7 posts tagged “firefox”

Firefox 3 beta 5 is out now.

I think I'm ready to switch to 3 full-time now. Thing is, there are hundreds of articles around on how to install FF3 so you don't lose FF2, to run them both together. But I can't find anywhere that tells you how to install FF3 OVER FF2. To upgrade, in the traditional sense. Any ideas?

The team at Microsoft's Port25 have released an updated Windows Media Player plugin for Firefox on Vista. Wonder if the Yahoo stuff will work now? Hmmm... off to check ;)

Del.ici.ous "quietly" released a new version of their Firefox extension, bringing in more integration and practically taking over the bookmarks function. Try it out, if you haven't already. I love my del.ici.ous, its saved my life.Ok, over dramatic, but moving around XP, Vista and OSX there is no way I could be bothered to keep all my local bookmarks synced. With Del.ici.ous I don't have to. Instead of "Add to Bookmarks", click the "Tag This" button and you're good to go, wherever. Delly doesn't get enough love, its one of those things you use constantly, but you just take it for granted that its there.

On the subject, another Firefox extension I do love a lot is Scrapbook. Essential this is.. em.. an offline bookmarker. A webpage grabber. You find a loooong page with, say, instructions you need to keep, and you can grab it - text, pictures, music, everything. I use this all the time with 3D tutorials, its easy to go through the sidebar index it creates and then bring up the page - but it loads it from your hard-drive, so it doesn't matter if the actual website is still there or not. Erm.. I'm overcomplicating, its simple. Like Delly, try it, love it.

Now this is a thing of wonder, and its really easy to do. If you use a Google Homepage, you'll probably have seen the Googletalk widget. I love it, its better than the Googletalk program. Anyhow, you can get it permanently loaded into Firefox's sidebar in three easy steps:

1. Right click this link, and click "bookmark this link". Add it to your Bookmarks toolbar for easy access.
2. Right-click on the bookmark in the toolbar that you just made, and select "properties". Rename the link to Googletalk or something, and most importantly check the box that says "load this into the sidebar".
3. Now click on the bookmark and it will load up into Firefox's sidebar, ready to be used for as long as you're online. Fantastic.

In the library! With a candlestick!
.....or was it Office 2007? Or Colonel Mustard? Annnnyhow...

I installed Office 2007 earlier, because I never had MS Office before, and a demo was too tempting to pass on. Well, it all installed fine. Then I tried to fire up the Fox - it instantly crashed. WTF? So I tried again, and again, and again? Nada

So for the next hour I scooted about Office 2007, Vistas control panel, etc, trying to find out exactly what Office had done to kill Firefox. Was this a conspiracy by the Redmond Illuminati to keep us all using Internet Explorer? The plot thickened, no matter what I did, I couldn't get Firefox to run.

So in desperation, I Fired up Firefox in safe mode. And it worked. Aha, thinks me: a dodgy plugin somewhere. So I went through the plugins, disabling them and enabling them one-by-one. And yup, it was the Skype plugin that was causing Firefox to die.

Now what is bizarre is that it never did this before I installed Office 2007, so Office/Outlook must have changed something in Skype, or the telephony registry or somesuch. Anyhow I uninstalled the Skype plugin and I have my Fox back.

Whhhheeew.

Bored yet? ;)

1) I booted into my XP drive for the first time in two weeks this morning. Ewwww... everything seems slow and klunky, like booting into Windows 95 or something. Don't think I'll be going back there. Vista it is then.

2) I finally worked out how that RSS reader gadget in Vista's sidebar works! OK, I'll give you a hint - it shows you feeds that you are subscribed to in IE7. *bing!* (lightbulbs go on).

3) Xplorer2 Lite has been updated, and works fantastically with Vista. Infact, its a lot faster than Windows Explorer, and you don't get lockups when accessing large folders on external drives (come on MS, fix that already)

4) It should have been built into Vista, but it wasn't. Dexpot gives you multiple desktops, like the Linux ones. If you're using Windows with only one monitor (Vista or XP) download this and you'll wonder how you coped before.

5) Firefox got updated to 2.0.0.2, so update if you haven't already. While we're on the subject, this is a fantastic Firefox extension : FEBE. Basically it lets you back up your Firefox - all your extensions, bookmarks, passwords etc. So for example, if you're just about to upgrade to Vista, or get a new PC, you can run it, save your Firefox stuff out onto a USB key or something, then just reload them into your new Firefox and carry on as if nothing had happened. Essential. Also handy for backing up your Firefox stuff, say once a week, "just in case...."

6) I've been burning stuff off the XP drive onto DVDs, in preparation for Vista, for about six months now. Add that to all my other cd-roms/dvds I've burned, and we're talking dozens of disks. Suppose I wanted to find a particular file... you'd have to insert the disks, one by one, look for it. Thats fine if you just need one file, but if you regularly need to look for stuff its a nightmare. Enter a lovely piece of freeware called Cathy (scroll down a bit to see it). Its a cd cataloguer, its fast and works with Vista (trust me, I'm using it). You insert your cd, click "add", two seconds later it ejects the cd. Do this for all of them, and you have a catalog you can search instantly. I wish I'd found this 5 years ago, but I didn't. Well, its been added to my essential software list. Thanks Robert!

7) I'm resisting installing Yahoo Messenger until the shiney new Vista version is ready. If you need any beta-testers for that, let me know ;)

Everyone keeps posting about Vox being filled with Google Ads. I don't see any... where are they?

Could be that I'm using Firefox and Adblock plus, but the only mention of Google I see is the posts about it.

I was going to post about this site not working in Safari, but I'm glad I'm using Firefox if it means I don't get bombarded with ads. Ads are teh evil. If I want something, I'm quite capable of using Froogle or something to find it, I don't want ads. I've NEVER clicked on a webpage ad in the last 7 years, and I'm not about to start. (Yeah, I know they get revenue from us just displaying the ad, but thats evil enough).

Can we get paid accounts and make the ads go away?