Firefox is a winner in this year’s Webware 100 competition.
Firefox was among the top 10 voted products that amounted for about half of the 1.9 million votes, so at least it was the most voted browser, despite Maxthon’s tricky tactics.
Miro and Joost also got voted in the top ten in the Video category.
The list is worth looking at and you may learn about an interesting product or two. Here is the list of all winners.
Add comment April 24th, 2008
As part of Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 2.0.0.14 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download.
We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 2.x, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.
For a list of changes and more information, please review the Firefox 2.0.0.14 Release Notes.
If you are still running Firefox 1.5.0.x, you are highly encouraged to upgrade to the Firefox 2 series as Mozilla ceased supporting Firefox 1.5.0.x in May 2007. Simply choose “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu to begin the upgrade process.
Via Developer.mozilla.org
Add comment April 17th, 2008
Firefox 3 Beta 5 is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.
New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:
* Improvements to the user interface based on user feedback, including changes to the look and feel on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux.
* Changes and fixes for new features such as the location bar autocomplete, bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom, and others, based on feedback from our community.
* Fixes and improvements to platform features to improve security, web compatabilty and stability.
* Continued performance improvements: changes to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimization continues to improve performance over previous releases as measured by the popular SunSpider test from Apple, and in the speed of web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office.
Testers can download Firefox 3 Beta 5 builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in 45 different languages. Developers should also read the Firefox 3 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.
Via developer.mozilla.org
Add comment April 4th, 2008
Firefox benefits from a vast community of add-on developers and here are a few that will supercharge your every day browsing experience.
One feature that distinguished Firefox early on was its support for tabbed browsing. But the default configuration contains some awkward behaviors when switching between tabs and opening new tabs.
1. First, install Last Tab. It allows Firefox to cycle through tabs in order of most recent use. This will feel more intuitive to anyone familiar with switching between applications in Windows using ALT+TAB.
A nice supplement to this is Tabs Open Relative, an add-on that opens new tabs next to the currently active tab. By default Firefox opens new tabs at the far right of the screen. But when opening a new tab, usually the intent is to find/display information or resources related to what’s on the first tab. In essence this add-on will help group similar topics.
2. With all of those tabs open, it can be cumbersome to switch to those not recently viewed. For targeted switching, install Fancy Numbered Tabs. It replaces the small “x” on the right of every tab with a number graphic of the same size.
Then you’ll be able to hit CTRL+<number> to activate any given tab without counting first.
3. No list of essential browser add-ons would be complete without mentioning mouse gestures. My favorite flavor for Firefox is All In One Gestures, which provides the ability to customize every gesture, and lots of configuration options. It also supports rocker gestures.
4. For sites you visit most frequently it’s helpful to set up keywords that activate a target bookmark. As an example, ff could be the keyword for Firefox to visit FeelFirefox.net . But, in Firefox’s default installation that requires first accessing the bookmarks menu, then right clicking and going to the properties for an existing bookmark. There isn’t an option to set up a keyword when adding a new bookmark.
Meet Openbook. It customizes the options displayed when creating a new bookmark. Note that in the image below, the Keyword textbox option is filled.
And, to access sites you search frequently more efficient, add a variable to your bookmark. For example, take a look at dictionary.reference.com. A search for feathers yields a URI like this: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/feathers. To sidestep the main page and dive right in to search results, bookmark this page and replace feathers in the URI with %s, like this: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/%s.
If you made d a keyword for the bookmark to http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/%s, then searching the site later would only require you to type d feathers in the address bar.
5. Like it or not, lots of content online is formatted as PDF. Google provides the option to convert PDF into html when accessing a file from its search page, but what if for some strange reason, you were accessing a PDF from another page?
Install PDF Download to control how Firefox handles PDFs. It allows you to download it, open it normally or view it as HTML. You can configure it to choose one of those options by default or prompt for every PDF.
Via Tech.blorge.com
Add comment December 28th, 2007
New versions of favorite applications are always a little tricky; you want to keep up with the times without fixing what ain’t broke. With that in mind, I took a look at the newly released Firefox 3 Beta 2 to see what we can look forward to when the final version ships in 2008.
Although the basic look of the browser hasn’t changed, there are actually quite a few new features coming. (For a complete list, you can check out Mozilla’s release notes.)
Some of the new features in Firefox 3 are not immediately obvious — at least, not to the casual user. Among other things, Mozilla is incorporating new graphics- and text-rendering architectures in its browser layout engine (Gecko 1.9) to offer rendering improvements in CSS and SVG; adding a number of security features, including malware protection and version checks of its add-ons; and offline support for suitably coded Web applications.
Other new features — some of which are listed here — are more visible to end users, such as the menu bar that now appears asking if you want to save a just-entered password. Indeed, I’ve wondered if the browser will become top-heavy with built-in features that were already available as add-ons.
For example, Firefox 3 Beta 2 adds the ability to save your existing tabs when you close the app down, and it has enhanced the browser’s ability to magnify Web pages from just affecting text to taking in the entire page — features that are already available via the Tab Mix Plus and Image Zoom extensions. Right now, it looks like the new version will escape that particular criticism — its memory footprint is, if anything, smaller than that of Version 2 — but time alone will tell.
Incidentally, if you’d like to try out the new beta, feel free — but be aware that this is a beta version in the traditional sense, not the sort of eternal beta you get with, say, Google Docs. As a result, there is as of yet no support for current add-ons, and there are still a few serious glitches — for example, you’re going to get an error message if you try to use Yahoo’s newer e-mail format.
All that being said, here are the five new and/or enhanced features in Firefox 3 Beta 2 that most caught my attention:
1. Easier downloads. While the older Download Manager was quite serviceable, Mozilla has made some nice tweaks in the new version. It now lists not only the file name, but the URL it was downloaded from, and includes an icon that leads to information about when and where you downloaded it. (The Remove link has been, well, removed from the Download manager — you now have to right-click to delete a listing.)
But the new feature I really approve of is the ability to resume a download that may have been abruptly stopped because Firefox, or your system, crashed. I tried it out by using the Task Manager to end firefox.exe during a download; when I brought Firefox up again, the Download Manager resumed the download as if nothing had happened.
Since I’ve wasted a lot of time over the years having to deal with repeatedly failing downloads, this is something I appreciate.
2. An enhanced address bar. Mozilla has also made improvements in the autocomplete function of its address bar (which Mozilla calls a “location bar”), and I have to say I find it both impressive and useful. In Firefox 3 Beta 2, the autocomplete doesn’t just offer a list of URLs that you’ve been to, but includes sites that are in your bookmark list.
It then gives you a nice, clear listing of the URLs and site names in large, easy-to-read text, with the typed-in phrase underlined. It makes it really simple to find and return to that semi-remembered Web site you visited a few days ago.
3. A workable bookmark organizer. Speaking of bookmarks, the separate history/bookmarks sidebars and managers have been replaced — or, rather, augmented — by a single Places Organizer, which uses Windows Explorer’s familiar tree-on-the-left/list-on-the-right format. It offers a simple, quick way to read and manage your history and bookmarks — including the ability to immediately edit a bookmark’s name, location and tags rather than having to go into the Properties box (something that I was really sick of in Version 2).
4. Easier bookmarking. There are, in fact, quite a few new features involving bookmarking, some of which are small but highly useful. For example, you can now quickly create a bookmark by double-clicking on a star that appears in the right side of the address bar. You can also add tags to your bookmarks, which could work nicely as an organizational tool.
There is also new folder called Smart Bookmarks in the toolbar. It offers three categories of bookmarks — Most Visited, Recently Bookmarked and Recent Tags — and is automatically populated during the course of your Web sessions. Since, like most people, I have a series of sites that I tend to visit regularly, I can see how something like the Most Visited list could prove handy as a one-click resource for my daily surfing. (I could, of course, create my own folder for these sites, but it’s a lot easier to let Firefox do it.) My only quibble: A Recently Visited list would also be handy — more handy, I think, than a list of sites that were recently bookmarked.
5. Better memory management. I’m a great fan of Firefox, but there have been times when I’ve considered going back to Internet Explorer because of issues I was having with memory. After a couple of hours of adding and dropping tabs, Firefox could commandeer nearly 200MB of memory, at which point I’d usually have to shut it down to prevent my other apps from grinding to a halt. It was very frustrating — especially when the folks at Mozilla denied that it was really a problem.
t now looks like that may have finally been taken care of. Mozilla has announced that the new version handles memory usage better, so I decided to put it through a modest test. I opened the Firefox 3 beta and my current copy of Firefox 2.0.0.11 on different systems; initial memory usage for the current version (with add-ons disabled) was 25,740KB, about 100KB less than the new beta’s usage of 25,848KB. I then opened five tabs in both versions, ran a two-minute YouTube video, and shut everything down but the initial home page. At that point, Firefox 3 Beta 2 was using 46,296KB of memory — more than 2,500KB less than the 48,968KB that Firefox 2 was using.
This is admittedly not comprehensive or conclusive testing, but if that trend extends to long-term usage, I can see the latest version of Firefox taking up a lot less memory than its predecessor.
According to Mozilla’s Firefox 3 Beta 2 release notes, “There’s still more to come.” That could be good — or bad. Firefox became popular because it was lean, mean and user-tweakable, and I’d hate to see Mozilla lose that focus.
Certainly, if Firefox 3 Beta 2 is anything to go by, the Mozilla team is doing a fine job in balancing new features with a basic philosophy of “don’t fix what ain’t broke.” We can only hope that they will continue following this adage as time goes on and the final release grows closer.
Via Computerworld.com
Add comment December 27th, 2007
Firefox is more than a browser. It’s a toolbox, just waiting to be filled with tools.
This is for freelancers who want only the best tools to make their working day easier and more productive.
This first installment contains the top 12 most useful Firefox extensions for freelance web developers and designers.
1. FireFTP
A powerful FPT client in one tab, your work in another. Sometimes the simplest solutions can be profoundly useful. (Note: Does not as yet support SFTP).
2. ColorZilla
This extension allows you to pick colors from the web, paste the hex code into other programs, zoom in on pages, measure distances and utilize a built-in pallet browser. A must-have for any web designer.
3. IE Tab
Shelve the need to open up both Firefox and Internet Explorer to test your work in IE or properly view a website that hasn’t been optimized for Firefox. IE Tab places a small icon in your status bar allowing you to use IE’s rendering engine for a specific site. You can also open a new IE tab via the right-click menu.
4. Firebug
An essential part of the web developer’s toolbox, Firebug allows you to tinker with the undercarriage of your project’s CSS, JavaScript or HTML. You can operate Firebux through a panel or in a separate window. It allows you to identify how each line of code shapes the final product as rendered on the web.
5. Load Time Analyzer
Isolate the loading times of images, stylesheets, page requests, scripts and so on. You can even graph the results — though I’m not really sure why you’d want to…
6. Greasemonkey
Add Javascript to any webpage. Whether you write your own scripts or use scripts provided by other coders, Greasemonkey helps unlock the full potential of any given website. (Note: try it with DOM Inspector.)
7. Web Developer
Another developer essential, Web Developer adds an array of custom tools and menus to Firefox. Use it in tandem with Firebug for maximum functionality and control over your code.
8. View Source Chart
Color codes your HTML to help keep track of hierarchies and nested elements.
9. MeasureIt
Click the ruler icon in your status bar to unlock MeasureIt’s functionality. It allows you to measure the pixel width and height of page elements via the cursor. Yep — no more cumbersome copying and pasting into Photoshop. When you’re done, hit ‘Escape’ and everything returns to normal. A useful, subtle tool.
10. HTML Validator
This nifty extension adds a little validation error and warning display to your status bar which updates as you browse. It can validate both HTML sent by the server and HTML in memory after Ajax execution.
11. Window Resizer
Quickly resize your browser to view websites in 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024 and 1600×1200 resolutions.
12. Aardvark
As you move your mouse cursor over a page element it will be isolated by a red rectangle. A yellow caption will display the element’s type and class or id (if available). Keyboard shortcuts then allow you to edit or delete the element.
Via Freelanceswitch.com
Add comment December 19th, 2007