Recently in Firefox Category

I use Firefox both in work and at home, so I'm used to using it on both OSX and Linux (Ubuntu). Since so much of what I do is either centred around email or web based systems, my usage of my browser and a few other tools, is quite important to me. Things that make my life that little bit easier are always welcome.

So which addons do I currently have installed:

• Google toolbar - shows a site's pagerank and gives you access to a few other handy little tools
• Zemanta - a handy tool for bloggers which allows you to easily access images and links based on your post's content. You can also use it to easily link to products on Amazon
• Mozbar - direct access to the Seomoz tools
• Delicious - probably the addon I use most. I spend a lot of my time bookmarking sites, so doing it via a web service like Delicious makes sense
• Alexa sparky - gives you access to Alexa data on any site you're viewing
• Ebay toolbar - if you use ebay as much as I do then this makes it a lot easier to track your current bids (I was trying the AIR desktop, but it was annoying)
• Blacknight domain search - allows you to search for available domains directly from within Firefox

Which Firefox tools / addons are you using?

Trying to get sites to display identically across multiple browsers and multiple operating systems is awkward. This site probably doesn't display particularly well on all browsers, but I'm not a professional web designer / developer, so you'll have to excuse me. It's also not a corporate / business website trying to sell products or services to the public.

Screenclick, however, is a business website.

Earlier this evening I decided to visit it on my Mac using Firefox. Apart from the really annoying splash page, which doesn't do anything useful, the main page does not load correctly in Firefox 3 on the Mac:


Now if you open the same page in Safari you seem something totally different:
Why?

Seemingly somebody decided to use Microsoft's Silverlight, but didn't bother to do a simple plugin check that would either prompt the user to install the plugin or gracefully degrade.

I won't be able to view their site on my Linux desktop either, as Silverlight isn't available for Linux (there is a port, but last time I checked there wasn't a native Debian / Ubuntu version available)

UPDATE: I've now moved to my Ubuntu Linux desktop and this is what I get:

The wonderfully helpful splash page (do they honestly expect me to continue browsing after seeing that?)



and the inner page (for some odd reason it's actually telling me that I need Silverlight now, whereas it wasn't on my Mac!)

When I was playing around with Firefox 3 several months ago one of the biggest annoyances for me was the "autocomplete".

As you type a URL Firefox suggests links from your browser history.

While that might be useful the way they've implemented it is incredibly obtrusive and, therefore, really really annoying.

As I mentioned previously I couldn't upgrade to Firefox 3 as my main browser for a number of silly reasons. Since then those issues have been resolved, so I've started using FF3 on my home desktop.

So what about the annoying auto-complete?

Well it's easy enough to disable if you know how.

Luckily somebody out there did!

Like so many Firefox settings it can be configured via the advanced configuration menu, which now comes with a health warning!

In your location (address) bar simply type "about:config" (no quotes).
The variable / setting you need to change is found under:

browser.urlbar.maxRichResults

I've set mine to "1", as I really don't need more. I can always change it later if I really want to.

Restart Firefox and finally sanity is restored!

Although I only upgraded my Mac's browser to Firefox 3 this morning I will be downgrading it shortly

Why?

Practicalities.

Several web applications I use on a regular basis break badly in Firefox 3, which renders them unusable (typo3) or not as usable as I would like (Movable Type).

I know the guys in Movable Type will fix the issues, though they were waiting on a stable Firefox release before they made any crazy changes.

I've no idea how long it will be before the Typo3 team fix the UI issues on their end.

Unfortunately in both cases the issues arise from Javascript rendering issues ie. the browser engine has changed how it handles it

Ah well!

Today sees the official release of Firefox 3

Ubuntu users seem to have been granted the privilege of downloading the new release since this morning for some odd reason!

The guys behind Firefox are also trying for a Guinness record for the most downloads in a 24 hour period.

Inevitably their web servers have crashed under the load and are now displaying an error message:

Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

I guess that was to be expected, however their FTP servers are still working fine!

If you want to grab the new version of Firefox via FTP you can get it here

I enjoy playing around with new "toys", so I was delighted to get an email earlier this evening from one of the Zemanta team earlier this evening to let me know that they'd added support for Movable Type.

The concept behind Zemanta is intriguing. It's a browser plugin that integrates with serveral of the more popular blogging platforms via your browser. Once you've composed a blog post of 300 characters or more it will make suggestions for images, links and other content.

As they describe it themselves:

Have your browser understand what you are blogging about and suggest pictures, links, articles and tags to make your posts more vibrant. We are making blogging fun again.

The images are pulled from a variety of sources, but they assure users that they are all copyright cleared ie. you won't be getting any nastygrams from people's legal teams asking you to remove them!

Although the people at Zemanta only officially support Firefox I'm working away quite happily using the plugin on Swiftweasel, which is a derivative.

A new look and feel was unveiled for Dilbert.com

You'd think that people would be delighted, but the opposite is the case.

Why?

Well whoever is responsible for the screwup that is the new site seems to be living in the past.

The new Flash animations are simple Flash. There's no reason why they wouldn't work in most browsers on most platforms, but if you visit the animation section using Linux you get a lovely message:

Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows XP Media Center 2005, Mac OSX 10.3 or Mac OSX 10.4 is required to view this page

So you grab yourself a copy of the UserAgent Switcher extension for Firefox and "spoof" a "supported" browser. And of course the entire thing then works fine.

Doh!