Firefox 3: Make the switch or wait ?

The Mozilla Firefox team did release Beta 2 of Firefox 3 just two days ago and with each passing Beta I’m asking myself if I should make the switch to Firefox 3, wait or use both versions next to each other. Most extensions do not work right out of the box though which is probably the greatest concern besides that this is still a Beta and not a release candidate or the full version.

Firefox 3 will be an awesome browser. The developers managed to get rid of some of the memory problems that seem to plague Firefox 2 users and incorporates several beloved extensions into the main product. The release notes are a bit sparse on the changes in Beta 2 compared to Beta 1, here is what they say:

Firefox 3 Beta 2 includes approximately 900 improvements over the previous beta, including fixes for stability, performance, memory usage, platform enhancements and user interface improvements. Many of these improvements were based on community feedback from the previous beta.

Folders for your Temporary Bookmarks

When I first heard about the Read it Later extension I thought that this would be another extension that was not really needed. I use a system of temporary folders in my bookmarks toolbar and move website urls in there whenever I find an interesting article that I cannot read at the moment.

Instead of using just one Temp folder I have several temporary folders depending on the type of article. I sort them in the categories Webmaster, Tips, Tools and Temp for general content. All four are always visible in my bookmarks toolbar and it takes just the click of the mouse button to access those websites again or delete them once I finished taking a closer look at them.

There is no need for an extension that uses valuable RAM to do the same.

Different Cursors depending on link type

Links can open in a new page or new tab and it is never clear where they are actually opening until you click on them. I don’t like to open links in a new window because new Firefox windows consume more RAM than Firefox tabs. If I know that a link will open in a new window I tend to copy the link location instead, open a new blank tab and paste that link into the tabs address bar.

But, there is one way to make Firefox display if the link is opening in a new window or tab. It’s just three lines of CSS code that have to be added to the userContent.css file in the Firefox profile. The best way to find this file is to use the search function of your operating system.

Close Firefox, add the following lines of code to the end of the file and restart the browser afterwards to see if the changes have been successful. Links that open in a new window should be displayed with a crosshair cursor instead of the normal cursor.

Multiple Cookies for one site

Firefox Facts mentioned Cookie Pie in their latest article and I thought it would be nice to review it as well because I’m using one website where this does make sense.A friend of mine is visiting me from time to time and we normally do not use the computer when she is there. We both do have Gmail accounts however and like to check the account from time to time.

Instead of using two different browsers to login into both Gmail accounts we simply use Cookie Pie and two separate tabs to access both Gmail accounts from one browser. I suppose there are other applications where this would make sense, maybe one where the administrator of a website is also a user of it and does not want to communicate and post as a user.

Usage is pretty straightforward. Just install Cookie Pie on your computer and activate it by right-clicking an open tab. Activate it again in another tab and you are free to visit the same website using different accounts.

Secure Firefox Cache with a Ramdisk

This is a quick useful tip that I found at the Ghacks Technology News website. Instead of using a hard drive to store the Firefox cache users could use a Ramdisk instead to speed things up and increase security at the same time. The two benefits of a Ramdisk are that its data will not be recoverable by normal means after rebooting or shutting down the computer and that it allows faster read and write processes because those are stored in RAM and not on the hard drive.

You need a software to create the Ramdisk, one amongst many is Ramdisk.sys which can be extracted to any location on your hard drive. You have to initialize the Ramdisk by clicking on Install Ramdisk. Select a size of RAM that you want to use for it afterwards (I suggest 25-50%) and pick a drive letter for it. The Ramdisk will be available after clicking on OK.

Fire up Firefox and use about:config in the address bar to open the Firefox configuration. Filter for the value browser.cache.disk.parent_directory, if it is not found create it by right-clicking and selecting New > String. The value has to be the path to the Ramdisk in the form drive letter:\\folder.

My Ramdisk has been installed as drive letter Z: and I have a temp folder in there called temp. My path looks like z:\\temp\\ therefor.

How to synchronize Firefox profiles

You might want to synchronize your Firefox profile folders if you use Firefox on more than computer. This is handy for instance to always have the same bookmarks and extensions available no matter on which computer you work with Firefox. The easiest way to sync your bookmarks, passwords, cookies and history would be to use the Google Browser Sync extension for Firefox which has to be installed on all computers that you want to share those files with.

A Google account is required if you want to use the feature though which might turn some users away from this solution. It could not be easier to use it though. Download the Google Browser Sync extension, install it, enter your Google account information, select a PIN for additional security and repeat the process on every computer that you want to sync the profile with.

Passwords and Cookies are always encrypted and you can opt to encrypt all other data as well. The syncing process is completely automatic. Whenever you start Firefox the extension compares the current data with the one stored on the Google Server and synchronizes all data that is not the same.

Two Firefox browser cache tweaks

Firefox is running fine for most users with the default settings. Advanced users however can tweak an immense amount of settings in Firefox to make it more effective and suitable for their special needs. This is one of the main reasons for creating this blog. I wanted to create a place where I could write about the tweaks and tips that work for me to let other Firefox users know about them and try them out for themselves.

Today I’m writing about two Firefox browser cache tweaks, one dealing with the memory cache and one with the hard drive cache. My partition on C with Windows XP has a size of only 10 Gigabytes which is not much. I did install Firefox on that drive as well and was looking for ways to store temporary files on a different drive.

The Firefox hard drive cache stores a lot of temporary files and i decided to move it to another hard drive. This was not the only reason though. I’m using an encrypted hard drive for all my temporary files and wanted to move the cache to that drive for privacy reasons as well.

Tweak the Firefox Auto Completion

Whenever you start writing text into the address bar Firefox tries to auto complete the text by comparing it with previously entered text. The default way of handling and comparing is not optimal and there are several ways to configure the settings to become more effective.

I did find three options that can be changed that make a difference. The first requires that links have to being with the phrase that you are typing, the second searches in normal text as well and the third option is the time that Firefox waits for new keystrokes before showing results.

You have to change them in the Firefox configuration file. Type about:config in the address bar and filter for the following phrases:

accessibility.typeaheadfind.startlinksonly Set this to true if your links have to start with the phrase that you are typing.

accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly Set this to false if you want to search in entered text as well

accessibility.typeaheadfind.timeout Change that value which is the time in ms Firefox waits for new keystrokes before showing suggestions.

Move Firefox sidebar from left to right

I had a quick chat with a friend of mine lately and we ended up arguing whether the left or the right side would be the better position for the Firefox sidebar. While I did not really mind because I tend to disable the sidebar his opinion was that it would fit better on the right side because it would not interfere with the flow of the eye and website.

There is no “put sidebar on right side” button in Firefox but we can add some code to the beloved userChrome.css file to move it from the left side to the right.

Search for userChrome.css on your system and open it. Now scroll to the bottom of the file and add the following code to it. Restart Firefox after saving the changes and you will notice that the sidebar is now located on the right side whenever you display it.

How to use Firefox 3 and Firefox 2 on the same system

The beta of Firefox 3 is relatively stable and users are beginning to download and install it on their systems. The problem that they face then is that Firefox 3 accesses the profile of Firefox 2 which means that many add-ons will be deactivated in the process and are re-activated once Firefox 2 is started again.

There are two solutions to work with Firefox 3 and Firefox 2 on the same system. The first is to download and install the portable version of Firefox 3 which does not interfere with the settings of Firefox 2. This method is not complicated at all.

Some users however prefer to install the normal versions of Firefox 3 and Firefox 2. This is understandable as well. A post on the Codefront blog explains how this can be achieved without facing the difficulties of sharing a profile. The solution is to create a new profile for Firefox 3 and tell Firefox 3 to explicitly use that profile when running.