Firefox 3.1b1 out

The Mozilla Firefox development team has published the first beta of the upcoming Firefox 3.1 browser to the Mozilla ftp. Interested users can grab their copy right from the releases directory where it branches of to downloads for the various operating systems and supported languages.

Not that many new features are included in the release. The highly talked about Javascript engine TraceMonkey which promises performance boosts has to be activated separately in about:config by setting javascript.options.jit.content to true.

Other than that the Geode add-on has been included in the release which offers location based browsing although I would have preferred that Mozilla keeps the stance of not including add-ons with Firefox releases and leave it up to the user to decide whether he wants to use an add-on or not.

Ubiquity

I suppose you all have read about the newest Mozilla Labs baby called Ubiquity which is a mix of a command line and service launcher for Firefox. It was released as a prototype yesterday and there have been some positive reviews about the new service so far.

Let me go into detail on what Ubiquity is all about. Ubiquity installs itself as an extension just like any other. It is activated by the keyboard CTRL Space command which displays a transparent black rectangle in the upper left corner of the screen below the Firefox header area.

That screen resembles a command line waiting for user input. There are about 50 commands that Ubiquity comes installed with which are the core of the extension. This reaches from posting messages (about a website) to Twitter, looking up information on Wikipedia, performing web searches on various search engines or looking up information on Google Maps.

The real benefit for the user is that he does not have to leave the current tab to get the information because everything happens in that black box. Results are shown in that block as well in real time.

Mozilla put up a user tutorial at the Mozilla Wiki site which explains the basics using a few examples

The goal of the developers however is far reaching, they did not want to produce a web command line utility, they want to:

• Empower users to control the web browser with language-based instructions.
  (With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.)
• Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone–not just Web developers–to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.)
• Use Trust networks and social constructs to balance security with ease of extensibility.
• Extend the browser functionality easily.

Those are some strong interesting goals which could change the way users interact with websites and services forever.

Have you tried Ubiquity yet? What is your opinion of the extension?

Restore The Default Firefox Search Engine

I recently installed a software that changed the default search engine in Firefox. Firefox would query that search engine whenever I entered a keyword or phrase in the location bar. Thankfully though it is pretty easy to revert the change and restore the default Firefox search engine.

You need to open up about:config in the location bar and filter for the term keyword:url. A right-click on that entry and the selection of Reset changes the search engine to the default search engine.

It is of course possible to use another search engine by modifying the entry and entering the url of the new search engine that should be used.

Disable Adblock Plus for Bookmarks

Adblock Plus is one of Firefox add-ons that you will find on every recommendation list. The add-on blocks many forms of advertisement including popup and banner ads. It sometimes however blocks regular websites from being displayed correctly and I found it very useful to add my bookmarked websites to a filter that would allow ads to be displayed on them.

This has another effect. Websites that I visit regularly deserve the money that they make from advertisement. This does not mean that I click on a lot of ads but think of those banner ads that pay when someone visits a website. So, it’s good for those sites and helps them stay alive.

It’s pretty cumbersome to add all websites manually to Adblock Plus this is why the author created a script that processes a list of websites and makes them filter ready so to speak. A whitelist will be generated which can be imported into the Firefox add-on.

To do that you need to export the bookmarks in Firefox 3. Firefox 2 users can simply copy and paste the contents of their bookmarks.html file that is located in the Firefox profile folder into the form which will process the contents.

Firefox 3 users have to export the bookmarks as HTML before they can do the same. (Because Firefox 3 is storing bookmarks in a different way). Use the keyboard combination CTRL SHIFT B to open the bookmarks manager. Click the Import and Backup menu at the top and select Export HTML from the menu. After that open the file, copy all contents and paste it into the script.

All that needs to be done is to save the whitelist as a text file and import it into Adblock Plus to whitelist all bookmarked websites.

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.