something like:

http://maketecheasier.com/about/search-result/?cx=012219648382774935931%3A71v9_lruh3c&cof=FORID%3A11&q={searchTerms}

Paste this URL to the Search URL field. 

• Once you have completed the form, scroll down and click on the Generate Plugin button. Code will show up on the text area.
• Click on the Install Plugin. A window will pop up and ask you if you want to install the search engine in your search bar. 
   
• Click Add. Once you are happy, click Submit Plugin to enter your search engine to Mycroft database.

3) Hacking the backend

If you don’t like to install any extensions as you might feel that it will slow down your Firefox’s performance and you don’t want to submit your search engine to Mycroft, the other way that you can do is to hack the backend of Firefox. Don’t worry, it’s very easy.

• Open up a text editor.
• Copy and paste the following to the text editor.

<search
name=”Name_Of_Search_Engine”
method=”GET”
action=”URL_Of_Search_Engine_Result_Page”
queryCharset=”utf-8″
>
<input name=”search_parameter” value=”Value_of_parameter_required_to_carry_out_the_search”>
<input name=”q” user>
</search>

• Change the Name_Of_Search_Engine to your search engine name.
• Change the URL_Of_Search_Engine_Result_Page to the search url of the site (without the search parameter)
• In the input field, enter any relevant search parameter in the search url. Leave the <input name=”q” user> as it is.
• Save the file and give it a .src extension (for example: your_search_engine.src) 

If you are using Windows, save the file to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins

If you are using Ubuntu, first save the file to the desktop. Open up your terminal and type

sudo cp ~/Desktop/your_search_engine.src /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/

If you are using Mac OS X, this method does not work. 

Restart your Firefox and you should find your new custom search engine in the search bar

Adding an image to your custom search engine

Create a image of size 16×16 pixels and save it with the same name as your search engine. It doesn’t matter if you save it as jpg, gif or png.

Now copy and paste the image to the same directory where you place the search_engine.src file.

Done!

How To Easily Add A Custom Search Engine To Your Firefox Search Bar originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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WiseStamp is a Firefox extension that allows you to create and insert rich HTML signature for your Web-based email accounts, including Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL mail. After you have installed and get it running, you can create your own signature with a rich text editor and optionally, fill in your social network detail and get them to show up in your signature.

The WiseStamp Email Signature Firefox extension is still an experimental extension that is not yet approved by the Mozilla team. To install, you will have to create a Mozilla account and log yourself in before you can access the installation link. Alternatively, you can bypass the logging in by installing via the WiseStamp site.

Once you have installed and restarted your Firefox, you can access to the rich-text editor to create your html signature.

You can also fill in your social networking detail and display them in your signature.

The Setting tab allows you to configure how you want to display the signature, whether to show an icon, text or both for the IM and social services. By default, WiseStamp include a promotion link in your signature. You can remove it by unchecking the box beside “Promote Wisestamp Project“.

WiseStamp email signature works on Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL mail. There is no extra steps required to insert the signature. Whenever you compose a new message, the signature will automatically be inserted to the message area.

If you are using Gmail only and are keen to create multiple html signatures, Blank Canvas Gmail signature would probably be a better choice.

Easily Create and Insert HTM signature For Your Webmail originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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You may have installed countless add-on in Firefox to enhance your using experience, but if you want to get the most out of Firefox, you really have to hack your way into the about:config.

The about:config page contains most (if not, all) of Firefox configuration options. It is so far the most effective, and the most powerful way to tweak and enhance your Firefox performance. Here are 28 of the popular tweaks.

Accessing your about:config page

In your Firefox, type about:config in the address bar.

You will be shown a warning page. Click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button to proceed.

On the main page, you will see a long list of configuration entries. Enter the name of the key you want to update in the “Filter” field. The list will narrow to only the entries that match your keyword as you type.

To modify the value, simply double click on the entry value field and update the entry. That’s all!

Isn’t that simple? Now, let’s get to the tweaking.

1) Adjust the Smart Location Bar’s Number of Suggestions

In Firefox 3, when you start typing in the location bar, a drop-down list of suggestion URLs will be shown. If you want it to show more than 12 suggestions (12 is the default), you can adjust the browser.urlbar.maxRichResults keys and get it to show the number you want.

Config name: browser.urlbar.maxRichResults
Default: 12
Modified value: Set to your desired number of suggestion. If you want to disable it all together, set it to -1

2) Disable the session restore function

Firefox 3 automatically saves your session every 10 secs so that whenever it crashes, it can restore all your tabs. While this is a useful feature, some of you might find it irritating. To disable this function, toggle the value of browser.sessionstore.enabled to False

Config name: browser.sessionstore.enabled
Default: True
Modified value: False if you want to disable the session restore function

3) Adjust the Session Restore Saving Frequency

Same as above, if you decided to keep the session restore feature on, but want to reduce the session saving frequency, change the value of browser.sessionstore.interval so that Firefox will save the session at a longer interval.

Config name: browser.sessionstore.interval
Default: 10000 (in msecs, equivalent to 10secs)
Modified value: Set it to your desired value. 1000 means 1 sec and 60000 means 1 minute.

4) Enable Advanced Color Profile Support

Firefox has this advanced color profile features that display higher image quality. It is not enabled by default as it has a negative effect on the performance of the browser. If you are concern with the image quality rather than the performance, you can activated it via the gfx.color_management.enabled setting

Config name: gfx.color_management.enabled
Default: False
Modified value: True (if you want to activate the color profile support feature)

5) Disable Antivirus Scanning

This is mainly for Windows users. By default, Firefox 3 automatically scan the downloaded file with the default anti-virus application to make sure it is free of virus. If you download a big file, it could take a long time for the whole scanning process to complete. To increase the performance of the browser, you might want to consider disabling the anti-virus scanning via the browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone key.

Config name: browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone
Default: True
Modified value: False (if you want to disable it)

6) Configuring The Scrolling Tabs

When you opened many tabs, Firefox will not keep on reducing the tab width. Instead, it shows a scrolling bar so that the min width (100px) is conserved and you can scroll to find your tabs. If you are those who don’t like the scrolling tab function and prefer Firefox to show all the tabs, regardless how small it is, you can set the value of browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to 0 to disable it. Similarly, if you want Firefox to display more tabs before showing the scrolling button, you can reduce the default value to a lower value, say 75 pixels.

Config name: browser.tabs.tabMinWidth
Default: 100
Modified value: 0 if you want to disable the scrolling functions, other values to set the min width value

7) Show/Disable Close button on Tabs

Some people love to see the Close (the red X) button on every tabs, but some hate it. Whatever is it, you can configure it to your preferences via the browser.tabs.closeButtons setting.

Config name: browser.tabs.closeButtons
Default: 1
Modified values:

• 0 – display a close button on the active tab only
• 1- display close buttons on all tabs
• 2- don’t display any close buttons
• 3- display a single close button at the end of the tab strip

8) Extend Scripts Execution Time

In Firefox 3, a script is only given 10 seconds to respond, after which it will issue a unresponsive script warning. If you are hooked on a slow network connection, you might want to increase the script execution time via dom.max_script_run_time to cut down on the frequency of the no script warning.

Config name: dom.max_script_run_time
Default:10 (in secs)
Modified value: 20, or any values greater than 10

9) Handling JavaScript Popups

When you come across a site that executes a javascript open new window function, and if the popup window is without all the usual window features, i.e. back/forward/reload buttons, status bar etc, Firefox will automatically treat it as a popup and will not open it as a new tab. However, if you find this to be a nuisance and wanted to open all new windows in a new tabs, you can specify it via the browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction setting.

Config name: browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction
Default: 2 – Open all JavaScript windows the same way as you have Firefox handle new windows unless the JavaScript call specifies how to display the window
Modified values:

• 0 – open all links as how you have Firefox handle new windows
• 1 – do not open any new windows
• 2- open all links as how you have Firefox handle new windows unless the Javascript specify how to display the window

10) Enable Spell Checking In All Text Fields

The default spell checking function only checks for multi-line text boxes. You can get it to spell-check for single line text box as well.

Config name: layout.spellcheckDefault
Default: 1 (spell checker for multi-lines text boxes only)
Modified values:

• 0 – disable the spell checker
• 2 – enable the spell checker for all text boxes

11) Open Search Box Results In New Tab

When you search using the search box at the top right hand corner of the browser, it will display the search results in the current tab. If you don’t want the search to interfere with your current tab, you can tweak the browser.search.openintab to make it open in a new tab.

Config Name: browser.search.openintab
Default: False
Modified value: True (open search box results in new tab)

12) Lower The Physical Memory Used When Minimized

This tweak is mainly for Windows users. When you minimize Firefox, it will send Firefox to your virtual memory and free up your physical memory for other programs to use. Firefox will reduce its physical memory usage, when minimized, to approximately 10MB (give or take some) and when you maximize Firefox it will take back the memory that it needs.

The preference name does not exist and needs to be created.

Right click on the background and select New->Boolean.

Enter the name when prompted: config.trim_on_minimize
Enter the values: True

13) Speed up your Firefox

Several tweaks required for this

Config name: network.http.pipelining
Default: False
Modified value: True

Config name: network.http.proxy.pipelining
Default: False
Modified value: True

Config name: network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Default: 4
Modified value: any value higher than 4, but not more than 8

Config name: network.http.max-connections
Default: 30
Modified value: 96

Config name: network.http.max-connections-per-server
Default: 15
Modified value: 32

14) Increase/Decrease the Amount of Disk Cache

When a page is loaded, Firefox will cache it into the hard disk so that it doesn’t need to be download again for redisplaying. The bigger the storage size you cater for Firefox, the more pages it can cache.

Before you increase the disk cache size, make sure that browser.cache.disk.enabled browser.cache.disk.enable is set to True.

Config name: browser.cache.disk.capacity
Default: 50000 (in KB)
Modified value:

• 0 – disable disk caching
• any value lower than 50000 reduces the disk cache
• any value higher than 50000 increases the disk cache.

15) Select all text when click on the URL bar

In Windows and Mac, Firefox highlights all text when you click on the URL bar. In Linux, it does not select all the text. Instead, it places the cursor at the insertion point. Regardless which platform you are using, you can now tweak it to either select all or place cursor at insertion point.

Config name: browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll
Modified value:

• False – place cursor at insertion point
• True – select all text on click

16) Autofill Address in URL Bar

Other than the smart location feature, you can also get your URL bar to autofill the address as you type the URL.

Config name: browser.urlbar.autofill
Default: False
Modified value: True (Have Firefox autofill the address as you type in the URL bar)

17) Same Zoom Level For Every Site

Firefox remembers your zoom preference for each site and set it to your preferences whenever you load the page. If you want the zoom level to be consistent from site to site, you can toggle the value of browser.zoom.siteSpecific from True to False.

Config name: browser.zoom.siteSpecific
Default: True
Modified value: False (enable same zoom preferences for every sites)

18) Setting your zoom limit

If you find that the max/min zoom level is still not sufficient for your viewing, you can change the zoom limit to suit your viewing habits.

Config name: zoom.maxPercent
Default: 300 (percent)
Modified value: any value higher than 300

Config name: zoom.minPercent
Default: 30 (percent)
value: any value

19) Configure Your Backspace Button

In Firefox, you can set your backspace to better use by getting it to either go back to the previous page or act as page up function.

Config name: browser.backspace_action
Default: 2 (does nothing)
Modified value:

• 0 – go back previous page
• 1- page up

20) Increase Offline Cache

If you do not have access to Internet most of the time, you might want to increase the offline cache so that you can continue to work offline. By default, Firefox 3 caches 500MB of data from supported offline Web apps. You can change that value to whatever amount of your choice.

Config name: browser.cache.offline.capacity
Default: 512000 (in KB)
Modified value: any value higher than 512000 will increase the cache value

21) Auto Export Firefox 3 bookmarks to bookmarks.html

Unlike the previous version, Firefox 3 backup the bookmarks file in places.sqlite rather than the usual bookmarks.html. Since bookmarks.html allows us to export and sync our bookmarks with other browser, it will be very useful if Firefox 3 can backup the bookmark to the bookmarks.html as well.

Config name: browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML
Default: False
Modified value: True (auto export bookmarks file to bookmarks.html)

22) Disable Extension Compatibility Checks

This is useful if you want to use an extension that is not supported by your version of Firefox badly. It is not recommended, but you can still do it at your own risk.

Right click and select New->Boolean. Enter extensions.checkCompatibility in the field. Enter False in the next field.

Right click again and select New->Boolean. Enter extensions.checkUpdateSecurity into the field and enter False into the next field.

23) Disable Delay Time When Installing Add-on

Everytime you wanted to install a Firefox add-on, you will have to wait for several secs before the actual installation starts. If you are tired of waiting, you can turn the function security.dialog_enable_delay off so that the installation will start immediately upon clicking.

Config name: security.dialog_enable_delay
Default: 2000 (in msec)
Modified value:

• 0 – start installation immediately
• any other value (in msec)

24) View Source in Your Favorite Editor

This is very useful for developers who are always using the ‘view source‘ function. This tweak allows you to view the source code in an external editor.

There are two configuration need to be made:
Config name: view_source.editor.external
Default: False
Modified value: True ( enable view source using external text editor)

Config name: view_source.editor.path
Default: blank
Modified value: insert the file path to your editor here.

25) Increasing ‘Save Link As‘  timeout value

When you right click and select the ‘Save Link As…‘, the browser will request the content disposition header from the URL so as to determine the filename. If the URL did not deliver the header within 1 sec, Firefox will issue a timeout value. This could happen very frequently in a slow network connection environment. To prevent this issue from happening frequently, you can increase the timeout value so as to reduce the possibility of a timeout.

Config name: Browser.download.saveLinkAsFilenameTimeout
Default: 1000 (1 sec)
Modified value: any value higher than 1000 (value is in msec)

26) Animate Fullscreen Toolbar Collapse mode

In Firefox’s fullscreen mode, toolbars and the tab strip are hidden at the top of the screen and only shown on mouseover. To draw attention to this, there is an animation of the toolbar sliding upwards and off-screen when fullscreen mode is toggled on. For performance issue, the animation of the collapse of the toolbar only appear for the first time. For some reason that you may love/hate the animation, you can adjust Browser.fullscreen.animateUp to switch it on/off for every collapse.

Config name: Browser.fullscreen.animateUp
Default: 1 (animate the toolbar collapse only the first time)
Modified value:

• 0 -disable the animation
• 2- enable the animation for every collapse

27) Autohide Toolbar in Fullscreen mode

In fullscreen mode, the toolbar is set to autohide and appear upon mouseover. If you have a need to view the toolbar at all time, you can toggle the value of browser.fullscreen.autohide to False to always show the toolbar.

Config name: browser.fullscreen.autohide
Default: True (always autohide)
Modified value: False (always show the toolbar)

28) Increase Add-On search result

If you go to Tools->Add-ons->Get Add-ons and perform a search there, Firefox will only fetch and display 5 matching results. If you want Firefox to show more than 5 results (say 10), you can adjust extensions.getAddons.maxResults to get it to display more results.

Config name: extensions.getAddons.maxResults
Default: 5
Modified value: any value more than 5

This list of about:config is definitely not the complete list. If you have any tricks not listed here, please add it in the comment.

28 Coolest Firefox About:Config Tricks originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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Personas For Firefox is a Firefox extension that allows you to easily create and change theme for your browser, and to personalize it so that you can truly call it your own. You don’t need to be a designer or coder. As long as you have some simple photo editing skill, you can start to create your own personas.

Creating your own Personas

There are two files that you need to create: the “header” and the “footer” image. The “header” image is displayed as the background of the top of the browser window (i.e. behind the toolbars and the tab strip) while the “footer” image is shown on the bottom status and find bars.

You can design your own header and footer image. The header image should be 3000 pixels wide and 200 pixels tall. The footer image should be 3000 pixels wide and 100 pixels tall.

When designing, it is best to position your design elements toward the right so that they do not distract from the menubar and other major UI elements of Firefox.

Dynamic Personas

You can also create dynamic personas to present live information such as the weather report or time of the day.

Download Personas For Firefox

Design Your Own Personas

Add a Personal Favor To Your Firefox originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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Open up your Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal).

Type the command

sudo apt-get autoremove icedtea-gcjwebplugin

to remove the icedtea-gcjwebplugin package from your system.

Restart your Firefox 3. The Java runtime should be working now.

(icedtea-gcjwebplugin is a little web browser plugin to execute Java applets. It is targeted for Mozilla and compatible browsers that support the NPAPI. It seems that this has some compatibility issue with Firefox 3.)

Java Not Working On Your Firefox 3? Try This Simple Fix! originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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For those who have not installed Firefox 3, you can do it by adding the following package to your repository.

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following line:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fta/ubuntu hardy main

Save and exit.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Once finished, you should have Firefox 3 running in your Ubuntu.

(Alternatively, if you are patient enough, you can wait for Ubuntu to update their repository. It may take a while)

Get Your Firefox 3 Today originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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