Firefox WordPress.com Sidebar Widget

Ruff has concocted a neat sidebar widget which allows you to post to your WP.com blog straight from the Firefox sidebar.

Filed under: FireFox, Wordpress.com

Opera 9: one plus, one minus

So far, this is what I really notice: Opera 9 is very ver fast – both launching and retrieving web pages. And, compared with Firefox, it consumes only half the system resources; with equal numbers of tabs open, Firefox packs a wolloping 100,000KB, whereas Opera makes do with about 50,000KB (according to the Windows Task Manager -> Processes – Mem Usage).

But … on the downside, Opera still has huge display issues. Some web sites are not really usable – Google Mail would be the most glaring example. Boy, do they need to work on that back in Norway.

Filed under: Browsers, FireFox, Opera

JSCalc – Firefox calculator bookmarklet

Gosh, this is a cool little popup calculator by The Man in Blue: JSCalc.
Just remember to enable Javascript for themaninblue.com (if like me you have the NoScript extension) to allow it to do its work.

Filed under: FireFox, Web Apps

Better Browsing with Shortcuts: CTRL+E for Google Search

I’m a big fan of shortcuts. Sometimes you discover one by accident. OK, I could read through the Mozilla Help file and try and memorize a whole batch of them … but does anybody do that?

I stumbled across CTRL+E by accident. In Firefox, if you press this combination (or CTRL+K), your cursor focus shifts to the Search box at the top, next to the address bar (Google in my case). If text is in there, it is highlighted – so you’re ready to type in your query.
Because I discovered this accidentally, and was so delighted, I’m much more likely to remember it now.

And as to another very useful (indispensable) shortcut: CTRL+W will close your current tab.
It must be easily 100 times a day I use that one.

Filed under: Browsers, FireFox

1-in-10 Now Use Firefox

Gosh, we’ll soon be mainstream
A UK-centric view of browser shares, told with freshness.

ScottVR: Here’s what I did to make the firefox google toolbar work under firefox beta 1.4 or 1.5

Filed under: FireFox

Backing Up a Firefox Profile

I’d always wondered whether that would work … just saving a copy of the whole caboodle.
And it seems that indeed is the answer: Axlotl explains.
Cool. Just remember, if you’re on Windows, that you can’t have Firefox running while trying to zip up that profile folder.

Filed under: Browsers, FireFox

Firefox 1.5 buggy: insert image dialog box is cut off

Using the insert/edit image tag, Firefox pops up a dialogue box that looks like this:

Pretty useless really …
BTW, the same ‘cut off’ thing also happens with the insert/edit link – it’s unusable. Is this a Firefox bug – or a problem with the visual editor?

Filed under: FireFox, Wordpress.com

Best Firefox Extensions

rambleschmack has compiled a definitive list (as far as anything is definitive … and what sort of name is rambleschmack anyway?).
I happen to agree with a lot on his list.

Filed under: FireFox

HTML Validator Plugin for FF 1.5

is now available (version 0.7.6) and works!
I hadn’t realised how much I relied on this one. Especially if you check code and templates a lot. It’s right at the top of my must-have extensions.

Filed under: FireFox, Web Development

ColorZilla and MeasureIt are back again!

Hurrah!
Two of my favourite can’t-live-without Firefox extensions are now available again in the 1.5 beta version.
ColorZilla – version 0.8.3.1
MeasureIt – version 0.3.3

If you do any sort of web design at all, and haven’t tried these yet, run and grab them. They’re seriously good.

Filed under: Browsers, FireFox, Web Development

SessionSaver for Firefox 1.5 Beta

I nearly freaked after my upgrade to Beta 2 … the Sessions extension was not supported. Eeeek!
I am lazy and organise nearly all my online work through the facility of … yep, browser sessions.
And then they were all inaccessible. I contemplated trawling through my browsing history; but that would only bring back the most recently visited sites.

Fortunately, the developer of the SessionSaver keeps carving away at it. Visiting the forum where all the news for this extension is discussed brought immense relief: a very recent (development) version had just been posted.
The forum page is: SessionSaver .2d: new (rewrite)
and the extension (dev version) can be downloaded here.
Oh joy of joys – it works, and works well!
And, what’s even better: the extension has been improved further. There is now (finally!) a way to save/export your sessions, and also import session files. This was sorely needed and I’m thrilled to have that feature. Now I can save session files for backup, and also transfer them to other machines.

Thank you, rue, thank you very much.

Now the functionality of SessionSaver is beginning to come a bit closer to what Opera’s inbuilt session management offers. I can’t really think of a better way of handling sessions than Opera does … as in many other respects, the Norwegian browser gnomes have got a good handle on ease of use and flexibility.

Filed under: Browsers, FireFox