Force Old Extensions to Work in Firefox 3

When you install Firefox 3, it checks to see if your old extensions have been updated for the new version of the browser. If it finds they haven't, it disables them.

If you like living on the edge, you can change a couple of settings to force Firefox to use your old extensions. Be forewarned, though, that doing this can cause compatibility problems and other woes.

Go to the following settings in about:config, and change both to false by double-clicking them:

extensions.checkCompatibility

extensions.checkUpdateSecurity

If you don't want to muck around with about:config but still want to force old extensions to work in Firefox 3, download and use the Nightly Tester Tools extension.

ROCK YOUR FIREFOX: Firefox Launches Facebook Application

Firefox has launched an application for Facebook. “Rock Your Firefox” allows users to share their favorite Firefox add-ons and see which add-ons their friends are using. It’s part of the ongoing community outreach by Firefox, and currently has about 500 members one day after going live.

Much like the Firefox add-ons directory, you can browse and search add-ons within Facebook. The difference, however, is the addition of the social grid, meaning you can discover new add-ons through Facebook friends. It’s a cool little app with some excellent branding; one wonders if Blake Ross, the Firefox founder had to give them a nudge, or whether this was coming regardless.

Make your Extensions Work With Firefox 3

Firefox 3 Beta only: If you've taken the plunge into testing the new Firefox 3 beta your favorite extensions are disabled, that's because developers haven't updated them and may not be providing secure updates yet. If you're an impatient risk-taker who needs your extensions back NOW, here's a cheat that may get them to work. Big Honking Warning: Only do this if you're willing to deal with possible bleeding edge extension bugs and security risks!

• Type about:config into Firefox's address bar and click the "I'll be careful, I promise!" button.
• Right-click anywhere. Choose New>Boolean. Make the name of your new config value extensions.checkCompatibility and set it to false.
• Make another new boolean pair called extensions.checkUpdateSecurity and set the value to false.
• Restart Firefox.

All goes well, and any extensions that aren't yet officially Firefox 3 Beta 3 compatible and don't have secure updates will be enabled. Final warning: These changes may lead to unexpected wacky behavior. Proceed at your own risk!

Three useful Firefox 3 'awesome bar' hacks

1. Control how many listings you're getting. The default number of sites that show up on the Smart Location Bar, or "awesome bar," of the nwe Mozilla browser is 12. Changing that number works the same way as getting rid of the sites altogether.

Just type about:config into your address bar, hit the "okay" button when the security warning pops up, then paste browser.urlbar.maxRichResults in the open box, and hit the Enter key.

Double-click the result, and it'll let you change that digit to whatever you want. One thing to note, though, is if you add more results, it won't make the list any longer than six at a time, so you'll still have to scroll.

2. Keep bookmarks off the address bar. You save a bunch of sites, but you don't want them showing up when you're typing, right? This extension will keep the church-and-state line of browsing history and bookmarks from being crossed ever again.

This probably isn't useful, if you only have a few bookmarks, but it can be very helpful if you've got a huge collection that requires you to scroll down the list to find the site you're looking for, effectively killing any time saving the bar was meant to do.Add-on Distrust lets you get away with 'private' browsing in Firefox 3.(Credit: Mozilla Add-ons)

3. Keep certain sites from showing up altogether. Got a site you'd rather not have others see when they're using your machine? Unless you've got browser history turned off, and the site isn't bookmarked, you're generally out of luck.

There's currently not a way to keep specific sites from showing up or right-clicking to remove them from the list, which is why we have to recommend using Apple's Safari for it's "private browsing" feature. When toggled, it won't save any of your information, clicks, or cached data for anyone else to find.

If you don't feel like switching browsers (even though Safari is pretty darn good), there's an extension called Distrust (download here) that emulates the same thing, deleting only the bits of data from that session. Just don't be surprised if your significant other or kids ask why there's an eyeball in the corner of your screen.

10 interesting Firefox extensions to impress your friend!

1.Piclens

Anyone that hasn’t seen PicLens before is sure to be left in awe. It’s a nifty image browser for sites like Flickr, Google Images, Photobucket, and more. It brings an astonishing 3D realm for navigating photos to the browser. Transitions are smooth, effects are amazing, and there aren’t really enough words that can describe how awesome the experience is. We’ve gotta throw a YouTube video out there because a screenshot wouldn’t even do it justice:

Seeing that you and all of your friends are probably YouTube junkies it’s best that we forewarn you about PicLens supporting YouTube videos. Yes, you can search and browser through Youtube videos just like you can with images. That’s a good enough reason not to install the extension, because the last thing we need is a reason to spend a few more hours each day on YouTube.

2. Scrapbook (Homepage)

WIth Scrapbook you can actually capture and save any website to your computer. That way you can access a cached version of the page anytime you would like, and what’s even better is that you can mark it up all you want. Highlight a word here, throw a note there… you’re friends will never realize that you can grab a site and morph it into whatever you want.

3. Gspace (Homepage)

Do you feel bad about having an outrageous amount of storage in Gmail and letting it all go to waste? With this simple extension you can put your Gmail account to work as a file storage solution. It comes equipped with a spiffy FTP-like interface that couldn’t make transferring files any easier with your Gmail account. Heck, it can even interact with multiple Gmail accounts so that you can create one for documents, another for images, and so on!

4. Tab Effect (Homepage)

I can’t say that this extension serves a valuable purpose, but it will sure catch the attention of your friends . You’ll see the extension in all it’s glory when you go to switch from one tab to another. That’s when the cube-like rotation effect will kick in, and you can watch as your friends’ jaws drop to the floor.It is an very interesting feature so we highly recommend you to download this feature.

5. Repagination (Homepage)

This is an extension that your friends may not be impressed with right away, but they will definitely be looking for the download if you use it with one of their favorite sites.

Repagination is a powerful tool that can continuously grab whatever page the “Next” button links to, and it will be concatenated onto the current page. One example of this is being able to grab hundreds of search results pages, and scroll through them all as if they were a single site. It works pretty much anywhere there are page numbers or a next button. It’s especially handy when you’re navigating through pages of photos, such as those on Flickr.

What’s going on in the screenshot below is I scrolled down to the bottom of the Google search results page and right-clicked on the number “2?, which represents the next page in the order. Then I went to Re-Pagination->All and it concatenated 26 more Google search results pages onto the one that I was already viewing. I darkened the concatenated portion in the screenshot below so that you can distinguish where the original results page ends and where the other one begins, but when using the extension it looks like one fluid page. You can also limit how many pages are concatenated which might be a good idea so that it doesn’t add so many.

6. Tab Scope (Homepage)

I know I know, seeing a thumbnail when you hover over a tab is nothing knew. Opera does it out-of-the-box, and to the untrained eye this is really nothing different. Don’t be deceived… this is not just a preview.

With Tab Scope you can fully navigate the small thumbnail that is shown when you hover over a tab. Go forward or back, refresh the page, scroll, or even click on links. It’s way more than just a preview, and it deserves all the attention it gets.

7. Update Scanner (Homepage)

I’m sure your friends would love to be notified when the content of websites change. Just think, they could take MySpace stalking to a whole new level. With Update Scanner it is a no brainer.

Just point it to the URL you want to check for updates, specify the interval at which it should check the page, and tell it roughly how much of the content needs to change before it notifies you. Update Scanner will do all the work in the background, and will popup with a notification whenever a change has been detected.

8. Interclue (Homepage)

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a better idea of what a hyperlink points to? That’s where Interclue comes into play. When you hover over a link it is capable of showing a crazy amount of data about that specific page. Maybe the number of words the it contains, how many links there are, Digg count, and much more. If the link points to a YouTube video you can even watch it right from the Interclue popup window.

9. Firefox Universal Uploader (Homepage)

Take the pain out of uploading files to Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Box.net, Facebook, and more by using this uploader tool. It is complete with an FTP-like interface, but you’ll use it to upload/download images and files to your favorite sharing sites. This is also a great way to retrieve images in bulk that you’ve uploaded to a supported online service, but accidentally deleted from your own computer.

10. ThumbStrips (Homepage)

The last thing you’ll need to show your friends is how you can navigate your browser’s history in style. Remembering names of the websites you visit is so 2005. With ThumbStrips you can just flip through thumbnails of the sites you recently visited:

If you show your friends all of these things it will surely leave them in awe. Most browsers aren’t capable of doing most (if any) of the things listed here, and if they’re not using Firefox the odds are probably pretty good that they had no idea it was capable of doing such amazing things thanks to the extensions.

Make Firefox 3 Even Faster

Firefox 3 as we all know is now super quick at loading pages. But there is always room ofr improvement and best of all since Firefox is open source software there is a lot of ways that you can mod the app.

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit enter. You will get a warning about changing settings but we are not doing anything too radical so it is OK. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 8. This means it will make 8 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

9 Tweaks for Firefox 3's Location bar

While Firefox 3’s location bar is perhaps my personal favorite new feature and the one I missed the most when I have to use Firefox 2 for some testing, there are a lot of people who find it weird, obtrusive and don’t like it including bookmarks and history among its results.

An option to restore its old behavior was available for a few weeks during Firefox 3 development but it was pulled basically because it would need a lot of testing and it was thought it was not worth it. The option may come back for Firefox 3.1.

In the meantime, for those who prefer the old way and those who want even more power, here are 9 easy tweaks you can try.

1. Make the autocomplete menu show only typed addresses and not visited or bookmarked

• Enter about:config in the location bar to access the advanced preferences. Accept the “This may void your warranty message”.
• Look for browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped and double click it to set it to TRUE.

2. To set the autocomplete menu to single line suggestions install the oldbar extension, developed by Seth Spitzer. Together with the previous tweak pretty much restores Firefox 2 behavior, except typed characters are searched in all the address instead of just the beginning.

3. Change the number of suggestions displayed in the autocomplete menu

• Enter about:config in the location bar to access the advanced preferences.
• Look for browser.urlbar.maxRichResults and set it to the number of results you want to get.
• Restart Firefox for the change to take effect.

4. Hide the star button if you prefer to use the Bookmarks menu or a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + D)

• Open your userChrome.css file located in your profile folder.
• Add this line to the end of the file: #star-button {display: none !important;}
• Restart Firefox for the change to take effect.

5. Always show the Go button. By default it is only displayed when you are editing the current web address.

• Open your userChrome.css file located in your profile folder.
• Add this line to the end of the file: #go-button { visibility: visible !important; }
• Restart Firefox for the change to take effect.

6. If you enter firfox in the location bar and you try to correct it, the autocomplete menu won’t suggest anything because it only keeps working as you edit the last characters. Install the Edit Middle extension, developed by harikaried, to make it work with edits anywhere.

7. To auto select the first suggestion in the autocomplete menu, install the Enter Selects extension, developed by harikaried. You will need to logon to Mozilla Add-ons to install it as it’s still experimental.

8. Tweak the autocomplete menu title and addresses size and colors by adding these lines to your userChrome.css file. Check for the specific hexadecimal color code to use at WebMonkey.

.ac-comment {font-size: 100% !important; color: #444444 !important; }

.ac-comment[selected='true'] { color: #FFFFFF !important; }

.ac-url-text {font-size: 100% !important; color: #000077 !important; }

.ac-url-text[selected='true'] { color: #FFFFFF !important; }

9. To include Google and Amazon search results in the autocomplete menu install the Searchery extension, developed by Ian McKellar. You will need to logon to Mozilla Add-ons to install it as it’s still experimental.

10. Bonus tip courtesy of Frederick from the comments: To hide the web feed icon from the location bar, add this line to your userChrome.css file: #feed-button[feeds] { display: none !important; }

Happy tweaking!

How to quickly save all the images and other media of a web page using Firefox 3

Its cumbersome if you want to save all the images on a webpage of site one but one. Till now you what you did was right click on the images and save it one by one. Now what if you need to save all the images at one shot ? . With this option you can save all the images and all the media files ( video and audio ) in one shot to a specific folder in your computer.

• You just need to click on the site identification button for the website, which is there just one left hand side of the address bar.
• Click on it and you will see “Manage Information” Button popping up. Click on it
• Next You will see another popup with lot of options. Select the Media Option.
• In this tab you will see all the images and other media files listed which is availble in that web page.
• Select one image and press CTRL + A ( Select All )
• Then Click on the Save As button. This will ask you to specify a folder where it will save all the media and image files.

Thats all. You can check your folder now and see all the images. Another advanatage of this is you will be also able to see any image which is hidden on that page. Specially if you have a website and you want to analyze it.

Recover Firefox 2 passwords in Firefox 3

Updated to Firefox 3 today - loving it so far. But, have had a major problem!

Lost your saved passwords upon updating to Firefox 3! You can check to see if your passwords imported into Firefox 3 by going to Tools > Options > Security > Saved Passwords.

However, a little tinkering, and I have my saved passwords in Firefox 3!

Here’s how:

1. Go to your Firefox Profile Folder. You can find your profile folder in Windows by navigating to %APPDATA%/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/
2. Now look for the file called signons2
3. Open with any text editor, highlight and copy all of the data, then close the file.
4. Now look for the file called signons3
5. Open with any text editor, highlight and then paste the data from signons2
6. Close the file (Don’t forget to save!)
7. Now restart Firefox … and your passwords are now updated to your Firefox 3 installation!

Firefox 3 Themes

Are you using Windows XP but prefer the Firefox 3 Theme for Vista, or vice versa? Unfortunately Mozilla decided that Windows users shouldn’t be given the option between the two themes, but it was only a matter of time before someone duplicated them for everyone to use. As you can see above I’m running Windows XP, but Firefox 3 has the Vista theme enabled.

To do this yourself all you have to do is download the respective theme that you want to use:

• Vista on XP: Makes Firefox 3 running on Windows XP use the Vista theme.
• XP on Vista: Makes Firefox 3 running on Vista use the Windows XP theme.

I haven’t tried these themes on other operating systems (such as Linux), but I suspect that they will work on any OS just as any normal theme would. Report back in the comments if you decide to try these out on other operating systems. Update: Malinthe confirmed in the comments below that these themes work in Kubuntu Linux.

Both of the themes are still experimental, which means you’ll need to login to the Mozilla site before being able to install them.

UPDATE: Both themes are now public, and don’t require any login.

Convert Firefox Into A Social Networking Hub!

Flock is a browser which makes social networking more easier than ever bringing to you a host of tools to interact with different social networking websites. Firefox on the other hand is not social networking ready but can be easily converted into a social networking hub by using extensions and add-ons.

In this post we will take a look at those useful extensions and add-ons which will help you convert Firefox into a social networking hub.

StumbleUpon Toolbar

StumbleUpon is a great way to come across wonderful sites. The StumbleUpon Toolbar extension will help you discover websites in your selected categories. It will also let you share and connect with your friends.

Shareaholic

Are you a avid social networker? Shareaholic is one extension that will fulfill your addiction with social networks by allowing you to bookmark or e-mail pages to a wide array of social networks.

Shareaholic currently support, del.icio.us, facebook, foxiewire, friendfeed, google bookmarks, google reader, healthranker, kaboodle, magnolia, mixx, myspace, pownce, reddit, simpy, stumbleupon, streakr, truemors, tumblr, twitter, ycombinator, bzzster and more.

Download Shareaholic

ShareThis

Another extension similar to Shareaholic, ShareThis makes it more easier and efficient to share any type of content with anyone you want to share it with. ShareThis also makes it easier to share with your friends by providing you a mash up of address book from popular social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, AIM etc.

Download ShareThis

Del.icio.us Bookmarks

This is the official extension created by Yahoo which will help you easily bookmark any site to your del.icio.us, you can also browse all your bookmarks in the sidebar.

Download Del.icio.us Bookmarks

Dashblog

What happens when you see a interesting image and want to quickly want to share it with your friends through your blog? Do you want to quickly be able to share those videos, images and websites without having to go through much trouble. Dashblog is a extension that will quickly collect videos, images, text/quotes, songs and screen-captures from any web page and publish them to your blog(wordpress, blogger) or twitter.

Download Dashblog

Piclens

PicLens transforms your browser into a visually stunning experience for enjoying online photos and videos. You can effortlessly search and zoom your way around thousands of images and YouTube videos faster and more immersively than ever before.

Piclens lets you search YouTube videos and discover videos and photos from various other sites. You can also browser products from Amazon with a 3D experience.

Piclens currently supports a host of services including Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and almost all of the popular image sharing websites.

Download Piclens

Clipmarks

Clipmarks is like adding a pair of scissors to your browser, letting you capture exactly what you want others to see (text, images or video). Your clips are saved on clipmarks.com and can easily be syndicated to FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook or other sites.

Download Clipmarks

Meebo

Meebo is a popular online instant messaging service which allows you to chat with friends from multiple IM networks without having to install any client on your Desktop.

We have made a exception to include Meebo in our list even though it is not compatible with Firefox 3 since it is a real must have extension and is definitely useful.

Download Meebo

GMarks

GMarks allows you to sync and manage your Google Bookmarks from within Firefox.

Download Gmarks

TwitterFox

The extension adds a tiny icon on the status bar that notifies you when your friends update their statuses. Also it has a small text input field to update your status from within Firefox without having to visit the site.

Download TwitterFox

TwitterBar

Are you in hurry and want to post something to Twitter? TwitterBar comes to the rescue by allowing you to post to twitter directly from the Firefox address bar. Simply type in your message and click on the icon to submit your post to twitter.

Download TwitterBar

Digg Sidebar

Who can ever forget Digg when one talks about social networking? Digg sidebar is a useful extension that will allow you to see and Digg stories in the Firefox Sidebar.

View all the stories as they occur without having to refresh the page over and over again, you can also choose from various categories and topics and from popular/upcoming/all sections on Digg by just using a menu.

Download Digg Sidebar

FlickrFox

FlickrFox allows you to browse and search Flickr photos in a sidebar.

Download FlickrFox

Facebook Toolbar

The official toolbar from Facebook which allows you to easily access your Facebook account using the toolbar, without having to visit the website.

You can also access your Facebook account from the Firefox sidebar.

Download Facebook Sidebar

Email This! Bookmarklet

Email this! will send your recipient the link, title, & highlighted text of the page you are viewing using Gmail, Google Apps GMail, Yahoo, and Stand-Alone Mail Clients like Outlook Express, Thunderbird, & More!

Set the Web Up Just Like You Like It

Now you can use Web-based protocol handlers to provide quick access to your favorite Web applications. For example, you can set Firefox up so clicking on a mailto: link on any site will open a new message in your preferred webmail provider rather than your computer’s default mail program (note: this feature is only available with webmail services that have registered with Firefox 3).

Go to Tools → Options → Applications to select the default application for each protocol or to select “Always Ask” if you prefer to choose the application yourself every time.

Enable Spell Checking In All Text Fields

The inline spell checking is probably my favorite feature in Firefox 3 but it doesn’t check the single-line text boxes for spelling mistakes. You can right-click on the field and have it check the spelling or you can permanently turn spell check on by changing a configuration option.

• Name: layout.spellcheckDefault
• The preference name already exists and does not need to be created.
• Default Value: 1
• Possible values:
  • 0 - Disable the spell checker
  • 1 - Enable the spell checker for multi-line text boxes
  • 2 - Enable the spell checker for all text boxes

How To- Restore Your Lost Firefox 2 Bookmarks in Firefox 3

The steps to restore lost bookmarks in Firefox 3 (only for Windows )

For Windows XP

1: Click on Start- > Run

2: Type - > C:\Documents and Settings\YourWindowsUserName

3: Display the Hidden folders by clicking on Tools at the top the Folder Options-> View -> Show Hidden Files

4: Now you should see a folder named Application data. Double click on it and then go to Mozilla-> Firefox -> Profiles

5: Under Profiles, you’ll find a folder having the name default with a combination of numbers and letters. Just double click it and you’ll find a folder bookmarkbackups . In that you’ll find some HTML files named bookmark with a date associated with them.

6: Copy the bookmark file with the most recent date and paste it on your desktop.

7: Now go to Firefox-> Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks-> Import and Backup -> Import HTML and choose that file which you had saved on your desktop. And you are done. Your bookmarks should appear now.

For Windows Vista

1: Click Start and in the Search box Type C:\Users \ YourWindowsUserName

2: Display the Hidden folders by clicking on Tools at the top the Folder Options-> View -> Show Hidden Files

3: Now again here you’ll find Application Data. So click on it then Roaming - > Mozilla-> Firefox -> Profiles

Rest of the steps are same as steps 5, 6, 7 mentioned above.

So that was how you restore the bookmarks in Firefox 3 if you’ve lost them. Hope that helps.

Configuring The Close Button

The placement of the Close Button has been a very controversial subject for many people. I have run into several individuals who hate that there is now a button on every tab while others say “it’s about time.” I like the feature but if you’re one of the people that don’t then you can easily change it:

• Name: browser.tabs.closeButtons
• The preference name already exists and does not need to be created.
• Default Value: 1
• Possible 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 (Firefox 1.x behavior)

If you decide that you want to leave the Close Button on all of the tabs then there is another configuration option that you may be interested in. This option is considered the clipping width and refers to how small a tab can be and still display a close button. It only applies to the tabs other than the one that is currently selected.

• Name:browser.tabs.tabClipWidth
• The preference name already exists and does not need to be created.
• Default Value: 140 (pixels)
• Possible values:
  • Value greater than 140 will hide the Close Button sooner.
  • Value less than 140 will hide the Close Button later.
  • Value of 0 disables the hiding of the Close Button.

Microsummary Update Interval

Micro summaries have the potential to become extremely useful but they need a little push. For this I came up with three different ways to keep up with micro summaries to keep users more informed of new posts and comments. If you haven’t been using the Micro summaries because they don’t update frequently enough then you can always adjust it:

• Name: browser.bookmarks.microsummary.updateInterval
• The preference name does not exist and needs to be created. Use an Integer type when creating the preference.
• Default Value: N/A
• Possible values:
  • The number of minutes between updates expressed as an integer.

Increase Maximum Number Of Connections

When you go to download multiple files you may notice that Firefox will only let you download two files at a time. If you want to download more you will have to increase the number of connections Firefox can make.

• Name: network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server
• The preference name already exists and does not need to be created.
• Default Value: 2
• Possible values:
  • Increase the value to something larger than 2 if you want to have the ability to download more files simultaneously.

Open Search Box Results In New Tab

The search box in the upper-right corner of Firefox makes it really easy to search your favorite sites. You can get each of those search queries to open in a new tab with this simple tweak:

• Name: browser.search.openintab
• The preference name already exists and does not need to be created.
• Default Value: false
• Possible values:
  • false - open search box results in current tab
  • true - open search box results in new tab

How To Disable Session Restore

The built-in session restore feature is really nice but I use Tab Mix Plus and its session restore is a little nicer (it remembers things like tabs that I have protected). It has some nice features but if you don’t disable the one that Firefox has then you may end up receiving duplicates of all your tabs.

• Name: browser.sessionstore.enabled
• The preference name does not exist and needs to be created. Use an Boolean type when creating the preference.
• Default Value: true
• Possible values:
  • false - disables the built-in session restore
  • true - enables the built-in session restore

Lower The Physical Memory Used When Minimized

This last one is a classic for our site. This article was posted back in March of 2006 and has received over 4,300 Diggs. Since that time it has brought in nearly 200,000 unique visitors and many find that it does exactly what they want.

This tweak will send Firefox to your virtual memory when you minimize the browser, therefore freeing 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. Some people argue that this is not a good thing to do but other browsers, like Opera, have are setup to do this by default.

• Name: config.trim_on_minimize
• The preference name does not exist and needs to be created. Use an Boolean type when creating the preference.
• Default Value: N/A
• Possible values:
  • true - this enables Firefox to be written to the virtual memory when minimized.