Firefox 2.0.0.11 appearing on ftp mirrors

Firefox 2.0.0.10 has just been released two days ago and the Firefox team is already shoving version 2.0.0.11 on the ftp mirrors in order to publicly release this new version that fixes the bug that emerged after the release two days ago. The reason for the hurry was a bug affecting an important HTML element interface (.drawImage) that affected several websites and extensions.

I suppose the Firefox team will make the announcement of the new release as soon as all mirrors have all versions on their ftp servers to make sure distribution happens as flawlessly as always.

No need for release notes, the only thing fixed seems to be the bug mentioned above. The release is already available on the Oregon mirror ftp.

Firefox Hack Back Button Memory Consumption

Here is something for you to try out. Open Firefox and visit a website. Something like Microsoft, Mozilla or The Register will do. Open the Task Manager or another process viewer and take a look at the current memory consumption which should be between 40-60 Megabytes depending on the add-ons that you have installed.

Now visit several links on the website you are currently on and observe the memory consumption. It does rise, does not it ? It seems to rise continuously although only one tab and website is open all the time.

The reason behind this is that Firefox does store previous visited websites for the Back Button. The benefit is that hitting back will load the website from memory cache which is a lot faster than from normal cache or requesting the website from the server again.

Some users do not use the Back button a lot and decided to disable this functionality in order to save memory. Type about:config in the address bar and filter for the string browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers

FoxLingo a must have Language Translator

The developers advertise FoxLingo as the ultimate language tool for Firefox and I must admit that they might be right about this. I sometimes come upon websites that I can’t read because I do not speak the language that the text is written in. I can recognize the language most of the time but I have no easy way to quickly translate the website to understand roughly what it is all about.

I did use Google Translate but this had the disadvantage that I had to visit the Google Translate website to use it and that it did not support that many languages. FoxLingo supports 45 languages and 34 translation services to deliver the best and most reliable translation possible.

You can mark any text on a website and translate it from one language to another one in just a few seconds. FoxLingo has a button called AutoTrans which translates a website automatically if pressed from one language to another.

Disable automatic Formfills in Firefox

Firefox fills out forms automatically be default which is something that not all users want. There is however an easy way to disable that function which has the result that no forms are automatically filled from that moment on. The easiest way to change the setting is to type about:config in the address bar and filter for the name browser.formfill.enable.

The function is active if it is set to true. A double-click changes the setting to false which has the desired effect. Changes take effect immediately.

Quick Tip to Resize Windows in Firefox

It is essential to test websites at different screen resolutions to make sure that your visitors will be able to see the same contents even if they run a different resolution than the website was designed for. The quickest way to change the resolution of the Firefox window is a Javascript one liner.

Paste the following code into the address bar of Firefox and hit enter afterwards: javascript:window.resizeTo(800,600). This will change the resolution of the Firefox window to 800×600. Just change the values to different ones, for example (1024,800) if you want to use the Firefox browser in that resolution.

It is also possible to save this code as a new bookmark instead of pasting that code into the address bar. Right-click on the bookmarks toolbar and select New Bookmark from the menu. Put the code into the location field and enter a name that describes it

Extension Updates Week 47

Another week has past and it is again time for the weekly Firefox extension update post in which I take a look at the most interesting updated or new extensions that have been released in the last seven days. This is of course my selection and yours might differ from that although I do my best to pick all the interesting ones.

If you happen to know of a extension that has been updated but is missing in this list feel free to add it in the comments so everyone knows about it.

Display all Links of a Website

Many users are insecure whether a website that they are currently visiting is the real deal or a fake copy of it. Phishing is a threat that most users take lightly or do not even know about. The Page Info window of Firefox details all links of a website which can be a great asset in determining if the site is the original or a copy.

Right-click on any website and select Page Info from the menu. Now click on the Links tab in the new window that just opened. You see a list of all links on that website. It is then possible to look at the specific link that you want to click and see if it really leads to the destination you think it will lead.

Advanced users have other methods of finding this out but this is probably the easiest way for inexperienced users. The General tab can also be used to verify that you are indeed on the right website because it does display URL information.

Merge Firefox Toolbars to get more space

I have read about a great tip at Make Use Of describing the possibility to merge Firefox toolbars to save space on the screen. I was not aware that this is possible until know. I surely removed some items on toolbars that I did not needed but I never came up with the idea to merge toolbars instead.

Until now I simply enabled toolbars whenever I needed them and disabled them again afterwards. To merge toolbars simply do the following. Enable all toolbars, right-click one of them and select customize from the menu. Now drag and drop all items that you need into one toolbar. This can be the menu bar or navigation toolbar as well.

I moved the Pagerank checker from the Google toolbar to my menu toolbar. This was actually the only useful aspect of the Google Toolbar. I thought about moving the Stumbleupon icons to the menu toolbar as well but this would reduce the input fields of the address to much.

Can’t remember a Firefox password ? This will help

If you are lazy you let Firefox save passwords for you which are then automatically entered into the corresponding password form if you visit a website again. But what do you do if you forget that password but need to know it ? This is for instance a issue if you use Gmail and want to add it in your POP3 mail client as well.

There are actually two possibilities to reveal the password of a password form even if it is only displaying in asterisks. The first option would be to open the Firefox menu and visit the Security tab in there. (Tools > Options > Security Tab) Click on Show Passwords and in the new window again on the Show Passwords button. All of the passwords that have been saved are revealed now including the site url and the username.

Copy Tab Urls

I sometimes find a useful link list and open many tabs at once quickly looking at the websites leaving those open that look interesting enough and closing those that do not seem to be. This leaves me with lots of open tabs at the end and I find it pretty useful to create a list of urls that I found quickly.

I use a Firefox extension called Copy Tab URLs to copy the urls of all open tabs at once instead of manually copying and pasting those urls or adding the sites to my bookmarks who would soon grow to a huge size. You might be wondering why I need to copy and paste the urls. I sometimes do some research for companies and individuals and the url is always an essential part of the report that I create.