This download has been blocked by your Security Zone Policy

You might be in for a nice surprise if you are trying to download certain file types with the latest version of Firefox 3. Certain file types, like exe or msi are blocked from being downloaded displaying a red cross and the error message “This download has been blocked by your Security Zone Policy”.

The first thought that comes to mind is that the error message is related to the Security Zone Policy of Windows. Guess what, indeed it is. Firefox 3 is now taking the Security Zone Policy of a Windows operating system into consideration when downloading files which might confuse part of the user base who always thought that Firefox 3 would be independent from the operating system.

Firefox 3 users can change the Security Zone Policies in the Internet Options which are available in the Windows Control Panel. The option that has to be checked is “Launching applications and unsafe files” by clicking on the Custom level button of the Internet Zone.

The solution for users with Internet Explorer 6 is to update their browser to Internet Explorer 7 to have the option and make use of it according to a Mozillazine (via Firefox Facts) article about blocked downloads in Firefox.

Firefox 3 Experience

Firefox has been my main browser for a long time. I really loved Firefox 2 and the waves of add-ons that were created by the community. This added tremendous value to the browser and put it on pair with Opera. You’d always find an add-on for something that you needed or did not like and it was easy to create a browser that was more or less designed and providing the functionality that you wanted.

Controversy started with the release of Firefox 3 which mainly concentrated on a new feature called the Awesome Bar which was simply a change in the way the location bar worked. I do not want to get into that deeply here but if you are interested you can follow the Firefox 3 location bar discussion at Ghacks.

I did not mind it that much because I mainly use a bookmarks toolbar to access the sites that I visit regularly and since I have disabled the history it never was a problem for me.

My initial experience with Firefox 3 was not that positive. I experienced a huge cpu load and memory usage every 45-60 minutes in which Firefox 3 would become totally unresponsive. I first thought that it was caused by the Brief add-on which was the RSS Feed reader add-on that I had been using for a while but it turned out to be something else.

The culprit were Firefox Live Bookmarks which update themselves automatically. Whenever they did that my browser would freeze. Not a nice feeling if you are in the middle of writing an article or doing other time sensitive things. After exporting the live bookmarks, importing them into Google Reader and deleting them in Firefox 3 the high loads stopped.

That was a relief but it cost me half a day to discover why it was caused in first place. I also had some difficulties with add-ons that were not compatible to Firefox 3 and that would not even work if I would force compatibility.

I really like Firefox 3 now. It’s faster, more responsive and uses less system resources which is always great.

Now, what about you ? Care to tell me if you made the switch to Firefox 3 yet and how your experience was ?

Firefox World Record: Are you in ?

The Mozilla team is going for the world record with the official release of Firefox 3. They want to be the most downloaded software in the first 24 hours after release ever. I’m saying ever because this record attempt is a first, there is no magic number to beat and it will be the first entry in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Firefox 2 reached about 1.6 million downloads in the first 24 hours and that’s probably the figure that needs to be reached as a minimum but only the sky is the limit as the FAQ on the page points out.

Dedicated users can pledge to download Firefox 3 during release day. It’s a pretty nice table sorted by countries. Currently more than 79K users have pledged to download Firefox during release day with the United States taking the lead followed by Spain, Poland and Germany.

If you want to pledge to the cause visit the Spread Firefox site and add yourself to the list. The release date will be published on that site as well.

via Sparx

The keyboard is mightier than the mouse

I usually work with the keyboard in Firefox whenever possible which speeds up many processes in Firefox. I was always a bit irritated that I had to click on a search result after searching on a search engine. This did not feel right and natural.

After typing the search phrase and hitting enter it would be natural to be able to select the first, or any other, search result from the list without having to move the hand away from the keyboard to grab the mouse and click the link.

Several Firefox users must have felt the same way because multiple Firefox add-ons have been created that deal with that matter. One that has not been updated in 18 months is the Search Keys extension which adds visible keys to the search results.

The first result would be labeled 1, the second 2 and so on. Pressing the corresponding key on the keyboard loads the search result in the same tab. Pressing ALT (CTRL in Linux) and the number will open the search result in a new tab while SHIFT and the number will open it in a new Firefox window.

The keys comma and period are used to navigate search results pages. This is not working in all search engines though. A quick test revealed that all keys are still working when searching Google while the comma and period shortcuts are not working in Yahoo.

Backup Firefox Passwords Manually

The guys over at Firefox Facts are explaining in an article how to backup the Firefox passwords manually. This is interesting for everyone who needs to quickly move passwords from one computer to another and those who want to backup their passwords regularly without using a Firefox password exporter extension.

All three files that need to be copied are located in the Firefox profile folder. This profile folder is normally located in your Application Data or AppData folder of the Windows user profile or ~/.mozilla/ in Unix or ~/Library/Mozilla/ and ~/Library/Application Support/ on a Macintosh.

The following three files contain all the information about the passwords: signons.txt, signons2.txt, key3.db. Moving them into another Firefox profile would remove the old passwords of that profile and replace them with the new ones.

Open multiple bookmarks at once in Firefox

Let me describe what I would like to do. When I open the bookmarks menu in Firefox I can load one bookmark at a time that is in a folder. I know that I can load all bookmarks in a folder by middle-clicking on the folder directly which loads all the bookmarks and removes every other open tab in the process.

This is not what I’m looking for. I would like to be able to pick multiple bookmarks at once and load them all in new tabs once I’m finished. Much like the left-click CTRL option in Windows Explorer when selecting files.

I tried to find a solution but no Firefox add-on or option seems to offer it. I know that I have got some Firefox geeks among my readers which is why I’m asking this question here.

Firefox Repagination add-on

Don’t you hate it when you visit websites that divide articles to increase their pageviews and look more appealing to advertisers this way ? While some websites provided a print link that displays the full article others do not have this luxury and if you want to read the full article you have to click next a dozen times.

Not very user friendly if you ask me. enter Repagination for Firefox. This little Firefox add-on adds an option to the Firefox right-click menu when hovering over specially named links. It only becomes active on links that are either numbered (1,2,3,4) or named Next.

The option Repagination becomes visible on those links. If you select it you can load all other parts of the article below the current part. That is extremely useful for paged articles. You can limit the amount of pages that should be loaded below the current one, it ranges from 5 to unlimited.

Repagination comes with a slideshow option that is great for photo galleries. You can select a delay of 1 to 64 seconds until the next photo of the gallery is displayed.

The add-on does not work with any website that is dividing their articles though. Some websites prefer to name the next links and do not use next or a numbered approach. Those paged articles do not work that well.

A great addition to this add-on would be the option to use an automatic approach for some websites that you visit regularly.

Changing the Fonts in Firefox

Changing the fonts in Firefox, why would someone want to do that ? Maybe because of the same reason someone changes Windows system fonts, maybe because the fonts that are displayed are not optimal for his display setting, say Clear Type. I recently ran into a problem that Firefox was displaying text in forms so stuffed that it was impossible to read, even when changing the size of the font .

It’s obviously better to use Clear Type fonts if you use a LCD monitor and have Clear Type enabled. Firefox by default uses Verdana and Arial I think as Serif and Sans-Serif fonts and another one for Monospace. The Monospace font was the one that was causing the troubles for me, here is a screenshot of the font setting in Firefox.

And here are some examples of how fonts change the display of text on websites. JPG is a lossless format and results might look different on your computer. The best option would be to test different fonts to see which works the best in your environment.

You can access the font settings in Tools > Options > Content Tab > Advanced Button.

Firefox Corbel Font:

Firefox Arial Font:

Firefox Cambria Font:

Firefox Candara Font:

Install Firefox add-ons locally

The usual way to install a new Firefox add-on is by left-clicking on the link on a website which will start the installation. You might be asked to allow the website to install add-ons in Firefox but that’s usually it. I have lately experienced some troubles with several installations of Firefox add-ons. I did receive download errors for instance or installations that would simply stop at a point.

My thoughts on this topic were that it would probably be easier to install the add-ons locally, meaning to download the xpi file of the add-on and install it from my local hard drive which would actually be the same process that Mozilla Thunderbird users perform when installation add-ons for the email client.

My only problem was that I did not know if this was possible at all. I did check the add-ons menu first but there was no option to load a xpi file from the hard drive.

I then tried to use the File > Open File menu and what can I say: It works! I was able to install the add-on from my hard drive using the Open File dialog.

You can download the xpi files by right-clicking them and selecting Save As from the menu.

How to remove unnecessary Firefox plugins

Plugins are added by third-party applications to Firefox which add some kind of functionality to the browser. While some plugins make good sense, say the Quicktime plugin for instance, some others are not that easily understandable. Why would I need a Microsoft Office plugin for instance ?

You can check the installed plugins by entering about:plugins in the address bar. The list contains all available plugins that are currently loaded in Firefox. Information like the name, location on the hard drive and a short description are available. The description helps to determine if that plugin is actually needed on your system.

My preferred solution for plugins that I (think I) do not need is to create a temporary directory and move all unnecessary plugins into them. This ensures that I can move them back if I should discover that I do need the plugin.